From THE NEW YORKER: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/quick-pick/

And Dennis Lim of THE LOS ANGELES TIMES:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/29/entertainment/la-ca-second-look-20100829

Quite a lot happens in “Change of Plans,” Danièle Thompson’s crowded comedy about a Paris dinner party and its aftermath. There are (in no particular order) near- and actual divorces, last-minute reconciliations, a terrible accident and a miraculous cure, a secret marriage and a surprise pregnancy. Mostly, there is marital infidelity, which seems to come as naturally to the middle-aged, middle-class French couples who populate the film as shopping for goat cheese or going for a medical checkup.

“Loyalty is for France,” one of them remarks. “Not for marriage.” “Change of Plans” goes further, suggesting that marital disloyalty may itself be a form of patriotism, or at least that making a humorous spectacle of colliding adulteries is a proud part of the French literary and cinematic patrimony. In any case, the character’s insouciance — expressed after she has cheated on her husband but before he has cheated on her — captures the spirit of this diverting, hectic entertainment, which refuses to take anything too seriously, staking out a middle ground between melodrama and farce.

Ms. Thompson, whose previous films as a director include “La Bûche” and “Avenue Montaigne” (both written, like “Change of Plans,” in collaboration with her son, Christopher), is playful but rarely frivolous when it comes to the emotions of her characters. And though she sometimes gives them reason for tears, deep anguish is no more a part of her palette than madcap hilarity.

“Change of Plans,” in other words, is a civilized affair in every sense, and its good-natured decorum is both a limitation and a source of charm. Taking place on consecutive summer solstices during a multicultural music festival, the movie gathers 11 somewhat less multicultural but nonetheless generally appealing people and throws them into a roiling bouillabaisse of domestic and romantic complication. They meet at the apartment of M L (Karin Viard) and Piotr (Dany Boon), who want to christen their newly renovated kitchen with appropriate festivities.

M L has been sleeping with the kitchen’s designer, Jean-Louis (Laurent Stocker), and Piotr has been struggling with depression and unemployment, but these troubles hardly distinguish them from their guests. Mélanie (Marina Foïs), a gynecologist, has been carrying on an affair with a jockey, and she plans to leave her husband, Alain, a saintly cancer specialist played by Patrick Bruel.

M L’s sister, Juliette (Marina Hands), arrives with Erwann (Patrick Chesnais), an older gentleman who may be her lover, not knowing that her estranged father, Henri (Pierre Arditi), has also showed up at M L’s place.

Filling out the table are Lucas (Mr. Thompson, the screenwriter), an arrogant lawyer who wants to bring M L into his practice; his wife, Sarah (Emmanuelle Seigner); and also Manuela (Blanca Li), M L’s flamenco instructor, a last-minute addition and a late arrival. Over coquilles St.-Jacques and Piotr’s controversial bigos (a recipe for the dish, a stew, appears during the end credits, attributed to Ms. Seigner’s husband, Roman Polanski), various secrets are held onto, developed and revealed. Ms. Thompson and her editor, Sylvie Landra, adroitly capture the eddies and squalls of casual conversation, as the polished cast works in harmonious dissonance to strike contrapuntal notes of idiosyncrasy.

These people are not uniformly likable, but each is interesting enough to spend an informal evening with, and they have a way of finding one another’s soft spots and sharp edges. The dinner party itself is fairly undramatic — the filmmakers are too smart to fall into the playwright-school convention of airing everybody’s dirty laundry at the table — but its moments of tension and indirection ripple outward.

Just when the evening threatens to grow tedious, the action flashes forward a year, during which quite a bit has changed, and then traces those changes to their subtle, at the time barely perceptible, origins at M L and Piotr’s party.

This chronological conceit is clever, and it provides “Change of Plans” with an engaging, offbeat narrative rhythm. But there is also something a bit facile about the plot, which doles out surprises a little too eagerly and addresses some of its sadder implications with a brio that feels glib and insensitive.

The three married couples at the center have adolescent children, none of whom are heard or glimpsed (though the bedroom of M L and Piotr’s daughter is the scene of a startlingly funny dance number featuring Mr. Arditi and Mr. Chesnais). The presence of the younger generation would surely change the tone of the film, and their absence allows Ms. Thompson to be cavalier about the causes of spousal betrayal and coy about some of its consequences.

By the end, you can’t help feeling that Ms. Thompson’s guest list — which M L self-consciously calls the “cast” of her soiree — is unwieldy, and that the evening has dragged on too long. So do many parties, but this one is not quite the lark — or the memorable disaster — it could and probably should have been.

The charming nebbish at the eye of the tornado that passes for a plot is a young German-Greek restaurant owner named Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos). Restaurant may be an unduly upscale name for Zinos’s establishment; it’s more of a diner housed in a scruffy warehouse in a worn-out Hamburg neighborhood. Still, the clientele loves the down-home cooking and the funky music. The notion of home is central here, a place where members of an ad hoc family can come together. But so is the notion of food. The plot plunges into incipient chaos when Zinos joins his biological family at an elegant restaurant, watches the chef go ballistic after a customer demands hot gazpacho, then convinces the prima donna to cook for his hash house.

Hot gazpacho as a flash point recalls an early crisis in a wonderful American movie called “Big Night,” when a temperamental Italian chef refuses a couple’s demand for spaghetti with their risotto. And “Soul Kitchen” recalls another short and brilliantly funny German movie because of its co-star and its pell-mell style. Zinos’s brother Illias, a jailbird out on parole, is played by Moritz Bleibtreu. He was Manni, the dim-bulb drug courier in “Run Lola Run,” Tom Tykwer’s one-of-a-kind whirligig in which Franka Potente’s Lola runs and runs to save poor Manni’s life.

In its gleefully anarchic way “Soul Kitchen” is also one of a kind, although pinning down the kind can be tricky. It runs and runs through the above-mentioned farce (preposterous complications ensue when Illias’s gambling habit puts the restaurant at risk) into patches of inspired slapstick (Zinos’s life takes a wrenching turn for the worse when his lower back betrays him) and outbursts of opera buffa that involve, among others, a nymphomaniacal tax collector, an aged Greek sailor named Aristotle and a Turkish chiropractor called Kemal the Bone Cruncher.

Remarkably, though, Mr. Akin’s little movie, which goes into national distribution starting next week, has a heart big enough to make us care about Zinos’s hapless search for love. It’s a modern flavor of love, with no layers of conventional development, and all traces of sentiment squeezed out. Yet there’s poignance in the hero’s fraught relationship with Nadine (Pheline Roggan), an ethereal beauty who wants him to live with her in Shanghai; there’s even poignance in the sound of his Skype program closing down after an international call. And romance fills the smoky air from the moment a hard-drinking, super-literate barmaid named Lucia Faust appears on screen; she’s played, alluringly, by Anna Bederke. So you could call “Soul Kitchen” a romance with sensational music, or a hymn to friendship with romantic resonances. Whatever you want to call it, the thing is bursting with life.

Critic Rating: THREE STARS

A woman lost and found amid the chaos
By Ann Hornaday
Friday, August 20, 2010

Patricia Clarkson has a voice like toasted pecans drenched in bourbon. Sultry and refined, classically beautiful but not Hollywood perfect, she is often the best thing about the movies she’s in — and, all too often, she’s in them too briefly. In “Cairo Time,” a gentle, achingly romantic bagatelle from Canadian writer-director Ruba Nadda, Clarkson finally claims the romantic leading role she has long deserved. Delivering a tender, unshowy performance as eloquent in its silences as in her seductive, peppery whisper, Clarkson proves what her fans have known forever: She’s ready for the spotlight. With luck she’ll stay there for a while.

As “Cairo Time” opens, Clarkson’s character, Juliette, a Canadian magazine editor, has just landed in Egypt, where she plans to join her husband, Mark, a U.N official. At the airport, Juliette is met by Mark’s old friend Tareq (Alexander Siddig), who informs Juliette that her husband has been delayed in Gaza. At large and more than a bit at sea, at first Juliette tries to navigate Cairo’s chaotic and noisy streets on her own, but quickly learns that she’ll need a guide. She calls on Tareq, and for the next few days the two explore the city and their own interior landscapes, which undergo tiny seismic shifts the longer they spend together.

As a portrait of a woman confronting foreign climes and mid-life changes, “Cairo Time” resembles a bigger, glossier movie in theaters right now. But as a heroine Juliette presents a far more enigmatic — and, oddly, more recognizable — protagonist than Julia Roberts’s post-divorce pilgrim in “Eat Pray Love.” As “Cairo Time” unfolds, with Juliette and Tareq taking leisurely ambles through the city or smoking hookah pipes in its coffeehouses, she begins to exude an unmistakable sense of longing, a feeling that Tareq — a man of courtly restraint and old-fashioned decorum — picks up on and responds to in kind.

Like Tokyo in “Lost in Translation,” Cairo plays a role unto itself in “Cairo Time,” which like that earlier film seems steeped in an ethereal, slightly dazed sense of dislocation. As Juliette embarks on her geographic and psychological journey, it’s never clear where she’s going or means to end up, which makes the film’s most pivotal moment — elegantly staged by Nadda in a hotel lobby and elevator — all the more electrifying. With slow-burning emotion and finely calibrated performances from its two deeply attractive leads, “Cairo Time” pays lyrical tribute to the beauty and rue of brief encounters everywhere.

One Restaurant’s History, Spiked Desserts and All
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: August 19, 2010

Spaghetti, spinach and French fries, all smothered in cream sauce: the menu at Soul Kitchen, a decrepit restaurant in a converted warehouse in an industrial section of Hamburg, Germany, may not be to everyone’s palate. But the place attracts a scraggly following of regulars who exit in a huff after its manager, Zinos Kazantsakis (Adam Bousdoukos), hires Shayn (Birol Ünel), a snooty culinary prima donna, as its new chef.

When Shayn scraps the menu to serve dishes with names like Acupuncture Master’s Soup, the place empties. Recently fired from his job at a more upscale restaurant after refusing to honor a customer’s order for hot gazpacho, Shayn is not above spiking desserts with an aphrodisiac made from Honduran tree bark.

The scene in Fatih Akin’s sweet slapstick farce, “Soul Kitchen” (named after the restaurant), in which the patrons go orgiastically berserk while under the bark’s influence, isn’t laugh-out-loud-funny so much as warmly amusing. We’ve seen it before, just as we’ve also seen the mishap at a funeral when, to the mourners’ shock and chagrin, a coffin is dropped, rather than lowered into the ground, and the corpse’s legs are exposed.

What gives these hoary gags some screwball vitality is the skill with which Mr. Akin piles them on willy-nilly in a swiftly edited comedy that never loses its exuberance. This Turkish-German director, who wrote the screenplay with Mr. Bousdoukos, likes all his characters, no matter how eccentric or disreputable. Besides Zinos, who exudes an unquenchable lust for life, they include his crooked brother Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), a habitual burglar and gambler on “partial parole” from jail, whom Zinos, against his better judgment, hires at the restaurant; and Zinos’s hard-drinking, chain-smoking waitress, Lucia (Anna Bederke), a squatter in the warehouse, who falls in love with Illias.

Other major characters include Zinos’s friend from grade school, Thomas Neumann (Wotan Wilke Möhring), a crafty real-estate wheeler-dealer who wants to buy Soul Kitchen; and Zinos’s rich, sexy girlfriend, Nadine (Pheline Roggan), who leaves Hamburg for a job in Shanghai. While separated, the two carry on steamy communications via Skype.

Early in the movie, Zinos injures his back as he tries to move a dishwasher. For the rest of the film he hobbles about in varying degrees of comic agony. He eventually ends up in the office of a Turkish “physio-healer” known as Kemal the Bone Cruncher, whose treatment for a herniated disc is a crude variation of a medieval torture rack.

“Soul Kitchen” is really a comic history of the restaurant, which before the film ends changes hands more than once, undergoes multiple renovations and at different moments is a punk-rock club and a soul-music dance club. It is also the story of an embattled fraternal relationship (both Kazantsakis brothers resemble Ringo Starr) whose bond survives Illias’s betrayals.

Its insistent zaniness makes “Soul Kitchen” very different in spirit from Mr. Akin’s two previous films, “Head-On” and “The Edge of Heaven,” which established him as a major European filmmaker. Seriously silly, it evokes the same high-spirited, pan-European multiculturalism in which people of all ages and backgrounds blithely traverse national borders as they aggressively pursue their destinies.

Europe in Mr. Akin’s films, whose stories often hinge on unlikely coincidences and plot contrivances, is a teeming potpourri of oddballs and hustlers. At the moment Zinos finally bestirs himself to fly to Shanghai to be with Nadine, he unexpectedly runs into her at the airport as she is returning from China.

Mr. Akin’s vision of interconnectedness in the global village, while similar to that of a movie like “Babel,” is more casual and lighthearted. You don’t feel pressured to ponder the deeper meaning of the geopolitical puzzle; it’s just a fact of modern life.

SOUL KITCHEN Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Fatih Akin; written by Mr. Akin and Adam Bousdoukos; director of photography, Rainer Klausmann; edited by Andrew Bird; production designer, Tamo Kunz; costumes by Katrin Aschendorf; produced by Ann-Kristin Homann, Mr. Akin and Klaus Maeck; released by IFC Films. In German and Greek, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Adam Bousdoukos (Zinos Kazantsakis), Moritz Bleibtreu (Illias Kazantsakis), Birol Ünel (Shayn Weiss), Anna Bederke (Lucia Faust), Pheline Roggan (Nadine Krüger), Lucas Gregorowicz (Lutz) and Wotan Wilke Möhring (Thomas Neumann).

Make it funky: Fatih Akin
The German-Turkish director wants you to step into his Soul Kitchen.
By David Fear

“Does Prince count?” Fatih Akin asks, his face scrunched ever so slightly. The 36-year-old filmmaker is sitting in the lounge of a Soho hotel, lost in thought; his fingers are absentmindedly drumming on his espresso cup. (The clacking suspiciously resembles the bassline for the Commodores’ “Brick House.”) Finally, he replies to a question regarding the first American soul music he ever heard; the judges will accept Prince as an answer. “When I was growing up, you couldn’t escape Purple Rain! For a lot of kids, Prince was our first taste of R&B music.” Suddenly, Akin’s face lights up. “Oh, wait, do you remember that old Levi’s commercial with the guy in the bathtub? That introduced me to Sam Cooke!” He energetically croons the opening line of “Wonderful World”: “Don’t know much about hisssss-tor-yyy.…”

That tune may not be on the soundtrack to Soul Kitchen, Akin’s new film about a ramshackle Hamburg, Germany, restaurant run by a Greek immigrant (played by cowriter Adam Bousdoukos) and a ragtag group of fellow misfits. But given the film’s blasts of vintage funk (The Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing”), sexed-up ’70s jams (Curtis Mayfield’s “Get Down”) and body-moving deep cuts (Kool & the Gang’s “Rated X,” Zapp and Roger’s “I Wanna Be Your Man”), it’s clear that Akin’s early exposure to Cooke & Co. has cultivated a connoisseur’s taste in our nation’s smoothest, grooviest musical exports. For the director of the fatalistic romance Head-On (2004), the use of these songs extended past his admiration of aching falsettos and amming’ on the one; it also boiled down to location, location, location.

“Hamburg is a soul-music city,” Akin says of his birthplace. “It’s a port town that was full of American and British servicemen, who used to bring these records in; during the ’90s, our club scene had places that played Stax/Volt records. Berlin has punk and electronica, but we have soul. The music is part of Hamburg’s identity; Adam and I are both first-generation immigrants who really relate to African-American culture, so it’s part of our identity, too. Plus, that’s what Adam would play in his restaurant.”

Indeed, the movie’s eatery—a cavernous cafeteria that’s transformed into an unlikely boho hot spot, thanks to the movie’s scrappy band of outsiders—is based on a real bistro that Bousdoukos ran for ten years. “I was working as a waiter in a Greek taverna while I was acting,” Bousdoukos says, calling in from Germany. “I took my earnings from movie jobs and ended up buying the place. So one day, I’m sitting in my restaurant, the same tape of old Greek folk songs is on, and I think, I like James Brown and Otis Redding. Why am I not playing that music? I hauled my turntable in and started spinning soul records; suddenly, all these young, hipper customers began showing up. It became a hangout place.”

Akin and Bousdoukos had been close friends since the mid-’80s, and the two had initially thought about turning Bousdoukos’s story into a movie right after Head-On was finished. The filmmaker, however, wasn’t ready to do a comedy at that point; instead, he went on to make a doc on Turkish musicians (2005’s Crossing the Bridge) and another heavy culture-clash tragedy (2007’s The Edge of Heaven). After his longtime producer and mentor, Andreas Thiel, passed away unexpectedly during Heaven’s last week of shooting, Akin felt the need to take on a project involving laughs. “To get out of my grief, I had to make something lighter,” he says. “But even after we’d started making it, I didn’t trust the script, the humor.… I didn’t trust myself to do it right. I mean, unless you have Billy Wilder’s sense of timing, you shouldn’t sign up for a comedy! But Andreas had always pushed for me to do it, so I figured I owed it to him to try.”

