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IFC Entertainment & NETFLIX to make Independent Films available to watch instantly!

IFC Films News — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:05:31 +0000

IFC ENTERTAINMENT SIGNS DEAL TO MAKE INDEPENDENT FILMS AVAILABLE TO BE WATCHED INSTANTLY AT NETFLIX

IFC Entertainment Titles Available Include American Independent, Documentary and World Cinema Titles, With Films by John Sayles, Errol Morris, Susanne Bier, Christopher Nolan, Catherine Breillat, James Toback, Rebecca Miller and Hirokazu Kore-Eda

NEW YORK, November 20, 2009 – In a move designed to increase the reach of independent cinema, IFC Entertainment, one of the leading distributors of independent and foreign films, and Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced a partnership that gives Netflix U.S. rights to 53 unique titles from IFC Entertainment. Through this agreement select titles from IFC Entertainment’s eclectic library of independent films will become available to be streamed instantly to televisions and computers via the Netflix service. The deal was announced jointly by Lisa Schwartz, executive vice president for IFC Entertainment, and Robert Kyncl, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix.

The partnership gives Netflix members on an unlimited plan the opportunity to instantly watch the newly acquired films on their computers or TVs through a range of Netflix ready devices. Those devices include Netflix ready Blu-ray disc players and new Internet TVs from LG Electronics; Blu-ray disc players from Samsung and Best Buy’s Insignia brand; the Roku digital video player; Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console and Sony’s Playstation 3 (PS3) computer entertainment system; TiVo digital video recorders, and Internet TVs from Sony and, soon, VIZIO. The films will be available beginning Friday, November 20th.

“Netflix has always championed independent cinema and has creatively built audiences for films in this genre, and we’re excited to give their customers instant access to this wide-ranging collection of independent film,” said Lisa Schwartz, executive vice president for IFC Entertainment. “Our top priority is to make independent film available to a wider audience and this partnership further underscores that commitment.”

“Partnering with IFC Films gives us the opportunity to expand the number of quality films that our subscribers can watch instantly,” said Robert Kyncl, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix. “This deal reinforces our commitment to bringing diversity to the library and properties like this collection of titles bring us closer to that goal.”

The deal will include 53 contemporary classic, and recent critically acclaimed titles, including English-language independents from John Sayles’ Sundance prize winner THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and the award-winning RETURN OF SECAUCUS SEVEN, Christopher Nolan’s first film FOLLOWING, Joe Swanberg’s NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS, James Toback’s WHEN WILL I BE LOVED?, and Rebecca Miller’s debut ANGELA.

The library will also feature documentaries by renowned filmmaker Errol Morris, including the groundbreaking THE THIN BLUE LINE and his debut feature GATES OF HEAVEN. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s award-winning BROTHER’S KEEPER, and Jim Stern and Adam Del Deo’s political documentary SO GOES THE NATION are also featured.

In addition, some of the most celebrated foreign language titles of recent years can be instantly streamed from Netflix, including Susanne Bier’s BROTHERS, Patrice Chereau’s GABRIELLE, Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Cannes prize winner NOBODY KNOWS, Lukas Moodysson’s TOGETHER, Christophe Honoré’s DANS PARIS, Catherine Breillat SEX IS COMEDY, Alfonso Cuaron SOLO CON TU PAREJA, Kristian Levring THE INTENDED and Hou Hsiao Hsien’s THREE TIMES.

Essential French Cinema From IFC Films this Fall

IFC Films News — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:23:07 +0000

This month IFC Films is proud to present three terrific films from the best of the best in French cinema. Headlined by three of the brightest French talents around, Nathalie Baye, Louis Garrel, and Juliette Binoche, these films are unmissable for any fan of Gallic film!

FRENCH GIGOLO, the French box office hit, continues the long tradition of exploring female desire and sexuality with sharp wit and insight. The film caused much discussion in France for it’s frank depiction of female sexuality in a country that’s never been shy on the matter. Directed, written and co-starring Josiane Blasko (FRENCH TWIST), the film stars Nathalie Baye (VENUS BEAUTY INSTITUTE, TELL NO ONE) and Eric Caravaca (MONSIEUR IBRAHIM) and premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Stephen Holden of the NY Times notes: “The movie is very canny about the intersection of sex, power and money.” The Times also highlighted the film exactly for this reason:

From “France. Sex. Problem?” By ELAINE SCIOLINO, Published: October 29, 2008:
“THE posters displayed in Paris Métro stations show a slim woman in her 50s in a cocktail dress, reclining on a leather sofa. Her hair is natural, her makeup understated, her smile satisfied. In the foreground, a man, his torso nude, slips two 100-euro notes into his pocket.

The posters were advertising “Cliente,” a popular movie that revolves around clichés about prostitution and gigolos in France. Judith, the client, who is played by Nathalie Baye, one of France’s highest-paid actresses, is not a pathetic, lifted rich woman of a certain age and nothing to do. Rather, she is a hard-charging, 51-year-old television shopping-channel anchor and director who, after her marriage falls apart, wants good sex without strings and is willing to pay handsomely for it.

For Josiane Balasko, 58, the director, author and actress (she plays Judith’s sister), the goals were twofold: to shatter a long-held taboo in France and to send a positive message to middle-aged women who find themselves alone and wanting sexual fulfillment.

A FRENCH GIGOLO is now available on demand from IFC Festival Direct.

IFC Films’ collaborations with Christophe Honoré (LOVE SONGS, DANS PARIS) are always very exciting, and we’re glad to add his latest, THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON to the list. Louis Garrel, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, and Lea Seydoux star in this “pleasingly tart vision of lust, teenage or otherwise” (Village Voice).

Likened by some to a “Gallic Gossip Girl”, this indelibly French romance blends the same irresistable measures of swooning emotion and sly wit the made us love Honoré’s previous films. Dennis Dermody exclaims, THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON is “INTELLECTUAL, PLAYFUL AND THRILLINGLY ALIVE…FREEWHEELING, TEMPESTUOUS. Louis Garrel is brooding, beautiful and ultimately touching. Lea Seydoux is gorgeous and mysterious.”

THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON is now available on demand from IFC Festival Direct.

Oscar-winner and America’s French Sweetheart, Juliette Binoche, leads a brilliant ensemble in the latest from from Cedric Klapisch (L’AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE). PARIS explores the lives and loves of a cross-section of French people with elegance and romance. The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern gushes on the subject: “Klapisch makes fiction films that are better than most documentaries at tracking the ravages and felicities of urban renewal, the connections between people and their neighborhoods, the ties that both bind and torment families. In his latest feature, PARIS, he does all of that and then some. PARIS sees life—on earth, not just in La Ville Lumière—as a dance of human connections, some of which fail while others endure… [the film] pulses with a contemporary version of the energy that animated Balzac’s novels, or Colette’s accounts of the life she observed from the window of her apartment in the Palais Royal.”

This satisfying portrait that manages to capture both the reality and immortal romance of the City of Lights creates a great film experience. Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post concludes: “hurry, please, to PARIS, Cedric Klapisch’s intoxicating portrait of a city…[the director] captures both the picture-postcard ideal of the city and the candid truth behind it, managing to enhance both images… [it] is a funny, sad, romantic and deeply felt love letter. If you can’t book a trip now, it’s the next best thing.”

PARIS is now playing in theaters nationwide, and is also available to watch on demand.

UNCERTAINTY is a New York Times Critic’s Pick

IFC Films News — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:05:37 +0000

Lovers Cross a Bridge, in More Ways Than One
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: November 13, 2009

“Uncertainty” is a taut, skillful exercise in cinematic clockwork concocted by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the talented directors of “The Deep End” and “Bee Season.” Written by the two men, with dialogue largely improvised by the actors, the movie splits into parallel stories after an opening scene in which young lovers, Bobby Thompson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a Canadian musician, and Kate Montero (Lynn Collins), a Broadway dancer, meet on the Brooklyn Bridge one Fourth of July morning.

Kate is unexpectedly, but not yet visibly, pregnant, and decisions have to be made. Although Bobby and Kate are clearly in love, they have only known each other for 10 months, and Bobby lacks a green card. Unable to decide what to do, he flips a coin, at which point they run headlong in opposite directions, only to meet each other on either side of the East River simultaneously (a surreal conceit). From there, “Uncertainty” imagines radically different destinies for the pair, signaled by their color-coded wardrobes (green for Brooklyn, yellow for Manhattan).

The movie’s exploration of chance, coincidence and fate has none of the metaphysical resonance or moral gravity found in the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski, who obsessed about such matters. There are no philosophical asides that search for a deeper meaning, if there is one. Nor does the film try to camouflage the artificiality of the concept.

The two stories don’t converge, nor do they play into each other. But as “Uncertainty” crosscuts between alternative fates, each unfolding at exactly the same time as the other, it never loses its coherence. The quieter of the two strands, which begins in Brooklyn, is a family drama in which the couple visits Kate’s family in Queens for a holiday barbecue. En route they pick up a stray dog they find wandering in traffic.

These scenes depict the Monteros as a mostly assimilated, middle-class family of Argentine descent coping with unhealed wounds (the death of son) and nagging worries. Kate’s mother, Sylvia (Assumpta Serna), is suspicious of Bobby and frets that Kate’s younger sister, Sophie (Olivia Thirlby), shares Kate’s show business aspirations. The flow of overlapping dialogue is so natural that you never sense that the actors are straining to come up with ideas.

In its depiction of multiple characters at a sprawling family celebration and in its psychological complexity, this part of “Uncertainty” recalls a more muted “Rachel Getting Married.” Kate is the more sharply drawn character: a willful young woman beholden to no one. Bobby is comparatively aloof.

The Manhattan half of the story is all action. When they discover a misplaced cellphone in the back seat of a taxi, Bobby calls the number, and two different people, both desperate to retrieve the phone, respond in rapid succession. Moments before the first claimant meets them, they watch aghast as he is shot to death.

When the second respondent demands the cellphone, the story makes a giant, unsteady leap by having Bobby and Kate decide to ransom it instead of handing it over. There are hints that its supposed owner has been involved in a lottery scandal.

For most of the rest of the story Bobby and Kate are chased by a gunman over the streets and rooftops of Manhattan (mostly Chinatown), as they hatch a foolish plan to collect half a million dollars. Even as you’re watching this story, it feels implausible.

At the same time Rain Li’s fluid cinematography (some of it hand-held) and Peter Nashel’s score mesh to give the chase a visceral momentum. The streets of New York have rarely been photographed more realistically. One of the story’s strengths is its up-to-the-minute technological savvy. It captures the paranoia of a high-tech urban climate in which it is possible to track people instantly by cellphone, computer and credit card, so that there is nowhere to hide.

Joe Gordon-Levitt on UNCERTAINTY

krkail — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:28:27 +0000

Over at co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s incredible production tumblr, the star of UNCERTAINTY has shared some candid thoughts on his experiences with the film (as well as a great moment of impromptu music on the set!)

“Working on UNCERTAINTY was a turn on. I get off on unique creative experiences, and the collaborative improvisational process into which Scott and David, the filmmakers, invited Lynn and me was indeed unique. It also turns out to have resulted in a great film. Or I’d say so anyway.

And it’s one of those movies, like BRICK or MYSTERIOUS SKIN, that’s truly, as they say, “independent,” as opposed to 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, for example, which certainly had no blockbuster budget, but was produced by a major studio, Fox Searchlight. UNCERTAINTY’s budget makes 500’s look like GIJOE’s, especially when it comes to marketing. Which brings me to the shameless pitch ;o)

If you like movies that push the envelope of the art, that aren’t made for the business of it all, but are really just made out of recklessly passionate cinephilia… I do recommend you check this one out. We can’t really afford to, you know, advertise and things like that, but we count on other cinephiles like us, like you, to head down to the art house instead of the multiplex.

I’m gonna be at the IFC Center, where it’s playing in NYC, for the evening shows all next weekend. Hope to see you there!

<3

J”

Watch Joe’s rendition of ‘La Bamba’ with the cast and crew here, and be sure to follow the Tumblr for new updates every day!

John Krasinski in Austin this weekend with BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN!

IFC Films News — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:03:20 +0000

This Friday and Saturday at Austin’s Alamo Ritz cinema the writer-director-star of BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN will be in person to present his eagerly awaited debut.

Friday & Saturday:
7PM Show: Intro & Q&A
9:45PM Show: Intro

Visit http://bit.ly/2qNLLM to buy your tickets now!

Sundance & IFC Films to present Olivier Assayas’ CARLOS

IFC Films News — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:40:18 +0000

SUNDANCE CHANNEL AND IFC FILMS TO PRESENT CARLOS, OLIVIER ASSAYAS’ EPIC PROJECT ABOUT TERRORIST CARLOS THE JACKAL

THREE-PART MINI-SERIES TO DEBUT IN U.S. ON SUNDANCE CHANNEL IN SPRING 2010

THEATRICAL FILM VERSION FOLLOWS IN FALL 2010 WITH SIMULTANEOUS NATIONWIDE ON-DEMAND FILM OFFERING

New York, NY – November 7, 2009 IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company has acquired all U.S. rights to the theatrical version of CARLOS, directed by Olivier Assayas (SUMMER HOURS). The film is a shortened version of the three-part mini-series of the same name that will premiere on Sundance Channel in Spring 2010. The mini-series and film are about the man known as Carlos the Jackal who single handedly invented the word “terrorism” while masterminding a wave of terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East in the 70s and 80s. CARLOS stars Edgar Ramirez (CHE, DOMINO) in the lead role with a sweeping cast of international talent from France, Germany, Japan and the Middle East. Scheduled to air on Canal Plus in early 2010, the three-part series was shot in various countries including Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Lebanon and Morocco. It is produced by Studio Canal and Film En Stock’s prize winning journalist Daniel Leconte and Jens Meuer (RUSSIAN ARK) in association with Sundance Channel.

Harold Vanlier and Anna Marsh of Studio Canal negotiated the deal at the American Film Market.

His name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, but everybody calls him Carlos. For two decades, he was the most wanted terrorist on earth. Manipulated by Arab secret services, protected by the Eastern bloc, in various disguises and under many pseudonyms, he headed a worldwide organization responsible for spectacular killings, hijackings and bombings. This is the story of a man snatched from ignominious exile in Sudan to answer for his crimes in France. It is the story of Carlos the Jackal.

Studio Canal’s Harold Vanlier stated ” I simply love working with IFC Films. They are passionate, really smart and the distribution model they bring to such a unique project is very attractive. To have the Sundance Channel sharing our enthusiasm from the very start was one thing but to now have their sister company IFC Films committing to a big theatrical release is really a tribute to Olivier Assayas as a filmmaker. We strongly believe CARLOS is one of the many projects that will help us turn the Canal Plus Group into the main European supplier of commercial films and high quality programming. ”

On behalf of IFC Films Jonathan Sehring said, “CARLOS is going to be one of the major events of 2010, and we could not be happier to be back in business with Olivier Assayas after SUMMER HOURS, our friends at Studio Canal and to work with our sister company Sundance Channel to bring this incredible vision about one of the most famous figures in recent history to American audiences.”

About Olivier Assayas
A rare French filmmaker with his finger on the pulse of the modern world, Olivier Assayas is the filmmaker of such films as SUMMER HOURS, BOARDING GATE, CLEAN, DEMONLOVER, LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER, LES DESTINEES, IRMA VEP and COLD WATER.

IN THE LOOP scores three top awards a Scottish BAFTAs

IFC Films News — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:37:19 +0000

From THE SCOTSMAN:

“In The Loop scoops Scottish Baftas hat-trick!

THE political satire In The Loop was the toast of this year’s Scottish Baftas after scooping a hat-trick of awards last night.

The 2009 ceremony saw Peter Capaldi, who starred as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, win the category Best Acting Performance in Film – although he was unable to turn up for the event.

The directing prize went to Armando Iannucci, while writers for the movie – a spin-off from the BBC TV series The Thick of It – were also rewarded for their efforts after picking up the writing in film award.

Last night Iannucci said: “I’ve always wanted to make a funny film. The sound of everyone laughing in a cinema is great.”

Iannucci, who collected Capaldi’s award on his behalf, said the actor was away promoting In The Loop in America.

He said: “He was really gutted to find he couldn’t come tonight. He really wanted to and he’d be distraught to find he had missed the great Bill Forsyth.”

FISH TANK Named Best Film at AFI 2009

IFC Films News — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:14:30 +0000

Last night in Los Angeles, Andrea Arnold’s FISH TANK was (together with Javier Rebollo’s WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO) named the New Lights Competition Award winner, the festival’s highest honor.

Actor Michael Fassbender accepted the award on behalf of the film, and delivered word from Arnold in the UK:

“I am so sorry that work commitments mean that I can’t be here tonight but delighted that Michael is able to say a few words on my behalf. (He is also a lot easier on the eye)

I was thrilled to hear that Fish Tank is one of the films that has been honoured with the New Lights Award. I went to AFI so it has special significance for me.

Everyone who worked on Fish Tank will be very chuffed with this recognition. It is their talent, care and hard work that made the film what it is.

I’d like to thank Rose Kuo and AFI for championing new independent films.

I’d like also to thank everyone at IFC for their support and belief in the film.

I’ll be asleep across the Atlantic tonight by the time Michael reads this but my dreams will be sweet. Thank you AFI.

Have a great night.”

John Krasinski in Boston this weekend for BRIEF INTERVIEWS!

sriley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:58:10 +0000

This weekend in Boston, John Krasinski (The Office, AWAY WE GO) will be presenting his directorial debut, a star-studded adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN, at Landmark’s Kendall Square theater!

The film was an Official Selection of the Sundance Film Festival where Peter Travers said of it, “Thrillingly alive. The best of the Sundance best!”

John will be at the theater for evening shows, Friday:
7PM Show - Intro & Q&A
9:45PM Show - Intro

And Saturday:
7PM Show - Intro & Q&A
9:45PM Show - Intro

Visit www.landmarktheaters.com to buy your tickets now!

IFC Films’ 10 Favorite Horror Films

krkail — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:29:14 +0000

In celebration of Halloween, the IFC Films staff have put together a little list. It’s a pretty ecclectic office, but as you can see we certaintly agree on classics. As voted by everyone from the Lawyers to the company President himself:

IFC Films’ 10 Favorite Horror Films!

