Showbiz History: La Dolce Vita, La Haine, and the return of Willow

The Golden Globe nominations nominations are announced today so there's no time to gaze fondly back. And yet we're so OCD about doing this. Here are 5 things that happened on this day, February 3rd, in showbiz history...

1945 Walt Disney's The Three Caballeros opens in theaters 

1959 A plane crash kills three popular musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and "the Big Bopper" J.P. Richardson. This tragedy became known as "the day the music died" due to the classic song "American Pie" by Don McLean...

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Bye, Fantasia

by Jason Adams

The 2018 edition of the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal just finished its three-week run on August 2nd, and yours truly covered it here from my perch six hundred whole kilometers away thanks to the wonders of the internet and the great generosity of the fest's programmers. We introduced the fest right here, listing what looked of interest. And now down below here's a round-up of what we eventually reviewed (you can click on the film titles to read each review):

Fleuve Noir -- Vincent Cassel and Romain Duris circle each other suspiciously (with sexy results!) in this off-beat crime-thriller from Julia director Erick Zonca

Knuckleball -- A kid fights off home invaders in a super dark twist on Home Alone 

Blue My Mind -- Add mermaid to the list of movie puberty hells getting the updated girlhood spin in this beautifully acted and photographed Swiss flick

Cold Skin -- Lovecraft meets Old-timey Lighthouse Keeper Sweater Porn

Chained For Life -- This movie (within a movie) starring Jess Weixler about our culture of beauty fetishization is a real trip and a half

Cam -- Madeline Brewer from The Handmaid's Tale proves she's no one-eyed fluke in this candy-colored Lynchian spin on online sex-work (PS Cam just got picked up for release this fall so stay tuned!)

Fantasia 2018: Fleuve Noir

by Jason Adams

There's a real effortfully cool 70s vibe to Fleuve Noir (aka Black Tide), the new crime thriller by Erick Zonca (his first movie since 2008's terrific Julia starring Tilda Swinton) - if you think Vincent Cassel might at some point sit in a seedy apartment and play some saxophone like he's Gene Hackman in The Conversation you wouldn't be straining nearly as hard as the movie is to make you think of that. Cassel, looking like a cigarette that gained sentience and put on an overcoat, plays Commandant Visconti, a detective (but don't call him a detective please!) on the case of a missing teenage boy...

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Fantasia, Straight Ahead

by Jason Adams

Tomorrow marks the opening of the 22nd annual Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, which runs all the way to August 2nd - the fest focuses in on genre films from around the world, with titles ranging from Indonesian Cowboy Epics to Christmas Zombie Musicals to Nicolas Cage. It's got everything a growing nerd might want... and then some things you might not think you want but you'll try them anyway and oh look you've got a new kink now, thanks Fantasia.

I'll be covering the fest both here at TFE and over at MNPP (we covered the fest there last year) over the next couple of weeks. There are some big titles screening like Mandy, the by-all-accounts insane bloodbath starring the aforementioned Cage alongside Andrea Riseborough of all people, and Under the Silver Lake, It Follows' director David Robert Mitchell's (recently delayed) flick with Andrew Garfield.

After the jump six smaller yet delicious-looking highlights from the fest's epic programming slate that we're hoping to get our beady little eyes on...

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It’s only 'It’s Only the End of the World'

Josh here, reflecting on the backlash against Xavier Dolan now he’s seen It’s Only the End of the World at the Sydney Film Festival

In what must be a true sign of success, Xavier Dolan was booed and savaged by critics at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year when his latest film It’s Only the End of the World premiered. The reaction was swift not just against his film, but against the filmmaker himself. Dolan address this, and reacted strongly to The Playlist which remarked “It's simply impossible to believe that a story this stridently self-pitying could not refer, more or less explicitly, to writer/director Dolan himself… It suggests a level of martyred self-involvement on Dolan's part that is tantamount to a persecution complex”. This was just one of many vicious reactions online and especially on twitter, against the film but then, in turn, against Dolan for defending himself against criticism.

The apparent taboo of a filmmaker reading, and responding to a critic was a major sore point. As though a critic should get the final word. It’s hard here not to recall the brilliant monologue from Ratatouille...

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