What he up ended up directing was a breezy underdog farce marinated in the sort of jagged, punkish verve that colors his earlier work—doing something funny may seem uncharacteristic to him, but Soul Kitchen is definitely a Fatih Akin film. And for an auteur so associated with moody diaspora-culture melodramas, he was happy to shed the Mr. Somber mantle. “People focused too much on the Turkish-meets-German aspect of my films at the expense of everything else,” Akin says. “It’s like showing people a picture you’ve painted, but everybody just fixates on the frame. Soul Kitchen liberated me from that. Now people just talk about the movie.” He smiles and starts tapping again on his cup. Damned if the beat doesn’t almost sound like the one in “When Doves Cry.”

Read more: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/88281/make-it-funky-fatih-akin#ixzz0×4VqiX7D

Olivier Assayas’ CARLOS, an epic biopic about notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal, starring Edgar Ramirez, Abbas Kiarostami’s French-language CERTIFIED COPY, starring Juliette Binoche, and the astonishing Mexican horror film WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, directed by Jorge Michel Grau!

Tickets go on sale to the general public on Sunday, September 12.

Visit http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/index.html for more info.

LOS ANGELES - “Cairo Time” stars Patricia Clarkson in a lovely and languid flirtation with a foreign land, an exotic man and the possibility that, long after the future seems set in stone, it might not be quite so predictable after all.

Canadian writer-director Ruba Nadda’s new film feeds off the cool beauty of Clarkson and the dry heat of Alexander Siddig as strangers thrown together by circumstance. Also in play are the romantic notions that so often accompany travel, primarily those daydreams of chucking the life you have for the life you imagine you might have if only, if only, if only … .

Clarkson is Juliette, a sophisticate headed to Cairo for a vacation with her husband, Mark (Tom McCamus), a top U.N. official who’s been unexpectedly dispatched to a Gaza hotspot. Tareq (Siddig) is the longtime Egyptian friend he’s enlisted to meet her flight and keep watch over her until he can break away.

The story opens with their awkward airport meeting, the polite but strained conversation of the newly and not so happily acquainted. But Nadda is in no rush, slowly warming her comely pair under the desert sun and the affection they both have for Mark. Though we’re left to mostly imagine the absent husband, there is an easiness and intimacy to Juliette’s phone conversations with him that suggest a happy marriage. And when Tareq offers to take her to see the pyramids, she demurs - those she and Mark have vowed to see together.

With Mark delayed again and again, Juliette is at loose ends. Her rising frustration is soon overtaken by the enticement of Cairo, and she sets out to explore it all - the city, her unexpected solitude and the handsome Tareq with his mysteries and substantial charms. Nadda is content to let us luxuriate in the unfolding complications and connections between them, giving veteran director of photography Luc Montpellier (who shot Nadda’s last cut at love, 2005’s “Sabah”) time to capture the beauty of the place and this mismatched set.

The attraction of opposites and the inherent difficulties that follow are favorite topics for the filmmaker, who has something of an obsession with affairs of the heart. Which might be a drawback except that she keeps improving with time. Juliette and Tareq discover each other in many of the ways typical of these types of fairy-tale romances - strolling through local bazaars, chess matches in the coffee house, long candlelit dinners - moments that carry the chance for hands to brush, looks to linger or an out-of-control cart to force them into each other’s arms. But more often than not the embrace doesn’t come; instead temptation is left to hang heavy in the air.

Hints of their other lives surface during Juliette’s swing through Cairo’s diplomatic scene, and Tareq’s chance encounter with an old love, which serves to give a sense of the individuals they were as well as the couple they might become. Friction, when it surfaces, becomes critical, since dangerous moments have a way of crystallizing feelings, and neither wants to contemplate the implications of the betrayal of a husband, of a friend.

The dialogue is spare, a good thing since it is here that nuance suddenly and regrettably occasionally slips away with moments that strain credibility and a few lines likely to make you cringe.

Thankfully, Nadda lets much of the insight and understanding come from watching Clarkson and Siddig watch each other. Ultimately the film rises on the heat of Juliette and Tareq, made irresistible by Clarkson and Siddig, and making “Cairo Time” well worth the trip.

In Her Own Words: Ruba Nadda Discusses an Exclusive Clip from “Cairo Time”

Ruba Nadda’s TIFF ‘09 film “Cairo Time” starts its U.S. theatrical run this Friday, August 6. Nadda provided indieWIRE with an exclusive clip and commentary from her feature that played at this year’s Tribeca, and stars Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig.

This love story focuses on Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), a long-married magazine editor who travels to Cairo to meet her husband, a UN official working in Gaza, for a much-needed vacation together. When work delays his arrival, he asks his friend and former security officer Tareq to show Juliette around the unfamiliar metropolis. At first overwhelmed, Juliette finds herself gradually falling under the city’s spell–and, unexpectedly, under Tareq’s as well. [Synopsis courtesy of IFC Films]

SUMMARY

Five years ago, I got this idea. It was very simple. A woman – her name was Juliette and she was about 50 – arrives in Cairo for a vacation with her husband, whom she hasn’t seen in two months. She finds herself stood up at the airport and is instead met by an old friend of her husband - a handsome, Arab man named Tareq. Unable to navigate Cairo on her own, she is forced back to this man, and slowly, an unexpected love affair starts to emerge between them as they discover Cairo together.

Juliette appeared to me as feeling out of sorts in her life, not exactly unhappy in her marriage but sort of settled into the state of her life. She had believed for so long that one day, she’d have a certain kind of ‘life’ with her husband. But it was always put off for one reason or another. The trip to Cairo and the Pyramids is meant to be a kind of start of this ‘life’ but once again, he stands her up.

Cairo is an amazing city but the heat is unbearable (we were there from April to mid-July), it is densely populated, there are no sidewalks, no streetlights, people don’t drive with their lights on at night, you have to point and demand drivers to stop the cars and let you cross the street. We never had control over our locations, we had a censorship minder from the government watching over us. I has to make sure there were no scripts, shot lists on my set to make it more difficult for her to follow the narrative. Often I would have to send my sister, Fadia, to go take our ‘minder’ shopping, or for a coffee or to a different location where we were not shooting, to lose her for an afternoon if I had a difficult scene. This woman had to sign the reels before they were allowed to be shipped back home. I was going to be damned if I were to let her change my film. And as it turns out, I didn’t alter one single word. There were three times where my camera crew and I were almost arrested – yet everyone, from my amazing Canadian and Arab crew to both Patricia and Alexander handled everything with such grace and patience. We survived Cairo and we had a blast. “Cairo Time” is a very simple story. It’s about unexpected love between two very ordinary people. I would have gone to the ends of the earth to get have this movie made. I still can’t believe it happened.

I had a very specific vision for the film. Together with my DP, Luc Montpellier, we designed every single frame of this movie. We wanted something classic – with an almost liquid pace. We insisted on shooting on widescreen 35mm film. We were very specific about lenses and framing – we knew Cairo was mad and chaotic but we wanted the camera to be steady and calm to reflect the way the city washes over you. Something happens to you as a Westerner when you enter this place and we wanted that reflected on the screen. So many people have asked me about how stunning Cairo is, and whether I did any tricks. We didn’t. We pointed the camera and shot. Nothing was CGI’d. The only green screen in the movie is the sequence shot in the train. We had only 25 days to shoot this movie. We did our second unit shooting on our two days off every single week out on the streets of Cairo without permits. That was when we came very close to being arrested.

THE SCENE

Even though I was pretty clear and focused about the film looking classic and polished, I was also committed to showing Cairo in all of its glory. And even though it’s a gorgeous city, it has a lot of problems. One of them being rampant child poverty and the blatant neglect of this issue by the government. On previous trips, I was stunned when I discovered ‘carpet academies.’ There, I saw girls as little as four-years-old weaving, working 16 hours a day, making less than one dollar a day. Clearly, these children are being taken advantage of and the worst of it was that these were tourist destinations. Tourists would go and take a look at how these Arab/Persian rugs are made and buy a rug for thousands of dollars while each rug is made for less than 20 American dollars. Because I speak Arabic, I was able to talk to these young kids and hear their very sad stories and how they needed these jobs to support their families, while the owners of these factories tried to insist this was a school. So even though on the surface, “Cairo Time” is clearly a love story, I needed to set it in Cairo as it really is. Though Juliette, as a Western tourist, only gets a superficial look at Cairo’s more troubling aspects, they are impossible to miss if you look. So basically this scene is about Juliette delivering a letter from a girl she met on a bus to this girl’s lover who works at one of these carpet academies.

SHOOTING THE SCENE

Shooting this scene was an absolute nightmare. It was by far was the worst day of the shoot.

My crew entered the carpet factory and we started setting up the shot - a dolly shot that reveals the children working. Five minutes into the set up, the owner realizes he is going to look bad, so he pulls all the kids who are working there (they ranged from 4 to about 12 years old) and shuts us down. As anyone can tell you, on an independent film, you can’t afford to lose half an hour let alone a whole day of filming. I didn’t know what to do at first. We couldn’t simply just find another location and I didn’t want to. I wanted authenticity – those girls you see weaving in the scene – actually work there. We paid them for the day, but even that we had to do so on the sly. My DP and Charles Pugliese (my executive producer) quickly went into action. They said, ignore the owner, lets continue setting up the shot. So we did that. An hour went by – the owner grabbed all the young kids and brings in a new batch – who are all about 12 to 15 – thinking that will look better on screen. So we shoot the scene with the older kids. As the camera is rolling, the Egyptian censorship woman interrupts, chastising a child for her shabby clothing. I cut and tell her she makes a great actress. She takes the child out of my shot and we go back to get a second take. Again, she interrupts it because she’s angry with this young man who is in the background of the shot folding carpets on the ground. She thought it looked low class to do this on the floor. So while we’re shooting, she is yelling at him and bringing him a table so he can fold on that. The owner of the factory then starts yelling at us, telling us to stop. He had it with us, he wanted us out.

Patricia and Alexander were unbelievable that day. As Luc, my first AD, Charles and were trying to figure it out, Patricia called out to me. I started to apologize because it’s pretty difficult for actors to be trying to stay in character through all this. But Patricia wanted to help. She asked me what she and Alexander could do. I said, woo the censorship woman, distract her, make her fall in love with you. Well Patricia is amazing - she did exactly that.

I have never come so close to punching someone in the face. I wanted to kill the factory owner because he kept cursing me in Arabic thinking I couldn’t understand him. I had to keep my cool because they kept threatening to throw us out, but we kept refusing to go. The trick was, we just kept ignoring him. So we called lunch and slowly, he and his colleagues became lazy. Slowly, they brought back in the little kids – the four and six-year-olds. I wanted this footage. I was not leaving without it. Charles saved the day. He suggested we put our two cameras to use. So I set up a shot with my DP and Patricia in one corner behind a carpet. Of course our censorship woman and the owner were right at my side. Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Charles and our steadicam operator got the extra footage of the young girls that you see in the scene.

I got my satisfaction at the end of the day. As I was walking out with my crew, the owner, laughing at me, asked in English if I got enough footage of his kids. I turned back and told him off in Arabic in front of his friends. I got my scene and I was able to unload on this jerk.

Todd Solondz is a shock jock of a filmmaker, a writer-director who always keeps a glass of cold water for throwing at the audience handy. Which almost but not quite prepares you for “Life During Wartime,” his latest sharp-edged comic tragedy about families, forgiveness and the unsettling ironies that can threaten to unravel even an ordinary life.

The film, a taut and tantalizing mix of salty bites and lazy blanks, stars Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney and Ally Sheedy as the latter-day Jordan sisters Joy, Trish and Helen, respectively, that Solondz first introduced in the uneasy brilliance of 1998’s “Happiness.” Though he is playing fast and loose with the details of their lives and with new actors in place, the essence of unrelenting bad fortune and bad timing remains.

It all begins with a set piece that echoes “Happiness’” opening moments — a romantic dinner drenched in candlelight and discomfort — as Joy learns that her husband has slipped back into his nasty habit of making seedy sex calls to strangers. A break from her marriage, which you suspect was coming even before the bad news was served up with desert, seems in order.

Ever a glutton for emotional punishment, Joy heads into the arms of her sister Trish and her mom ( Renee Taylor) in Florida. Families of the button-pushing sort are often the starting point for the downward spiral that the filmmaker clearly enjoys teasing out, though perhaps never better realized than in his 1995 adolescent heartbreaker, “Welcome to the Dollhouse.”

Just as there was little happiness in “Happiness,” there is no joy for Joy as she is battered by her mom’s bitterness, Trish’s misplaced hopes and the bipolar emotional swings of ex-boyfriend Andy, now deceased but still insistent and very slyly played by Paul Reubens.

In truth, Reubens’ character isn’t the only one afflicted. Many of “Wartime’s” denizens lurch between placid discussions and searing sudden rages or observations so sexually explicit as to leave you longing for good old-fashioned innuendo.

What helps patch over the excess emotional duress is the film’s uniformly strong acting ensemble, with Henderson the first among equals. Wide eyes welling in tears, body draped in long, loose dresses, she is mesmerizing to watch, letting naïveté float around her like gossamer. All that softness and vulnerability proves an excellent punching bag, and nearly everyone takes their shots, led by the hyperkinetic Sheedy as the successful screenwriting sister who’s decamped to Hollywood, literally, figuratively and hysterically (as in laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally deconstructing) vibrating through her scenes.

Trish, of course, has her own set of thorny issues with her new love interest Harvey ( Michael Lerner), the upcoming Bar Mitzvah for her son Timmy, an angelic Dylan Snyder, and the unexpected release of her pedophile ex-husband Bill (Ciarán Hinds), who Timmy has been told is dead. Timmy serves as the innocent counterweight — questioning all the drama, ever in search of his father, trying to understand how to make that transition to adulthood.

Like the filmmaker’s earlier work, “Life During Wartime” is full of exceedingly uncomfortable insight. One of Solondz’s artistic gifts is his ability to throw bizarre human behavior into the mix — Hinds as a pedophile family man and his disturbing flashbacks the most jarring example — and yet create family dynamics that feel remarkably familiar.

Silence and space become characters of note too, which the filmmaker, along with director of photography Ed Lachman and production designer Roshelle Berliner, manipulate beautifully. Characters are either slightly too close for comfort or slightly too far apart. Tense moments linger while we contemplate the possibilities. The words, when they finally come, spit out like a rotten egg. A staccato exchange between Bill, just out of prison and bedding the prickly rich older woman he’s met in a hotel bar, Charlotte Rampling’s Jacqueline, is priceless.

What Solondz does so well is create unthinkable moments in a “Leave It to Beaver” world, where unmentionables are aired in the most innocuous ways to startling effect. In “Life During Wartime,” he’s done just that, creating a relationship agitprop that pops and sizzles; just be careful not to get burned.

New York, NY (July 20, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company has acquired North American rights to Im Sang-soo’s erotic thriller THE HOUSEMAID, which made its world premiere in Competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. IFC plans to screen the film at key Fall film festivals and then release the film early next year.

THE HOUSEMAID is a sumptuous and erotic thriller set within the household of a beautiful and extremely wealthy family. When they hire a comely young maid to work with an older housekeeper, she is specifically assigned to cater to the spoiled and vastly pregnant wife, who will soon give birth to twins, and her agreeable young daughter. However, it’s not long before she attracts the attention of her husband and soon finds herself pregnant. It’s only when the family’s social order is disturbed that all hell breaks loose. The film is a remake of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 classic of the same name which was recently restored by Martin Scorsese.

President of IFC Entertainment Jonathan Sehring said: “THE HOUSEMAID is one of the most sheerly entertaining and sexy thrillers we have seen in years. It establishes Im Sang-soo as a major filmmaker and reconfirms that some of the best filmmaking anywhere in the world is happening in South Korea. We couldn’t be happier that Mirovision entrusted this film to us and think it’s the perfect fit for all of our platforms.”

“We’re extremely happy to find IFC as the North American home for our film,” said Jason Chae, producer of THE HOUSEMAID and President of Mirovision. “We’ve always been impressed by IFC’s passion for Korean landmark films and this is an honorable deal. I already have a lot of confidence in IFC’s blueprint for US distribution. I believe THE HOUSEMAID can turn a new page for how a Korean movie can be received by a wider audience in the North American market.”