RUNNERS UP: Vampyr (1932), Suspiria (1977), Candyman (1992), The Orphanage (2007), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

#10 -PSYCHO - 1960, d. Alfred Hitchcock
Modern horror was born in 1960. In Italy the giallo was sprung from Bava, in the UK Hammer found its stride, Michael Powell capped his career with PEEPING TOM, and in Hollywood the master of suspense turned a corner from a career of mystery to abject psychological terror. PSYCHO is ubiquitous, at this point, but its affect remains potent. In the attic: the ego, in the basement: the id. Hitch spun out a genre’s pinnacle with the simplest of Freudian metaphors, and a generation of movies owes him for it. (Keaton Kail)

#9 -HALLOWEEN - 1978, d. John Carpenter
Though this Carpenter classic is responsible for introducing the world to the oft-abused “slasher” genre, not to mention a franchise of sequels and prequels no one should ever bother with, it’s hard to be too angry at the original. A sumptuous widescreen feast of terror with one of the all-time most haunting scores, the original “Halloween” is so frightening, you will want to turn away, but so aesthetically masterful, you won’t be able to. (Jeff Deutchman)

#8 - JAWS - 1975, d. Steven Spielberg
No pontificating. Listen. http://bit.ly/2yh2Yp

#7 - THE DESCENT - 2006, Neil Marshall
Every great horror movie co-exists with an iconic score, PSYCHO had Bernard Hermann, JAWS had John Williams and THE DESCENT has David Julyan. Julyan’s beautiful strings captures the fear, desperation, loneliness and strength felt by Shauna Macdonald’s character as she tries to survive a violent and calculated attack of bat-like people in an Appalachian cave, with her thrill-seeking friends. What makes this movie so refreshing is the social dynamic between a group of women that try to help a friend who lost her husband to a fatal car accident a year before. The underlying secrets and tension between these characters can only be forced out by the literal interpretation of violent creatures killing them off one by one. I absolutely adore this movie, but it is elevated to a completely higher level with Julyan’s score. (Nat Baruch)

#6 - THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE - 1974, d. Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper’s MASSACRE hit the 70s like a blunt trauma. With a sickly palate of grease yellows, fleshy oranges and shocks of browned-blood-red Hooper painted the American south like it had never been seen before. ’72’s DELIVERANCE whetted an as-yet latent appetite for the deranged American hick-monster, but TEXAS CHAINSAW’s redneck-sploitation thumbed at the apparently vivid phobia of an aberrant south to masterful, horrifying effect. A watershed in American independent film, and brags one of the most stunningly beautiful closing images in all of cinema. Leatherface dancing away towards sunset, gore effusing from his chainsaw, will certainly stick in my mind permanently. (Keaton Kail)

#5 - ALIEN – 1979, d. Ridley Scott
My favorite moment in ALIEN is one of the more tender and striking images of femininity I can summon up from any movie I’ve seen. Sigourney Weaver, victorious, exhausted, half-naked in her spaceship stands straight up in the glass cockpit and the camera worships her for a brief second, set starkly against a backdrop of terrible, empty, black space. It’s a tiny, elegant moment in a frenetically violent movie, but not rare. Scott’s touch elevates an aggressively simple, killer-aliens-will-lay-eggs-in-your-brain concept to a discussion of terror and the sublime. The film confronts an indefatigable image of space as the final frontier and finds out in the mystery nothing but monsters. And you’d certainly be hard pressed to beat the tag line. (Keaton Kail)

#4 - THE OMEN - 1976, d. Richard Donner
In the 1970s, the horror film picked up on a very specific anxiety: what type of child would result from the unbridled debaucherous reproduction and lax parenting of hippies? A Satanic one, of course. THE OMEN must be considered a member of any horror canon, but it is also unquestionably one of the most sublime conservative films. (Jeff Deutchman)

#3 - POLTERGEIST - 1982, d. Steven Spie… TOBE HOOPER
The inimitable Tobe Hooper claims his second spot in our countdown with the film that is surely responsible for more nightmares of generation Y than any other. Spielberg’s producer credit often overshadows the undeniable stamp of the director of this terrifying domestic haunt, but questions of authorship are irrelevant to its brilliance — a child’s home is supposed to be the safest place on earth, and this movie terrorizes that security thoroughly. (Keaton Kail)

#2 -THE EXORCIST - 1973, d. William Friedkin
Scorsese recently hit it right on the nose: “A classic, endlessly parodied, very familiar— and it’s as utterly horrifying as it was the day it came out. That room—the cold, the purple light, the demonic transformations: it really haunts you.” THE EXORCIST has carved out a little corner in understanding the horror film as something of an ideal of the genre. It cuts straight to a core fear of that final evil, Satan himself, come to make us do backwards-broken-spider-walks down staircases. (Keaton Kail)

#1 - THE SHINING - 1980, d. Stanley Kubrick

‘Nuff said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmn6FRgYwBQ

THE LISTS

Nat Baruch - Marketing & P.R.
My top 5 influential horror movies that remind me of halloween (though not necessarily my favorite horror movies of all time)

5. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME - Dir. David Lynch
Traditionalists, say what you will about this film compared to the late-great TV show before it, but this film invoked fear in my little 11 yr old heart. Nothing can scare an 11 yr. old more than strobe lights, burly Canadians and cigarette butts.

4. THE GATE - Dir. Tibor Takacs
Yes, before directing such classics like MANSQUITO and episodes of RED SHOE DIARIES, Tibor made this underrated flick about a 13 yr old Stephen Dorff opening up the gate of hell in his parent’s backyard by playing a heavy metal record backwards. This movie has the best use of a barbie doll as a weapon.

3. CANDYMAN - Dir. Bernard Rose
A story by Clive Barker, before ever seeing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, this movie introduced me to social commentary within the confines of a horror tale. Hooks, babies, bees and dead dogs lie in this tale of a white grad student who is writing a paper on urban legends and comes across the one about a son of slaves who, violently murdered, becomes a cursed ghost in the present, reaking havoc in the Chicago projects when one looks in the mirror and says, “Candyman, Candyman, Candyman”. All of this in enveloped with an iconic score by Philip Glass.

2. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET - Dir. Wes Craven
My first foray into kitsch horror, though I say that with the utmost respect. What 8 yr. old would ask their parents to get them a subscription of Fangoria Magazine, just so they can order a
replica of Freddy’s glove?

1. POLTERGEIST - Dir. Steven Spie…I mean Tobe Hooper
The first horror movie that made me feel like I understood the responsibility and loss that a parent must face everyday, at such a young age. More kids movies should be like this.

Jeff Deutchman - Acquisitions
1. The Shining
2. Suspiria
3. Peeping Tom
4. Funny Games (97/08)
5. The Driller Killer

Justin Dipietro - Distribution
1) Shocker (if only because of Bingham Ray’s standout performance)
2) I Spit on Your Grave
3) C.H.U.D
4) The Monster Squad (wolfman’s got nards!)
5) Jaws 3-D

Jon Hertzberg - Distribution
1. DAWN OF THE DEAD
2. ALIEN
3. PSYCHO
4. SUSPIRIA
5. CAT PEOPLE

Kathryne Howe - Acquisitions
1 Silver Bullet
2 The Descent
3 The Exorcist
4 Halloween
5 Nightmare on Elm St.

Keaton Kail - Marketing & P.R.
1. Vampyr (1932)
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
3. Hausu (1977)
4. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
5. Blood & Black Lace (1960)
6. Alien (1979)
7. Night of the Hunter (1955)
8. [Safe] (1995)
9. Living Dead Girl (1982)
10. 28 Days Later (2002)

Huma Khan - Legal
1. The Exorcist
2. The Omen
3. The Omen II
4. Amityville Horror
5. The Ring

Lizzie Nastro - Acquisitions
1. The Shining
2. House of the Devil
3. Don’t Look Now
4. Halloween
5. Cujo

Sarah Orazio - Exec. Assistant
1. Jaws
2. Ghostbusters (not horror, but so great)
3. Alien
4. The Birds
5. Scream (don’t judge me)

Courtney Ott - Marketing & P.R.
1. The Thing
2. Alien
3. Psycho
4. Poltergeist
5. The Descent

Whitney Rodgers - Post-Production
1. Poltergeist
2. Child’s Play
3. Candyman
4. Nightmare on Elm’s Street
5. Pet Cemetery

Jonathan Sehring - President, IFC Entertainment
1. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
2. Nosferatu (1922)
3. Psycho (1960)
4. Exorcist
5. Night of the Living Dead
6. Nightmare on Elm Street
7. Halloween (Carpenter)
8. Don’t Look Now
9. Black Sunday (Bava)
10. Silence of the Lambs

I really like the early Cronenberg films (Frenzy, Shivers, The Brood) - Jaws doesn’t count (it’s a giant shark) - The Birds is great but it ain’t Psycho.

Vicki Sheng - Marketing & P.R.
1. El Orfanato
2. The Shining
3. The Ring
4. The Others
5. Amityville Horror

Laura Sok - Marketing & P.R.
1. The Omen
2. The Shining
3. The Exorcist
4. The Orphanage
5. Halloween

Rose Surnow - Marketing & P.R.
1. The Vanishing
2. The Omen
3. Poltergeist
4. The Bad Seed
5. The Shining

C. Mason Wells - IFC Center
“Hell Is Other People”
My favorite horror movies aren’t about blood or shocks, but the terrifying, cringe-inducing things people say and do to one another everyday. Full of emotional belligerence and bitter jealousy, naked egomania and crippling self-delusion, these are the kinds of movies you and watch through your hands — in the horror of self-recognition.

1. THE KING OF COMEDY (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
2. WE WON’T GROW OLD TOGETHER (Maurice Pialat, 1972)
3. A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (John Cassavetes, 1971)
4. THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (Maren Ade, 2003)
5. WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)

Ryan Werner - Marketing & P.R.
1. The Shining
2. Carrie
3. The Descent

4. Eyes Without a Face

5. Rosemary’s Baby

Mike Winton - Marketing & P.R.
1. Jaws
2. Halloween
3. Creepshow
4. The Descent
5. Sleepaway Camp

NEW ON DVD: Medicine for Melancholy & Fear(s) of the Dark

IFC Films News — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:20:55 +0000

This week two excellent IFC Films are being released on DVD; Barry Jenkin’s debut feature MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY, a bright, romantic story of race, taste, and San Francisco, and FEAR(s) OF THE DARK, a collection of animated horror shorts from graphic artists Charles Burns, Blutch, Richard McGuire, Pierre Disciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Maire Caillou.

Roger Ebert appreciates the modest charm of MEDICINE: “”Medicine for Melancholy” is a first, but very assured, feature by Barry Jenkins, who has the confidence to know the precise note he wants to strike. This isn’t a Statement film or a bold experiment in style; it’s more like a New Yorker story that leaves you thinking, yes, I see how they feel.”

A.O. Scott of the NY Times: “There are no simple answers or obvious conclusions to be gleaned from this movie, which, like its soundtrack, is both sad and vibrant, meandering and formally sure-footed. It is an exciting debut, and a film that, without exaggeration or false modesty, finds interest and feeling in the world just as it is.”

The critics also agree that FEAR(S) is unmissable for fans of horror and animation: “”Rusty alleyways and vaporous ghosts painted by the masters of dread. Razor-sharp images that will slice your eye and nest there forever. Thrilling, disturbing and haunting. Bring the kids!!,” says director Guillermo del Toro (PAN’S LABYRINTH), and Jeanette Catsoulis of the NY Times agrees enthusiasm is warrented: “Never less than MESMERIZING…Exhibiting an astonishing range of styles…”an eerie delight… astonishing… ravishingly beautiful.”

Visit Amazon DVD to take home both of these great movies today!

BEFORE THE FALL wins big at Screamfest 2009

IFC Films News — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:19:43 +0000

From Bloody-Disgusting:

“The big winner of the night was F. Javier Gutiérrez’s Tres Dias (Before The Fall), which took home three awards, for editing, actor Víctor Clavijo, and Gutiérrez’s directing. And Ti West’s House Of The Devil also won big, for best actress (Jocelin Donahue) and best score (Jeff Grace). Best Picture went to Tom Six’s Human Centipede, an award that was accepted by the hilarious Akihiro Kitamura, who plays the “head” of the film’s titular experiment. Best Short film awards went to Thibault Emin (Else) and Erwin van den Eshof (Harry Doright). All in all a great year; grats to the winners, and we will see you again in 2010!”

Ruba Nadda’s CAIRO TIME, starring Patricia Clarkson, Acquired

IFC Films News — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:12:37 +0000

Official Press Release:

IFC FILMS MAKES TIME FOR “CAIRO TIME” AS COMPANY ACQUIRES U.S. RIGHTS TO ROMANTIC DRAMA STARRING ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE PATRICIA CLARKSON AND ALEXANDER SIDDIG

Acclaimed Film From Ruba Nadda Won “Best Canadian Feature” at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival

Theatrical and VOD Release Set For 2010

New York (NY) (October 21, 2009) – IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired U.S. rights to CAIRO TIME, a romantic drama starring Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Pieces of April, Whatever Works) and Alexander Siddig (Kingdom of Heaven, Syriana, “24”). Written and directed by the internationally acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Ruba Nadda, the movie was produced by Daniel Iron of Foundry Films and executive produced by Christine Vachon and Charles Pugliese of Killer Films with David Collins of Samson Films.

CAIRO TIME was featured as a Special Presentation at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival where it garnered the prize for Best Canadian Feature.

IFC Films acquired the rights to CAIRO TIME from E1 Entertainment International, the film’s sales agent and U.S. and international rights holder. The deal for CAIRO TIME was negotiated by Lizzie Nastro, IFC Films Director of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, and Victoria Cook from Cinetic on behalf of Charlotte Mickie of E1 Entertainment International.

IFC Films will release CAIRO TIME in 2010 via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to on-demand viewers at home the same day they premiere in theaters.

CAIRO TIME traces the brief unexpected love affair that blossoms between a married woman visiting Cairo for the first time and her husband’s good friend, his Egyptian former head of security. The Toronto jury described it as “a superbly directed lyrical waltz of longing and desire across disparate worlds, with exquisite performances by Patricia Clarkson, Tom McCamus and Alexander Siddig. The film evocatively serves as an analogy for the intricacies of passionate romance that, for practical reasons, can never be realized.”

“On behalf of the entire cast and crew of CAIRO TIME we are so excited to have IFC Films distributing the film in the U.S. – it really is a dream come true,” said Ruba Nadda. “We thank them for their support and look forward to a wonderful partnership!”

CAIRO TIME marks critically acclaimed actress Patricia Clarkson’s foray as a romantic leading lady. Her innovative work has earned her unparalleled recognition from the independent film community, film critics, and her peers.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented, “”CAIRO TIME is so exquisite in the way its tale of romantic longing unfolds that it recalls one of the classics of the genre, BRIEF ENCOUNTER. Patricia Clarkson gives one of the performances of her career. She has never been as luminous or alive as she is in this film and she’s met every step of the way by Alexander Siddig. We think this film is really going to connect with audiences and we couldn’t be happier to be in business with our friends at E1, Killer Films, Foundry Films, Samson Films and director Ruba Nadda.”

“I am absolutely thrilled that IFC Films will be our distributor” said Charlotte Mickie, Executive Vice-President of E1 Entertainment International “They are our valued partner and have been for some time. They will bring superb marketing skills to the table as well as tremendous expertise in new media.”

About the Filmmaker
Ruda Nadda was born in Montreal and studied English at York University and film production at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She made several award-winning short films, including Do Nothing (97), Interstate Love Story (97), So Far Gone (98) Damascus Nights (98), Laila (99), I Would Suffer Cold Hands for You (99), Black September (99) and Aadan (04),before writing and directing the features Sabah (05) and Cairo Time (09).

FISH TANK and IN THE LOOP lead 2009 British Independent Film Awards

IFC Films News — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:05:02 +0000

From BIFA’s official website:

“NOMINATIONS AND JURY ANNOUNCED FOR THE 12TH BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS

The nominations and jury members for the twelfth annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) were announced today, Monday 26 October, at Soho House in London.

BIFA Directors, Johanna von Fischer & Tessa Collinson say: “We have had a record number of films submitted this year, with the pre-selection committee viewing over 200 films. A highlight from the nominations is the very strong debut director category.”

The nominations this year reflect the up and coming and internationally renowned on and off screen talent.

The film receiving the most nods is Fish Tank with eight nominations. Moon follows with seven nominations. An Education, In The Loop and Nowhere Boy each receive six nominations and Bright Star receives four. Other films with multiple nominations are Katalin Varga receiving three, and Bronson and Bunny & The Bull receiving two nominations each.

First time BIFA actor nominees include Abbie Cornish, Carey Mulligan, Katie Jarvis, Aaron Johnson, Andy Serkis, Peter Capaldi, Sam Rockwell, Tom Hardy, Anne-Marie Duff, Kerry Fox, Alfred Molina, John Henshaw, Christian McKay and Hilda Péter.

This year sees repeat nominations for actress Katie Jarvis, who is nominated in this year’s Best Actress and Most Promising Newcomer categories. Duncan Jones and Armando Iannucci both receive nominations in the Best Director and Douglas Hickox Award categories for Moon and In The Loop respectively. Andrea Arnold holds two nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Fish Tank.

The BIFA Pre-Selection Committee of 70 members viewed more than 200 films, out of which they selected the nominations, decided by ballot.

Daniel Day Lewis, one of the most exceptionally talented and enigmatic actors in the industry, will be honoured with the Richard Harris Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Film by an Actor.

BIFA’s new jury is comprised of professionals and talent from across the British film industry including: Actress Jodie Whittaker, Actors Idris Elba, Liam Cunningham, Eddie Marsan and Peter Mullan, Directors Sarah Gavron and Eran Creevy, Producers Dixie Linder, Anita Overland and Adrian Sturges, Documentary Filmmaker Kate Blewett, Film Marketing Consultant Robert Mitchell, Projectionist Paul Speed and Head of Distribution and Exhibition at The UK Film Council Peter Buckingham.

The much anticipated 12th awards ceremony will take place on Sunday 6 December at The Brewery, Chiswell Street, in London and will be hosted by James Nesbitt.

BIFA are proud to announce the following nominees for this year’s awards:

BEST BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM
An Education
Fish Tank
In The Loop
Moon
Nowhere Boy

BEST DIRECTOR
Sponsored by The Creative Partnership
Andrea Arnold – Fish Tank
Armando Iannucci – In The Loop
Duncan Jones – Moon
Jane Campion – Bright Star
Lone Scherfig – An Education

THE DOUGLAS HICKOX AWARD [BEST DEBUT DIRECTOR]
Armando Iannucci – In The Loop
Duncan Jones – Moon
Peter Strickland – Katalin Varga
Sam Taylor Wood – Nowhere Boy
Samantha Morton – The Unloved

BEST SCREENPLAY
Sponsored by BBC Films
An Education – Nick Hornby
Fish Tank – Andrea Arnold
In The Loop – Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
Moon – Nathan Parker
Nowhere Boy – Matt Greenhalgh

BEST ACTRESS
Sponsored by M.A.C
Abbie Cornish – Bright Star
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Emily Blunt – The Young Victoria
Katie Jarvis – Fish Tank
Sophie Okonedo – Skin

BEST ACTOR
Sponsored by Stolichnaya Elit
Aaron Johnson – Nowhere Boy
Andy Serkis – Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
Peter Capaldi – In The Loop
Sam Rockwell – Moon
Tom Hardy – Bronson

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Anne-Marie Duff – Nowhere Boy
Kerry Fox – Bright Star
Kierston Wareing – Fish Tank
Kristin Scott Thomas – Nowhere Boy
Rosamund Pike – An Education

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sponsored by Stolichnaya
Alfred Molina – An Education
Jim Broadbent – The Damned United
John Henshaw – Looking for Eric
Michael Fassbender – Fish Tank
Tom Hollander – In The Loop

MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER
Christian McKay – Me & Orson Welles
Edward Hogg – White Lightnin’
George MacKay – The Boys Are Back
Hilda Péter – Katalin Varga
Katie Jarvis – Fish Tank

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION
Bronson
Bunny & The Bull
The Hide
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Katalin Varga

RAINDANCE AWARD
Sponsored by Raindance
Colin
The Disappearance of Alice Creed
Down Terrace
Exam
They Call It Acid

BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT
Sponsored by 3 Mills Studios
Bright Star – Cinematography – Greig Fraser
Bunny & The Bull – Production Design – Gary Williamson
Fish Tank – Cinematography – Robbie Ryan
Moon – Original Score – Clint Mansell
Moon – Production Design – Tony Noble

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Sponsored by Chapter Media
The Age of Stupid
The End of The Line
Mugabe and The White African
Sons of Cuba
Sounds Like Teen Spirit

BEST BRITISH SHORT
Christmas with Dad
Leaving
Love You More
Sidney Turtlebaum
Washdays

BEST FOREIGN FILM
Il Divo
The Hurt Locker
Let The Right One In
Sin Nombre
The Wrestler

THE RICHARD HARRIS AWARD (for outstanding contribution to British Film)
Daniel Day Lewis

THE VARIETY AWARD
To Be Announced

THE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Sponsored by The UK Film Council
Announced at the British Independent Film Awards on Sunday 6 December

Review Roundup: ANTICHRIST

IFC Films News — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:11:45 +0000

EVERYONE HAS AN OPINION. WHAT’S YOURS?

We’ve been keeping score of what some of the nation’s critics have been saying about ANTICHRIST. Now you can finally have your say.

“What’s certain is that serious film people on several continents will be talking about von Trier’s latest affront, defending or deriding it, finding it hard to ignore. Short of a flat-out masterpiece, what more can movies offer?”
- Richard & Mary Corliss, Time

“A powerfully made film. The performances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are heroic and fearless. Von Trier’s visual command is striking. And if you can think beyond what he shows to what he implies, its depths are frightening. IT IS A REAL FILM. Von Trier has reached me and shaken me.”
- Roger Ebert ,Chicago Sun-Times

“AN ALTERNATELY DEADLY SERIOUS AND HIGHLY IRONIC EXPLORATION OF PSYCHOSEXUAL TRAUMA…CHAOS REIGNS IF NOT NARRATIVE SENSE, BUT I WOULD BE LYING IF I DIDN’T ADMIT THAT THIS IMPOSSIBLE MOVIE KEPT ME HOOKED FROM START TO FINISH.”
- Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Mr. von Trier has certainly lost none of the impish, assaultive sensationalism that has made him both a darling and a scapegoat of film critics. But the formal rigor and itellectual brio that made his best films - “Breaking the Waves’ and ‘Dogville’ - as hard to dismiss as they were easy to loathe seems to have abandoned him.”
- A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Suggests a Bergman film run amok, is wide open for ridicule. Yet it is indelible. It reinforces the reputation of Mr. von Trier, its Danish director, who has called it “the most important film of my entire career,” as one of world cinema’s most foolhardy provocateurs. Ms. Gainsbourg’s extraordinarily intense depiction of grief that transmutes into insanity and murderous rage lends the film a terrifying emotional immediacy.”
- Stephen Holden, The New York Times

“Set to become the scandal of the fall season…But it is more than adroit provocation. In some ways it may be Mr. von Trier’s most emotionally exposed film, one in which he relinquishes his formal mastery and habits of control to enter uncharted and uncensored territory.”
- Dave Kehr, The New York Times

“***1/2! As somebody one said (the Marquis de Sade, perhaps): No pain, no gain. Lars Von Trier might not be, as he famously boasted in CAnnes, ‘the best director in the world.’ But, as witnessed by his ‘Antichrist,’ he certainly is one of them. First and foremost ahs tob e the surreal, fairy-tale-like cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, who also lensed ‘Sludog Millionaire.’ Then there are the brave pefromances by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Very few actors would have the courage to allow von Trier to put them trhough what Dafoe and Gainsbourg experienced in the name of art.”
- V.A. Musetto, New York Post

“This isn’t a pretend horror flick, with violence you can shrug off or laugh off. It’s the real thing. My first—and then frequent—instinct was the emotional equivalent of duck-and-cover…But both actors have given themselves over to the filmmaker’s vision with performances that had me feeling like Malcolm McDowell in ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ horrified yet unable to look away. And Anthony Dod Mantle has created a succession of somber images that refuse to loosen their grip on my memory. By turns repellent, powerful and ludicrous, ‘Antichrist’ piles horror on horror with pitiless passion.”
- Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

“***1/2. Antichrist’’ may (I say may) be a psychosexual drama of profound and primal impact…has the power to haunt beyond words…It’s an evil joke and devastating art; an act of audience abuse and proof of film’s ability to access the most subterranean levels of experience. It’s unlike any movie ever made. For that, be thankful.”
- Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

***1/2. “Antichrist” may be objectionable in a hundred different ways, but it is undeniable and cinematic in a hundred others. Its mixture of tones and genres risks complete disruption every second. Certainly it’s barking mad. “You have to have the courage to stay in the situation that frightens you,” Dafoe’s He says to Gainsbourg’s She at one point. von Trier did exactly that, and he got some amazing work out of two exceptionally brave actors. And the film will, in its way, endure.”
- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

“The story of “Antichrist” is a tangled mess of sex, evil and death, with Von Trier making a stab at allegory and old-fashioned horror, but ultimately failing on both fronts. What makes Von Trier’s vision particularly troubling is how powerfully he tells his stories. Actresses give themselves over to this director, with performances so physically and emotionally naked, it’s as if you could see inside their soul. Gainsbourg has done that and more.”
- Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

“A doggedly outrageous, fearsomely ambitious two-hander is so desperate to make you feel something—if only a terrible sensation of nothingness—that it’s almost poignant. ‘Antichrist’ which, above all, wants to make pain visceral, is less successful at projecting authentic experience—the shock tactics are ultimately numbing. Still, ‘Antichrist’ is not without its qualities—notably von Trier’s boundless sarcasm and skill with actors. Gainsbourg’s courageous, uninhibited performance effectively creates the movie.”
- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“A word to the squeamish: there is no shame in leaving as the tools—and I use the word advisedly—come out. In a way, you will be getting the best of ‘Antichrist,’ which until now has been a film of awkwardness, confusion, and great beauty. I see no reason to ally oneself wholeheartedly either with those who despise von Trier for his horrific silliness or with those who revere his ambition. Both have a point, and the problem is that von Trier, even at his most objectionable, can summon a wealth of images that defy explanation.

The same applies to ‘Antichrist,’ with a twist: it was sex that led to death in the first place. That’s why the movie is so self-involved, and leaves you fighting for breath, and why I believe von Trier when he describes the whole thing as a “dream film.” That would account for the want of logic, for the claustrophobia, and for the incantatory manner in which details loop round and recur. I can no more rid myself of the memory of the wife, in a glowing white dress, crossing a moonlit bridge, than I can of Arthur Rackham drawings in a book of fairy tales from my childhood. I feel the same way about the fox in the film; without warning, it speaks, and most people giggle at the sound, but we accept something similar in ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ so why the derision here, since von Trier is clearly carving out a fable? Maybe that should be his next challenge: a PG rating. Skip the mutilation, stay in the woods, and make as strange a film as possible for kids. We can take it.”
- Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“There’s a mystery that will linger long after the film’s psychosexual dynamics and philosophical musings: Just who is von Trier trying to reach with ‘Antichrist’? Surely the teenagers who have made “Saw” into such a cash cow aren’t likely to sit through more than an hour of carefully composed set pieces and Bergmanesque encounters between the lead couple. And it’s hard to imagine the bourgeois sophisticates who have flocked to von Trier’s other films being able to stomach this one’s most outrageous moments.”
- Ann Hornaday, Washignton Pot

“And after the infantile bludgeoning that is ‘Antichrist,’ I feel no need to keep accompanying von Trier’s career at all. I’ll just read the plot outline of each new movie, layer on that familiar von Trier affect of repulsion, resentment, and boredom, and it’ll be as if I’ve seen it. u win, Lars—if I’m the bourgeoisie, consider me épatée.”
- Dana Stevens, Slate

“Like no other movie this year or ever…MESMERIZING…ALMOST EVERY ONE OF ITS FRAMES SHIMMERS WITH DEMENTED, IMAGINARY LIFE. Von Trier is one of the most accomplished cinema artists of our time.”
- Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“The impotent folly of ‘Antichrist ‘is that von Trier has made it his mission to shock the bourgeoisie in an era when they can no longer be shocked.”
- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“Charlotte Gainsbourg gives a phenomenal, fearless performance. I’ve never witnessed a performance like it.”
- Melissa Anderson, Film Comment

“I don’t think I breathed for the last half - out of shock, out of stress, out of disbelief. This is to say that von Trier had us all. von Trier is a consummate filmmaker…He has ideas and vision and some humor. He can get an actor to do anything and do it well.”
-Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe

“Before I had a chance to see it, a male reporter for a major newspaper told me that “no woman” could possibly enjoy the film. I enjoyed ‘Antichrist.’ I guess this makes me less of a woman? In fact, I’d argue that ‘Antichrist’ is a much better—and scarier, and more sexually and politically provocative—female revenge film than ‘Jennifer’s Body’, which some writers have claimed as a work of feminism. The dateless, basement-dwelling stereotype of the fanboy aside, young male horror fans aren’t going to let the kind of fear of women that leads to politically correct tiptoeing get in the way of their good time. And neither should we.”
- Karina Longworth, Double X

Review Roundup: NIGHT & DAY

IFC Films News — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:20:22 +0000

This weekend at Anthology Film Archives - A SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT of Hong Sang-soo’s NIGHT & DAY

The lauded director of WOMAN ON THE BEACH delivers what Scott Foundas of The Village Voice calls “his most extraordinary work to date!” Glen Kenny of the Auteurs points out that Hong’s wry mix of deliberate style and humor makes the film “LAUGH OUT LOUD HILARIOUS…one of the most acute depictions of male sexual desire.”

Here’s Kieth Uhlich of Time Out New York’s full review, a perfect 5-STARS!

“Fearing he’ll be arrested after smoking marijuana with American exchange students, middle-aged South Korean painter Sung-nam (Kim) hightails it to Paris—that romanticized safe haven for expats and artists alike. A local approaches him outside the airport, asks for a cigarette and then cryptically tells him to beware of his new environs. Filmmakers from Jacques Rivette to Hou Hsiao-hsien have treated the City of Light like Alice’s rabbit hole; writer-director Hong Sang-soo similarly embraces the fantasy, but goes one step further in this extraordinary character study by fully erasing the line that separates the actual from the fictional.

Sung-nam is an indelible, psychically unmoored addition to the director’s rogues’ gallery of male neurotics, a passive-aggressively vain character whose fantasy life commingles indistinguishably with his reality. Hong spends the first few sequences acclimating us to the surroundings, calling specific attention to an observation made by boardinghouse owner Mr. Jang (Gi): “We can’t easily tell night from day here.” Then, after Sung-nam meets an ex-girlfriend on the street by chance, people begin to wend their way in and out of his life as if they were muses conjured to stoke his anxieties.

Which of the protagonist’s interactions are real and which are artist’s fancy? Hong never lets on, preferring to set character and audience adrift within his motion-picture Rorschach test. Indeed, the film’s deceptively placid surface—punctuated by mesmeric pans and zooms—implies that each moment is suspect and part of the self-involved Sung-nam’s larger creative process, which the director lays bare with piercing, X-Acto knife precision.”

Mo Perkins talks A QUIET LITTLE MARRIAGE, Slamdance, and working with IFC

IFC Films News — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:38:43 +0000

From the Slamdance website:

Q & A with director Mo Perkins about her film A Quiet Little Marriage and IFC Distribution Success

Mo Perkins’s A Quiet Little Marriage won Slamdance’s Grand Jury Award Winner for Best Narrative Feature this year and has been picked up by IFC for both US and international distribution. The film stars Cy Carter, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Jimmi Simpson, Michael O’Neill, Rita Taggart, Lucy DeVito, Charlie Day and Melanie Lynskey. It will play first on demand and can be seen now on Comcast, BrightHouse, Time Warner, Cox, and Cablevision.

Here is our Q & A with Mo:

Tell me about your film that won the Grand Jury Award at Slamdance.

A Quiet Little Marriage is my first feature. The story unfolds around a married couple, who are in love, but find themselves struggling over whether or not to begin a family. They can’t communicate about it and wind up sabotaging each other secretly rather than confronting one another.

You worked with your actors Cy Carter and Mary Elizabeth Ellis to write the script for this film. What was that process like?

The three of us had worked together before on short films and we are all good friends. We came together with the idea of making something where the actors would have a creative ownership of their characters. Hopefully, that collaboration from the beginning would lead to very grounded, realistic performances. Mary Elizabeth and Cy didn’t actually write, but we co-conceived for sure. After nailing out collectively some of the themes and ideas for the story in brainstorming sessions, I went off and wrote on my own, and then brought scenes to the two of them every week. We would rehearse those scenes and then I would go back and rewrite based on those rehearsals. For me it was a wonderful way to write, a real luxury. Every rehearsal was a discovery for all of us and the story just kept getting stronger. Given the chance, I would work that way again in a heartbeat.

Can you talk a little about what inspired the subject matter for your story?

When we were coming up with ideas for what kind of story we wanted to tell, Cy and Mary Elizabeth and I all felt like marriage was a somewhat untold story. It felt like films usually ended with a marriage. We were all newly married and wanted to talk about the work of recommitting to partnership daily, living and sharing with someone on that intimate level.

I heard that the entire movie was shot in 15 days. Why such a short time and how did you and the crew overcome that challenge?

We pretty much did as many days as we could afford. It was a dead run. But we overcame that by being really prepared. It really helped that Cy and Mary Elizabeth had such a strong connection to their characters, we could trust each other, move quickly and still get good performances.

How did IFC get involved with distributing your film?

IFC let our producers reps, Circus Road Films, know that they were interested after our second screening at Slamdance. Circus Road brokered the deal and we actually used the legal services award from our Slamdance win to get Pierce Law Group, LLP to help with our contracts. IFC has been really great to work with, everybody was really open and easy to talk to.

Any favorite moments from your time at Slamdance?

Seeing other people’s films was really fun. I loved meeting all the other filmmakers. Also, it was a real treat to have so much of the cast and crew at the festival together. It was like being on vacation with a big group of my best friends.

What are you working on now?

I’m almost finished with the first draft of a new script and I’ve got a brand new baby.

A QUIET LITTLE MARRIAGE is now available nationwide on demand from IFC Festival Direct.

MAY THE BEST MAN WIN & Rob Riggle on Funny or Die

IFC Films News — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:44:39 +0000

A hilarious clip featuring The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle, from Adam Fleishhacker’s MAY THE BEST MAN WIN, is being featured this week on Funny or Die!

Check it out here!

MAY THE BEST MAN WIN is now playing nationwide on demand, from IFC FESTIVAL DIRECT.

VINCERE & FISH TANK win big at Chicago IFF

krkail — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:26:15 +0000

VINCERE & FISH TANK among winners at the 45th CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

CHICAGO, October 17, 2009

At the Festival, Chicago audiences are able to choose from 145 films from 45 countries, showcasing both established masters and rising new filmmakers. Competitions were held in the International Feature Film, New Directors, Documentary and Short Film categories, along with a special Chicago Award for a local filmmaker. The Festival’s highest honor is the Gold Hugo, named after the mythological God of Discovery.

Award Winners:
International Feature Film Competition

Gold Hugo for Best Film to MISSISSIPPI DAMNED (US) for its powerful and uncompromising portrait of the compounding frailties and difficulties of a struggling black community.

Silver Hugo for Special Jury Award to FISH TANK (UK) for its aesthetic boldness in taking us into a grim public-housing environment and showing us the transcendent spirit of a young girl that struggles to overcome the adult lies that engulf her.

Silver Hugo for Best Director to Marco Bellocchio (VINCERE, Italy) for taking us into the privileged details of a love story so well drawn that we cannot renege on what we have felt between the two main characters.

Silver Hugo for Best Actress to Giovanna Mezzogiorno of VINCERE (Italy) for her astonishing understanding of love, its depth and its degradation.

Silver Hugo for Best Actor to Filippo Timi of VINCERE (Italy) for bringing such a commanding virility to a young Mussolini that we are both entranced and repelled by his climb to power and evil.

Gold Plaque for Best Supporting Actress to Jossie Harris Thacker in MISSISSIPPI DAMNED (US) for her character’s multiple and believable life changes that give us insight into the tragedy that jealousy, alcohol, and neglect can lead to.

Gold Plaque for Best Supporting Actor to Michael Fassbender in FISH TANK (UK) for his stunning charismatic presence that infuses life into this sad family momentarily and then absconds in shameful weakness.

Gold Plaque for Best Screenplay to Tina Mabry of MISSISSIPPI DAMNED (USA) for it’s well observed unfolding character depictions in a Mississippi community that keep us both fascinated and horrified by the events that life brings.

Gold Plaque for Best Cinematography to Daniele Ciprì (VINCERE, Italy) who has taken the human face, given its images breath in every sense, and allowed us into each second of this film’s dramatic contortions.

Gold Plaque for Best Art Direction to HIPSTERS (Russia) for its infectiously colorful and imaginative sets and its stimulating counterbalancing of a modern generation set against Soviet darkness.

Silver Plaque to BACKYARD (Mexico) for its exposé of the horrible crimes of violence against women in Juarez.

The International Feature Film Competition Jury includes jury president Jacqueline Bisset (UK), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Iran), Duane Byrge (US), Pablo Cruz (Mexico), and Bruce Sheridan (New Zealand).

Horror Squad is all about DEATHBELL

IFC Films News — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:09:24 +0000

The Korean prep-school gorefest DEATHBELL is now playing in IFC Festival Direct, and Peter Hall over at The Horror Squad says it’s worth your time!

“DEATHBELL Trailer Blows Lid off Asian School System”

When I was in Seoul for work back in January I stopped at the first DVD stand I could find and picked out every recent release disc they had that looked even vaguely like a horror movie. No clue on the titles, no clue on the plots, but if it had a blood splatter on the cover (the international sign for horror movie), it came home with me. One of the titles in the stack happened to be Death Bell, a crazy little film about students who spend the weekend at their vacant school in order to cram for an upcoming intellectual decathlon against a rival school. Except all of the kids soon find it hard to study when someone starts kidnapping them and setting them inside Saw-esque traps that can only be escaped if the remaining students solve a brain teaser in time.

As with most Asian films, though, the “That sounds cool, why can’t I find it anywhere?” barrier in the past has always been a lack of distribution in the US, but now thanks to IFC On-Demand, a good chunk of us Yanks will be able to plop down on a couch and give the student-killing film a shot on October 14th as part of IFC’s Festival Direct program. Which is great news, because Death Bell is just insane enough (and, distinctly non-American enough) to warrant a watch for fans of Asian horror movies, even despite a few zany script problems.”

THE ANTE-ANTICHRIST SHOW at IFC Center!

IFC Films News — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:55:45 +0000

Buy your tickets now for a special midnight screening event at the IFC Center, the night before Lars Von Trier’s ANTICHRIST finally hits theaters!

Thursday night, Oct 22 at 12:01am the Center will be playing the eagerly-awaited film with free popcorn, poster giveaway, and surprises.

www.ifccenter.com

“Chaos Reigns” at Fantastic Fest and NYFF

IFC Films News — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:57:29 +0000

As its 10/23 release get’s closer and closer, Von Trier’s beautiful and horrifying ANTICHRIST is stirring up all sorts of terrific chaos. We can’t resist passing on these two choice stories from the film’s recent bouts a the New York Film Festival and Fantastic Fest 2009:

From indieWIRE’s The Lost Boy:

“Antichrist” Causes Audience Member To Have Seizure In New York

So last night I attended the New York Film Festival premiere of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” and I figure I’d relay an eerie incident that happened in the midst of the film’s intense third act. Sometime in between on-screen mutilations, I hear this loud moan coming from behind me, followed by a loud thud. Immediately the entire audience at Alice Tully Hall was in a frenzy, most of us unsure as to what happened (I had thought someone fell off the balcony considering how loud the thud was), though it later became clear a man had a seizure. People starting screaming “Call an Ambulance!”; “Call 9/11” (including the familiar voice of actress Lili Taylor, who was apparently beside the man) as Charlotte Gainsbourg continued on her psychotic onscreen mission. Finally the film was shut off and the house lights came on, and 4 or 5 policemen entered the theater, helping the man (who was apparently okay) out. And then, after a few moments of whispering between audience members trying to figure out what had happened, “Antichrist” came back on.

I don’t know if “Antichrist” caused the seizure, but it considering the point in the film in which it occurred, it seemed like that was the case. After the screening, people recalled a similar incident back in 1994, when “Pulp Fiction” screened at NYFF. After the scene with Uma Thurman and the syringe, someone had a heart attack.

Either way, the incident certainly heightened the rest of the film’s intensity… And though I’m sure IFC Films would never stoop to exploiting someone’s health officially, the taglines sort of write themselves.”

Crow, Fox & Deer from Lars von Trier’s ANTICHRIST bring a special message to the Alamo Drafthouse @ Fantastic Fest 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax4NDN8dqo4

AFTERSCHOOL, Campos’ “frighteningly accomplished first feature”, praised by the Village Voice

IFC Films News — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:20:59 +0000

From The Village Voice
Afterschool, the High School Movie’s Web-Addled Update
AV club in the internet age
By J. Hoberman
Tuesday, September 29th 2009 at 2:30pm

Afterschool, the almost frighteningly accomplished first feature made by Antonio Campos when he was 24, is high school as horror show. The premise isn’t novel, but the movie, which was featured in the 2008 New York Film Festival, gives teenage sex and death a disquieting high art sheen. A key shot has the kids at a posh New England academy lining up for their daily meds at the far end of a perfectly framed fluorescent corridor.