The deal for THE HOUSEMAID was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President, Acquisitions & Productions, and Jeff Deutchman, Manager of Acquisitions & Productions, for IFC Films and with Jason Chae, President & Producer of Mirovision, and Erica Nam, Vice President of the International Division at Mirovision, on behalf of the filmmakers.

Somewhat Happily Ever After
Todd Solondz introduces forgiveness to his latest grim comedy, Life During Wartime.

* By Carl Swanson
* Published Jul 11, 2010

On a recent muggy afternoon, Todd Solondz, who doesn’t seem to be made for this weather, or maybe any kind of weather, arrives under a floppy sun hat. Pale and slight, with a nerdy courtliness, he’s wearing prescription sunglasses—his trademark green Buddy Holly glasses tucked in his pocket—and yellow Converse sneakers. Solondz, 50, lives in the Village, in a one-bedroom apartment that is convenient to NYU, where he started teaching full-time a year ago. It’s also near Washington Square Park, where he takes his 17-month-old son, Elroy, for walks: Yes, Solondz—the filmmaker so determined to find the most “ostracized, most feared, most hated, reviled, and so forth” characters he could find, who wrote and directed a movie called Happiness that centered in part on the erotic quandaries of a pedophile dad—is a doting father.

And, predictably, an anxious one. “I’m hardly a role model for anybody trying to have a film career,” he says. “Could I use a little more income? Yes. But I’m okay right now.” His family is in the city for the summer, which suits him fine, even if his air conditioner doesn’t work so well. “I’m very fortunate in life, because I don’t really take pleasure in going to the beach.” For Solondz, pleasure seems complicated. His self-denial won’t even permit him to take me up on an offer to share some fries—a proposal that seems almost to horrify him. Which wouldn’t surprise anyone who has seen his films, including his latest, Life During Wartime, a follow-up to his symphony of droll disenchantment, Happiness.

Solondz has made his entire career (or “quasi-career,” as he says) out of refusal—it’s at the core of his relationship with himself, with his films’ backers, and, most important, with those who go see his movies. He won’t give viewers what most filmmakers do: characters who are easy to sympathize with or dislike, a moral universe that simplifies the chaos and ambiguity of everyday life into the clarity of entertainment. Nor will he buy into the ideology of “I was a loser, but I came out on top. That’s Hollywood. That’s ’cause everybody wants to feel they’re unappreciated, [but] look, given the opportunity, they can triumph.”

Instead, he makes uncomfortably funny movies about, say, a glum teenager who feels that she’d be happy only if she were pregnant, or a man seeking acceptance by a clan of cheery Christians by agreeing to kill an abortionist. In Happiness, which was set in New Jersey (where Solondz grew up), he depicted the lives of three sisters: manic Trish, who “has it all,” except her husband wants to have sex with her son’s tween friends; Joy, who is bruised, overcautious, and searching; and Helen, a successful poet of grim experience who feels like a faker. (“If only she’d been raped as a child,” Solondz says. “That was her tragedy, yes.”) Meanwhile, in Florida, their father is leaving their mother in part because he’s daunted by the years of healthy retirement stretching before him, and wants to be alone.

Life During Wartime is set mostly in Florida with an all-new cast. “The first scene of this movie, it’s shot exactly as if you’re watching Happiness again,” Solondz says. “So the audience feels a little confident, like, I know what he’s doing. But then I can subvert it and take it someplace else.”

Fifteen years ago, Solondz was the suburban auteur of bleakness that the then-ascendant indie culture needed. His rigorously untranscendent coming-of-age story, Welcome to the Dollhouse, won accolades at Sundance in 1996, and everyone wanted something from him. But he wasn’t seduced: He’s apparently not all that seduceable. “After Welcome to the Dollhouse, every door was open to me. But because I had [spent] most of my life feeling a failure, I was very discomfited at the same time that I was so moved by the success. So I wrote Happiness. I knew I had the liberty, and you always have to write with liberty, and I knew that it would close every door. It was almost a test: Can you still want to work with me?”

The answer was: to a point. The original distributor refused to release Happiness, and his subsequent films (Storytelling, Palindromes) continued to mine this vein in even more challenging ways. “I could have gone, obviously, from Dollhouse onto a big-budget Hollywood film,” he says. “Once, years ago, I had a meeting with Drew Barrymore about doing Charlie’s Angels, and I loved the idea of playing with these icons and designing a film around them, and Drew was very into the idea, but we both knew that the studio would never hire me, and they were right, because their movie made $300 million. My movie would have made three. The movie itself had no interest for me. I would have been open to it, but it’s just the moth going to the flame.”

For the record, Solondz says he was “never particularly interested in pedophilia to begin with.” But like a moth to the flame, he is interested in extremes, and pushing the boundaries of areas of human behavior that are confidently demarcated by the culture. “It’s easy to say ‘Yes, I love mankind,’ but are you going to make exceptions?” he asks. “What are our limits, and how does that make us richer, or not, if we are able to embrace all of this about who we are?” This is not an easily plumbed area for popular entertainment, of course. And in Life During Wartime, pedophilia is conflated with terrorism. He talks about his films as if he too were surprised at their gruesomeness. Even while he says, “Look, my job is to manipulate an audience without my audience feeling like they’re being manipulated,” he’ll describe how he couldn’t watch the borderline rape scene in Storytelling while it was being filmed.

As the poet laureate of the put-upon, the outmaneuvered, and the earnestly delusional, he’s prone to self-deprecating defiance. “There are a lot of people who hate me, I know,” he says. But you don’t get the idea that he feels he can do much about that. He’s aware that indie culture no longer needs him in the same way. “His work is just as important and interesting as it was ten years ago,” says James Schamus, the head of Focus Features, whose previous company distributed Happiness. “It’s just not the next big thing.”

What is new in Life During Wartime is the introduction of forgiveness: Can Solondz allow his characters to forgive one another for evil behavior? He denies that the arrival of Elroy has anything to do with his newfound sensitivity. But the answer is tangled, of course. As it always is for him. “After I had screened Happiness at a festival early on, there was a college kid—who was a little bit drunk, I must assume—who approached me and said, ‘Man, that scene where that kid gets raped, that was hilarious,’ ” says Solondz. “And I knew I was in trouble. That was not the response that I was looking for, which is why I said afterward that my movies aren’t for everyone, especially people who like them.”

NEW TESTUO III : THE BULLET MAN and 1992’s CLASSIC TETSUO II : THE BODY HAMMER TO BE RELEASED ON DEMAND AND IN SELECT THEATRICAL ENGAGEMENTS IN EARLY 2011

New York, NY (July 15, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company has acquired North American rights to two films from director Shinya Tsukamoto’s acclaimed Tetsuo trilogy: TETSUO III: THE BULLET MAN, the third installment in the series and the first new Tetsuo film in nearly 20 years, and TETSUO II: THE BODY HAMMER (1992), the second film in the series. The series tells the story of a man who, upon getting angry, becomes a human weapon. The company plans an early 2011 release for both films.

Shinya Tsukamoto was among a group of directors responsible for a revival of innovative and daring Japanese cinema beginning in the early 1980’s. TETSUO I: THE IRON MAN (1989), Tsukamoto’s first major feature and a now legendary cyberpunk classic, was one of the seminal films made during this period. The Tetsuo films have won worldwide acclaim for their inventive visual effects and industrial themes, which are often cited as an influence by a generation of Western filmmakers including David Cronenberg, Quentin Tarantino, and Gaspar Noé, as well as Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor.

TETSUO III: THE BULLET MAN, Tsukamoto’s first English-language film, stars Eric Bossick as Anthony, a young man who was born and raised in Tokyo and is now raising a family there. What should be a happy time in Anthony’s life is not: his wife is crippled by anxiety and unable to leave the house. She also has recurring nightmares about a horrible fate awaiting the pair’s young son, Tom. Those nightmares turn out to be prophetic when Tom is cruelly run down in the street. Anthony flies into a terrible rage, and soon discovers that the power of his emotion transforms him into a strange, metallic monster. This delights the mysterious man who ran down Anthony’s son, a man who now continually taunts Anthony from a distance.

An early version of TETSUO III: THE BULLET MAN had its world premiere at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. After Venice the filmmaker made revisions and launched a new cut, which debuted at the 2010 TriBeCa Film Festival. The film has the aggressive visuals, special effects and soundtrack that are Tsukamoto’s trademark while also being the first Tetsuo installment with a strong narrative.

Director Shinya Tsukamoto expressed pleasure at having the multifaceted independent distributor introduce TETSUO III: THE BULLET MAN and reintroduce TETSUO II: BODY HAMMER to North American audiences.

“This project started as TETSUO AMERICA 17 years ago, so I am very glad that the new film will be released in the United States. IFC is the ideal distributor for this film,” said Tsukamoto.
Said IFC President Jonathan Sehring: “As a lover of Japanese action cinema from an early age, I have always admired how that culture has used popular cinema as a way of reflecting real-world anxieties and conflicts. The TETSUO movies are no exception, and I am very excited to bring them to a whole new generation of audiences.”
Jeff Deutchman negotiated the deal for BULLET MAN with Fionnuala Jamison of Coproduction Office and with Kiyo Joo of Goldview for BODY HAMMER.

Opening exclusively on demand via IFC Midnight, Wednesday July 23.

http://twitchfilm.net/news/2010/07/first-look-at-the-us-trailer-for-uk-thriller-exam.php

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words: NYC Premiere of “Life During Wartime”
by Brian Brooks (Updated 19 minutes ago)

Following the screening, guests headed down Sixth Avenue to Italian restaurant, Scuderia.”

Take a look at the crew gathered for press and a packed theater at the links below:

The Wall Street Journal

Wire Image

TalkMovies

http://trailers.apple.com/

IFC CENTER
Q&As after 5:30PM, 7PM, and 7:30PM Shows
BUY TICKETS HERE: http://www.ifccenter.com/films/joan-rivers-a-piece-of-work/

CHELSEA CLEARVIEW CINEMA
Q&A after 6:15PM Show.
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By Karina Longworth Thursday, Jun 24 2010

Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me is a nasty little noir novel about Lou Ford, deputy sheriff of a small Texas town, a seemingly nice guy hiding a “sickness” that eventually compels him to kill everyone he loves. In typical Thompson fashion, the prose is straightforward, the underlying themes thorny. Stanley Kubrick, who hired Thompson to write The Killing and Paths of Glory, famously called Killer “the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.” (If you have not read the book, here’s your cue to beware of spoilers.)

Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me is, as the 49-year-old, highly prolific British filmmaker puts it, “a very literal version” of Thompson’s novel. Casey Affleck plays Lou, Kate Hudson is his long-term girlfriend, Amy, and Jessica Alba plays the prostitute Joyce, whose taste for rough sex flips a switch in Lou, setting off his killing spree. Winterbottom moved the action from 1952 to 1957 and shot in Oklahoma to take advantage of better tax credits, but his Killer is to-the-letter faithful to Thompson’s where it counts, retaining much of the novel’s dialogue and, most controversially, Thompson’s complicated, disconcertingly alluring spin on mutually consensual violent sex, tipped over into repellent, absolutely nonconsensual and nonsexual fatal violence. Part in-your-face exploitation flick, part visually stunning, coolly seductive noir rounded out with borderline-snarky ’50s period detail, the film is fully thrilling — if you know what you’re getting into.

When the film premiered at Sundance in January, a loud segment of the audience, apparently unfamiliar with the novel’s brutality, balked. “I don’t understand how Sundance could book this movie,” complained the first questioner at the premiere’s Q & A, to a mix of applause and boos. “How dare you? How dare Sundance?” A media frenzy ensued, turning Winterbottom into the festival’s unlikely bad-boy auteur, much to his own surprise.

“What I found weird at Sundance was [the suggestion] that by showing violence against women, it somehow promotes it,” Winterbottom says, over a glass of white wine on a recent visit to Los Angeles. “That because it’s horrible to watch, it’s therefore immoral.”

Amy’s and Joyce’s death scenes are necessarily explicit and extended, Winterbottom says, in order to convey the intensely complicated underpinnings of the action. “Amy loves Lou unconditionally, thinks she’s running away with him, and he kills her. Joyce is the same. These are the people who offer the possibility of happiness, and he still destroys them. They are the most important moments. You feel much more emotionally involved than if it was just really quick. Bash, bash, bash, that would be better? That seems to me to be a perverse argument.”

For all of his faithfulness, Winterbottom diverges from Thompson’s take on the root cause of Lou’s bad behavior. “Thompson gives very responsible explanations of Lou,” Winterbottom says. “In a page and a half, he says, on the one hand, Lou’s a child of sex abuse, and it comes from that, and on the other hand, he’s schizophrenic. Which in a way are two contradictory explanations.”

In the film, the formative instance of abuse that marks Lou for life is presented in hazy flashback, Lou’s “abuser” kittenish and purring, the trauma fetishized. Winterbottom addresses schizophrenia somewhat by increasingly offering evidence that we’re seeing a skewed version of the world through Lou’s slanted eyes, but an unreliable narrator is a pretty standard noir device. For Winterbottom, Lou’s crimes are more fascinating for the ways in which they defy any sort of logical explanation.

“Lou’s violence is totally self-destructive,” Winterbottom says. “Joyce and Amy, when Lou kills them, it’s nothing that helps him in any way. It’s totally perverse, it’s totally pointless.”

That pointlessness is the film’s point — evil that can’t be definitively explained is much more unsettling, because there’s no definitive way to stop it. The Killer Inside Me more or less shares this theme with No Country for Old Men, which inspired much less vitriol. Of course, No Country didn’t star two female movie stars better known for gracing the covers of ladies magazines than for their acting prowess; Javier Bardem’s killer didn’t seduce women with a mixture of escapist fantasy and sexual domination before killing them, and when he did dispatch his victims, the actual murder was over in a blink of an eye — he surely didn’t take the time to beat them to death, all the while saying, “I’m so sorry baby. I love you. Good-bye!”

Even creepier, Winterbottom normalizes his protagonist’s personality split by calling attention to the dualities all around him. Lou’s first scrap of internal monologue: “The trouble with growing up in a small town is everyone thinks they know who you are.” That overfamiliarity breeds a blindness to behavior that falls outside of archetype — who would suspect that the prostitute wants to get married, that the schoolmarm is into being spanked, that the deputy sheriff is a serial killer? In this town, Lou says, he’s expected to be “both a man and a gentleman” — something of a schizophrenic split in itself, and a classic noir dichotomy between hard and soft, dark and light.

“The Killer Inside Me”: Much ado about misogyny
“The Killer Inside Me’s” violence will shock and offend. But it’s a crucial element of an important, flawed film

As was already clear when I wrote about the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “The Killer Inside Me” two months ago, Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s legendary 1950s crime novel is likely to provoke a strong, and strongly divided, response. “The Killer Inside Me” tells the story of Lou Ford (played by Casey Affleck), who presents as an all-American deputy sheriff in small-town Texas but gradually slides into psychotic, misogynistic violence.

Since Lou narrates the Thompson novel, and film is by its nature a more detached and objective medium than fiction, there are limits to how well Winterbottom and screenwriter John Curran can capture the book’s eerie, haunting power, or Lou’s willful lack of self-knowledge. But the novel’s most notorious scene, in which Lou calmly pulls on a pair of black gloves and sets about beating his hooker girlfriend to death, all the while apologizing to her and telling her he loves her, is rendered in explosive and terrifying detail. It serves as a rupture in the film’s narrative of reality, one almost as dramatic as the moment when the film appears to break in the projector during Bergman’s “Persona.”

Up till then, Lou appears to be an intriguing, somewhat dark film-noir hero. Yeah, he’s cheating on his wife, he bends his law-enforcement role to suit his own purposes, he has an appetite for sadomasochistic sex. You may or may not find that distasteful, but it belongs to the genre. This horror-show does not. Here is this handsome, intriguing good-boy/bad-boy character, in whom we have invested at least a little prurient identification, pummeling a beautiful woman’s face into a grisly, bloody mass while murmuring, “Hold on, sweetheart. It’s almost over.” You sit there in shocked disbelief: This can’t be happening. But it is.

It’s a dreadful scene that provokes powerful emotions: Pity and terror, of course, for Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba, in the movie), who loves Lou passionately and yearns to make him happy and would probably still forgive him for this vile betrayal. Beyond that, though, what’s also shocking is the sense that we are implicated in the crime: It’s as if, by taking the ride with Lou through his moral ambiguity and his smoldering, dangerous sex scenes with Joyce, we’ve given him permission to push through all possible boundaries of good and evil and decency and sanity, like a demented Nietzschean Superman. You get the same feeling, in a somewhat different fashion, from reading the book. Thompson almost taunts us: OK, crime-fiction readers, you want a story about a dark-hearted killer? That’s what you paid for, right? Well, try this.