A new student at this blandly sinister institution, populated by privileged preppies and the duplicitous teachers who are their employees, confused introvert Rob (Ezra Miller) largely lives (and gets his behavioral cues) online. An opening montage of YouTube attractions—a happy baby, a violent accident, Saddam Hussein’s final moments, a piano-playing cat, war—segues to his preferred hardcore website. Rob is not only an inchoate cinephile, but a nascent filmmaker who joins the school video club (faculty adviser Mr. Wiseman named for documentarian Fred), mainly to get next to attractive freshman Amy (Addison Timlin). In the course of Rob’s documenting, twin sisters—the school’s popular seniors—lurch into an empty stairwell, bleeding and screaming. Having apparently ingested cocaine cut with strychnine, they die on camera even as Rob stumbles to their aid.

Of course, nothing recorded is without ambiguity. Shades of Blow-up or Michael Haneke’s Caché abound—Campos screened the latter for his cast and crew, as well as cell phone images of 9/11 victims jumping from the Twin Towers. As the school goes into mourning for its twins, Rob is assigned to produce the memorial video—his alienation compounded by perfunctory sex with Amy (accompanied by an ominous drone) and her subsequent involvement with his sleepy-eyed, drug-dealing roommate, whom he suspects might be implicated in the deaths.

Afterschool has been compared to Paranoid Park, but where Gus Van Sant’s high school crime scene is lyrical, impressionistic, and tolerant, Campos’s is cool, precise, and judgmental. (Not for nothing did the filmmaker dedicate his first opus, made at 13 and titled Puberty, to Stanley Kubrick.) The school has as much atmosphere as a bell jar. The movie itself is highly composed—the visual style predicated on fragmenting close-ups, purposefully shallow focus, and studied camera placement, with Campos wielding the edge of the frame as if it were a scalpel.

Otherwise, Afterschool is blunt, if mordantly deadpan, satire. Our affectless antihero isn’t the film’s lone media-programmed zombie. Afterschool’s unctuous adults are founts of risible TV-learned clichés—most spectacularly in the headmaster’s search to find an appropriate response to the tragedy. In the context of such vacuous official rhetoric, as well as Campos’s hyperfastidious mise-en-scène, Rob’s memorial video arrives as a fabulously inappropriate blast of truth. The most expressive element in the film, the tape is raw and immediate, tastelessly filled with overlong takes and “empty” locations, including the space where the sisters expired. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” the headmaster explodes. “You didn’t even have music!” Neither, for the most part, does Afterschool.

Bruno Dumont’s HADEWIJCH Acquired!

IFC Films News — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:08:55 +0000

IFC FILMS ACQUIRES NORTH AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS TO BRUNO DUMONT’S AWARD- WINNING “HADEWIJCH”

Film Awarded the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival

U.S. Premiere This Sunday at the New York Film Festival

New York (NY) (October 1, 2009) – IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired North American rights to HADEWIJCH, a provocative film about a religious extremists’ absolute love of god and the shocking consequences it brings. Written and directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Bruno Dumont, the film stars Julie Sokolowski, in her feature film debut, and was produced by Rachid Bouchareb, Jean Brehat, Muriel Merlin and Dirk Wilutsky. HADEWIJCH is having its U.S. premiere this Sunday at the New York Film Festival with Dumont and Sokolowski in attendance. The film had its world premiere last month at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, where it won the esteemed FIPRESCI International Critics Prize. It was also recently shown in competition at the San Sebastian festival.

The deal for HADEWIJCH was negotiated by Lizzie Nastro on behalf of IFC Films, with Yoann Ubermulhin of Pyramide International.
In one of his most uncompromising works to date, Bruno Dumont undertakes a topical exploration of the psychology of religious extremism and martyrdom. Expelled from a convent for her overzealous faith, teenage Céline (Julie Sokolowski) reluctantly returns to a life of comfort and privilege as the daughter of a French government minister. Back in Paris and farther from God, she makes a new friend, an Arab boy who introduces her to the cités, housing projects full of Arab and African immigrants, an alien world but one where faith exerts a familiar sway. As hard-headed and at times as enigmatic as its unforgettable heroine, HADEWIJCH is a movie on a quest: At once a sincere theological inquiry and a provocative political meditation.
Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented “Over the last decade, Bruno Dumont has emerged as one of the most important filmmakers working in the world. With Hadewijch, he’s made his most accessible film that is going to be a real topic of discussion. We’re absolutely thrilled to be working with him and our friends at Pyramide.”

IFC Films is releasing HADEWIJCH in 2010 via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to on demand viewers at home the same day they premiere in theaters.

About The Filmmaker
Bruno Dumont was born in Bailleul, France. He has taught philosophy and directed more than forty commercials, shorts and documentaries. He is the director of La Vie de Jésus (99), L’Humanité (99), Twentynine Palms (03) and Flandres (06). L’Humanité and Flandres were both awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Hadewijch (09) is his latest film.

New ANTICHRIST Art from Fantastic Fest!

IFC Films News — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:27:50 +0000

Artist David D’Andrea has designed a gorgeous new look for Lars Von Trier’s beautiful and terrifying ANTICHRIST, now being sold exclusively at Fantastic Fest ‘09.

The poster is available only at the Alamo Drafthouse for a mere $25. The 27″ x 40″ print was commissioned by specifically by and for the festival.

ANTICHRIST will open October 23rd in theaters and October 28th on demand.

More Raves for Cédric Klapisch’s PARIS

IFC Films News — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:05:35 +0000

From Anne Hornaday of The Washington Post:

“Cinematic ‘Paris’ Is A Must-See Destination

Even in its opening mash-up of images and musical styles, it’s clear that “Paris” will both indulge and explode the city’s mythology. In a frenetic series of scenes, director C?dric Klapisch announces that his movie will be set in many cities: the Paris of high fashion, the Paris of deeply embedded history, the Paris of love, the Paris of loss, aristocratic Paris, the Paris of African and Arab immigrants. Filming in some of the city’s most familiar precincts, from the mansard-roof apartment buildings to the marketplace at M?nilmontant, Klapisch captures both the picture-postcard ideal of the city and the candid truth behind it, managing to enhance both images.

It takes more than one or two characters to lead viewers on such a far-ranging, polyglot tour, and luckily Klapisch is an expert at deploying densely layered ensembles, as he proved in “L’Auberge Espagnole,” his lovely 2002 ode to young expats. In “Paris,” we follow the stories of several dyads, but most of the action centers on a dancer named Pierre (Romain Duris), who has just received a troubling diagnosis from his cardiologist, and his sister Elise (Juliette Binoche), a single mother who moves in with him with her three children. While an ensemble of attractive characters weave in and out of each others’s lives (Melanie Laurent, of “Inglourious Basterds,” and Francois Cluzet, from “Tell No One,” are only two), Pierre observes the comings and goings from his aerie, his elegiac attachment to his city infusing “Paris” with a contagious sense of wistful romance. (Some of the movie’s most evocative scenes transpire outside Pierre’s purview, in the wholesale market that comes alive on the outskirts of Paris after hours.)

Duris has starred in several of Klapisch’s previous films, but he is best known for his captivating turn in 2005’s fabulous “The Beat That My Heart Skipped.” He has one of the most fascinating faces to be found on the screen today, one that possesses a transfixing, ineffable combination of beauty and homeliness. His features are on gratifyingly full view here, but the real revelation in “Paris” is that Duris is a pretty good dancer, as he proves in Pierre’s brief flashbacks of his former glitzy glory.

Klapisch mostly succeeds masterfully at proving his modest but also ambitious thesis: that people live in Paris, die in Paris, fall in and out of love in Paris, come to Paris invested with dreams and delusions, and the city accepts it all, sometimes rudely but ultimately with a singular kind of grace. “Paris” is a funny, sad, romantic and deeply felt love letter to a great city. If you can’t book a trip now, it’s the next best thing.”

From Roger Ebert:

“At the end of “Paris,” a character whose future is uncertain rides in a taxi through the city and glimpses some of the film’s other characters going about their lives. He doesn’t know them, but we do, and seeing them so briefly is enough to make the film’s point: We are here, we strive, we love, we laugh, we fail, we are sad, sometimes we look at the world and smile for no particular reason.

Here is a film about a group of Parisians. It opens with a sweeping shot of Paris from the atop the Eiffel Tower. The characters don’t have interlocking lives; it’s not that kind of film. They have parallel lives. The purpose of Cedric Klapisch, the writer-director, is to make a symphonic tribute to the city he loves, and each character is a movement.

That said, every character has life and depth. It’s unusual for an episodic film to involve us so well in individual lives; as the narrative circles through their stories, we’re genuinely curious about what will happen next.

The central character is Pierre (Romain Duris), who is a dancer in his 30s told that he has little time left. Only a heart transplant can save him. His sister Elise (Juliette Binoche) brings her two daughters and comes to live with him, and they try to cheer each other. He spends much time standing on his balcony, observing life in the street. She’s rebounding from a bad marriage and considers herself finished with men.

We also meet a famous Parisian historian named Roland (Fabrice Luchini), whose lectures are so literate and certain he seems to be reading from a teleprompter scrolling in his mind. He is very alone. Well into his 50s, he becomes obsessed with a pretty student and anonymously sends her florid romantic compliments by text. Then he lurks nearby to watch her reading them, Creepy. Meanwhile, he’s starring in a TV documentary series about the city.

His younger brother is Philippe, played by Francois Cluzet, the Dustin Hoffmanish star of “Tell No One” (2006). Phillipe is an architect, a father in waiting, an encourager who senses Roland’s discontent. Elise finds herself attracted to Jean (Albert Dupontel), a vendor in one of the many Paris street food markets. Jean is divorced from Caroline (Julie Ferrier), but they’re still friendly. Still, they don’t seem to have a future.

There are several smaller characters, including a bakery owner (Karin Viard) who has outspoken prejudices about people from any part of France that is not Paris, and yet is open-minded enough to praise a young employee from North Africa who is a reliable worker. I’ve meet French people like that: Not racist, but tactlessly opinionated–or particular, as they might prefer.

All of these stories are told against the backdrop of Paris, a city Klapisch loves with a passion. He hasn’t made a travelogue with beauty shots, however, but set his story in very specific places: Streets, a university, cafes, restaurants, dawn at the vast Rungis, the wholesale food market that replaced Les Halles. There is even a scene set in the catacombs, the bones and skulls of Parisians past neatly stacked behind the Professor.

The characters have love, fear it, or seek it. Only one has a desperate problem. None is quiet satisfied. They have a daily reprieve from illness or death, but never think in those terms–except for Pierre, who is forced to. They go to work, home again, to their spouses or lovers or empty flats. They move easily through the city, and we are reminded that in Paris, traditionally a city of tiny apartments, the cafes served as living rooms. You’re not buying a coffee, you’re renting a table, and it’s yours for as long as you sit there.

I love Paris in the same way Klapisch does, for the concentration and intensity of its daily life and street theater. A modern place like downtown Houston seems to me an unlovely prospect, all concrete, no shadows. Why do modern corporations envision their headquarters as free-standing tombstones instead of friendly neighbors?

Viewing the film’s with the city, I was reminded of another film, “When The Cat’s Away” (1996). That was the one about the young woman who leaves town and entrusts her cat with a neighboring cat lady. When she returns, this old lady is heartbroken: The cat has run away. The entire neighborhood gets caught up in the search, including a simple-minded fellow who helpfully risks his life on rooftops, usually in search of the wrong cat. I looked up the film, and discovered it was by Cedric Klapisch. There you go.”

From Mick LaSalle of the SF Chronicle:

In cities, sometime at night, sometimes early in the morning when they’re just waking up, a feeling comes. It’s partly an awareness, partly a longing - it’s the sense that, if you could only pull back and watch it from a slight distance, you might be able to hold the entire city in your mind: all its pain, all its striving, all its romance, all its drama.

“Paris” is writer-director Cédric Klapisch’s attempt to do precisely that, to stand back and capture the entire essence of a city. It’s a monumental and ultimately impossible task, but he comes as close as anybody to achieving it. And he does so with an all-star cast made up of some of the brightest talents in France.

Klapisch’s masterstroke was to place at the center of a movie a man, forced by circumstances, to stop and simply observe. Romain Duris plays a former dancer awaiting a heart transplant, who spends the day looking down from the window of his Paris apartment, watching people frantically going about their lives.

Klapisch doesn’t do the corny thing: He doesn’t have all the other characters be people that Pierre (Duris) sees from the street or imagines in his mind. That would have been sentimental and disastrous. Yet simply by putting Pierre in that top-floor balcony, looking down, Klapisch provides us with the perspective with which we view the other characters - with distance, with affection and a bit of puzzlement. Why do people make themselves so miserable? Do they think they’re going to live forever?

Juliette Binoche, who stars as Pierre’s older sister, continues to be a marvel. Somehow she conveys an impression of ethereality, even though she’s almost as earthy as Anna Magnani. She’s also more beautiful now than she was 20 years ago, and no, this is no clumsy attempt at gallantry. Just get out the videotape.

Newly anointed star Melanie Laurent (”Inglourious Basterds”) plays a college student who, without meaning to, catches the eye of her middle-aged history professor (the long-suffering comic actor Fabrice Luchini). To see Laurent here is to understand what attracted Quentin Tarantino. Laurent’s quality of reserve and careful observation is the same, whether dealing with high-ranking Nazis or a professor going through a hellish midlife crisis. Another familiar face, François Cluzet, plays the professor’s brother, a well-meaning architect.

Also check out comic actress Karin Viard, who was nominated for a César Award (the French Oscar) for playing a racist, oblivious baker. It’s a small role but very funny.

Urban life can be a series of collisions, but mostly it’s a series of near misses - friendships that might have blossomed, relationships that might have happened. Klapisch captures the bittersweet quality of those human contacts that seem to hold promise, but life goes by too fast for them to take root. The beauty of Paris, which is fully conveyed in the film, only emphasizes the sadness of those missed opportunities. It’s a place of commerce, but it looks like it was made for pleasure.”

John Krasinski in person this weekend for BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN

IFC Films News — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:22:35 +0000

Attention NYC! This weekend at the opening shows of his directorial debut, BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN, The Office’s John Krasinski will be at the IFC Center in person!

John will introducing shows and stick around for Q&As both Friday and Saturday night.

Friday:
6:25PM Screening Q&A
8:20PM Screening Intro, Q&A
10:15PM Screening Intro

Saturday:
6:25PM Screening Q&A
8:20PM Screening Intro, Q&A
10:15PM Screening Intro

Visit www.ifccenter.com now for tickets!

Rave review of PARIS in the Wall Street Journal

IFC Films News — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:18:36 +0000

From The WSJ:

The French writer-director Cédric Klapisch makes fiction films that are better than most documentaries at tracking the ravages and felicities of urban renewal, the connections between people and their neighborhoods, the ties that both bind and torment families. In his latest feature, “Paris,” he does all of that and then some. “Paris” sees life—on earth, not just in La Ville Lumière—as a dance of human connections, some of which fail while others endure.

That’s equally the case with the film, whose central character, a professional dancer named Pierre (Romain Duris), is terrified to find himself afflicted by possibly terminal heart disease. Some connections are less vivid than others, a few vignettes fail to thrive. As a whole, though, “Paris” pulses with a contemporary version of the energy that animated Balzac’s novels, or Colette’s accounts of the life she observed from the window of her apartment in the Palais Royal. (It also pulses to a sensationally eclectic score.)

Pierre is an attentive observer too, but the movie takes a longer and wider view than he can command from his upstairs window on the world, or during his cautious meanderings through the streets. It finds specific connecting points—a text message on a mobile phone, an avocado in a produce warehouse—between would-be lovers and lovers-to-be. Pierre’s sister, Elise (the ever-enchanting Juliette Binoche) does more than flirt with a fishmonger at an open-air market. A renowned historian turned TV host, Roland (Fabrice Luchini), stalks a beautiful student with startling results. (”I’m really not a Machiavellian pervert,” he insists during their first meeting.) Roland’s architect brother, Philippe (François Cluzet), dreams a dream—a stunning set piece within the film—of designing a perfect neighborhood populated by perfectly normal people.

Refreshingly, no one is normal in “Paris”—no one even comes close. Mr. Klapisch’s special gift is to populate his films with perfectly grounded eccentrics who use perfectly ordinary words to express poetic ideas. One of those ideas is the ceaseless tension between old and new in the evolution of cities, and one of the characters who obliquely expresses it is the cabbie who takes Pierre to the hospital for an operation that will save or end his life. “Richard-Lenoir is jammed,” the cabbie says, invoking both a boulevard and French history without thinking of it, then rattling off a string of alternate routes, and hallowed names, that include Bastille and Voltaire. The modern Paris of “Paris” lives in an ever-present past.

- Joe Morgenstern

ANTICHRIST has “the scariest trailer we’ve seen, ever.”

IFC Films News — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:00:40 +0000

The official US trailer for ANTICHRIST has made it’s exclusive debut on Apple Trailers, and the excitement is palpable.

Here’s a collection of reactions to this latest glimpse at the beauty and terror of Lars Von Trier’s eagerly anticipated film:

NY Magazine Vulture Blog
“That’ll Do, Antichrist Trailer, That’ll Do - The first trailer for Lars von Trier’s Antichrist garnered complaints that it wasn’t scary enough for the movie that’s already a legend of genital-bashing horror. We can all shut up now, though, because there’s a new one, and it’s the scariest trailer we’ve seen, ever.”

/FILM
“I almost didn’t post this, because we’ve run a few clips and/or trailer from Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist already. But goddamn, this is a hell of a trailer. For one, it is in HD Quicktime, and while I’ve understood previously that the movie has some great imagery, this presentation suggests that it might be a really genuinely beautiful film. Furthermore, this trailer is genuinely scary. It hints at the classic effect of the original Alien and The Shining trailers for inspiring fear. No small feat. Check it out.”

CHUD
“AMERICAN ANTICHRIST TRAILER ALL BUT DARES YOU TO WATCH THE MOVIE…I can’t wait to check this movie out for myself, and the new trailer really highlights the film’s shocking nature. Plus it looks mind-blowingly gorgeous.”

BEYOND HOLLYWOOD
“New US Antichrist Trailer Is Pretty Sweet!…If you’re currently on the fence about giving this film your undivided attention, the US trailer might be the thing to push you over, regardless of which side you’re leaning.”

Hong Sang-soo at LACMA includes Sneak Preview of NIGHT & DAY

IFC Films News — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:00:54 +0000

From LACMA FILM:

“EXHIBITION SERIES
Cigarettes & Alcohol: Eight Films by Hong Sang-soo
September 11–19

In conjunction with Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea, LACMA will screen eight feature films from contemporary, award-winning Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. His consistent oeuvre eschews the genre tropes beloved by his contemporaries in Korean cinema and instead focuses on the human-scale drama of intimate relationships. His plots have the precision and sly wit of Rohmer, the attentive gaze of Ozu, the pervasive alienation of Antonioni, and mordant flourishes worthy of Buñuel. Set among hauntingly deserted vacation spots, anonymous smoky restaurants, and sparse apartments, his intricately constructed, indelibly frank seriocomedies float by on a current of amply-flowing Soju and romantic complications. His impulsive men and resilient women, characters whose bonds are never as simple as they seem, engage in love triangles and verbal jousts teeming with flirtation, evasion, misunderstanding and self-revelation. Always pining to revisit and revise the past, Hong’s melancholy intellectuals—filmmakers, artists, professors, actors—drift through the present moment lost somewhere between their art and real life.

We begin the series with a preview screening of Hong’s latest work, Like You Know it All, a comical portrait of an “art-house film director,” not entirely dissimilar from Hong himself, as he serves on the jury of a provincial Korean film festival and gets embroiled in a series of picaresque mishaps. We will also present the Los Angeles premiere of 2008’s Night and Day, Hong’s first film predominantly set outside Korea, which finds a painter on the lam in Paris spending evenings on the phone with his wife back home in Seoul and his bleary waking hours wading through drolly maladroit encounters with fellow expats.

This series is presented with the support of the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

Like You Know it All (Jal aljido mothamyeonseo)
September 11 | 7:30 pm | Preview Screening
Rivalries, sexual indiscretions, and communal drinking abound as arthouse filmmaker Ku is drawn into assorted awkward social and romantic configurations: first in the small town of Jecheon where he is officiating as juror of a film festival, rendered with puckish delight by Hong, and later when Ku turns up to address a class of film students on Jeju Island at the invitation of an old college friend. Hong’s newest film, another work of minimally adorned and sharply perceptive behavioral comedy was world-premiered at the 2009 Cannes film festival. “Wryly perceptive in its deconstruction of artistic egos, sending up pretensions while at the same time making what sound like first-person declarations about creativity…Hong’s funniest film.”—Lee Marshall, Screen International.
2009/color/126 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Kim Tae-woo, Ko Hyun-jung, Uhm Ji-won.