Unfortunately, “The Killer Inside Me” has already become a Rorschach blot that reflects the public’s widely varying ideas about extreme media depictions of violence, especially violence against women. I say “unfortunately” because few of the pro-or-con responses based on that perception will do justice to the work itself. If you believe, or fear, that movie violence serves as a form of pornographic wish-fulfillment for male audience members, and may in fact legitimize or enable acts of real-world violence, then of course you’ll find the movie repellent and indefensible, no matter how well it’s executed or what its creators have to say about it.

One could certainly argue that that view is simplistic and uninformed. (I’m reminded of then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attacks on the “Grand Theft Auto” games, which she clearly hadn’t even looked at, let alone tried to play.) At the risk of starting a long and contentious sidebar discussion, I’ll suggest that generations of sociologists have tried and failed to establish clear links between watching violence on-screen and committing violent acts in person. Leaving that issue aside, the most common rejoinder from defenders of media violence — that it plays a complicated and cathartic role for the spectator, whose focus shifts back and forth from victim to perpetrator — may miss the point of Thompson’s novel even more.

Winterbottom’s adaptation of the novel is spellbinding cinema, with all the atmosphere, technical excellence and expert pacing the British director is known for. Perhaps more important, it captures much of the nihilistic soul of Thompson’s novel, which aims to be a self-undermining critique of crime fiction, as well as a bleak biblical parable about the darkness and violence he sees at the heart of America and masculinity and perhaps human nature. In a funny way, “The Killer Inside Me” comes closer to agreeing with its critics than its defenders; it’s almost a work that argues that it ought not to be seen (or read), or at least ought not to be necessary.

I would argue, in fact, that the book and movie’s portrait of Lou Ford pre-echoes some second-wave feminist ideas about men, women and rape, such as those of Susan Brownmiller. Thompson believed that male-female sexual relations, even in their so-called normal guise, contained hints of violence, and that it didn’t take much to tip them over into terrible brutality. He definitely does not depict Lou and Joyce’s S/M sexual relationship as innocent and consensual play (as contemporary p.c. sexuality would have it), but as the mutual opening of a door that leads to much darker places. There are hints of a psychological explanation, if you want them — Lou has a history as both a sexual abuser and an abuse victim — but the boundary between normalcy and raving psychotic madness seems dangerously permeable.

As I wrote in April, to complain that “The Killer Inside Me” is full of misogynistic violence is a little like reading “Moby-Dick” and objecting to all the stuff about whaling. Violence against women is Thompson’s text and theme and central metaphor — and in case I haven’t made this clear, anyone who might find the violence in this movie gratifying or arousing is already virtually beyond the bounds of professional help.

Played by Affleck with unruffled aplomb, Deputy Lou doesn’t even carry a gun because crime in the oil boomtown of Central City, Texas, is nearly nonexistent. But beneath his ultra-normal veneer Lou has the tastes and background of a depraved European aristocrat (indeed, I suspect Lou served as an inspiration for Thomas Harris’ creation of Hannibal Lecter). He’s probably the only person in Central City who reads Freud and listens to Schubert — or whose sexual appetites suggest the Marquis de Sade or Georges Bataille.

Within the first few minutes of the film, Lou is sent to run Joyce out of town and she responds by slapping and slugging him. She’s bored and lonely and sick of sleeping with ugly guys for money; she’s looking for a reaction, and she gets one: On the verge of walking out, Lou comes back and tackles her, pulling down her panties and whipping her bare ass with his belt. The sequence is both erotic and violent, profoundly troubling and potentially arousing, designed to provoke a whiplash of emotional, psychological and libidinal responses. It sets the table for what follows: an exploration of the dividing line between sex and death that’s at least as morbid and philosophical as anything in modernist European literature.

Depending on your point of view, Lou is either a deranged sociopath or an inevitable product of his environment, and the genius of Thompson’s novel — and of screenwriter Curran’s extraordinarily faithful adaptation — lies in the fact that interpreting what happens is entirely up to you. Lou himself does not understand why he does the vicious and bloody things he does (Affleck narrates some portions of the film in bursts of Thompsonian prose), but as the story becomes increasingly fantastical and grotesque, he gets a pretty clear idea how it’s going to end.

You can make a case for “The Killer Inside Me” as one of the most important American novels of the 20th century, but it’s essentially a work of fatalistic allegory, and as Winterbottom’s film goes along it can’t help becoming more like an ordinary crime movie. Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas and Simon Baker stand out among the cast of befuddled Central City locals — Baker plays the out-of-town lawman who first suspects that Lou’s behind the local crime wave — but Kate Hudson is a bit stranded as Lou’s doomed fiancée, Amy. She meets a similar fate to Joyce’s, late in the film, and while Winterbottom is sticking close to the book here, as elsewhere, I think he’s violating a cardinal rule of moviemaking: Show us something shocking once, and it has a didactic force. Show it again, and it becomes technical, or sickening, or both.

If the pileup of corpses and the ensuing ludicrous conflagration that ends “The Killer Inside Me” is the only conclusion Lou can imagine, Winterbottom and Curran might have thought a little harder about the fact that Lou is completely insane. In a novel, especially one with an unreliable narrator, there is no necessary distinction between fantasy and reality, and no way to verify or falsify the narrator’s account. Lou Ford longs to destroy not just himself and those around him — especially those who love him — but also the story he’s telling and those of us reading or watching it. If Winterbottom’s film were literally a bomb that blew us all up after we watched it — that blew us up because we watched it — it might fulfill all its antihero’s and original creator’s ambitions.

Want to watch Jessica Alba get her face punched in again and again and again, for what feels like several minutes until her skin falls off, her eyes loll in her head and, finally, her mouth caves in on itself?

No? Well then “The Killer Inside Me” is probably not the film for you.

But is it the film for anyone?

Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel has been praised for being highly faithful to its source material. The only problem is that this book is “the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind” ever, said the late Stanley Kubrick, who directed his own share of violent material with “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Shining.”

The killer in question is Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), an aw-shucks sheriff who has his “feet on both sides of the fence.” That is to say, on one side he is an active member of society, on the other side he beats the women he loves to a bloody pulp.

“The public version of Lou - the straight forward deputy sheriff - is something Lou sees as the complete opposite to who he really is,” director Michael Winterbottom tells the Daily News. “He’s deliberately constructing a facade of being the easy going slow talking kind of dopey deputy sheriff.”

Winterbottom compares his anti-hero to the real-life British taxi driver who recently went on a killing spree that left twelve people dead. Instead of murdering strangers, however, Lou Ford kills the two women who love him most: Joyce (Alba), a prostitute with whom he spends many steamy nights, and Amy (Kate Hudson), his fiancée.

While Amy’s demise may not be as grisly as Joyce’s face pummeling scene, it’s no picnic. At one point, Lou kicks his bride-to-be so hard that it appears her bladder may have ruptured.

“Both Joyce and Amy offer Lou everything he could possibly want and he still destroys them because he wants to destroy himself,” Winterbottom says. “He hates himself - that is the tragedy of Lou.”

While Ford may hate himself, Winterbottom has been accused of hating women. The director has been criticized for only bestowing violent deaths on his female protagonists (the one man who is killed is simply shot in the head at close range).

“The two most important people from Lou’s point of view are Joyce and Amy and that’s where Thompson creates this sort of ultra violence because it’s about him destroying people who could make him happy,” the director explains. He adds that if the women are two-dimensional, it’s because we only see them through Ford’s eyes.

Winterbottom is one of the British directors responsible for popularizing the docu-drama style of filmmaking that seamlessly melds reality and fiction. He no doubt felt an affinity for the fact that Lou Ford is not only the main character in “The Killer Inside Me,” but also its narrator. This makes for a highly unreliable narrative that treads a fine line between fact and fiction.

“You only really have Lou’s version of what happens and Lou’s version of people - and Lou’s crazy,” Winterbottom says. “Although Lou Ford is telling you what’s happened, it’s not necessarily true.”

But does the fact that Joyce may not have died at all make her face being slowly smashed to smithereens any less disturbing? The answer can be found on both sides of the fence.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2010/06/16/2010-06-16_killer_inside_me_director_michael_winterbottom_explains_ultraviolent_jessica_alb.html#ixzz0r7Zs4700

“This rapier-sharp comedy of social manners from French auteur Agnès Jaoui (The Taste of Others) stars Jaoui as an overbearing feminist writer angling for a political career. Jaoui’s longtime collaborator, Jean-Pierre Bacri, plays a self-aggrandizing documentarian eager to interview her at her childhood home. And with the always wonderful Jamel Debbouze (Days of Glory) as an aspiring filmmaker who’s the son of an Algerian housekeeper, Jaoui neatly, gently, firmly slips political commentary into Let It Rain’s articulate mayhem. She also teases tender humor out of sibling rivalry, church ritual, fussy parenting, and the conversational limitations of bachelor farmers. A”

From The New York Times:

You Have Issues? So Does Everybody

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: June 18, 2010

The personal is political in the films of Agnès Jaoui, a sort of Gallic Woody Allen whose comedies of manners reveal a sensibility acutely attuned to the tiniest nuances of the mind games people play. Ms. Jaoui’s films may lack Mr. Allen’s comic shtick, quotable one-liners and showy metaphysical angst, but they are precisely calibrated dissections of the pretensions and insecurities of the French chattering class. As critical as she can be of her characters, Ms. Jaoui portrays them with the evenhanded sympathy of a wise therapist who likes her clients despite their annoying foibles.

The low-level politicians and media types who inhabit “Let It Rain,” her third film as a director (she has acted in many others), are too busy pursuing their personal agendas to sit back and despair about the human condition. Almost all them feel victimized in one way or another. That includes the protagonist, Agathe Villanova, a self-confident feminist writer (played by Ms. Jaoui with just the right edge of impatience) making the leap into politics.

Bossy and free-spirited, Agathe, who resembles a more unguarded Katie Couric, can’t understand why her boyfriend, Antoine (Frédéric Pierrot), objects to her rules about their relationship; she won’t live with him and has no desire for children. As much as Antoine loves her, he feels like an afterthought tagging after her during the campaign. As she discovers upon entering the fray, arguing politics with friends in Paris is no preparation for the rough and tumble of the real thing.

Agathe is at discreet loggerheads with her younger sister, Florence (Pascale Arbillot), who lives in the house, three hours outside of Paris, in which they grew up. Florence, who lacks Agathe’s self-esteem, is saddled with a clinging husband, Stéphane (Guillaume de Tonquedec). The sisters’ mother having recently died, Agathe returns to help settle the estate while campaigning for local office. Amid emotional tension exacerbated by Florence’s resentment of Agathe for being their mother’s favorite, their loyal Algerian housekeeper, Mimouna (Mimouna Hadji), is a calm voice of certainty. A believer in traditional family values, she looks askance at Agathe’s highhanded independence.

Once Agathe returns, Mimouna’s son, Karim (Jamel Debbouze), an aspiring documentarian who works as a hotel desk clerk, proposes making a television documentary about Agathe with his underemployed former mentor, Michel (Jean-Pierre Bacri, who wrote the screenplay with Ms. Jaoui). Agathe agrees, and the project becomes a comedy of errors in which the weather (it is always raining) plays a critical role.

Karim believes he has been looked down upon all his life for his ethnicity, and seethes with ambition and resentment. Michel, who is divorced with a young son, also feels discriminated against because his wife has custody of the boy. While interviewing Agathe, one of his first questions is why women usually get custody in divorce cases. As Michel repeatedly demonstrates his incompetence, Agathe is a surprisingly good sport until she becomes so angry she can barely speak.

“Let It Rain” is of a piece with Ms. Jaoui’s earlier films, “The Taste of Others” and “Look at Me,” whose minutely observed characters tend to be thin-skinned, competitive egotists invested in their status in the world of ideas. The movie captures the tone of urbane discourse with an astonishing awareness of the subtexts of every nervous remark.

If there is an overriding political sensibility in her films, it is an enlightened feminism that recognizes male vulnerability under a facade of braggadocio and forgives men their flaws.

Late in the movie Agathe, Michel and Karim, whose project is stalled, are rescued from their disabled car and a downpour by a couple of farmers, one of whom can’t stop staring hungrily at Agathe. They have their own tale of victimization by a government that subsidizes big agriculture while overlooking small farms. You realize these peasants, who actually produce things, have a legitimate gripe, in contrast with the psychological baggage weighing down their spoiled, more well-heeled guests.

Among the characters “Let It Rain” is the hardest on poor Michel, a “professional” documentarian, at least in his own mind, who dissembles when flaunting his connections and his résumé. While at work, he is so crippled by anxiety that he sabotages himself at every turn. On top of everything he is carrying on an affair with Florence.

That affair is one of the film’s two extraneous subplots. In the other, Karim, who is married, flirts with an attractive headstrong co-worker, Aurelie (Florence Loiret-Caille), who is ready to jump into a relationship.

Some have complained about the dearth of high drama in Ms. Jaoui’s films. But I think its absence makes them all the more authentic. Needlessly complicated, life already has more than enough petty dramas. “Let It Rain” may not be funny in a ha-ha sense, but it gave me an amused open-mouthed appreciation of life’s absurdities, including unanticipated nuisances like bad weather.

“Box Office: “Joan” and “Bone” Lead Potent Weekend For Indie Debuts (UPDATED)
A scene from “Winter’s Bone.”

After a few rather uneventful weekends at the specialty box office, a quartet of very strong debuts should lift the spirits of many a distributor this Sunday afternoon. According to estimates provided by Rentrak earlier this afternoon, four films opened to $15,000+ per-theater-averages, including two - Sundance alums “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” and “Winter’s Bone” - that managed $20,000+.

At 7 theaters in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, IFC Films’ release of Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s critically acclaimed documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” led the way, grossing $170,580. That was enough to give it a $24,368 per-theater-average - by far the best for a documentary so far this year (is-it-a-documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop” comes the closest with $20,770). IFC said the film - which chronicles the private dramas of iconic comedian Joan Rivers - played to sold out shows all weekend and that they plan an aggressive expansion: The top fifteen markets next week, and the top fifty by Independence Day weekend. Its debut number suggest that the expansion has the potential to turn “A Piece of Work” into a “Valentino” or “September Issue”-sized hit, though obviously it’s much too early to make such a forecast.

Also notable regarding the Joan Rivers doc is that it had the benefit of being on 3 screens at New York’s IFC Center, meaning it was screening upwards of 15 times a day at that single venue. Not benefiting from such a scenario, but managing a $20,000+ per-theater-average anyway, was Debra Granik’s U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner “Winter’s Bone.” Released by Roadside Attractions, the highly acclaimed “Bone” - a noir following a young woman (Jennifer Lawrence) living in the Ozark Mountains - grossed $85,442 from 4 screens (2 in New York and 2 in Los Angeles), averaging $21,360. “

“A good documentary about Joan Rivers would have been enough. Rivers is worth her own documentary. She’s a comedian of historical importance, the most successful female stand-up of all time, with an influential career that has lasted almost 50 years - and she’s still funny.

But “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” is a better film than that. It’s one of the best documentaries ever made about show business, about what it really consists of and what it demands. Along the way, almost incidentally, by showing us a woman in her mid-70s still driven to pursue this life of stress and punishment, it offers insight into the performer personality.

Rivers herself says it best. She describes the showbiz life as one of constant rejection; and over the course of the film, we see that that’s true. People who fail in show business get rejected all the time. Successes, like Rivers, get rejected most of the time. We see her, an elderly woman of enormous professional stature, hustling for commercials, hustling for gigs, worrying over her material, worrying over a barren schedule, getting bad reviews, playing lousy rooms and hoping for things that never happen. And this is someone who has it good.

It’s a life of constant ego battering, so it’s no wonder that some performers either crack up or become self-protective egomaniacs. To her credit, Rivers is refreshingly not crazy. Yes, the plastic surgery is bizarre - I don’t know why she went that far, though the pressure on aging performers can be brutal. And her apartment looks like a cross between Versailles and an 1890s brothel. But the woman herself is grounded, self-aware and plugged into the current culture. Her new material is observant and daring, and there’s nothing remotely nostalgic about it.

As the documentary begins, Rivers is turning 75, and her career is in a lull. Her previous accomplishments offer her only minimal satisfaction. For her, it’s all about the present tense. She works. The self-belief is impressive. It would be easy to think, watching the first minutes of the movie, that she’s finished, and that being finished would not be so bad. She’s had a good run. She’s made her mark. She’s got money. Why not just pack it in?

And then slowly, over the course of the year, the career comes back. It’s no one thing. Rivers does everything. She tries a play. She writes a book. She goes out of town for a stand-up show and ends up in a shouting match with a heckler. She submits to a celebrity roast on television, which places her in the hot seat, having to smile while lesser comedians make vicious jokes about her face and her age. She goes on “Celebrity Apprentice” and has to worry about Donald Trump. As seen from the inside, none of this is remotely glamorous, all of it is stressful and half of it’s demeaning.

The film contains a wonderful long shot: Following a tribute to George Carlin, a number of famous comedians are standing in the greenroom, and from the back we see Bill Maher put his arm around Rivers, in a gesture both inclusive and protective. He’s so much bigger than she is, and in a flash you realize this dynamo, this force of nature, this shark hungry for every possible gig on the planet is practically a little old lady.

In that moment, we feel protective of her, too, but mostly we just marvel at the strength and the spirit. Joan Rivers is more than a “piece of work.” She’s an extraordinary person, and this is a great documentary.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/10/MVLV1DRQN6.DTL#ixzz0qYqODcoX

Tiny Furniture

Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 6:50pm
BAM Rose Cinemas
Directed by Lena Dunham
With Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, David Call, Alex Karpovsky

“While Ms. Dunham’s film may reflect the quandaries of a 23-year-old, there is nothing juvenile about its execution. Tiny Furniture brings to mind Larry David’s ability to take his own tics and add humor and stakes to make them matter to others.” —The New York Times

US, 2010, 98 min
NY Premiere!

Lena Dunham writes, directs, and stars in this SXSW Jury Award winner that concerns Aura, who returns home from her Midwest liberal arts college to her artist family’s Tribeca loft with nothing to show but a film studies degree, a failed relationship, and a total lack of direction. Taking a job as a hostess at a restaurant, she falls into relationships with two self-centered men while struggling to define herself. Dunham’s razor-sharp dialogue drips with caustic wit, perfectly calibrated to both cut and provoke laughter in this incisive examination of post-college ennui and self-actualization, meticulously shot by Jody Lee Lipes.

Valhalla Rising

Sat, Jun 12, 2010, 9pm
BAM Rose Cinemas
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
With Mads Mikkelson, Jamie Sives, Gary Lewis

Denmark / UK, 2009, 100 min
NY Premiere!

“Gestures are deliberate and stylized, as though from a Japanese Noh play. The gorgeous primitive scenery seems straight out of a Terrence Malick movie, and the powerful, brooding music is even better, perhaps the best thing in it.” —The Hollywood Reporter

Refn (Bronson, Pusher Trilogy), subject of a recent BAMcinématek retrospective, strikes again with this bone-crushingly brutal and stylized Viking epic set in 1000 AD. Mads Mikkelsen stars as One Eye, a mute warrior who joins a band of Vikings on a crusade to Jerusalem to conquer the Holy Land. Their doomed journey turns out to be a voyage into the very heart of darkness. Refn, a poet of violence, writes this gut-punchingly gory, hypnotically beautiful tale in the blood of his characters and backs it with a thundering drone metal soundtrack.

Lovers of Hate

Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 6:50pm
BAM Rose Cinemas
Directed by Bryan Poyser
With Chris Doubek, Alex Karpovsky, Heather Kafka, Morgan Coy, Adam Donaghey, Chris Ohlson

US, 2010, 90 min
NY Premiere!

“Does a superb job of tapping into a lot of our worst nightmares with some dark, intelligent comedy, and then completely screws us over by making it relatable and believable.” —Cinematical

In the dog house with his wife, sleeping in his car, and working as a census taker, 30-something Rudy (a hilariously deadpan Chris Doubek) sees his life go from bad to worse when his brother (Alex Karpovsky), the author of a successful Harry Potter knockoff, rolls into town and vies for his ex. Bryan Poyser’s dark comedy mines the rich terrain of sibling rivalry with a flurry of caustic one-liners. Yet it’s the film’s melancholic undercurrent—an evocation of the bitterness engendered by a lifetime of small failures and petty jealousies—that imbues Lovers of Hate with an unexpected resonance.

Cold Weather

Sat, Jun 12, 2010, 6:15pm
Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 9:30pm
BAM Rose Cinemas
Directed by Aaron Katz
With Cris Lankenau, Trieste Kelly Dunn

US, 2010, 96 min
NY Premiere!

“An impressive experiment in genre in more ways than one: a pulp fiction of troublesome dames and distinctly costumed villains, wedded to conversational comedy, while also a subtle exploration of friendship… Nobody does unspoken tension and unforced sensuality quite like Aaron Katz.” —LA Weekly

When his life in Chicago implodes, forensic science graduate Doug gives up his pursuit of science and returns to Portland, Oregon to work in an ice factory, read Sherlock Holmes novels, spend time with his sister, and generally mope around. Yet, just as director Aaron Katz lures the viewer into expecting another study of 20-something ennui, he turns the plot on its head when Doug’s ex-girlfriend mysteriously disappears. With sublimely lyrical visuals by cinematographer Andrew Reed, Katz (Dance Party, USA) ratchets up the suspense while playfully riffing on the standard mystery genre tropes, casting Doug’s sister as the Watson character and reimagining that relationship as an exploration of familial communication.

June 11, 2010
A Comic’s Life and Times: Enter Talking or Mocking

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Joan Rivers — where have you been all my life? That, at least, is what I thought after watching (twice) the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” Directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, this convulsively funny movie takes an up-close and sometimes queasy-personal approach to its motormouth subject, who, when she’s not making you howl with laughter (or freeze up in horror), brandishes her deeply held hurts, fears, prejudices, poor judgment and bad taste as if they were stigmata.

Once best known as Johnny Carson’s permanent guest host (until he cut her dead) and for her disingenuous question “Can we talk?” (not you, silly), Ms. Rivers, now 77, began slipping down the pop-culture food chain in the 1980s after a series of calamities, including the 1987 suicide of her husband, Edgar Rosenberg. She continued to perform and to churn out books, among other pursuits. But for those who didn’t know her way back when, she was little more than a red-carpet attack dog and plastic-surgery cautionary tale. She made you laugh (and cringe), but there was desperation in the sight of this former comedy savant who, between operations and peddling jewelry on QVC, lashed out at those whose celebrity eclipsed hers.

Whatever else you want to call her — and various names spring to mind while watching the movie — she seems an unlikely fit for Ms. Stern and Ms. Sundberg, whose documentaries include “The Devil Came on Horseback,” about the atrocities in Darfur, and “The Trials of Darryl Hunt,” about a wrongly convicted African American prisoner. However improbable, the match-up works, partly because the filmmakers don’t approach her as either an entertainment industry untouchable or one of its casualties. They’re sympathetic to her, but a touch cool, and certainly not fawning, which underscores their status as entertainment industry outsiders. This is just a look at a native in her natural habitat, sequins and feathered boas included.

The filmmakers probably didn’t need to force their way into that habitat, because Ms. Rivers, who, with her daughter, Melissa, starred in a television movie about her husband’s death, seems to have few boundaries. It isn’t that she overshares on an obvious level — there are many biographical details that never even come up — it’s that no other “Joan,” no private self, seems to be lurking beneath the mask. Given the single-mindedness with which she pursues her career — Melissa Rivers likens that career to a second child — you have to wonder how any other Joan could have survived. It’s no wonder that when Joan Rivers asks a radio host, “Who is the real me?” it feels like an honest question.

For 14 months Ms. Stern and Ms. Sundberg tagged along with their subject, racking up miles and yowzah moments in her relentless pursuit of fame, money, attention, love, kicks, masochistic thrills or whatever it is that makes Ms. Rivers, née Joan Alexandra Molinsky, run. Having lucked out with timing, they began shooting in 2008, the year before Ms. Rivers won the Donald Trump reality show “The Celebrity Apprentice.” She was enduring a fallow period and fighting irrelevance any which way she could, which might account for why she agreed to this documentary. (She’s also good friends with Ms. Stern’s mother.) The filmmakers kept after her as she moved from airplanes to hotel lobbies, dressing rooms and onto the stage, where her cavernously wide mouth pours out invective, acid asides and jokes jokes jokes like water.

To their credit, the filmmakers don’t try to make her look good, and while they omit some of her uglier routines, they don’t (perhaps can’t) ask you to love her. That’s a wise move. Ms. Rivers may be a comic genius, but she’s easier to admire from the distance of a movie seat and perhaps across the passage of time. An equal-opportunity offender, she has taken plenty of people down on her way up, including other women. Watching some of her nastier “Tonight Show” spots (which aren’t in the movie), I find it hard to decide if her pokes at Elizabeth Taylor’s weight are more painful than her self-lacerating jibes. Picking on Ms. Taylor was unspeakably mean. But Ms. Rivers’s contempt for herself lasted longer: a lifetime, or so it seems.

Smartly, the filmmakers take on Ms. Rivers’s own looks from the start, opening the movie with shots of her bare face — a shut naked eye, a thin line of mouth — as someone else greases it with makeup. It’s only after she’s put on this face that all these pieces come together in startling close-up. It’s a nice metaphor for the effort it takes to assemble the product known as Joan Rivers, but the bluntness of the images and her gaze are disconcerting. Is she daring us to look, or begging? It’s hard to know, and the filmmakers, who resist putting her on the couch, aren’t saying. In the end, all you really know is that when she stands on the stage, it’s as if she had tapped right into her id. It’s a gusher.

“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” is rated R. (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.) Her language is so dirty that it’s almost charming, when it’s not appalling.

Joan has been working overtime enjoying the well-deserved spotlight leading up to the release of A PIECE OF WORK tomorrow in NY, LA and SF! Here’s a roundup of some of the exciting features this week taking a look at this tireless legend:

PAPER MAGAZINE.COM - June 8, 2010 - “Getting a Little Work Done” Joan Rivers on hurt feelings, abortion jokes and the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
by Elizabeth Thompson.

“People should never give you a standing ovation?

JOAN: No. That really means you’re over.”

THE ONION A.V. CLUB - June 9, 2010
Interview by Sam Adams

“AVC: One of the most striking moments in the film is the confrontation between you and an audience member who takes offense at one of your jokes. Your point is that comedy exists to laugh at things—

JR: …that aren’t laughable. But isn’t it? That’s what separates us from the animals. We laugh. ”

SF WEEKLY - “The Joan Rivers show: More than just a vulgar broad in a makeup mask” - By Mark Olsen - Wednesday, Jun 9 2010

“The remarkable year chronicled in the film — the ups of winning Celebrity Apprentice, the downs of failing to bring an autobiographical play to New York — encapsulates an entire life in show business. Moving with ease from seedy nightclubs where she hones her act to the large casino stages where she leaves audiences gasping at what they’ve just heard, Rivers wields her abrasive bluntness as sword and shield. Yet now at an age where she is frequently feted as an influence to such followed-in-her-footsteps comedians as Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin, Rivers sometimes feels as if she is being celebrated with one hand and pushed out the door by the other.”

By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: June 3, 2010

STEPHEN KING once said of the novelist Jim Thompson: “He was crazy. He went running into the American subconscious with a blowtorch in one hand and a pistol in the other, screaming his goddamn head off. No one else came close.”

The same qualities that made his books so arresting — Thompson’s wildness and originality and dark, violent sexiness — also made him immensely appealing to filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick signed up Thompson in the 1950s, the author’s heyday, and Sam Peckinpah hired him in the ’70s, near the end of his life. Both arrangements ended badly, however, and not just because Thompson was alcoholic and quarrelsome.

Thompson’s vision, though it seems made for Hollywood, is so singular that over the years it has proved remarkably resistant to movie adaptation. The two versions of his novel “The Getaway” — Peckinpah’s in 1972 and Roger Donaldson’s 1994 remake — are notoriously watered down and leave out the book’s most interesting feature: an ending in which the two central characters, a bank robber and his wife, descend into a physical and spiritual hell. Burt Kennedy’s 1976 movie of “The Killer Inside Me,” starring a young and hunky Stacy Keach, is a mess, a movie that can’t decide whether it wants to be a noirish mystery, a horror flick or a psychological thriller.

Oddly, the best movie versions of Thompson so far have been by directors who are European: “The Grifters,” directed in 1990 by Stephen Frears, an Englishman, and the Frenchman Bertrand Tavernier’s 1981 film “Coup de Torchon,” an adaptation of the novel “Pop. 1280,” which many people, including Donald Westlake (who wrote the screenplay for “The Grifters”), consider by far the greatest of the Thompson movies. Now Michael Winterbottom, another Englishman, hopes to join the list with his new version of “The Killer Inside Me,” which stars Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson and opens in theaters on June 18, as well as on video on demand.

Kubrick called “The Killer Inside Me,” which came out in 1952, “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.” The book is arguably Thompson’s best and embodies many of the difficulties entailed in translating his work to the screen.

It’s the story of Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff in a small Texas town, seemingly bland and ineffectual, who turns out to be a compulsive and heartless killer. So, to begin with, there are scenes of creepy violence, including a famous passage, describing the murder of a prostitute, that begins: “I backed her against the wall, slugging, and it was like pounding a pumpkin. Hard, then everything giving away at once.”

Like many Thompson novels “The Killer Inside Me” is told in the first person, and the reader eventually discovers that Lou is himself dead: he’s speaking to the reader from beyond the grave, as it were, and his narrative voice is as seductive and elusive as the one he uses to sweet-talk his victims. How can we believe a word he says? Robert Polito, Thompson’s biographer, explained in an interview: “Thompson isn’t like the writers he’s often compared to. He’s not like Hammett, Chandler, Cain. The books aren’t realistic. They’re much closer to phantasmagoria.”

Mr. Tavernier suggested recently that one reason Europeans make better Thompson movies is that they regard him as a serious, literary author, not just a pulp writer. Speaking from Cannes, where he was promoting his new film, “La Princesse de Montpensier,” he said: “There’s a metaphysical element in Thompson, and Americans always leave that out. They take out everything that makes the books great: the dialogue, the great humor. I see him more as a writer like Alfred Jarry, Henry Miller, Celine.”

He also complained about the two movie versions of “The Getaway,” and said about the portion of the book that had been cut, “You could make a very interesting film just from that part alone.”

In France, Mr. Tavernier recalled, “Pop. 1280” was published not in a cheesy paperback but in the highbrow journal Le Novel Observateur, where for some reason the population was reduced to 1275. “Whole novels have been written here about what happened to those five people,” he said, laughing.

“Pop. 1280,” like “The Killer Inside Me,” is set in Texas and is about a bumbling sheriff who sets about murdering some of the townspeople. Mr. Tavernier’s version, “Coup de Torchon,” began to take shape, he went on to say, only when he gave up trying to transpose the story to contemporary Paris and instead moved it to West Africa — a landscape with the proper degree of Thompsonian strangeness. He got the idea, he said, from rereading Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night” and realizing the book’s descriptions of colonial West Africa were “exactly, exactly the world described by Thompson.”

Mr. Winterbottom, who was in New York recently for the Tribeca Film Festival, said he was originally interested in the work of another ’50s pulp writer, David Goodis, whose novel “Down There” was the source for Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player,” but the rights were unavailable, so he turned to Thompson instead. He was initially unaware of the 1976 version, and he said he still hasn’t seen it.

Unlike Mr. Tavernier or even Mr. Frears, who took certain liberties, Mr. Winterbottom was at pains to make what he calls a “very literal film,” one that deviates little from the text of the novel and is hardly watered down. His rendering of the beating scene is so graphic that at early film festival screenings some viewers walked out. He also expands on what is just a hint in the text and dwells on some of the characters’ liking for rough, sadomasochistic sex.

Unlike the Burt Kennedy movie, which in a flashback develops an elaborate Freudian explanation for why Lou is the way he is — scenes of his being beaten and watching his father have sex, as well as some metaphorical shots of underground mine explosions, just for good measure — the Winterbottom version, like the book, leaves Lou’s nature ambiguous. He might be a psychopath who was literally emasculated by his father, he might be a cold-blooded killer pretending to be a wounded psychopath to elicit our sympathy and understanding, or he might be someone whom any of the rest of us could turn into given the right (or wrong) circumstances….

Continued at NYTimes.com: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/movies/06killer.html?ref=movies

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
by writer/director Ricki Stern with co-director Annie Sundberg

I had met Joan Rivers briefly through my parents who have been friends with Joan for several years. My film partner, Annie, and I had just finished the film The Devil Came on Horseback about the genocide in Darfur and we were looking for our next project. I wondered about Joan Rivers. After a brief conversation on the phone with Joan, I met her at her grand apartment. In her den, we spoke intimately for about an hour. She was surprisingly honest about her life, sharing how she felt about turning 75 and how she was still passionate about her work. When I told her I wanted to do a cinema verité documentary following her for the next year, I stressed I would need all access, all the time, which meant showing up at 6 AM as she rolled out of bed without makeup. Joan did not hesitate.

The challenge in making a film about a Joan Rivers, a pop icon, was to reveal something new and surprising. I wanted the film to illustrate the dichotomy of Joan’s stage persona and the Joan that lies beneath—a vulnerable woman looking to her audience for approval and love.