The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (Daijiga umule pajinnal)
September 12 | 5 pm | Free admission
Against a backdrop of urban desolation, four seemingly disconnected lives become intertwined in Hong’s debut film, winner of the prestigious Dragons and Tigers Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival. “Almost a sociological report on what it is like to be living in Seoul in 1996… an unsettling vision of everyday life as the familiar and routine take on an increasingly unfamiliar and terrifying edge.”—Tony Rayns.
1996/color/115 min. | Scr: Hyo-seo Ko; dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Kim Eui-sung, Cho Eun-suk, Lee Eung-kyung, Park Jin-song.

Woman on the Beach (Haebyonui yoin)
September 12 | 7:30 pm
Hong concluded his first decade of feature filmmaking with this summation of his central preoccupations: “karmic irony, self-deceived desire, squandered second chances, and unforeseen abandonment” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). A filmmaker struggling with a new screenplay sets off on a wintry retreat to a desolate seaside town in search of inspiration…or perhaps just to procrastinate. Either way, he winds up wooing his production designer’s girlfriend and even a local girl who looks just like her. Selected as the best undistributed film of 2006 in critic’s polls by both indieWIRE and the Village Voice. “One of recent cinema’s deepest portraits of an artist.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker.
2006/color/127 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Kim Seung-woo, Ko Hyeon-jeong, Song Seon-mi.

Woman is the Future of Man (Yeojaneun namjaui miraeda)
September 12 | 9:40 pm
The drunken reminiscences and one-upmanship of two friends on a snowy afternoon that lands them on the doorstep of a mutual acquaintance—the woman they both loved and lost—who is hardly charmed by the impromptu reunion. Titled after a Louis Aragon quote which caught Hong’s eye on a French postcard, Hong’s film detects that the present can be as filled with unanswerable longings as the past. “Memory, desire and raw self-interest clash against one another with startling poignancy… intellectually stimulating, aesthetically bold.”—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.
2004/color/88 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Yu Ji-tae, Kim Tae-woo.

Turning Gate (Saenghwalui balgyeon)
September 18 | 7:30 pm
In Hong’s biggest Korean box-office hit, an out-of-work actor embarks on two consecutively turbulent relationships. The film takes its title from an ancient legend about a commoner executed for courting the King’s daughter and reincarnated as a snake, which then kidnaps her, only to be washed away in a storm before the eponymous temple entrance. “You never know where it’s going from scene to scene…a surprising cinema of understatement and psychological richness.”—Phillip Lopate, Film Comment.
2002/color/115 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Kim Sang-kyung, Yeh Ji-won, Choo Sang-mi.

Tale of Cinema (Geuk jang jeon)
September 18 | 9:40 pm
Art and life are intertwined in Hong’s most mind-bending twice-told tale. A former film student not only believes that his hapless love life is the source material for a tragic short film by a classmate; he also becomes obsessed with its leading lady and sets about pursuing her off-screen. Hong playfully intertwines filmgoing and lovemaking, zooms and ellipses, as the male psyche is bared in all its doggedness and uncertainty.
2005/color/89 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Kim Sang-kyung, Uhm Ji-won, Lee Ki-woo.

The Power of Kangwon Province (Kangwon-do ui him)
September 19 | 5 pm | Free admission
Over the same weekend, a professor of literature and his former student make separate pilgrimages to the film’s namesake holiday destination—a wooded, craggily mountainous region that overflows into North Korea—as Hong gradually reveals how their lives are interconnected. Reminiscent of Kieslowski in its contemplation of missed connections, chance and synchronicity, Hong’s sophomore film is the first of his twice-told tales.
1998/color/110 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Oh Youn-hong, Paik Jong-hak.

Night and Day (Bam guan nat)
September 19 | 7:30 pm | Los Angeles Premiere | In person: Hong Sang-soo
In self-imposed exile from his native Seoul, a married, photorealist painter wanders the streets of Paris. But a roundelay of chance meetings in the City of Lights entangles him in the emotional lives of two Korean women. Hong lucidly observes this chronicle of one man’s confused attempt to savor a rootless year. “One of Hong’s lightest and most easily digestible metaphysical meals to date.”—Derek Elley, Variety.
2008/color/145 min. | Scr/dir: Hong Sang-soo; w/ Kim Young-ho, Kim You-jin, Seo Min-jeong, Park Eun-hye.”

TICKETS/INFORMATION
Tickets are $10; $7 for LACMA members, seniors (62+), and students with valid ID. Price includes both films in a double bill except where noted. Tickets to only the second film on a double bill are $5. Tickets may be purchased at the museum box office, by phone at 323 857-6010 or online at lacma.org. Subscribe to the Film Department’s e-newsletter by emailing film@lacma.org.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art | 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
lacma.org/film

Nicolas Winding Refn’s VALHALLA RISING Acquired

IFC Films News — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:55:18 +0000

IFC FILMS ACQUIRES US RIGHTS TO NICOLAS WINDING REFN’S ACTION-ADVENTURE VALHALLA RISING

Film had its World Premiere Friday at the Toronto International Film
Festival as a Special Presentation

Toronto, ON (September 14, 2009) - IFC Films, one of the leading
American distributors for independent and foreign films, announced today at the Toronto International Film Festival it has acquired U.S.
distribution rights to VALHALLA RISING, an action-adventure movie about a Viking warrior. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on Friday to strong critical praise.

Directed by the visionary Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn,
VALHALLA RISING is his follow up to the critically acclaimed Bronson.
VALHALLA RISING stars Mads Mikkelsen, whose previous credits include
Casino Royale, and IFC Films’ After the Wedding and Flame and Citron.
This is Mikkelson’s third film with Refn, as they previously worked
together on the first two films in Refn’s Pusher acclaimed mafia movie
trilogy.

The deal for VALHALLA RISING, negotiated by IFC Films acquisitions
topper Arianna Bocco and Carole Baraton from Wild Bunch, is one of the first major acquisitions to be announced out of the 2009 festival. IFC Films won distribution rights following a bidding war.

VALHALLA RISING tells the story of One-Eye, a mute warrior of
supernatural strength, who has been held prisoner by the chieftain Barde for many years . Aided by a boy, Are, he kills his captor and together they escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight, One-Eye and Are board a Viking vessel but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that first disintegrates as they sight an unknown land. As the new land reveals its secrets and the Vikings meet a ghastly fate, One-Eye discovers his true self. Referencing masters like Akira Kurosawa Sergio Leone, and Andrei Tarkovsky, VALHALLA RISING shows how carnage, once invoked, has no fealty but to itself.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment said, “Nicolas Winding
Refn knows film like no other director. He elevates genre to the realm
of art and has established himself as one of the most audacious
filmmakers working in Europe today. VALHALLA RISING is one of the most visceral and exciting films we’ve seen in a long time. We’re absolutely thrilled to be in business with him and reunited with Nimbus Films.”

IFC Films plans to release VALHALLA RISING in 2010 via its IFC In
Theaters program.

Described by TIFF programers as “one of the most daring and audacious directors in Europe,” Nicolas Winding Refn is best known for the Pusher trilogy, which transplanted the gangster film to Copenhagen and gave it a tragic import and epic scale. Born in Copenhagen, Nicolas Winding Refn studied in New York City at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

He made his feature directing debut with the first Pusher film in 1996.
He has since directed the features Bleeder (99), Fear X (03), Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands (04), Pusher III:I’m the Angel of Death (05), and Bronson (09).

Mia Hanson-Love’s FATHER OF MY CHILDREN Acquired

IFC Films News — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:39:56 +0000

2009 Cannes Award-Winning Film To Have North American Premiere At The Toronto Film Festival

New York (NY) (September 8, 2009) – IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired U.S. rights to FATHER OF MY CHILDREN (La Pere de mes enfants), a French drama written and directed by by Mia Hansen-Løve. The film won the Jury Special Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and is having its North American premiere this month at the Toronto Film Festival.
FATHER OF MY CHILDREN was produced by Philippe Martin, David Thion (LESFILMS PELLÉAS), Oliver Damian (27 FILMS PRODUCTION).

The deal for FATHER OF MY CHILDREN was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, IFC Films VP of Acquisitions, with Agathe Valentin from Films du Losange.

Grégoire Canvel has everything a man could want. A wife he loves, three delightful children and a stimulating job. He’s a film producer. Discovering talented filmmakers and developing films that fit his conception of the cinema-free and true to life-is precisely his reason for living. His vocation. It fulfills him and Grégoire devotes almost all his time and energy to his work. He’s hyperactive, he never stops. Except on weekends, which he spends in the country with his family-gentle interludes, as precious as they are fragile. With his bearing and exceptional charisma, Grégoire commands admiration. He seems invincible. Yet his prestigious production company, Moon Films, is on its last legs. Too many productions, too many risks, too many debts. Storm clouds are gathering. But Grégoire plows on at all costs. Where will his blind obstinacy lead him? One day, he is obliged to face the facts. In one word: failure. He is overwhelmed by fatigue. Which soon, secretly, turns into despair.

Jonathan Sehring commented, “We’re quite sure that FATHER OF MY CHILDREN is going to touch people. It is one of the most moving and thoughtful films we’ve seen about a family in crisis in awhile. It also pays tribute with great warmth to the world that many of us inhabit in getting films by the great directors into the world. With it Mia Hansen-Løve further establishes herself as one of France’s great talents to watch.”

IFC Films is releasing FATHER OF MY CHILDREN in 2010 via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to on demand viewers at home the same day they premiere in theaters.

About The Filmmaker
Mia Hansen-Løve was born in 1981. She was cast by Olivier Assayas in Late August, Early September (1998) and Les destinées sentimentales (2000) before she began formal training at the Paris Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in 2001. From 2003-2005, Mia wrote for the Cahiers du Cinéma and directed several short films. FATHER OF MY CHILDREN (Le père de mes enfants) is her second feature after her 2006 debut All Is Forgiven (Tout est pardonné).

IFC Films & the Criterion Collection to release a series of Contemporary Classics

IFC Films News — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:37:26 +0000

Criterion to handle sell through for select films from IFC Films upcoming slate and library

Initial releases to include Arnaud Desplechin’s A CHRISTMAS TALE, Matteo Garrone’s GOMORRAH and Steven Soderbergh’s CHE

New York, NY – September 1, 2009 – In a move designed to preserve contemporary classic cinema for future generations, IFC Films, one of the leading distributors for independent and foreign films, and The Criterion Collection, the premiere video distribution company of the best in world cinema, today announced a partnership that gives Criterion sell through home entertainment distribution rights for select IFC Films titles. Through the deal, Criterion acquires the rights to distribute IFC Films’ titles on DVD in the U.S., and will release sell through special editions of each film. The announcement was made today jointly by IFC Films’ Jonathan Sehring with Criterion’s Peter Becker and Jonathan Turell.

Criterion will distribute select upcoming titles from IFC Films, as well as titles from IFC Films’ esteemed library. Each title will be released in special DVD packaging with original box art, offering the highest technical quality and original supplements and bonus material. Select titles will be released on both DVD and Blu-ray.

Criterion and IFC Films are pleased to immediately announce the exclusive releases of several independent and foreign titles including three critically acclaimed films direct from the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Arnaud Desplechin’s French drama A CHRISTMAS TALE will be released on November 10. Winner for a Special Prize at Cannes for the 61st anniversary of Catherine Deneuve’s contribution to cinema, A CHRISTMAS TALE stars Denueve & Mathieu Amalric and tells the story of a family with strained relationships. On November 24 Criterion will release GOMORRAH, directed by Matteo Garrone and presented by Martin Scorsese. GOMORRAH, a crime film based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, won the Grand Prix at Cannes and received a 2008 Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film. Also in 2009, Criterion will release Steven Soderbergh’s 2008 epic CHE, starring Benicio del Toro as revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a role for which he received the Best Actor Award at Cannes. The film was produced by Laura Bickford and written by Peter Buchman and Benjamin van der Veen. CHE will be released on both DVD and Blu-ray.

Upcoming 2010 releases include Jan Troell’s 2008 Golden Globe-nominated EVERLASTING MOMENTS; Olivier Assayas’ acclaimed 2009 box office hit SUMMER HOURS, starring Juliette Binoche; Steve McQueen’s award-winning film HUNGER starring Michael Fassbender; Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s STILL WALKING; and Abdellatif Kechiche’s Venice and César Award-winning THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN.

Criterion will also release special editions of films from IFC Films’ esteemed library including Alfonso Cuaron’s breakout film Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN. A Mexican coming of age story which took world audiences by storm in 2001, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdu. Also scheduled for release is a special edition of Christopher Nolan’s FOLLOWING, a 1998 film noir and Nolan’s directorial debut. The precursor to Nolan’s MEMENTO, BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT, FOLLOWING tells the story of a young man who follows strangers around the streets of London and is drawn into a criminal underworld.

“From the inception of IFC Films, we modeled our acquisition strategy on Criterion’s but with the intent on focusing on the auteurs of today,” said Jonathan Sehring, IFC Films’ President of IFC Entertainment. “It’s a great honor and thrill for us to embark on this partnership with them. They are the golden seal of approval.”
Peter Becker from Criterion commented, “IFC Films has been on an incredible roll, hunting down daring international films and spotting filmmakers whose work will stand the test of time. Criterion has always presented a mix of international classics and director-approved editions of important contemporary films, so this new slate of releases fits our mission perfectly. These films are future classics, and we’re very excited about the opportunity to work with the filmmakers to present them in great editions right from the start.”

Perfect ‘A’ Rating for STILL WALKING from The AV Club

IFC Films News — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:39:20 +0000

From The Onion AV Club

Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s home drama Still Walking is a master class in doing much with little. The movie’s style and plot are simplicity itself. A Japanese family, including unemployed art restorer Hiroshi Abe, his father (Yoshio Harada), a retired doctor, his mother (Kirin Kiki) and his sister (You) gather to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the eldest son’s drowning death. The action transpires throughout a single day, much of it filmed in unblinking master shots that take in the intergenerational conflicts—some expressed and some omnipresent but unspoken—without intruding upon them. Kore-Eda saves his rare close-ups for incidental details, like the toothbrushes laid out for Abe and his family’s overnight stay, or the sizzle of corn fritters slipping into hot oil.

Those seemingly throwaway inserts—drawn, as it turns out, directly from Kore-Eda’s memories of his own family reunions—are the key to the movie’s heart. The substance of the family’s conversations is riddled with regrets: a child’s life cut short, a father’s legacy left unfulfilled, his children caught between their own unfulfilled dreams and their parents’ unfulfilled expectations. But their actions are embedded with a shared history no disappointment can undo. For good and for ill, they’ve left their imprint on one another.

Although the movie’s style and setting inevitably prompt comparison to Ozu’s home dramas, Kore-Eda doesn’t share his predecessor’s mournful disdain for the younger generation, or his sentimental veneration of the old. He sees each character’s flaws and virtues with equal clarity, letting them unfold with a measured grace that equals Jean Renoir’s. Kiki, much of whose dialogue is drawn from Kore-Eda’s mother, initially seems like the epitome of the patient, sorrowful housewife, but a visit by the young man her son died rescuing opens a window into a deep well of bitterness and spite. Harada’s stern, gruff patriarch is the closest thing to a villain, retreating to his examining room when family arrives and emerging only to issue harsh, unsparing judgments of his offspring. But even he earns a measure of understanding, if only from a distance.

Built around a handful of long-take scenes at the family dinner table, Still Walking transpires with unhurried ease, but multiple viewings reveal the sophistication of its almost imperceptible style. The movie seems like a perfect found object, as if it had always existed and was just waiting to be uncovered.

by Sam Adams

Rave 5-Star Review of STILL WALKING from Time Out New York

IFC Films News — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:21:55 +0000

From Time Out New York:

*****FIVE STARS (Highest Rating)

Buried family traumas lie at the heavy hearts of many recent American dramas, films like Rachel Getting Married, Ballast, even The Wrestler. Japan, it must be said, has long made this subgenre a specialty. The great Yasujiro Ozu drew us intimately into generational separation—even down to the ground with his low camera positions—in masterpieces like Tokyo Story. Akira Kurosawa, better known for his samurai epics, explored regret in the devastating Ikiru, while Kenji Mizoguchi still deserves wider acclaim as the grief expert behind The Life of Oharu and Sansho the Bailiff.

Still Walking, from 47-year-old writer-director Hirozaku Kore-eda, almost certainly belongs to these ranks—we are in the presence of a new classic. Strong words, indeed, and merited: To submit to the quiet tensions of the modern-day Yokoyama clan, an extended family haunted by the memory of a departed son, is to experience moviemaking of a rare emotional subtlety. These characters do not weep for Junpei on the 12th anniversary of his death. Grown-up brother Ryota (Abe), an art restorer, brings home his new bride and feelings of inadequacy; his ten-year-old stepchild wanders the family house. Sister Chinami (the monomonikered You, of Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows) happily shreds radishes in the kitchen.

The title in the film’s original language captures the continuum better: Even If You Walk and Walk. Kore-eda limits his tale to a single 24-hour period, but we feel we know these people’s resiliency. Paying his respects, too, is the person Junpei saved from drowning, a sweaty mess of a man. There is still bitterness in the look he gets from the mother, Toshiko (Kiki, magnificent). Her son was better, and her soft sarcasm speaks volumes.

—Joshua Rothkopf

Marco Bellochio’s VINCERE Acquired

IFC Films News — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:47:15 +0000

2009 Cannes Competition Film Will Have North American Premiere At The 2009 Toronto Film Festival
And U.S. Premiere At The 2009 New York Film Festival

New York (NY) (August XX, 2009) – IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired U.S. rights to VINCERE, a powerful drama inspired by the incredibly true and tragic story of Mussolini’s first wife, Ida Dalser. Written and directed by Italian master Marco Bellochio, VINCERE had its world premiere in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Bellochio’s sixth film in competition since 1980. As Dalser, the film stars Giovanna Mezzogiorno (“The Last Kiss,” “Love in the Time of Cholera”) in a critically-acclaimed performance. Filippo Timi co-stars in a dual role as Mussolini and his illegitimate son. VINCERE will have its North American premiere in September at the Toronto Film Festival, followed by its U.S. premiere in October at the New York Film Festival.

VINCERE was produced by Mario Gianani, Hengameh Panahi and Olivia Sleiter. Daniela Ceselli collaborated with Bellochio on the screenplay.

The deal for VINCERE was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, IFC Films VP of Acquisitions, with Hengameh Panahi of Celluloid Dreams.

The deal marks IFC Films’ sixth acquisition from the 2009 Cannes Film Festival including Cristian Mungiu’s Tales from the Golden Age, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective.

There is a secret in the life of Mussolini: a wife and a son, Benito Albino, who was born, acknowledged and then denied. The secret bears a name: Ida Dalser. It is a dark page in history, one ignored in the official biography of the Duce. When Ida meets Mussolini in Milan, he is the editor of Avanti and an ardent Socialist who intends to guide the masses towards an anti-clerical, anti-monarchical, socially emancipated future. Ida already had a fleeting encounter with him in Trento and remained thunderstruck. Ida truly believes in him and his ideas. In order to finance Popolo d’Italia, a newspaper he has founded and the nucleus of the forthcoming Fascist Party, Ida sells everything she has. When the First World War erupts, Benito Mussolini enrolls in the Army and disappears. When Ida finds him again in a military hospital, he is tended to by Rachele whom he has just married. Ida lashes out at her rival furiously, demanding her rights as Mussolini’s true wife and the mother of his first-born son. She is led away by force. For more than eleven years, she is locked away in an insane asylum (and her son in an institute) where she is put under, physical restraint and tortured, never to see her son again. But Ida will not give up without a fight…

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented “VINCERE was one of the standout films of Cannes for us with Marco Bellochio at the top of his game and with an absolute star making performance by Giovanna Mezzogiorno that people will be talking about for years to come. She and Filippo Timi bring a physicality to their performances that is positively electrifying. We think this is the perfect film for all of our platforms and surely one of the most discussed international films of the year.”