Because of my background in theater, I have always been attracted to the circus life of regional theater and I saw several similarities in Joan’s transient lifestyle. As a stand-up comedian, Joan embodies the old-school performer who travels endlessly, performing multiple shows and then moves on to the next paycheck. It can be a lonely existence and I wanted the film to convey the bittersweet tone of Joan’s long life as a performer.

The film unfolds as Joan ventures into the year seeking her next great project. While following Joan to London where she launched her new play and to various book signings, we religiously filmed her stand-up act at a little theater in NYC where she goes to try out new comedy material without worry of failure. Joan’s irreverent and fearless stand-up work is the consistent backbone to the year, becoming a springboard for many scenes with her at work and with her family. Her stand-up act is where Joan unleashes her dark comedy mind and, while she hones and tempers her act for her larger Vegas shows, the unvarnished act is a window into Joan’s creative mind.

Ultimately I wanted the film to be a universal story about aging in a business that celebrates beauty and youth. Through the up-close exploration of her life as a performer, Joan reveals her groundbreaking history as a female performer and the personal sacrifices she has made to remain relevant in the comedy world.

Joan engenders strong feelings in people…they love her, they hate her…and because many people have some prior exposure to Joan, the film works to strip away those surface associations to reveal a private and surprising portrait of this very public persona.

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: May 28, 2010

The poignant, startling French film “The Father of My Children” opens with a whoosh of activity. A financially struggling independent-movie producer, Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), is driving through Paris, trying to keep the different parts of his life in play. He’s talking — he’s always talking — taking one call after another with a cellphone cradled under an ear. But what he’s really doing is juggling, a tricky proposition, given that he’s holding a cigarette in one hand, carelessly tending to the wheel with the other hand, while a stream of bad news from his creditors and various projects pours into his ear like poison.

Casually handsome and invariably dressed in a suit, though without the tie that might cut off his circulation, Grégoire looks every inch the bourgeois-bohemian businessman. He’s a moviemaker, and, as such, an apparent breed apart. The truth is, however, that while he keeps company with art, his truer mistress is money: he’s millions in debt, and the banks and the tax collectors are coming down hard. As he drives on, still juggling, an assistant warns him about a director who is fast helping lead the company into ruin. “Grégoire, if you allow it, there are no limits,” she says, adding that they need to get the director’s budget under control. “He’s bleeding us dry.” What no one knows is that Grégoire has almost bled out.

Mia Hansen-Love, the writer and director of “The Father of My Children,” based this charismatic, charming man on the well-regarded French producer Humbert Balsan, who abruptly died in 2005. Born into wealth, he started as an actor, appearing as an Arthurian knight in Robert Bresson’s “Lancelot of the Lake” (1974), before moving increasingly behind the camera. He continued to take minor roles, but his life’s pursuit and passion became nurturing films without obvious commercial prospects. They might make it onto the festival circuit — he produced titles by Lars von Trier and Claire Denis, who seem to be represented in this film though not named — but rarely beyond. He was evidently interested in producing Ms. Hansen-Love’s first feature, “All Is Forgiven,” but instead became the touching subject of her second.

A captivating if elusive subject, as it emerges. Although inspired by Mr. Balsan, “The Father of My Children” isn’t a documentary and so, rather than attempt to excavate the mystery of another human being, Ms. Hansen-Love gently digs along the fictionalized margins. She drops us into Grégoire’s life midswirl, letting us catch up to speed with the realistic dialogue that imparts information rather than explanations. Initially, it’s all we can do to keep pace with him as he races from foe to friend, trying to appease a difficult director in Sweden who is the presumed proxy for the Danish Mr. von Trier (“He’s a psychopath,” someone says), and joking with a husky, diminutive French filmmaker who appears to be a stand-in for Ms. Denis.

Grégoire is preoccupied with work and the fast-approaching financial disaster, a calamity that Ms. Hansen-Love makes palpable by beginning and ending many of her shots of him in hurried motion. (You intuit that he’s trying to outrun something; later you realize that that something is his life.) Yet even as Grégoire remains fixed on his troubles, Ms. Hansen-Love’s attention remains divided between him and his small family, the camera continually returning to his three daughters and wife (Chiara Caselli), who are always waiting for him to come home, get off the phone, be here now. The depth of his love for them is never in doubt. But when he compliments his oldest, Clémence (Alice de Lencquesaing), on her earrings, she has to remind him that he bought them. (The de Lencquesaings are father and daughter in real life.)

“The Father of My Children” is a tale of cinema, a story about the agonies of trying to work outside the cinematic mainstream (even in France!). Yet what makes the movie so affecting is that it’s also a love story about a family. Throughout the film, acquaintances and advisers urge Grégoire to sell his film catalog to save his company. He refuses, insisting that if he does, there will be nothing left. Of course he’s wrong, as Ms. Hansen-Love’s repeated and heartfelt images of his daughters and wife forcefully insist. For the film’s first hour, Grégoire, who’s made expressively real by Mr. de Lencquesaing’s understated magnetism, fills the story with excitement. And then he just disappears, a formally bold move that might have emptied out the film if Ms. Hansen-Love hadn’t already filled it with such feeling.

Adapted from Jim Thompson’s black-hearted 1952 crime novel, filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s equally uncompromising and wickedly entertaining The Killer Inside Me has been the subject of controversy for its explicit depictions of violence toward women. Casey Affleck leads a rich ensemble cast as a small-town Texas deputy sheriff, a seemingly chivalrous gentleman who’s revealed to be a degenerate sociopath. I spoke with Affleck by phone about this nasty piece of pulp—and I don’t mean what one victim’s face looks like after being repeatedly punched.

How did you approach this devil of a leading role? Like anything else, whether they’re the protagonist, the antagonist, or an extra. You want to understand what makes them tick, what they want and care about, and what stands in their way. You make it three-dimensional instead of a flat portrait of some murderer we’ve seen a million times. What’s great about the book and script is that you get to understand somebody who seems, on the surface, completely nuts and incapable of empathizing with.

Since the film’s premiere at Sundance, some have criticized the violence for being too extreme or misogynistic. There has to be space for those voices. In the world and what we do, making movies and media, I think they are valid—and, at times, righteous. In this case, they’re barking up the wrong tree. The irresponsible films that contribute to a desensitization of the culture aren’t like this movie. If you’re going to show violence, make it realistic and upsetting. The movies that bother me are the ones in which killing of any kind seems common and OK. People crash into each other, punch each other, stab each other, shoot each other and don’t get hurt, or there’s nothing upsetting about it. It mattered a lot to me that this be a realistic depiction of violence.

Jim Thompson’s work has been adapted for the screen several times. Why do you think it’s so potent? I’ve seen a couple of the movies, and I’ve read this book. Even though it’s within a genre, there are themes and characters that recur throughout his work that make me think it’s something that really matters to him—that he was exploring in an honest and personal way. When people do that, they usually end up striking a chord that’s resonant and perhaps timeless.

Though a vegan like you wouldn’t eatbarbecue, could you ever see yourself settling out there in God’s country? Absolutely! I loved shooting in Oklahoma and the big, flat plains. I don’t know why, but it has a special place in my heart. I have some family down in Georgia and Florida, so I’ve spent a lot of time in the South, and I love it there, too. The people, culture, language, and terrain—everything about it is so varied. I’ve driven across the country maybe 15 times. I love this whole country.

Do you have a beast inside of you? The bad Casey, perhaps? I think everybody has a million shades of gray inside them. That’s in part what this movie is about: all the badness inside the people who seem the most benign and neighborly, and the good that’s inside the people who seem the most malevolent and wicked.

But, specifically, do you have triggers that set you off? Probing journalists. [Laughs.]

‘The Killer Inside Me’ opens June 18

Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed. This is the mantra of the pessimist and the persecuted alike, the preemptive strike of those who tend to paint the picture a little blacker than it is. And then there is Joan Rivers, the orneriest creature ever to darken Hollywood’s door. She once told me that her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who killed himself in 1987, lived by the heartwarming motto “Fuck them over before they fuck you over first.”

I have known Rivers for 22 years, long enough to know that she does not exactly share this view of the world, even if she likes to muck around in it from time to time. In fact, she considers it a flaw in her late husband’s character, one that set in motion the chain reaction that almost destroyed her career: In the mid-eighties, Rivers was one of the most successful comedians in the world. She was the highest-paid entertainer on the Vegas Strip and Johnny Carson’s permanent guest host on the Tonight Show, until she was lured away to Fox to host her own late-night talk show. Edgar, she says, was a toxic presence on the set of her show, fighting bitterly with Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch over everything from office furniture to money. Joan and Edgar were fired after only seven months, and the fallout was devastating. She was excommunicated by Carson, her mentor, for leaving; she was effectively banned from late night, hardly ever invited to appear on Letterman, Leno, Conan. Her marriage fell apart and then Edgar swallowed a bottle of pills. Her daughter, Melissa, stopped speaking to her. Rivers fell into a deep depression, became bulimic, and considered suicide herself.

When I first met Rivers it was 1988, just a year after Edgar had killed himself. She was moving back to New York after fourteen years in Los Angeles and taking over Linda Lavin’s role in Broadway Bound, a gig that she says pulled her life out of its nosedive. It wouldn’t be the last time she found redemption through her work.

On a recent morning in early May, we are sitting in her study eating cake. It has been served to us by Kevin and Debbie, her butler and housekeeper, who have been living with her for twenty years in their own quarters in her grand apartment, a mini-Versailles on East 62nd Street. (“Marie Antoinette would have lived here,” Rivers likes to say, “if she had money.”) Joan loves cake, loves anything sweet. The Joan Rivers diet: You can eat anything you want before 3 p.m. and then nothing for the rest of the day. When she goes out to dinner, she puts a small pile of Altoids on the table next to her plate, which she eats one after another while barely touching her food.

We are talking about the peculiar turn of events her life has taken recently, how she is suddenly squarely at the center of the culture again—something that has escaped her since her Fox debacle. At the age of 76, it seems, she has been rediscovered. Much of it has to do with a new documentary about her life, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which opens in theaters on June 11. Roger Ebert wrote, in one of the film’s many rave reviews, that it is “one of the most truthful documentaries about show business I’ve seen. Also maybe the funniest.” The film comes at the end of a remarkable year for Rivers, one that began when she won The Celebrity Apprentice (after one of the uglier reality-TV showdowns), outfoxing all those bimbos, has-beens, and two-bit poker players to emerge—somehow—as the sympathetic character. At long last, not fired! It’s unfamiliar territory for Rivers: to be the one people root for.

“It’s amazing,” says Rivers, shaking her head in disbelief. But then this: “People who have seen the film come up to me and say, ‘I never liked you until now.’ TV interviewers say, right in front of me, ‘Even if you have always hated Joan Rivers … you are going to love her and be mesmerized by this film.’ They spit right in my face and then spend the next ten minutes wiping it dry.” That is when she shows me the pillow she has embroidered that sits on a leather couch in her study: DON’T EXPECT PRAISE WITHOUT ENVY UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD.

If Joan Rivers has a hard time taking a compliment, she has an even tougher time handing one out. “I will only praise someone who can’t take anything away from me,” she says with a mordant laugh. “People ask me all the time: ‘What do you think about Sarah Silverman?’ ” She switches into a comically polite-insincere voice. “Hmmm. She’s nice, I guess. I really haven’t seen her.”

CONTINUED IN FULL AT http://nymag.com/movies/features/66181/

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e16a8eae47/the-randolph-hotel-featuring-the-safdie-bros

Cannes, FRANCE (May 20, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company is acquiring U.S. rights to famed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s CERTIFIED COPY, which is screening in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film, which was written and directed by Kiarostami, stars Oscar-winner Juliette Binoche (THE ENGLISH PATIENT, CHOCOLAT, SUMMER HOURS) and British opera singer William Shimell making his onscreen debut.

CERTIFIED COPY was produced by Marin Karmitz, Nathanael Karmitz, Charles Gillibert, and Angelo Barbagallo. The film was executive produced by Gaetano Daniele. IFC Films will release CERTIFIED COPY 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.

CERTIFIED COPY is the story of a meeting between a man and woman in a small Italian village in Southern Tuscany. The man is a British author who has just finished giving a lecture at a conference. The woman, from France, owns an art gallery. This is a common story that could happen to anyone, anywhere.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment said, “For all of us at IFC Films, CERTIFIED COPY is the discovery of the Cannes Film Festival. We are honored to bring what we think will be Abbas Kiarostami’s most successful American release, featuring an absolutely radiant performance by Juliette Binoche, to audiences. We are also very happy to be working with our friends at MK2 again after our successful collaborations on SUMMER HOURS and PARANOID PARK.”

“We really couldn’t have hoped for a better distributor to guide Abbas Kiarostami’s film to U.S. audiences. In light of our past history of successful releases such as last year’s SUMMER HOURS, we are more than confident that this film will gain from IFC Films’ capacity to unite European films with a large audience. This bridge uniting Europe and the U.S. gives hope to uncompromising directors everywhere,” says producers Nathanaël Karmitz and Charles Gillibert of MK2.

The deal was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, SVP of Acquisitions and Co-Productions for IFC Films, and with Matthieu Giblin of MK2, on behalf of the filmmakers.

Abbas Kiarostami is one of the most revered filmmakers in the world today. His deeply humanist films have challenged viewers expectations and balance a narrative and documentary style. Born in Tehran on June 22, 1940, Kiarostami made his debut with a short film in 1970 called THE BREAD AND ALLEY. He first earned international acclaim and recognition in 1987 with WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOME? He won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for A TASTE OF THE CHERRY and the Golden Lion in 1999 for THE WIND WILL CARRY US. CERTIFIED COPY is the first film he shot outside of Iran and is currently in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

IFC FILMS GETS U.S. RIGHTS TO BERTRAND TAVERNIER’S THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER

Cannes, FRANCE (May 21, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company is acquiring U.S. rights to internationally acclaimed director Bertrand Tavernier’s THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER, which is screening in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film was produced by Eric Heumann, with a screenplay by Jean Cosmos, Francois-Olivier Rousseau and Tavernier, based on the novel by Madame de la Fayette. It stars Melanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson, Gaspard Ulliel, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, and Rapahel Personnaz. IFC Films will release the film theatrically and via its IFC in Theaters platform which brings critically-acclaimed independent movies to theatrical and on-demand viewers.

Set in sixteenth century France, as the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants rage against a backdrop of intrigue and shifting alliances, THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER is an epic drama and timeless love story that tells the tale of Marie de Mézieres, a beautiful young aristocrat, and Henri de Guise, one of the kingdom’s most intrepid heroes. The two are in love, but Marie’s father promises her hand in marriage to the Prince of Montpensier. The film follows Marie as she is caught between the many men in her path — the prince, her tutor Chabannes who falls in love with her, and Henri de Guise who returns from battle to find his feelings for Marie are as strong as ever.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment said, “We see many, many films but it has been a long time since we have seen a period costume drama that is as beautifully crafted as Bertrand Tavernier’s THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER. It’s perfect on so many levels, and Tavernier is really a master filmmaker. It is always a great pleasure for us to do business with Studio Canal, especially on such a masterwork.”

The deal was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, SVP of Acquisitions and Co-Productions for IFC Films, and with Harold Van Lier and Anna Marsh at Studio Canal, on behalf of the filmmakers.

In addition to THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER, IFC Films also picked up several other titles at this week’s Cannes Film Festival including Xavier Dolan’s HEARTBEATS, Antoine Blossier’s PREY, and Abbas Kiarostami’s CERTIFIED COPY starring Juliette Binoche. Additionally, the company announced plans at the start of the festival to partner with Sundance Channel on a multi-platform release for Olivier Assayas’ epic portrait of renowned international terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Following a premiere on the Sundance Channel in October, IFC Films will distribute both the extended, three-part version of the film as well as a theatrical version nationally in theaters, with the theatrical version available nationally on video-on-demand.

Cannes, France (May 19, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company is acquiring U.S. rights to two films: Xavier Dolan’s HEARTBEATS which is screening in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Antoine Blossier’s PREY. IFC Films will release HEARTBEATS 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. PREY will be released by the company’s recently launched new genre and specialty IFC Midnight label.

The deals for both films were negotiated by Lizzie Nastro, Director of Acquisitions & Co-Productions for IFC Films and with Sebastien Chesneau, Head of International Sales at REZO, on behalf of the filmmakers.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment said, “It’s with great pleasure that we continue our relationship with REZO with HEARTBEATS and PREY. Xavier Dolan is one of the most exciting young talents working in cinema today and we couldn’t be happier to bring HEARTBEATS to America. We also think audiences are really going to love PREY which is an inventive and wild ride, as welll as an impressive debut by Antoine Blossier.”