IFC Films is releasing VINCERE via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to on demand viewers at home the same day they premiere in theaters.

About The Filmmaker
Marco Bellochio is one of the most respected and important directors working in Italy today. After making short films and documentaries in the early 1960s, Bellocchio won international fame with his first feature, the powerful incest drama “I Pugni In Tasca” (aka Fist in His Pocket). Other stylish and provocative political dramas followed, most notably “La Cina E Vicina (China is Near) and Nel Nome Del Padre (In the Name of the Father). Bellocchio lost none of his rebel status in the ensuing years, and most recently has assaulted bourgeois sensibilites with Salto Nel Vuoto (Leap Into The Void); Gli Occhi, La Bocca (The Eyes, The Mouth), his follow-up to I Pugni In Tasca; and the controversial Diavolo In Corpo (Devil In The Flesh), his X-rated updating of Raymond Radiguet’s novel.

About IFC Entertainment
A leader in the independent film industry, IFC Entertainment consists of multiple brands that are devoted to bringing the best of specialty films to the largest possible audience: IFC Films, Festival Direct, IFC Productions, and the IFC Center. IFC Films is a leading distributor of independent film. Its unique day and date distribution model, ‘IFC In Theaters,’ makes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them simultaneously in theaters as well as on cable’s On Demand platform and through Pay-Per-View, reaching 50 million homes. ‘IFC Festival Direct’ features a wide selection of titles acquired from major international film festivals and offers them exclusively through Video on Demand. IFC Productions is a feature film production company that provides financing for select independent film projects. IFC Center is a three screen, state-of-the-art cinema with luxurious seating and HD digital and 35mm projection that shows art-house films in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. IFC Entertainment’s companies are subsidiaries of Rainbow Media Holdings LLC.

www.ifcfilms.com

For further information, contact:

For IFC:
Cynthia Swartz
Publicity, 42West
O: (212)277-7557
C: 9170597-0804
E: Cynthia.Swartz@42west.net

Corneliu Poromboiu’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE Acquired

IFC Films News — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:14:24 +0000

2009 Award-Winning Cannes Film Will Have North American Premiere At The 2009 Toronto Film Festival
And U.S. Premiere At The 2009 New York Film Festival

New York (NY) (August 19, 2009) – IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired U.S. rights to POLICE, ADJECTIVE, a smart policier about a cop on a surveillance mission who has a crisis of faith. Written and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, the film is his follow up to “12:08 East of Bucharest” which won him the Camera d’Or prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film. POLICE, ADJECTIVE stars Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Ion Stoica and Irina Saulescu.
POLICE, ADJECTIVE had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, winning the jury prize and FIPRESCI international critics’ prize. POLICE, ADJECTIVE will have its North American premiere in September at the Toronto Film Festival, followed by its U.S. premiere in October at the New York Film Festival.

The deal for POLICE ADJECTIVE was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, IFC Films VP of Acquisitions, with Pape Boye of Coach 14.
The acquisition of POLICE, ADJECTIVE marks IFC Films continued commitment to bring the best of Romanian cinema to the United States, following its successful distribution of Christian Mungiu’s Palme D’or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and their recent pickup of Mungiu’s Tales From The Golden Age, a collection of Romanian urban legends. The company has also released Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’ which won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and Radu Muntean’s Boogie (aka Summer Holiday). The deal also marks IFC Films’ fifth acquisition from the 2009 Cannes Film Festival including Tales from the Golden Age, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric and Andrea Arnold’s Fishtank.

In POLICE, ADJECTIVE Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a policeman who refuses to arrest a young man who offers hashish to two of his school mates. “Offering” is punished by the law. Cristi believes that the law will change, he does not want the life of a young man he considers irresponsible to be a burden on his conscience. For his superior the word conscience has a different meaning…

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented “”Romanian films have been taking the world by storm, and we’re thrilled to continue bringing them to America. Corneliu Porumbiou’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE is surely the smartest and drolly funny film of the year with one of the most remarkable endings in recent memory. We’re happy to make this film available on all of our platforms next year.”

IFC Films is releasing POLICE, ADJECTIVE via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to on demand viewers at home the same day they premiere in theaters.

About IFC Entertainment
A leader in the independent film industry, IFC Entertainment consists of multiple brands that are devoted to bringing the best of specialty films to the largest possible audience: IFC Films, Festival Direct, IFC Productions, and the IFC Center. IFC Films is a leading distributor of independent film. Its unique day and date distribution model, ‘IFC In Theaters,’ makes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them simultaneously in theaters as well as on cable’s On Demand platform and through Pay-Per-View, reaching 50 million homes. ‘IFC Festival Direct’ features a wide selection of titles acquired from major international film festivals and offers them exclusively through Video on Demand. IFC Productions is a feature film production company that provides financing for select independent film projects. IFC Center is a three screen, state-of-the-art cinema with luxurious seating and HD digital and 35mm projection that shows art-house films in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. IFC Entertainment’s companies are subsidiaries of Rainbow Media Holdings LLC.

www.ifcfilms.com

For further information, contact:

For IFC:
Cynthia Swartz
Publicity, 42West
O: (212)277-7557
C: 9170597-0804
E: Cynthia.Swartz@42west.net

Andrea Arnold’s FISH TANK Acquired

IFC Films News — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:10:16 +0000

IFC FILMS HOOKS “FISH TANK”
COMPANY ACQUIRES U.S. DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS TO ANDREA ARNOLD’S ACCLAIMED COMING-OF-AGE DRAMA
2009 Cannes Jury Award Winning Film Stars Newcomer Kate Jarvis

New York (NY) (August 13, 2009) - IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired U.S. rights to FISH TANK, a critically-acclaimed coming-of-age drama. Written and directed by Andrea Arnold, the film is her follow up to her debut feature RED ROAD and her Academy-Award ® winning short film WASP. FISH TANK had its world premiere in competition at Cannes, receiving a special Jury Prize (which it shared with Chan-Wook Park’s Thirst). The film stars British newcomer Kate Jarvis in a tour-de-force performance. Jarvis appears in every scene of the film and was hailed by critics as the acting discovery of the 2009 festival. Starring opposite Jarvis is Michael Fassbender, following his acclaimed performance in HUNGER. Fassbender will also be seen in this summer’s INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. Also starring in FISH TANK is the BAFTA-nominated Kierston Wareing (IT’S A FREE WORLD), Harry Treadaway (BROTHERS OF THE HEAD), and 12-year old Rebecca Griffiths, making her feature film debut. FISH TANK is a BBC Films, UK Film Council presentation in association with Limelight and was produced by Kees Kasander, Nick Laws and executive produced by Paul Trijbits, Christine Langan and David M. Thompson.

Other accolades the film has received on the festival circuit include the PPG Award for Best Performance for Kate Jarvis at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Golden Propeller and FIPRESCI International critic’s Awards at the Motovun Film Festival. FISH TANK was also shown at the Melbourne Film Festival, Munich Film Festival and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The deal for FISH TANK was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, VP of Acquisitions for IFC Films, with United Talent Agency and Jamie Carmichael of ContentFilm International. Andrea Arnold is represented by Matthew Bates at Sayle Screen Ltd. in the U.K. and Gersh in the U.S.

FISH TANK is the story of Mia (Katie Jarvis) a volatile 15-year-old who has become excluded from school and ostracized by her friends. One hot summer’s day her mother (Kiertson Wareing) brings home a mysterious stranger called Connor (Michael Fassbender) who promises to change everything and bring love into all their lives. Touching on the themes of Arnold’s Academy Award winning short WASP, FISH TANK is an original and unique modern tale of our times.
Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment said, “We couldn’t be happier to be working with Andrea Arnold on one of the great discoveries of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. FISH TANK is one of the most observant and beautifully executed coming of age stories we’ve seen in years and Katie Jarvis is a revelation in the lead role. This is the perfect film for all of our platforms.”
Director Andrea Arnold said: “I am happy that Fish Tank has found a good American home with IFC and I am really looking forward to working with them.”

IFC Films is releasing Fish Tank via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to on demand viewers at home the same day they premiere in theaters.

* * * *
About IFC Entertainment
A leader in the independent film industry, IFC Entertainment consists of multiple brands that are devoted to bringing the best of specialty films to the largest possible audience: IFC Films, Festival Direct, IFC Productions, and the IFC Center. IFC Films is a leading distributor of independent film. Its unique day and date distribution model, ‘IFC In Theaters,’ makes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them simultaneously in theaters as well as on cable’s On Demand platform and through Pay-Per-View, reaching 50 million homes. ‘IFC Festival Direct’ features a wide selection of titles acquired from major international film festivals and offers them exclusively through Video on Demand. IFC Productions is a feature film production company that provides financing for select independent film projects. IFC Center is a three screen, state-of-the-art cinema with luxurious seating and HD digital and 35mm projection that shows art-house films in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village. IFC Entertainment’s companies are subsidiaries of Rainbow Media Holdings LLC.

www.ifcfilms.com

For further information, contact:
For IFC:
Cynthia Swartz
Publicity, 42West
O: (212)277-7557
C: 9170597-0804
E: Cynthia.Swartz@42west.net

New York Times Portrait of Kore-Eda Hirokazu

IFC Films News — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:52:51 +0000

From The New York Times:

By DENNIS LIM
Published: August 12, 2009

DEATH looms large in the films of the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. The young heroine of his feature debut, “Maborosi” (1995), is haunted by the inexplicable suicide of her seemingly happy husband. In the metaphysical fable “After Life” (1998), the newly dead are asked to pick a single earthly recollection to keep for eternity, displacing all other memories. “Distance” (2001) observes the grief and shame of the relatives of cult members who killed themselves after carrying out a bio-terrorist attack.

With good reason Mr. Kore-eda, 47, has a reputation as a poet of bereavement. But as he pointed out in a interview, his movies are less about death and dying than about life lived in the shadow of death — an important distinction for this most meticulous of filmmakers. “I’m less interested in death itself than in people whose lives are touched by it,” he said, speaking through a translator while in New York for the Tribeca Film Festival in April.

Mr. Kore-eda’s sixth feature, “Still Walking,” set to open Aug. 28, is another fine-tuned elegy as well as his most personal work to date: a direct response to the death of his mother, whom he nursed in the last two years of her life. Precisely for that reason, despite having confronted the abyss of mortality in film after film, he could not bring himself to get too close this time.

“I didn’t want it to come too much from the mourning and sadness in my own life,” he said. “I didn’t want to make a movie where I had to portray a death.”

One practical solution was to keep the time frame concise. Except for a brief epilogue, “Still Walking” unfolds over a summer day and night, during a family gathering to mark the anniversary of the eldest son’s death.

“If I had made a film about my mother that covers a period of a few years, you would inevitably see the process of aging and the process of dying,” Mr. Kore-eda said. “And to be honest, I wasn’t ready for that.” He chose instead to present “one day as a cross-section of her life, one day when she was still well and active and happy.”

Mr. Kore-eda, who studied literature at Waseda University in Tokyo, began his career making documentaries for Japanese television. Some of these rarely screened films will be shown at a retrospective devoted to Mr. Kore-eda, the first in New York, that runs from Friday through Sept. 1 at BAMcinématek in Brooklyn. The themes of his fiction films — loss, remembrance, resilience — and his signature empathetic approach to traumatized characters can be detected in much of his early nonfiction work.

“However …” (1991) interweaves the life stories of two suicides: an official in charge of Japan’s Social Welfare Bureau and a woman who was a casualty of its failures. “August Without Him” (1994) is about the first Japanese man who admitted to contracting H.I.V. through sexual contact. The subject of “Without Memory” (1996) suffers from a rare kind of amnesia that prevents his brain from forming new memories.

In keeping with his documentary background, Mr. Kore-eda’s fiction films are often rooted in actual events and personal experiences. “Maborosi” is adapted from a novel, but Mr. Kore-eda has said that in shaping his lead character, he had in mind the widow of the suicidal bureaucrat he interviewed in “However. …” “After Life,” which has clear affinities with “Without Memory,” has its roots in childhood recollections of his grandfather, who had Alzheimer’s. The homicidal cult in “Distance” is modeled on Aum Shinrikyo, the group responsible for the 1995 sarin-gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system. “Nobody Knows” (2004), about four young siblings waiting in vain for the flighty mother who has abandoned them in a Tokyo apartment, is based on a real-life case that scandalized Japan in the late ’80s.

While “Still Walking” is not strictly autobiographical, Mr. Kore-eda filled the film with sensory triggers that take him back to his childhood in the rural outskirts of Tokyo. The title comes from the lyrics of a ’60s pop hit called “Blue Light Yokohama” (it’s heard in the movie), a favorite of his mother, who loved the song’s romantic evocation of cosmopolitan glamour. Much attention is lavished on the cooking and consumption of food, like the corn tempura that is Mr. Kore-eda’s Proustian madeleine. This was a boyhood staple, he said, made with corn harvested from a neighboring field, and he captures every last detail of its preparation, from the shaving of the kernels off the cob to the sound of the fritter bubbling in hot oil.

Amid these fond memories Mr. Kore-eda maintains his unsentimental gimlet eye for the emotional breach and the psychological impasse. Beneath surface niceties, a painful gulf exists between the grown children and their parents, and almost everyone (not least the doting mother) has a capacity for hurtful, passive-aggressive remarks. “That kind of relationship, where the parent and the child are very out of sync emotionally, it’s very reflective of my personal experience,” Mr. Kore-eda said.

Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), the family’s only surviving son, is clearly Mr. Kore-eda’s surrogate, and the movie’s filial dynamics mirror his own relationships with his parents. “Like you see in the film, my father and I had nothing to talk about except baseball,” he said. Ryota, a picture restorer, also must bear the open disapproval of his gruff doctor father (Yoshio Harada), who is frustrated that no one will inherit his medical practice. (In Mr. Kore-eda’s case, he said, his father supported his decision to be a filmmaker, but his mother “was against it all the way.”)

The mother (Kirin Kiki) is at first glance a warmer figure, but it’s not long before her neuroses reveal themselves. “All my mother ever wanted to talk about was what she hated about my father and the times he cheated on her when he was younger,” Mr. Kore-eda said. (There are similar exchanges in the film.) “It really irritated me, and I told them they had to sort things out between themselves.” He added, “Looking back on that, I see that it was really cold of me as a son.”

At the Tribeca festival screening “Still Walking” was introduced as a homage to Yasujiro Ozu, Mr. Kore-eda said, a characterization he takes issue with. “Still Walking” bears a more than passing resemblance to the “home dramas” that Ozu elevated to an art: spare, intimate films about the day-to-day domestic troubles of ordinary people. But while Ozu’s characters are paragons of calm acceptance in the face of life’s cruelties and disappointments, the characters in “Still Walking” are pricklier and less reconciled, and they have a harder time concealing their resentments.

“I think my parents would have been more comfortable if they were more like characters in an Ozu film,” Mr. Kore-eda said. A more relevant Japanese master, “in terms of a worldview I feel much closer to,” he added, is Mikio Naruse, whose characters are usually more openly anguished: “His movies really understand that humans are flawed creatures, and he makes no judgment against them.”

While most of Mr. Kore-eda’s films have been in a vein of quiet humanism, he has branched out on occasion, with more obviously commercial efforts like the pacifist samurai period piece “Hana” (2006) and the new “Air Doll,” a whimsical tale, adapted from a manga serial, of a blow-up sex doll that comes to life. “It’s very much a film about what it means to be human,” Mr. Kore-eda said. “You have a doll that is becoming more and more human, surrounded by people who are becoming less and less human.” (“Air Doll,” which had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is still awaiting distribution in the United States.)

Mr. Kore-eda said he had expected “Still Walking,” which he considers his “most Japanese film,” to lose some of its nuances in translation. “There’s no confrontation, no growth in the relationships,” he said. “In Japan this is a way to maintain peace and to get through life. It’s a survival technique that I didn’t think the Western world would understand.”

But the reactions at screenings around the world have proved him wrong. “The responses are more or less the same, whether in Europe, America or Japan,” he said. He is used to international audiences approaching his work from across cultural divides: people looked for religious connotations in “After Life”; “Nobody Knows” prompted questions about the Japanese child welfare system.

“But this time, “ he said, “they laugh in the same places, cry in the same places, and they ask the same questions. It seems to be a film that evokes a very basic level of emotion.”

NY Times: FIVE MINUTES and Ireland after the Troubles

IFC Films News — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:45:49 +0000

From The New York Times:

By TERRENCE RAFFERTY
Published: August 12, 2009

“YOU know, it’s a complicated relationship with the place one grows up in,” the actor James Nesbitt said, “particularly if it’s Northern Ireland.” He spoke from his home in London, where he has lived since the mid-1980s: “I’ve now lived here longer than I lived there, but I still consider Northern Ireland my home.”

And it is also complicated for Liam Neeson, with whom Mr. Nesbitt stars in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “Five Minutes of Heaven,” set in Northern Ireland. Since leaving Belfast 30 years ago, Mr. Neeson hadn’t been back for any significant time to the long-beleaguered country he too grew up in. “I found the city to be thriving, actually,” he said, from New York, “very different from when I was there in the ’70s.” With a bit of wonder in his voice, he added, “Even something as simple as seeing restaurants with tables and chairs outside, that was very, very novel.”

Maybe more novel yet is the story “Five Minutes to Heaven” tells, which is one that probably could not have been told when Mr. Nesbitt was growing up a Protestant and Mr. Neeson a Catholic, during the bloody period their countrymen call — with grim understatement — the Troubles: a time, beginning in 1968, of bitter sectarian violence between Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority and its angry Roman Catholic minority, with the British Army acting nominally to keep the peace but more practically as an occupying force. By the time of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the worst of the hostilities, more than 3,000 people had died, many of them on the very Belfast streets where, to Mr. Neeson’s astonishment, you can now enjoy a pint and a leisurely smoke without fear of your life.

The action of Mr. Hirschbiegel’s film, which opens on Friday, takes place partly in the old Belfast of the Troubles and partly in the al fresco Belfast of the present day, where some wounds have healed and some, stubbornly, have not. The main characters are a Protestant named Alistair Little (Mr. Neeson), who, in 1975, as a 17-year-old member of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, murdered a Catholic Republican, and Joe Griffin (Mr. Nesbitt), the victim’s brother. These men, who really existed and do still, “have never met and probably never will,” Mr. Hirschbiegel said, but the movie tries to imagine what might happen if they did.

The filmmakers had the cooperation of both Mr. Little and Mr. Griffin, and although Mr. Neeson chose not to meet the man he was playing until after he completed his scenes, Mr. Nesbitt sought out Joe Griffin, because, he said, “when I first read the script I found the character so extreme, physically and emotionally, and I couldn’t quite believe it.” After spending more than six hours with him, though, Mr. Nesbitt believed: “He’s an explosive personality, a man of huge anger and repression — as brutal as this sounds, a fantastic case study to observe and listen to. When he was telling me his story, he was very physical, constantly up and down, and his accent is so strong he can be quite hard to understand, even for me. But although he’s an uneducated man, he’s extremely articulate, and he’s very funny.”

Complicated, that is, as everything about Northern Ireland seems to be. “Five Minutes of Heaven,” Mr. Hirschbiegel said, “tries to take a new approach, to work on the spirit of reconciliation.” He added, “I didn’t want to take sides, or to do what films have done before in dealing with Northern Ireland’s past, retelling the tales and recreating the cruelties and the violence, and, in a way, recreating the anger.”

To implement this new approach required an English screenwriter (Guy Hibbert), a German director, a Protestant actor playing a Catholic and a Catholic actor playing a Protestant. In some way these paradoxes feel perfectly appropriate to the madness of the Troubles and the tenuous sanity of their aftermath. Before Good Friday 1998 it was nearly impossible to make a truly impartial film about Northern Ireland, a movie that didn’t take sides.

“There were a few Hollywood attempts to use the Troubles as a backdrop to tell a story,” Mr. Neeson said, “and a part of me always resented that because there was a war still going on, and people were getting killed and maimed, you know?” (He didn’t name any films, but the ’90s thrillers “Blown Away,” “Patriot Games” and “The Devil’s Own” are likely to be on the list.)

The sad fact is that, at their height, the Troubles were too messy and complex for Hollywood-style drama, the rights and wrongs far too ambiguous to sort out for anyone who didn’t have a stake in the outcome (and even for many who did). The early-20th-century struggles for Irish independence from Britain were easier to romanticize — to treat as classic tragedy, as John Ford’s “Informer” (1935) and Carol Reed’s “Odd Man Out” (1947) did, or to use as a pretext for rousing revolutionary adventures, like Michael Anderson’s “Shake Hands With the Devil” (1959) or Tay Garnett’s “Night Fighters” (1960).

But the Troubles were never a simple story of an oppressed people taking up arms against their colonial masters. And by the time Neil Jordan got around to dramatizing the birth of the Republic of Ireland, in his 1996 “Michael Collins” (with Mr. Neeson in the title role), that story no longer seemed so straightforward either, because the later history of Northern Ireland hung over it like the smoke of a long battle. At the climax of “Michael Collins” the revolutionary hero reluctantly accepts the terms of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the basis for the present-day Republic but also partitioned the six predominantly Protestant counties of the north.

Attempts were made nonetheless to bring some clarity to the tangled circumstances of Northern Ireland, most notable in the films of the Dublin-born director Jim Sheridan and the Northern Irish (and staunchly Republican) writer and director Terry George: Mr. Sheridan’s “In the Name of the Father” (1993) and “The Boxer” (1997), both written with Mr. George; and “Some Mother’s Son” (1996), written and directed by Mr. George alone. They’re strong movies, but in every sense there’s more freedom now, since Good Friday 1998, to see the conflict from different, less politically charged perspectives.

Paul Greengrass’s tumultuous “Bloody Sunday” (2002) recreates the 1972 massacre of Derry civil rights protesters by British paratroopers, and Pete Travis’s “Omagh” (2004) tells of a deadly — post-Good Friday — 1998 bombing by the so-called Real I.R.A., and although both films are sobering neither traffics much in sectarian rancor.

And as it happens, there’s another Troubles movie opening on Friday, Kari Skogland’s “Fifty Dead Men Walking,” which tells the true story of one Martin McGartland (played by Jim Sturgess), a young Belfast man who for years worked undercover to alert the British security forces of some of the Provisional I.R.A.’s direr plots. It’s difficult at the best of times to make an informer a hero; it would have been inconceivable 10 years ago to get the people of Belfast to cooperate on a story about someone like that, as Ms. Skogland said they enthusiastically did.

“I had the advantage of a community that really wanted to talk about their experiences,” she said. “The people who were involved in the war are at a stage in life where they’re a bit more reflective about what went on.” She added, “I think that at some point you have to look to self, because you can get so swept up in the passions and the agendas of a cause that you forget that one day there will be peace and the only person left standing is you looking at yourself in the mirror.”

In the movies Northern Ireland’s looking at itself now, and with any luck the people will be able to live with the complicated history they see. It was an awful time, and terrible beauty be damned.

Gerardo Naranjo - I’M GONNA EXPLODE

Ryan Werner — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:51:24 +0000

Last year at the Toronto Film Festival, we fell in love with Gerardo Naranjo’s I’M GONNA EXPLODE. It is the perfect summer movie - cool, sexy and totally in love with the movies. We’re thrilled to present the NYC Theatrical premiere at the Walter Reade Theater starting today. Also, don’t miss DRAMA/MEX, a film we released a few years ago that Gerardo made also.

I’m Gonna Explode

U.S. Theatrical Premiere
of the 2008 New York Film Festival Selection
One Week Only – Aug 12-18
Director Gerardo Naranjo to Appear in Person!

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is proud to present the U.S. Theatrical Premiere of Gerardo Naranjo’s I’m Gonna Explode showing at the Walter Reade Theater from Wednesday, August 12 through Tuesday, August 18 (one week). Director Naranjo will appear in person on Wednesday, August 12 and Friday, August 14 for both of the 6:15pm and 9:00pm screenings on each day.

Up-and-coming director Gerardo Naranjo (Drama/Mex, Malachance) brings the 2008 New York Film Festival favorite back to The Film Society for a weeklong run. I’m Gonna Explode, an epic youth film which channels Bonnie and Clyde and the French New Wave (complete with Georges Delerue music), tells the story of Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the son of a sleazy right-wing congressman, and Maru (Maria Deschamps). Roman and Maru meet at the high school talent show, where Roman does a performance called “I’ll Meet You in Hell,” then ineptly hangs himself on stage (with Maru the only one who applauds). The duo bonds in detention, and then it’s off into the night in a stolen Volkswagen with daddy’s gun.

Absurdist and ultimately heartbreaking, reminiscent of the rawness of his Mexican predecessors Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, Children of Men) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, Babel), complete with two wonderfully fresh performances by de Santiago and Deschamps, I’m Gonna Explode is further proof of Mexican cinema’s ongoing vitality.

Also screening is Naranjo’s vibrant second feature, Drama/Mex set in the dangerous back alleys of Acapulco. Drama/Mex weaves together three stories, deftly united by Naranjo through shifting timeframes and unexpected turns. Produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, the film was selected for Critics’ Week at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

IFC Films | 2008 | 106m | Mexico | In Spanish with English subtitles | Color | 2.35:1

The Film Society of Lincoln Center was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Advancing this mandate today, under the leadership of Executive Director Mara Manus and Program Director Richard Peña, The Film Society hosts two distinguished festivals—The New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films—as well as the annual Gala Tribute, and a year-round calendar of programming at its Walter Reade Theater. It also offers definitive examinations of essential films and artists to a worldwide audience through Film Comment magazine.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater is located at 165 West 65th St. between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway.

Film Descriptions

I’m Gonna Explode / Voy a explotar
Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico, 2008; 106m

Roman, the son of a sleazy right-wing congressman, contributes to his high school talent show by attempting to hang himself on stage. Maru, from the other side of the tracks, is the only one who claps. They bond in detention, and after staging a mock abduction it’s off in a stolen Volkswagen with daddy’s gun to the end of the night. Two wonderfully fresh performances by Maria Deschamps and Juan Pablo de Santiago grace this engaging and often funny youth film, a 2008 New York Film Festival selection.

Wed Aug 12: 2:00pm, 4:10pm, *6:15pm, and *9:00pm
Thu Aug 13: 4:15pm
Fri Aug 14: 4:10pm, *6:15pm, and *9:00pm
Sat Aug 15: 7:20pm and 9:30pm
Sun Aug 16: 2:00pm, 4:10pm, and 8:45pm
Mon Aug 17: 2:00pm, 4:10pm, and 6:15pm
Tue Aug 18: 1:00pm

Drama/Mex
Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico, 2006; 105m

Produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna and selected for Critics’ Week at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Drama/Mex weaves together three stories set in decidedly non-tourist sections of Acapulco. Chano won’t accept that his ex-girlfriend Fernanda doesn’t want him anymore. Her current beau Gonzalo wants to fight for what he now thinks is his. And having helped himself to his company’s payroll, Jaime plans to end it all in a cozy cottage on the beach. Naranjo deftly unites these three perspectives through shifting timeframes and unexpected turns.

Thu Aug 13: 2:00pm
Fri Aug 14: 2:00pm
Sat Aug 15: 5:15pm
Sun Aug 16: 6:20pm

* filmmaker in attendance

What’s playing when:

Wednesday, Aug. 12
2:00 I’m Gonna Explode
4:10 I’m Gonna Explode
*6:15 I’m Gonna Explode
*9:00 I’m Gonna Explode

Thursday, Aug. 13
2:00 Drama/Mex
4:15 I’m Gonna Explode

Friday, Aug. 14
2:00 Drama/Mex
4:10 I’m Gonna Explode
*6:15 I’m Gonna Explode
*9:00 I’m Gonna Explode

Saturday, Aug. 15
5:15 Drama/Mex
7:20 I’m Gonna Explode
9:30 I’m Gonna Explode

Sunday, Aug. 16
2:00 I’m Gonna Explode
4:10 I’m Gonna Explode
6:20 Drama/Mex
8:45 I’m Gonna Explode

Monday, Aug. 17
2:00 I’m Gonna Explode
4:10 I’m Gonna Explode
6:15 I’m Gonna Explode

Tuesday, Aug. 18
1:00 I’m Gonna Explode

All times p.m.
* filmmaker in attendance

Dargis Celebrates the Horror Cred of I SELL THE DEAD

IFC Films News — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:20:34 +0000

From the New York Times:

Fright Night, With Thrills From Six Feet Under

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 7, 2009

A pastiche of old-fashioned horror flicks and an homage to the same, “I Sell the Dead” recalls the kind of frightful diversions that were a staple on the television show “Chiller Theater.” That program, broadcast in New York on Channel 11 once upon a time, showcased disreputable pleasures and classics, including those produced by Hammer, the British studio that, with Christopher Lee brandishing a cape and fangs, transformed Dracula into one hot corpse. In the 1970s the show opened with the image of a six-fingered hand emerging through soil, the knobby digits twisting, as if beckoning us in unsettling welcome.

The writer and director of “I Sell the Dead,” Glenn McQuaid, hails from Dublin, so he probably has at least a passing acquaintance with Hammer. His producer, Larry Fessenden, who has directed tight, smart, micro-budgeted horror flicks like “The Last Winter,” grew up in New York, where, he has said, he made a habit of tuning in to “Chiller Theater” and the similar “Creature Feature.” All this probably helps explain why everyone in “I Sell the Dead,” a horror cheapie set in the early 1800s about two grave robbers, speaks with British (or close enough) accents, often while pawing through thick fog. Never mind that the entire movie was shot in New York, including in someone’s apartment and an East Village bar.

The loosely strung-together story turns on the ghoulish adventures of Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan from “Lost”), trained at the crooked knee of Willie Grimes (Mr. Fessenden). Having been sentenced to death for murder, Arthur confesses his sins to a priest (Ron Perlman) in piecemeal flashback. Arthur’s troubles began, he explains, when he and Willie started disinterring troublesome corpses, like the one with the stake in her heart. Deciding she would fetch a better price if she didn’t look like an appetizer, Willie tugs out the stake. She attacks. He thrusts it back in. She quiets down. He pulls it out, and so it goes, as the Hammeresque shivers give way to Abbott and Costello-style slapstick.

A fine pair of grave robbers, Mr. McQuaid and Mr. Fessenden plunder freely from the movie crypt, unearthing other chomping, glowing mysteries and monstrosities. Taking cues from B to Z masters of yore, they crank up the fog machine (or bring out the dry ice), dribble the blood (or the red syrup) and flash the trick knives and other sleights of cinematic hand. The serviceable, joking performances do the job just fine, with Mr. Fessenden, wearing his familiar snarl of hair and gap-toothed smile, clearly having a jolly old time. The jokes do wear thin, and the setup does too, but it’s nonetheless worth noting what a couple of crafty thieves can do with elbow grease, some spare change and the kind of deep movie love that never dies.

I SELL THE DEAD
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written, directed and edited by Glenn McQuaid; director of photography, Rick López; music by Jeff Grace; production designer, David Bell; produced by Larry Fessenden and Peter Phok; released by IFC Films. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Dominic Monaghan (Arthur Blake), Larry Fessenden (Willie Grimes), Angus Scrimm (Dr. Vernon Quint), Ron Perlman (Father Duffy), John Speredakos (Cornelius Murphy) and Brenda Cooney (Fanny Bryers).”

Rave review of FLAME & CITRON

IFC Films News — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:39:15 +0000

From Marshall Fine at The Huffington Post:

“There have been a ton of films about the French resistance during World War II. But, apparently due to the vagaries of foreign-film distribution in the U.S., few films have reached American cinemas from other countries that also fought back against the Nazis during World War II.

Paul Verhoeven’s The Black Book chronicled Dutch resistance in a luridly entertaining, cliffhanger manner. And now writer-director Ole Christian Madsen has resurrected a true story of Danish resistance with the fascinating thriller, Flame & Citron.

The title refers to the two central characters, code-named Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and Citron (Mads Mikkelsen), two fearless Nazi fighters who calmly assassinated collaborators who worked with the Nazis after the 1942 invasion of Denmark. Flame is so-called because of his dazzlingly red hair; Citron’s sour demeanor seemingly accounted for his code name. Together, the pair were best friends and colleagues, fiercely committed to eliminating all traitors.

But that’s the key to the tension in Madsen’s film: Even as they carry out assignments - and chafe at orders from London that keep them from killing Nazis themselves, for fear of bringing greater pressure - they suddenly find that things are not as clear-cut as they would like to believe.

Is the police official who secretly heads the underground cadre really a straight-shooter? Or is he operating on another agenda? Can they believe him when he says that there’s an informer in the group? And what of the double agent Ketty (Stine Stengade), who beds both Flame and the head of the local Gestapo? Where do her sympathies truly lie?

Madsen stages his action sequences with cold-blooded skill, creating concise, effective scenes of sudden, passionate violence - but violence that takes its toll on the perpetrator as well as the victim. Even the chilly Flame finds himself shaken at times, whether it’s being forced to assassinate a woman (something at which he previously had drawn the line) or accidentally killing a child.

Lindhardt and Mikkelsen make a fascinating team - Lindhardt with his snarly grimace and swatch of coppery hair, Mikkelsen the more saturnine behind glasses and an unchangingly acidic expression. Stengade is appropriately slippery as Flame’s love interest, who may or may not be double-dealing.

“Flame & Citron” is straightforward, brutal and exciting, a gripping tale of men ready for death in the face of unknowable treachery and a vicious enemy, but willing to fight for a cause nonetheless. It should be required viewing for any American politician considering an unprovoked war, who doesn’t believe in the possibility and effectiveness of an insurgent movement.

For more of my reviews, interviews and commentary, visit my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com.

STILL WALKING

Ryan Werner — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:47:59 +0000

Today The New York Times premiered the trailer for STILL WALKING. The trailer was edited by our friend Brendan McFadden, a producer of Aaron Katz’s films DANCE PARTY USA and QUIET CITY. The film will open August 31 at Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika in NYC and be available on demand. Other dates will follow. It’s the second film by Kore-Eda we’ve released following NOBODY KNOWS.

In addition, we’re thrilled to let you know that BAMcinématek will present a retrospective of Kore-Eda’s films with him in attendance for select screenings. This is not to be missed.

Here’s the official release:

BAMcinématek presents The Films of Hirokazu Kore-eda, August 21-September 1

First New York retrospective of acclaimed Japanese filmmaker features sneak preview of Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo) (2008)

Kore-eda at BAM Rose Cinemas for Q&As on Friday, August 21 and Saturday, August 22

“I’m interested in the emotions that arise from the collision between so-called real life and the artifice of film.” - Kore-eda

BAM Rose Cinemas (30 Lafayette Ave.) Tickets: $11 per screening for adults; $8 for seniors 65 and over, children under twelve, and $8 for students 25 and under with valid I.D. Monday-Thursday, except holidays; $7 BAM Cinema Club members Tickets available by phone at 718.777.FILM Call 718.636.4100 or visit BAM.org

Brooklyn, July 15, 2009 — From August 21-September 1 BAMcinématek, the repertory film program at BAM Rose Cinemas, presents The Films of Hirokazu Kore-eda, a retrospective of the renowned Japanese director. Kore-eda has built a body of fictional work by meshing the sensitive approach of his early documentaries to his narratives, imbuing them with a deep humanism. His lyrical films offer profound explorations of memory and loss with an observational style devoid of sentimentality.

Director and screenwriter Hirokazu Kore-eda was born in 1962 in Tokyo. He planned to become a novelist, but began working as an assistant director on documentary films for TV Man Union, the first independent TV production company in Japan, after graduating from Waseda University. He made his directorial debut in 1991 with the documentary Lessons from a Calf (Mou hitotsu no kyouiku Ina shogakkou haru gumi no kiroku), also made for TV, and made his first narrative feature Maborosi (Maboroshi no hikari), in 1995, which won the award for Best Director at Venice Film Festival. After Life (Wandâfuru raifu) (1998), his second feature film, was widely-released and brought the director to international attention. Additional films include Distance (2001); Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) (2004), winner of the award for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival; and Hana (Hana yori mo naho) (2007). Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo) (2008) will be released in the U.S. in August 2009 by IFC Films. Air Doll (Kûki ningyô) (2009), Kore-eda’s most recent film, premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

For press information, please contact Molly Gross at 718.636.4129 x3 or mgross@bam.org.

Movie City News: The Top 10 Reasons You Must See IN THE LOOP

IFC Films News — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:08:51 +0000

From Movie City News

“Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop is one of the smartest, funniest and most vulgar films since The Big Lebowski and is almost as quotable. It is the story of how one British bureaucrat’s slip of the tongue can be the catalyst for a campaign for war in the Middle East. There are scenes in secret Congressional meetings and UN hearings, but the tone is one similar to that of The Office, deadpan comedy at the expense of realistic human foibles. Between this and The Hurt Locker – a film I will champion all year – things are starting to look up for 2009.

Mark my words, In the Loop will be a massive cult film once it hits DVD and is watched over and over again. Being on the bandwagon early is but one of the reasons why you should see the best political comedy of the decade. Here are ten more (in no particular order of importance):

1. Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker

This is the guy everybody is going to be talking about, telling their friends about; I actually think Capaldi has a legitimate shot at being nominated for Best Supporting Actor. His character of Malcolm Tucker is exquisitely, beautifully vulgar, making symphonies out of words like “fuck” and “shit” in the same way that Alec Baldwin did in Glengarry Glen Ross, except with a wonderful Scottish brogue. Imagine that Baldwin scene, except you get to hang out with that character and follow him throughout the entire film and his demeanor never changes or wavers.

As the Secretary of Communication, Tucker is a character that is acutely aware of how things are perceived. He is always the smartest man in the room and someone who is looking out for his own best interests, probably at your expense. He even treats his allies like foes and he’s always ill-tempered about something, causing him to spew out these wonderfully dirty one-liners in a machine-gun style, hitting you with so many that you don’t even take the time to laugh because you’re afraid you might miss something glorious.

The writing is amazing, to be sure, but the way Capaldi brings it to life is truly a thing of beauty. I’d only seen him once before, on a couple of episodes of the brilliant British series Skins, but that didn’t prepare me at all for his tour-de-force in this film. Capaldi is fifty years old, but this is truly a star-making performance.

2. Funniest film of the year

The most amazing thing about the way the film is written and structured is that while the tone remains consistently cheeky, there are a lot of different types of comedy at work here, depending on which characters are in the scene and how they play off one another. Each character is funny in a very peculiar and particular way and everyone will have a different favorite and the joy is watching them interact. Capaldi’s character is funny because of how ornery he is while Tom Hollander is funny in a sadder, Michael Scott kind of way while Chris Addison is funny in a bumbling, goofy sort of way. Watching all of them bounce off each other, one being goofy, the other mopey, the other angry, some of the others are sniveling while others are funny because of their cowardice and it all just stews together. Much like in real life, the joy is in the differences between the people and the film is so adept at making those awkward exchanges feel piercingly real, which in turn makes them hilarious.

3. Quotable lines

Capaldi’s got all the best lines, including a gem involving Jane Austen and a horse’s penis, but there’s enough to go around. I would love to repeat them here, but I don’t want to ruin the experience for you. I will just say, though, that in the scene that Capaldi and James Gandolfini share together, there are so many wonderful insults thrown back and forth that I could not stop myself from smiling the whole time.

Speaking of Gandolfini…

4. James Gandolfini

Who the hell knew that Tony Soprano could be so damn funny? Here he’s playing an Army General who is serious about trying to stop this war at all costs and even more serious about his job. He’s a man who is put in a dicey predicament, the only man in the film who actually knows the real cost of war and he’s reluctant to sign based on false pretenses that might involve a lot of troops being killed. But he’s also sharp as hell and quick-witted and Gandolfini smiles just enough to bring the right amount of levity to the proceedings.

Basically Gandolfini’s character is supposed to be the “Colin Powell” of the story, a good man in an untenable situation. Except in this case, he’s got a wicked and dry sense of humor.