HEARTBEATS is the second film in two years for Xavier Dolan at the Cannes Film Festival where his debut I KILLED MY MOTHER won three of the four awards out of Director’s Fortnight. The film tells the story of Francis (Dolan) and Marie (Monia Chokri) who are good friends. One night, they meet Nicolas (Niels Schneider), a young man from the country who has just settled in Montreal. From encounter to encounter, from moment to moment, troubled by innumerable signs — some real, some imagined — Francis and Marie fall deeper and deeper into a fantastical obsession with him. Soon, they find themsleves on the precipice of a love duel that threathens the friendship they once thought indestructible.

PREY tells the story of Nathan (BEAU TRAVAIL’S Gregoire Colin) who is at a countryside retreat for a Fall family reunion that he expects to be particularly stormy. Claire, his wife, has to announce her pregnancy and there are tough decisions that need to be made to prevent the family’s pesticides business from closing down. But on the first night that the family gathers, a terrorized deer mysteriously attacks Claire’s father. The men decide to venture into the surrounding forest to find the reasons for the animal’s odd behavior. Carrying a shotgun for the first time in his life and witnessing the growing tensions between the men in the family, Nathan soon discovers that hunting season is not over yet. Now they’ve become the prey. Marking the debut film for Antoine Blossier, PREY brings together a special effects team from some of Hollywood’s best films.

- CARLOS, Sundance Channel’s First Scripted Project, to Premiere on Network in October –
- IFC Films Plans Subsequent October Theatrical and VOD Release -

Cannes, France (May 13, 2010) – Sundance Channel (www.sundancechannel.com) and IFC Films (www.ifcfilms.com) announced plans today for a multi-platform release of the highly-anticipated film, CARLOS. The five-and-a-half-hour film is the definitive portrait of the renowned international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, who masterminded a wave of terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Produced by Studio Canal in association with Sundance Channel, the film is Sundance Channel’s first original scripted project and is scheduled to premiere on the network as a three-part mini-series in October. Following the Sundance Channel premiere, IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, will distribute both the extended, three-part version of the film as well as a theatrical version nationally in theaters, with the theatrical version available nationally on video-on-demand. Sundance Channel and IFC Films are owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

Directed by Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours), the film stars Edgar Ramirez (CHE) in the title role. CARLOS was selected for the Official Selection at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and will screen Wednesday, May 19 at noon at the GRANDTHÉÂTRE LUMIÈRE.

“Every so often a project like CARLOS comes along that presents a one-of-a-kind opportunity to do something different that will maximize its potential and its exposure,” said Sarah Barnett, executive vice president and general manager, Sundance Channel. “CARLOS is a hugely ambitious and beautifully executed work of drama; we are excited to move into the scripted arena with a project of this caliber.”

“We’re looking forward to working with our sister company Sundance Channel on the multi-platform release of CARLOS. IFC Films pioneered the day and date VOD model, and we pride ourselves on releasing films in unique ways which will expand the audience for each project,” said Jonathan Sehring, President, IFC Entertainment. “We’re excited to continue our ongoing relationship with Studio Canal and are happy to be working with Olivier once again after our great success with the award winning Summer Hours.”

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.

Directed by acclaimed French filmmaker Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours), CARLOS examines the life of this infamous criminal, who was alternately seen as a hero, playboy and revolutionary or a villainous assassin. Starring Edgar Ramirez (CHE, Domino) in the lead role, CARLOS includes a sweeping cast of international talent from France, Germany, Japan and the Middle East and was shot in various countries including Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Lebanon and Morocco.

Assayas’ box-office success Summer Hours won Best Foreign Film from the National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Assocation and the Boston Society of Film Critics.

About Sundance Channel
Under the creative direction of Robert Redford, Sundance Channel is the television destination for independent-minded viewers seeking something different. Bold, imaginative and uncompromising, Sundance Channel offers audiences a diverse and engaging selection of films, documentaries and original programs. Launched in 1996, Sundance Channel is a subsidiary of Rainbow Media Holdings LLC. Sundance Channel operates independently of the non-profit Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival, but shares the overall Sundance mission of encouraging artistic freedom of expression. Sundance Channel’s website address is www.sundancechannel.com.

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.

About Rainbow Media Holdings LLC
Rainbow Media Holdings LLC is a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC). Rainbow Media owns and operates some of the world’s most popular and award-winning entertainment brands, including AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel, WE tv, Wedding Central and IFC Entertainment (IFC Center, IFC Festival Direct, IFC Films, IFC In Theaters and IFC Productions). Additional information about Rainbow Media’s multiplatform brands is available at www.rainbow-media.com.

Contact Information:
Courtney Ott Sarah Eaton Susan Norget
IFC Films Sundance Channel Susan Norget PR & Marketing
646-273-7214 646-273-3541 (212) 431-0090
(cell) 917-849-9235 (cell) 917-593-4100 (cell) 917-833-3056
ceott@ifcfilms.com sarah.eaton@sundancechannel.com Susan@norget.com

“Guerilla marketing and indie films have always gone hand-in-glove, from traditional methods like postering and flyering to more exotic, inventive means like, say, the guy who attached a giant bird to his car to promote Birdemic! Getting the word out is the name of the game, and it never hurts to have a good hook. To that end, filmmaking siblings Josh and Benny Safdie have gone old (or is it olde?) school to promote their new picture, Daddy Longlegs, opening tomorrow. They’ve outfitted Benny inside of a classic sandwich board set up proclaiming, somewhat modestly methinks, “This Film Exists!” It’s charming and low rent, which also might be a good way to describe their filmic oeuvre so far. A video of Benny doing his schtick after the jump.
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My favorite thing about this is how the ad also asserts “We Buy Gold!” Daddy Longlegs is, by the way, a small but very amiable film and, along with Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, is perfect counter-programming for a weekend that’s sure to owned by the dreary and overblown-looking Robin Hood.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=069FO4xMvQI&feature=player_embedded

New York, NY (May 11, 2010) – IFC Films, one of the leading foreign and independent film distributors, today launches a new genre label called IFC Midnight. IFC Midnight will offer the very best in international genre cinema, including horror, sci-fi, thrillers, erotic arthouse, action and more. Four new IFC midnight films will premiere each month on video-on-demand; select titles will also be released in theaters at the same time as their VOD premiere. In addition, an IFC Midnight branded line of Blu-ray and DVD product will be released via a distribution arrangement with MPI Media Group

President of IFC Entertainment Jonathan Sehring said: “Many of our most successful VOD titles are those that might fall under the Midnight label – not just films that are straight up horror, erotic arthouse or genre films but also ones that shock audiences, push boundaries and stir up controversy – so officially creating IFC Midnight was the logical next step. While we as a company continue to focus on a diverse range of films, this is one particular area which we are going to heavily brand and promote.”

The IFC Midnight label will continue to build on the company’s past successes with films such as Lars Von Trier’s controversial drama ANTICHRIST, Kim Jee Woon’s THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD, the Nazi zombie film DEAD SNOW, the supernatural thriller DARK MIRROR, the envelope-pushing erotic dramas THE EXTERMINATING ANGELS and A L’AVENTURE, and Larry Fessenden’s environmental thriller THE LAST WINTER. Some of the titles that will play or premiere under the IFC Midnight label in the next few months include the following:

The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Written and directed by Tom Six, the film is a truly one-of-a kind horror film about a mad scientist who achieves his sick lifetime fantasy of creating a human centipede. Entertainment Weekly wondered if this may be “the most disgusting horror movie of all time?” The film — a winner at Fantastic Fest for Best Horror Film and Best Actor, and a winner of Best Film at Screamfest LA — premiered theatrically on April 30 and will premiere on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning this month.

Cell 211. Directed by Daniel Monzón and winner of 8 Spanish Goya Awards, including Best Picture, this taut prison drama tells the gripping story of a rookie prison guard who becomes trapped in a cell during a violent riot and must convince the prisoners he is one of them. The film, an official selection at the Toronto and San Sebastian Film Festivals, will premiere exclusively on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in June.

Doghouse. Directed by Jake West, this riotous British horror comedy follows ravenous, blood-thirsty female zombies as they wreak havoc on a group of guys trying to enjoy a male-bonding weekend. The film will premiere exclusively on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in June.

Don’t Look Back. From director Marina de Van (IN MY SKIN) comes this tense psychological thriller about a beautiful, best-selling author (Sophie Marceau) who loses her grip on reality as she slowly morphs into the body of another woman (Monica Bellucci). The film, an official selection last year at the Cannes Film Festival, will premiere exclusively on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in June.

Valhalla Rising. Director Nicolas Winding Refn (BRONSON, THE PUSHER TRILOGY) delivers an action-packed epic about a savage one-eyed Viking warrior and a young runaway who embark on a dangerous odyssey. Starring Mads Mikkelson, the film — an official selection at Venice and Toronto last year and a featured selection at the upcoming BAM Cinemafest — will premiere in theaters and on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in July.

Exam. In this gripping thriller, director Stuart Hazeldine follows eight strangers as they enter a ruthless competition to get the job of a lifetime, where the stakes soon become life or death. EXAM premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and had its US debut at the Santa Barbara Film Festival (where it won the top award), The film will premiere exclusively on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in July.

The Horde (La Horde). Directed by Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher, this French zombie movie follows a posse of crooked cops, malevolent gangsters and a horde of walking dead through an action packed story of escape and revenge. A hit at the Venice Film Festival, London’s FrightFest Film Festival and at this year’s COLCOA (City of Lights City of Angels), the film will premiere in theaters and on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in August.

Vengeance. From acclaimed director Johnnie To (ELECTION 1 and 2, EXILED) comes his first English language film starring French superstar Johnny Hallyday along with To regulars Anthony Wong, Simon Yam, and Lam Suet. The film, a revenge thriller, was screened in competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and screened as an official selection at last year’s Toronto and San Francisco Film Festival. In the film, Hallyday plays François Costello, a Parisian restaurant owner who is in Macau at the request of his daughter—to avenge a savage attack on her family. The film will premiere in theaters and on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in August.

Enter the Void. Filmmaker Gaspar Noe’s long awaited follow up to the controversial IRREVERSIBLE is a cinematically audacious exploration of the connected nature of sex, drugs, life, and death that was one of the most talked about films on the festival circuit in the past year – playing at Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and SXSW. Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the film follows Linda (Paz De La Herta of THE LIMITS OF CONTROL) and her brother Oscar (Nathan Brown) on a spiritual journey through the city of Tokyo where the past, present and future merge into a hallucinatory maelstrom. The film will premiere in theaters and on VOD under the IFC Midnight label beginning in September.

New York, NY (May 7, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that the company has acquired North American and multiple foreign rights including Asia, the Middle East and East-Central Europe to Aaron Katz’s critically acclaimed COLD WEATHER. Written, directed and edited by Katz, and produced by Brendan McFadden, Ben Stambler, and Parts & Labor’s Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy, the film stars Cris Lankenau (Katz’s QUIET CITY), Trieste Kelly Dunn (UNITED 93) and Raul Castillo (DON’T LET ME DROWN). COLD WEATHER made its world premiere in March at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas where it emerged as one of the most critically acclaimed films of the festival. It will next be seen at the Los Angeles Film Festival and BAMCinemaFest. IFC Films will release COLD WEATHER 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.

Doug (Lankenau) has just moved back to his hometown of Portland, Oregon, to move in with his sister (Dunn), hoping for another chance at jumpstarting their grown up lives. When Doug’s ex-girlfriend comes to town unexpectedly, only to disappear shortly after, Doug, Gail, and their new friend Carlos (Castillo) appoint themselves as detectives in what they see as a real life Sherlock Holmes situation. While it is part classic mystery, at the heart of COLD WEATHER is a beautiful, natural story of family camaraderie and friendship.

President of IFC Entertainment Jonathan Sehring said: “”We’ve always been fans of Aaron Katz’s work but, with COLD WEATHER, he has made a great step forward as a filmmaker. It’s great fun to see him play with the detective/mystery genre and he’s aided by a wonderful cast and fantastic creative team. This is one of the most original American independent films of the year and we can’t wait to bring it to audiences via all of our various platforms.”

“This film was a collaboration between a small group of friends who know and trust each other. When deciding who would release the film, it was important to us to continue to work in that spirit,” said Katz. “Over the years, we’ve had a chance to get know the folks at IFC and see firsthand the way they support and champion independent film. From the start, they believed in the movie and their continued enthusiasm affirmed that we had found the ideal partner to distribute the film.”

The deal was negotiated by Jeff Deutchman for IFC Films and with Ben Stambler on behalf of the filmmakers.

Worldwide sales company Visit Films has acquired international festival rights as well as sales rights in the countries not included in the deal with IFC. Visit will be premiering the film for sales at the 2010 Marche du Film in Cannes next week and is currently arranging for international and regional festival premieres.

About the Filmmaker
Aaron Katz was born in Portland, Oregon. In high school, he became interested in film and acting. When he realized that he wasn’t a very good actor, he decided to go to film school at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Immediately after graduation, he and two of his college roommates drove a beat-up 1963 Chevy Nova from North Carolina to Portland in order to make his first feature, DANCE PARTY, USA. QUIET CITY, his second feature, premiered at SXSW 2007. Subsequently, QUIET CITY had critically praised theatrical runs in several cites, appeared on a number of year-end top ten lists, was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at Film Independent’s Spirit Awards, was released on DVD by Benten Films, and can now be seen on the Sundance Channel. Currently, Aaron lives in Pittsburgh.

Agnès Jaoui visits the Walter Reade theater for a sneak preview of the upcoming LET IT RAIN, plus five more of her witty films about contemporary life.

On sale: Thursday, May 20

Social Deceptions, Wry Perceptions: The Films of Agnès Jaoui

Writer, actor, and director, “triple threat” Agnès Jaoui is simply one of the brightest talents to have emerged in cinema over the past two decades. Her brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized films-created in collaboration with her partner Jean-Pierre Bacri-exhibit an intelligence and keen perception of contemporary life that is both inspiring and tremendously satisfying. Featuring Jaoui in person and a sneak preview of Let It Rain (opening in June).

Un air de famille (Family Resemblances)
Cédric Klapisch, 1996, France/UK/Switzerland; 110m
This superbly acted adaptation of Jaoui and Bacri’s popular stage play turns a birthday party into a tension-filled but immensely entertaining history of a family.
Wed Jun 2: 4:15

Let It Rain
Agnès Jaoui, 2008, France; 110m
A would-be feminist politician agrees to star in a documentary about successful women, only to discover the extent of her own vanity and hang-ups. Agnès Jaoui in person!
Tue Jun 1: 6:15

Look at Me
Agnès Jaoui, 2004, France/Italy; 110m
A talented young singer yearns for the affection of her famous novelist father in this popular portrait of wounded egos and unrequited longings. Opening Night Film, NYFF ‘03.
Tue Jun 1: 2:00
Wed Jun 2: 8:45
Thu Jun 3: 4:15

The Role of Her Life
François Favrat, 2004, France; 100m
Jaoui teamed with another director-screenwriter, François Favrat, for this behind-the-scenes tale of a fashion-mag freelancer playing personal assistant to a movie star (played by Jaoui!).
Tue Jun 1: 4:10

Same Old Song (On connaît la chanson)
Alain Resnais, 1997, France; 120m
A circle of prevaricating Parisians express their secret desires by breaking into snatches of popular songs, in Resnais’s César-winning Dennis Potter homage (scripted by Jaoui and Bacri).
Tue Jun 1: 9:00
Wed Jun 2: 2:00

The Taste of Others
Agnès Jaoui, 2000, France; 112m
Bohemia and bourgeoisie collide, as three pairs of potential lovers flirt high and low in Jaoui’s subtly drawn look at the ties that bind.
Wed Jun 2: 6:30
Thu Jun 3: 2:00

BY ROGER EBERT / May 5, 2010

It’s not death itself that’s so bad. It’s what you might have to go through to get there. No horror film I’ve seen inflicts more terrible things on its victims than “The Human Centipede.” You would have to be very brave to choose this ordeal over simply being murdered. Maybe you’d need to also be insane.

I’m about to describe what happens to the film’s victims. This will be a spoiler. I don’t care, because (1) the details are common knowledge in horror film circles, and (2) if you don’t know, you may be grateful to be warned. This is a movie I don’t think I should be coy about.

OK. Dr. Heiter is a mad scientist. He was once a respected surgeon, but has now retreated to his luxurious home in the German forest, which contains an operating room in the basement. His skin has a sickly pallor, his hair is dyed black, his speech reminds us of a standard Nazi, and he gnashes his teeth. He is filled with hatred and vile perversion.