5. My Girl Anna Chlumsky

One of my first crushes was on the young lady from My Girl and I was so jealous of that little bastard Macauley Culkin when he kissed her that I was happy when he got stung by bees. Uh, anyway, it’s nice to see Anna Chlumsky back on the screen in a fairly big role, as the aide to a bigwig in the State Department. Even better, the girl’s got great comic chops, especially the deadpan way she deals with her sniveling rival Chad (played with caustic brilliance by Zach Woods). The back and forth between these two is priceless.

6. Wonderful photography

It’s not often that I get the chance to praise the cinematography in a comedy, but this film is really surprisingly well shot by DP Jamie Cairney. There is nothing over the top or showy, but there is a fair amount of handheld work which at times gives the film a naturalistic feel – not quite documentary but something not far off. More than anything, the way the film is shot makes you feel like you are there; whether that means the United Nations or an airport or a dingy office in the British countryside, the photography is evocative and immersive.

7. Steve Coogan

Coogan is one of the funniest guys there is, but until now he’s only really been used properly in Michael Winterbottom films (24 Hour Party People and Tristram Shandy). Here, Coogan runs a little bit free in a story that might not seem like it has a lot to do with the central plot of the film, but is tied in together nicely at the end. Basically, he’s a pissed off taxpayer that wants the government to fix the wall of his house because it’s going to fall down. Since this is a minor character, it could be played in any number of ways, but Coogan takes the oddest possible route without being overtly strange. There is just something about his demeanor in this film and the way he carries himself that is realistically creepy, which makes him all the funnier because we’ve all dealt with people just like him.

8. Fully realized characters

I can’t stress how amazed I am at how Iannucci and his team of writers managed to make every single character – down to the bit parts – seem like an actual, flesh and blood human being in only 100 minutes. Every character has a clear motive and agenda that is conveyed to us quickly and because each character is so clearly defined, it’s easy to remember all of them, right down to the smaller parts.

The key realization by the filmmakers is that politicians and their aides are so single-minded in their focus and they’re all really focused on the same thing: keeping their jobs and not looking like a fool. And the other brilliant stroke was by making the way each character avoids that fate the way we would define them. There are no heroes in this film, per se, just a lot of shifting alliances and shifting perspectives, moving deck furniture on a sinking ship. And each character is a different piece of deck furniture, all of them uniquely shaped.

9. Tom Hollander

You’d definitely recognize Hollander if you saw him. He’s often playing the small, buffoonish man in period pieces like Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Libertine as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. As I said earlier, Hollander is playing the “Michael Scott” role (of the American Office), the sad and bumbling “boss” who is consistently making the wrong decisions and saying the wrong things. Hollander’s character is a bit more aware of his faults than Michael Scott, but he’s just as powerless to stop himself.

Hollander’s character is responsible for much of the mess that ensues in the film and he becomes a symbol for why war is inevitable – even accidentally coining a rallying cry – despite the fact that he’s against the war. But no matter how many times he tries to speak out, the wrong message has already gotten out there and it’s already being spun. The message is that no matter how much you scream about what you believe in, that one quote, that one misspoken word, will be used against you for all eternity.

10. It’s an important film

“Twelve thousand troops. But that’s not enough. That’s the amount that are going to die. And at the end of a war you need some soldiers left, really, or else it looks like you’ve lost.”

James Gandolfini’s General Miller says that line and it sums up what is so brilliant about the film. That line is simultaneously truthful, sad and deeply funny when said by Gandolfini. Despite the fact that it is clearly trying to be a comedy, it says more about the political issues in our world – and the hopelessness of trusting politicians – than any “serious” film could. It’s similar to the way that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team have become more reliable as newsmen than actual news anchors; because of the way they poke fun at the system, it gets more to the heart of the matter than simply accepting the spin and printing the story.

There are a lot of long conversations you can have with people after seeing this movie; conversations about war, media, truth, justice, politics and government. That’s more than the average comedy will give you. This is not The Hangover, it’s not about a bunch of guys getting drunk and screwing with each other; it’s about more important things than that.

But it’s even funnier.”

- Noah Forrest
July 27, 2009

Noah Forrest is a 26-year-old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

IN THE LOOP Opens to Great Success

IFC Films News — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:21:27 +0000

From indieWire:

Box Office: ‘Loop’ In The Money; ‘Summer’ Still Hot
by Peter Knegt

Armando Iannucci’s well-reviewed political comedy ‘In The Loop’ scored in its opening weekend, according to estimates provided by Rentrak earlier this afternoon. The film - described by indieWIRE‘s Eric Kohn as ‘the aesthetics of ‘The Office’ meeting those of ‘The West Wing’’ - grossed $200,816 from 8 screens. That gave ‘Loop’ a $25,102 per-theater-average, among the year’s ten best and distributor IFC Films’ highest since ‘Che’ back in December.

‘We are thrilled with the numbers for ‘In The Loop,’’ IFC’s Mark Boxer, VP Sales and Distribution told indieWIRE. ‘We have been so excited since Sundance to give audiences a chance to see what we believed to be the funniest film of the summer. New York and Los Angeles played to sold out audiences and the word of mouth was through the roof. The film will roll out to the top 15 markets this weekend and the top 50 within three weeks.’

IN THE LOOP Opening Day

Ryan Werner — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:20:36 +0000

This morning a few of us in IFC Films’ marketing & pr team had breakast together at Pastis to celebrate the opening of IN THE LOOP which debuts today in NY, LA, SF, Chicago, Boston and DC. It’s hard to believe 7 months have passed since our acquisitions team closed a deal for the film. It seems like only yesterday that we first met Armando Iannucci, Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky, Zach Woods and James Gandolfini in Park City. We knew from the minute we met them that we were in good company. Since then we’ve also met David Rasche, Chris Addison and Peter Capaldi (only by phone). It’s a great group, and we only hope this movie gets them all the attention they deserve.

At breakfast we passed around The New York Times to check out the review by A.O. Scott. He wrote, “The audience, meanwhile, is likely to die laughing. While ‘In the Loop’ is a highly disciplined inquiry into a very serious subject, it is also, line by filthy line, scene by chaotic scene, by far the funniest big-screen satire in recent memory.” Needless to say we were in a good mood.

IN THE LOOP is playing at the following theaters this weekend:

NYC - Lincoln Plaza Cinemas & IFC Center

LA - The Landmark

Boston - Landmark’s Kendall Square Cinema

Chicago - Landmark’s Century Center

San Francisco - Landmark’s Embarcadero

Washington D.C. - Landmark’s E Street & Bethesda Row

VILLAGE

Ryan Werner — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:17:50 +0000

Today, the owners of Village Restaurant, located at 62 West 9th Street in downtown NYC, announced their lease was up and they would stop business as of Saturday. Located in close proximity to the IFC Center, Village became a favorite place for IFC staff members. We’d often toast different milestones there. I have distinct memories of having drinks with Guy Maddin the night MY WINNIPEG opened and also welcoming new staff members. Most memorable were the huge late night gatherings every year after the New York Film Festival party. I’m sure everyone has their own memories of those nights, but mine were all good. Goodbye Village, we’ll miss you!

The Scoop on IN THE LOOP

David Rasche — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:49:45 +0000

Frankly, the most fun I had was lunch. Ok, that’s not exactly right, but, see, the way they do it over there, across the pond, they have the catering truck for lunch, just like we do, where you put your food on a plate, but instead of eating in a tent or some adjoining room, you eat in a converted double-decker bus. I know. Weird. And very cute. Isn’t it? Ye Olde Double-deckere Busse. But that’s just how they do it. Always have. And you know how they are about tradition. They redo the interiour (UK spelling) of the bus with little tables, and then you stoop your way to an available seat, and you eat on the up and the down levels of a double-decker bus. Oh, those English. Oops, they don’t like that. Oh, those British. Oh dear, maybe they don’t like that either. Oh, those UKish.

The experience of doing this film was Terrifying. First of all we get a 200 page script, start with that. And since the British roles in the script were of government positions we don’t have, you know, like the Common Minister to the Exchequer of something….I don’t know. Anyway the titles were titles of governmental positions we don’t have, and I had never heard of,so I didn’t really understand any of the Brit’s jobs in the script, nor their relation to each other. I was so confused, that the night before I flew to Londoun (UK spelling) I called Anna Chlumsky in a panic, asking “Who is Toby again? What does he do?’ omygod.

Ok, so we get a 200 page script ( a normal one is 123 pages ). It is huge. Takes three days to read. Can’t get it. I am not really sure who anybody is in the script, but we were told the Brits were coming and we were to report for rehearsal. Ok. Go there, hotel conference room, and there is Gandolfini and, of course, everyone is pooping in their pants because we are all sitting there with Tony Soprano and we know we could get iced at any moment. So we read a scene, and then Armando — wait, I have to explain.

See the British (UKish) give no quarter when it comes to anglicizing a name, so instead of giving the slightest nod to Italy and pronounce his name Armando, the second “a” sounding like the “o” in bond, like we do, and really as one should, oh no, they couldn’t do that, so his name is pronounced Armando, with the second “a” sounding like the ‘a’ in the word ‘can.’ It’s the same thing Churchill did in WWII with Nays-eye in stead of Nazi, remember? They just will not budge.

Anyway, so we read the scene and then the director, Armando (rimes with commando), says, let’s improvise. Ok, I don’t know what is going on in the scene because I know nothing about UK government positions, but ok, we’ll improvise. I stand with the group. Ok.

Well, not only had the Brits been rehearsing for weeks, not only had they known each other for weeks if not years, not only were they countrymen, but some of them were on the TV show on which the movie was based, so they had been doing their characters for literally years. They then launched into a brilliant improvisation, based on the text, and my contribution was to stand with confidence. I find that in a really tight circumstance, that will fool them. Just stand with confidence. It seemed to have worked. I may have mumbled some inanity, but I was dying inside. Good, good, they said. The writers who were there were madly scribbling. Good good.

I went home, immediately called my manager, and told him I was certain they were going to fire me.

Well, turns out that every single American actor, that night, went home and called his or her manager and told them they also expected to be fired. Add to that (so I hear) that the Brits got together that same night and were so amazed by the skill of the American actors, that the were afraid they would be eclipsed in the final edit and could neve keep up. So everyone thought everyone else was better than they were, and/or were afraid of getting fired. An auspicious beginning.

That all changed when we got to the set. By then we had all discovered that we had, in fact, not been fired (those who actually had been fired had discovered that they had actually been fired, but there weren’t any of those) and we had had time to think and dream and prepare, so by the time we got to the set, everyone was ready. Really ready.

The fur flew. We laughed, we thought, we rehearsed, tried it this way, that way. We worked very long days, but who cared. We had a ball, finding the scenes, finding new things in the scenes. The schedule was very heavy—many scenes were shot in a day, but I think we all agree it was arguably the most fun we had ever had on a movie.

First of all, the dialogue was superb. So funny, so clever, so witty, often so inane. I had everything. Sight gags, verbal gymnastics, illogic, really bad lying — everything you would want in a script. Absolutely delightful And the rythyms were there in the text, so you weren’t madly dashing around trying to change the lines to make them better. They were already better. Terrific writing.

But also.the way they shot was, they had two cameras, and the operators agreed before we rolled on where each would be situated on the set so that they wouldn’t accidentally include the other camera in the frame. We rehearsed maybe once, twice, not too much, and then they just rolled. And you knew you couldn’t screw up, because if you went to a new spot on the set, it didn’t matter.

So the cameras rolled, and we went at it. This cast was so damn funny, that many, many is the time when it was all you could do to stifle a laugh, because the other person in the scene was being so hysterically funny, you could scarce hold it.

Then the cameras would cut, and Armando (rimes with Last Tango) would appear with a beatific smile, we would ask how it went, and he would chirp, good, good. A smiling sphinx, he was. And we would move on. He knew what he wanted.

Oh, I forgot to say. When the scene as written was completed to Armando’s (rimes with Ann Rambo) satisfaction, he would say, “Now let’s loosen it up a bit.” That was the signal to do or say any frigging thing you wanted to. You could do the scene but in different words, you could do the words in a different order, you could do all different words, you could do a scene from Richard II if you wanted to. It was heaven, and those were the times when it was hardest not to laugh, when another actor surprised you with something hysterical. I must add, almost none of the attempts to do Richard II got into the actual film. Almost none.

So that’s the way it was shot. Then Armando (rimes with Fandango) took the 4 ½ hours of footage, and began to chip away until he got the film he wanted.

We are all very proud. We hope you enjoy it.

WEEKEND READING

Ryan Werner — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:57:30 +0000

With just 5 days until the release of Armando Iannucci’s IN THE LOOP, we compiled some of the past weekend’s press highlights…

The New York Times Arts & Leisure’s Sarah Lyall wrote, “It would be hard to find a more manipulatively back-stabbing or creatively foulmouthed bunch of hypocrites, bullies and cynics than exists in the warped landscape of ‘In the Loop.’…he jokes come at a rate of about three a sentence. But underneath the farce lies a deadly serious point about how Britain played into the United States’ hands in 2003, bolstering its arguments about the imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein and thus helping guarantee that the war could go ahead.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/movies/19lyal.html

Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times talks about the screenplay. He writes, “‘The trick is to make it sound like the words aren’t written, that they’re just tumbling out,’ Iannucci said. ‘And I generally don’t give the actors too much time to think about it. They’re more or less learning their lines that day.’”

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-indiefocus19-2009jul19,0,6160548.story

The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips talks to Iannucci about influences. ”Iannucci took inspiration from such cable TV icons as ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ and, more recently, Ari Gold on ‘Entourage.’ Further back? The polestars of motormouth lunacy: The 1940 classic ‘His Girl Friday,’ director Howard Hawks’ supersonic remake of ‘The Front Page’ starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, left, along with the complete works of Preston Sturges.”

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/talking_pictures/2009/07/am-i-the-only-one-who-thinks-people-dont-talk-fast-enough-in-comedies–we-only-have-one-life-to-live-speed-er-up-the.html

Profiles on the cast:

James Gandolfini talks to the Wall Street Journals’ Candace Jackson

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204271104574291782581995724.html

Former ‘My Girl’ star Anna Chlumsky now all grown up talks to the NY Daily News’ Joe Dziemianowicz

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/07/18/2009-07-18_celebrity_pop_quiz_anna_chlumsky.html

Meanwhile at The Boston Globe, Armando Iannucci tells Sam Allis that “”This is a verbal equivalent of the Bourne films. The action is nonstop.”

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2009/07/19/armando_iannuccis_in_the_loop_skewers_british_government_at_machine_gun_speed/

Hello!!

Ryan Werner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:00:01 +0000

Thanks for checking out our new website! For the last several months, we’ve been working on it to bring you more information about our films than ever before. Most of you know that our goal is to get our films to you in as many ways as possible - in theaters, on demand, at blockbuster, amazon, apple and with other partners. With this site, we hope you’ll get all the information you need whether on our brand new release IN THE LOOP or our upcoming release of Lars Von Trier’s ANTICHRIST. You’ll also be able to find out how to see some of our older films like NOBODY KNOWS, Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, THE THIN BLUE LINE or PARANOID PARK. You might be surprised there is more than one way!

This month, our full attention is on IN THE LOOP which has an amazing British and American cast including James Gandolfini and Steve Coogan. It’s a film that we fell in love with at the Sundance Film Festival and has been getting rave reviews from critics and audiences ever since. Over the next few weeks, you’ll be hearing all about it. We’ll be posting reviews, news and also asking various members of the cast and director Armando Iannucci himself to contribute entries. Check out the trailer on our site now if you haven’t seen it! We hope that this blog will not only deliver more information from us, but we’ll be regularly inviting friends of IFC Films to contribute. We’re also happy to answer your questions.

Be sure to check back regularly for announcements on new films that we acquire and special sneak preview screenings that you might want to see. We’ll also be sending updates from the Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals to name a few.

Those Who Can Laugh At Insanity Aren’t Condemned To Repeat It

Mimi Kennedy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:00:35 +0000

Working on In The Loop was one of the best things that’s ever happened in my acting career. Armando is a frigging genius in my opinion. The entire cast of (ok, we Americans said “Brits” - is that rude?) was brilliant beyond belief. And Gandolfini - what can I say? The way I was taught to act, he is the epitome. Real. The first day we met, first rehearsal in NY (hey, we heard sirens and wondered what was happening- turned out to be Dick Cheney arriving to give a speech in the hotel ballroom downstairs. Interesting) I was feeling all take-Karen-seriously and said I did not think necessarily that the General and Ihad been lovers, that this was the sort of thing which wasn’t necessary for a good man-woman friendship (my real-life experience.) By the end of the shoot, there I was improvising, “I’ll talk about your balls all you want because I remember when they worked.” Maybe this was because by then I felt so strongly that Karen, being from my generation, still remembered - and perhaps as a younger woman,practiced - Make Love, Not War. Maybe it was because on the day we shot the Georgetown cocktail party, I had to get James’ attention somehow, discreetly, for our tete-a-tete, and he said “goose me or something” and I gave him a polite tap and he said, “you have to really get my attention” and I dove in there deep, which is the take you see in the film.

Like I said. He is the epitome of how I was taught to act (thank you Curt Dempster): real.

I loved the British cast. Peter Capaldi is the nicest, sweetest man.Tom Hollander is a chick magnet and I see why. Humor and a brain. Idon’t think I ever succeeded in keeping a straight facethrough the line where he tells me and the General that he’s a “fakehawk.” Chris Addison is gorgeous and smart and funny and I loved his expressionfor good comedy acting “All killer no filler.” At least I think he was talking about comedy acting. Gina, Olivia, Alex, Jamies Smith, Paul Harris, Steve Coogan, Joanna Scanlon- brilliant. And Enzo, (Bob Adriano) was really British doing brilliant American - I think he’s the only one of us who crossed over.

Anna Chlumsky was sooo bright and pretty and emotionally honest - shebrought back vividly to me how it felt when I was a young temporarysecretary (before I got acting jobs) in the early days of feminism,when women bosses felt they had to be ballsy but also assumed you would pickup their dry cleaning and keep them on their diets. Zak Woods ishilariously deadpan. He and I went out to dinner almost the firstnight we were in London. It was late - we were way off time, and jet-lagged, but hungry — and I wanted to see the Thames, so we ended up bythe window of some expensive high-rise restaurant and I remember being alarmedas he tilted across the table, sort of nodding out while trying to be polite. David Rasche - do you believe the dead-on characterization HE achieved?!!That preening macho….nailed it. And the kid in the White House - I didn’t meetthe actor. But I’ve seen the alarmingly-youthful power brokers he’s based on, in Washington.

Is gud to laff at these events as fiction. The real ones they recall seem — almost — safely past. We are still at war, however. Those that led us into it are mostly gone (disappeared over the cliff?)and our laughter, in my opinion, is the pent-up relief of traumatized lemmings who are alive and snapping out of it.

We could spread the relief by ending war altogether!

Or, at least once we’ve laughed our asses off at this insanity writ large, we can - nexttime it ratchets up a request based on stuff ordinary citizens are too innocent andsheltered to understand — deny it a license to kill.

Yeah. Make love not war -still a good alternative. As long as you, you know, use protection.

The CHUD IFC Summer Preview: “IFC INVADES YOUR HOME THIS SUMMER”

IFC Films News — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:00:55 +0000

Alex Riviello over at CHUD lays out the amazing slate we have for you both in theaters and On Demand this summer!:

http://chud.com/articles/articles/20031/1/IFC-INVADES-YOUR-HOME-THIS-SUMMER/Page1.html

TIME OUT LONDON Debates ANTICHRIST: Joke or Masterpiece?

IFC Films News — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:00:52 +0000

ANTICHRIST won’t open in the US until October 23rd. However, the discussion has already begun in Europe. Time Out London recently set up a mini-panel of expert to discuss:

http://www.timeout.com/film/features/show-feature/8153/lars-von-triers-antichrist-joke-or-masterpiece.html

Read the Film Comment Review of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s STILL WALKING

IFC Films News — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:00:12 +0000

Film Comment’s Tony Rayns explores Kore-eda’s rich career seeking to grasp “how he came to make a film as fully achieved as Still Walking.”

STILL WALKING opens on August 28th.

TIME OUT NEW YORK Praises IN THE LOOP

IFC Films News — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Time Out New York calls In The Loop “The funniest and most quotable movie you’re likely to see all year.”