He drugs his victims and dumps them into his Mercedes. When they regain consciousness, they find themselves tied to hospital beds. He provides them with a little slide show to brief them on his plans. He will demonstrate his skills as a surgeon by — hey, listen, now you’d really better stop reading. What’s coming next isn’t so much a review as a public service announcement.

Heiter plans to surgically join his victims by sewing together their mouths and anuses, all in a row, so the food goes in at the front and comes out at the rear. They will move on their hands and knees like an insect. You don’t want to be part of the Human Centipede at all, but you most certainly don’t want to be in the middle. Why does he want to commit this atrocity? He is insane, as I’ve already explained.

He also wants to do it because he is in a movie by Tom Six, a Dutch director whose previous two films average 4 out of 10 on the IMDb.com scale, which is a score so low very few directors attain it. Six has now made a film deliberately intended to inspire incredulity, nausea and hopefully outrage. It’s being booked as a midnight movie, and is it ever. Boozy fanboys will treat it like a thrill ride.

And yet within Six, there stirs the soul of a dark artist. He treats his material with utter seriousness; there’s none of the jokey undertone of a classic Hammer horror film like “Scream … and Scream Again” (1970), in which every time the victim awoke, another limb had been amputated. That one starred the all-star trio of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and you could see they were having fun. Dieter Laser, who plays Dr. Heiter, takes the role with relentless sincerity. This is his 63rd acting role, but, poor guy, is seemingly the one he was born to play.

Tom Six is apparently the director’s real name. I learn his favorite actor is Klaus Kinski, he is an AK-47 enthusiast, and wears RAF sunglasses and Panama hats. Not the kind of guy you want to share your seat on a Ferris wheel. He has said, “I get a rash from too much political correctness.” I promise you that after this movie, his skin was smooth as a Gerber baby’s.

I have long attempted to take a generic approach. In other words, is a film true to its genre and does it deliver what its audiences presumably expect? “The Human Centipede” scores high on this scale. It is depraved and disgusting enough to satisfy the most demanding midnight movie fan. And it’s not simply an exploitation film.

The director makes, for example, effective use of the antiseptic interior of Heiter’s labyrinthine home. Doors and corridors lead nowhere and anywhere. In a scene where the police come calling, Six wisely has Heiter almost encourage their suspicions. And there is a scene toward the end, as the Human Centipede attempts escape, that’s so piteous, it transcends horror and approaches tragedy.

The members of the Centipede are Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie and Akihiro Kitamura. The Japanese actor screams in subtitled Japanese, perhaps because he will broaden the film’s appeal among Asian horror fans. In the film’s last half, the two actresses don’t scream at all, if you follow me.

I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine.

“THIS SUMMER’S MOVIE BAD GUYS HAVE REALLY GOT THE GOODS
By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY

Mickey Rourke may get the summer started Friday in Iron Man 2 as Whiplash, a laser-whipping, cockatoo-loving villain. But he’s hardly the only, or even the biggest, scoundrel of summer. Hollywood is showing its sympathy for the devil by anchoring some of its biggest movies with characters who are more villain than hero. USA TODAY takes a look.

‘The Killer Inside Me’

Opening: June 18

An affable Texas lawman has everyone fooled. He comes off as your average nice guy but hides a sick, secret temptation to murder.

Casey Affleck plays the lead, based on the popular 1952 crime novel, and the film — which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January — has been dividing audiences because of its graphic violence. The character of Lou Ford may be the darkest and most disturbing of the summer.

“In his mind, he’s the victim. And to a certain extent he is. The book and the movie is about how violence and abuse begets violence and abuse. He was beaten, and when he gets older, he just can’t help himself,” Affleck says.

“I think violence depicted in a realistic way — in which there are very real ramifications, and the victims are real human beings — that’s much more responsible than the kind of violence we see in nine out of 10 movies, in which we don’t know the victims, we don’t care about them.”

Filmmakers Tom Six and Ilona Six and cast members Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, and Akihiro Kitamura will appear in person at midnight screenings at the IFC Center on Friday and Saturday!

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE is available nationwide on demand via Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Time Warner, Bright House, Charter and Insight. Visit www.ifcfilms.com to watch the trailer, and join our fan page on Facebook for daily updates, links, and much more! http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheHumanCentipede

The film expands nationally beginning May 7th, with special late night screening events in select cities.

Karina Longworth, for The Village Voice:

“Tom Six’s Torture-Porn Game-Changer The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

In Tom Six’s torture-porn game-changer The Human Centipede, an evil German doctor kidnaps a Japanese man and two vapid American girl tourists, imprisons them in his basement lab, and shows them a presentation of simplistic hand-drawn slides that illustrate his diabolical plan: By surgically connecting all three via digestive tract, he will turn three beings into one. Just like that, an iconic movie monster is born.

The notion of a human centipede assumes that humans are interchangeable widgets, and thus, as long as there are more available, the centipede can keep growing indefinitely—and it’ll be exactly the same, except more horrible. So, yes, the sequel possibilities are endless. But on some level, the film may exist to mock the idea of a horror franchise in which the monster/threat/body count gets bigger with each iteration. (This Godzilla movie is just like the last Godzilla movie, except now he’s even more radioactive! Human Millipede is just like Human Centipede, except with even more gastric extension!) Either way, Six has created a marketer’s dream—if not for the whole “ass to mouth” thing.

Despite the above phrase, the film itself is not as scat-pornographic as you might think; there’s no excrement onscreen. (That said, when spoken in Centipede, the line “Swallow it, bitch!” gruesomely transcends its usual hardcore porn context.) Never as explicit as a Saw or Hostel film, Centipede disarms the viewer with comedy early on, then swiftly shifts into the shit (literally and figuratively), managing to maintain a steady aura of stomach-churning dread through the end purely from performance and suggestion. It’s definitive psychological horror, positioning the viewer to identify with the victim’s suffering and lack of free will, even after harshly judging what they did with that free will when they had it.

In fact, The Human Centipede is startlingly relatable: Six uses the centipede to talk about humanity. In the tradition of the first Frankenstein films, various contemporary “advanced interrogation techniques,” and certain interpretations of Catholic purgatory, Centipede plays on the notion that the only thing more frightening than death is a state bridging life and death, in which, though one’s body is no longer his own to control, the mind remains conscious. In Six’s view, the moral imperative to preserve life only goes so far—eventually, death is a relief.

Centipede may fit into a certain horror tradition by hyper-intensely depicting the fundamental fear of limbo, but it zigs where most of those films zag. If the standard cinematic way of dealing with that fear is by giving victims a last-minute burst of heroism to arrange their own reprieve, then the film is truly subversive in its hopelessness, its refusal to transform its victims into self-saviors with dubious impromptu powers. Centipede ultimately manages to correct mainstream horror’s bullshit conservative ideology. It’s become an old film theory chestnut that the horror heroine who says “no” to sex gets to live while her friends die—thus, the Final Girl. Six’s final girl never gets to have sex, but in the end, she’s truly fucked.”

Jeannette Catsoulis for The New York Times

Stranded Tourists Fall Into a Surgical Trap
Published: April 30, 2010

A must-see for coprophiliacs and spanking enthusiasts, “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)” may be the year’s first mainstream fetish movie. Whether its writer and director, Tom Six, has more on his mind than mere titillation is debatable; either way this twisted, hammy bio-horror is sufficiently original to lure even the most satiated genre fans.

An all-too-familiar setup finds a couple of ditzy American tourists (Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie) stranded in the woods en route to a German nightclub. Stumbling through the dark, they happen upon the villa of Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser), a cadaverous surgeon whose obsession with twins and demented medical procedures suggests part David Cronenberg, part Josef Mengele. Cowed by their host’s praying-mantis affect and plentiful supply of Rohypnol, the girls soon learn their fate: to be joined, mouth to anus, into a single plumbing system headed by a luckless Japanese hostage (Akihiro Kitamura).

Almost more revolting to describe than to watch, the film’s images (captured with a remarkably steady hand by the divertingly named Goof De Koning) accomplish much with suggestion and strategically placed bandages. But whether a commentary on Nazi atrocities or a literal expression of filmmaking politics, the grotesque fusion at least silences the female leads, both of whose voices could strip paint.

Concluding with a scene that prepares us more for a commercial break than end titles, “Centipede” promises to return with a sequel that, according to Mr. Six, will make this movie “look like ‘My Little Pony.’ ” I believe him.

Jessica Alba and Casey Affleck defend Winterbottom’s grueling Jim Thompson adaptation from charges of misogyny
By Andrew O’Hehir

Long before any civilians had actually seen it, Michael Winterbottom’s film “The Killer Inside Me” — adapted from Jim Thompson’s legendary 1952 crime novel — became a blogosphere target as a purported example of Hollywood’s pornographic glorification of violence against women. After the movie’s Sundance premiere in January, a female audience member assailed Winterbottom and the festival during the post-screening Q&A: “I don’t understand how Sundance could book this movie. How dare you? How dare Sundance?”

There were reports at the time that co-star Jessica Alba, who plays a prostitute who is literally beaten to a pulp by Casey Affleck’s deputy-sheriff protagonist, had walked out of that Sundance screening in disgust. Alba later denied this, and on Tuesday night at the film’s New York premiere in the Tribeca Film Festival, she and other cast members (including Kate Hudson, whose character suffers a similar fate) mounted an articulate defense of Winterbottom and his movie.

“Believe it or not, when I read the script it was a little bit watered down from the novel,” Alba said during an onstage chat with blogger and critic Glenn Kenny. “I read the novel and found it incredibly powerful. I took it to Michael and said, ‘I want to shoot this.’”

What “this” means is a story about one of the most chilling antiheroes in fictional history. On some level, complaining that “The Killer Inside Me” is full of misogynistic violence is akin to reading “Moby-Dick” and objecting to all the stuff about whaling. Lou Ford (played brilliantly by Affleck) presents at first as a baby-faced, all-American small-town cop, who doesn’t even carry a gun because crime in Central City, Texas, is nearly nonexistent. But beneath his ultra-normal veneer Lou has the tastes and background of a depraved European aristocrat (indeed, I suspect Lou inspired Thomas Harris’ creation of Hannibal Lecter). He’s probably the only person in Central City who reads Freud and listens to Schubert — or whose sexual appetite goes quite so far into sadomasochism, and beyond.

Within the first few minutes of the film, Lou responds to being slapped and slugged by Joyce Lakeland (Alba), a hooker he’s running out of town, by pulling down her panties and whipping her bare ass with his belt. Is this safe and sane, consensual S/M play? Absolutely not. Is it what they both want? Absolutely yes. The sequence is both erotic and violent, profoundly troubling and potentially arousing, designed to provoke a whiplash of emotional, psychological and libidinal responses. It sets the table for what follows: an exploration of the boundary between Eros and Thanatos, love and annihilation, that’s at least as dark as anything found in the collected works of the Marquis de Sade and Georges Bataille.

Depending on your point of view, Lou is either a deranged sociopath or an inevitable product of his environment, and the genius of Thompson’s novel — and of screenwriter John Curran’s extraordinarily faithful adaptation — lies in the fact that interpreting what happens is entirely up to you. Lou himself does not understand why he does the vicious and bloody things he does (Affleck narrates some portions of the film in bursts of Thompsonian prose), and perhaps the best way to understand “The Killer Inside Me” is as a savage Biblical parable that might be about America, might be about masculinity and might be about human nature.

Now, the Tribeca premiere was a much different and more carefully managed event than the Sundance catastrophe. This was a relatively small audience of well-connected New Yorkers and film industry insiders, exactly the sort of people likely to pride themselves on their sophistication (I observed no walkouts). As mentioned earlier, the movie was followed by an intimate on-stage conclave featuring the actors and director, with no audience feedback invited. But make no mistake, this is an extremely tough film to watch, and it’s meant to be. Some viewers will surely react with the visceral disgust that woman expressed at Sundance, and that’s every bit as legitimate as a more detached and analytical response.

In the worst of several gruesome scenes in “The Killer Inside Me,” Lou pulls on a pair of gloves and methodically sets about beating Joyce to death with his fists. (Spoiler police: This doesn’t count, I promise.) This scene is shocking in its graphic and bloody depiction of violence, and perhaps more shocking in what it suggests: Joyce’s eagerness for unbridled rough sex has opened the door to something much worse, and has even, in some sense, invited a brutal self-destruction that corresponds to her own self-hatred.

As Jessica Alba put it: “I think she bonds with him and encourages him to release his inner darkness. I think she’s found her soulmate, her guy, and in some way she knows how it’s going to end.”

Worst of all, perhaps, is the way Lou keeps telling her that he loves her and that he’s sorry, and then keeps on hitting her. “Hold on, sweetheart,” he tells her, in a tender lover’s voice. “It’s almost over.” He gets worked up through physical exertion, but seems emotionally calm and untroubled.

This scene raises many unmanageable and explosive questions, and it definitely does not present a politically palatable version of male-on-female brutality in an era when we have been trained to believe that sex is not violence and violence is not sex. Thompson’s view (and Winterbottom’s) is more fatalistic (and perhaps also more romantic) than that. I would even argue that the book and movie’s portrait of Lou Ford pre-echoes some second-wave feminist ideas about men, women and rape: Male-female sexual relations, even in their normal guise, contain hints of violence, and it doesn’t take much to tip them into apocalyptic darkness.

“The Killer Inside Me” will be released later this year by IFC Films, and a full review should wait until then. In the post-film discussion, Casey Affleck discussed the picture’s aims admirably. “I hope there’s room for discussion around this film, and room for people to tell us we’re being irresponsible,” he said. “But to me, irresponsible is when you have a movie where 300 people get killed by robots, and none of it matters, none of it registers. In this movie, we wanted the violence to seem real, and the victims of violence to seem real. I think we’ve been very responsible in how we approached the violence. I wouldn’t have done the movie otherwise.”

From the Observer:

Dispatches from Tribeca: Can We Talk About Joan Rivers?
By Christopher Rosen
April 27, 2010 | 10:15 a.m.

“When do you sleep?” The Observer’s Rex Reed asked the 76-year-old Joan Rivers above the din of a standing ovation at the New York premiere of Joan Rivers — A Piece of Work last night. And that’s a good question. Because after watching the new documentary based on a year in her busy life, one thing is abundantly clear: She doesn’t.

As co-directed by acclaimed documentarians Rikki Stern and Anne Sundberg, A Piece of Work is confident in its quality from minute one: A very up-close-and-personal montage of Ms. Rivers getting her incredibly large amounts of makeup applied (as she joked in the Q&A following the film, after seeing that the prospects of her getting a date again are slight). And while nothing that follows breaks new ground—it’s your basic rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story—the film is so tightly constructed that you don’t actually care. Besides, even at her advanced age, Ms. Rivers is still completely hysterical, politically incorrect and an astute observer of human interaction and nature. Simply in that regard, A Piece of Work succeeds. It’s the funniest movie thus far in 2010.

What does surprise, however, is Ms. Rivers’ complete lack of character vanity. She might be dressed to the nines and covered in pounds of make-up (not to mention all that plastic surgery), but at her core is still an insecure raw nerve, still smarting over the bad reviews she got from New York stage critics thirty years ago. Ms. Rivers is self-deprecating about her late-career malaise—where something like beating the Z-list “stars” on Celebrity Apprentice qualifies as major—but there’s a fear and sadness in her voice that belies the tough exterior. She knows this is her last act, but she simply refuses to go down without a fight. At first it seems almost fake—as Ms. Rivers said, she’s been playing “Joan Rivers” since the 1960s. But by the time the documentary is over, you realize that even if she is still playing a part, it consumed her long ago.

The film is gathering very positive word after it’s premiere. The Epoch Times says, “Nadda’s gentle rhythms and striking visuals make for a seductive cinematic blend. Never loud or crass, CAIRO is an adult film, in the classiest sense. A film of subtle charm.”

New York (NY) (April 23, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today it is acquiring North American and multiple foreign rights to the 2010 festival award winner TINY FURNITURE. Written and directed by Lena Dunham, and produced by Kyle Martin and Alicia Van Couvering, the film stars Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, David Call, and Alex Karpovsky. The film, which made its world premiere last month at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, was awarded the top narrative feature prize and Dunham took home the festival’s breakout award for emerging narrative woman director. These wins were followed with the prize for Independent Vision at the Sarasota Film Festival earlier this month. IFC Films will release TINY FURNITURE 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.

TINY FURNITURE tells the story of 22-year-old Aura (Dunham) who returns home after college to her artist mother’s loft with the following: a useless film theory degree, 357 hits on her YouTube page, and no shoulders to cry on. Starring Dunham’s real-life family in supporting roles and shot in her family home, TINY FURNITURE is a tragicomedy about what does and does not happen when you graduate with no skills, no love life, and a lot of free time.

The deal was negotiated by Lizzie Nastro for IFC Films and with Josh Braun of Submarine on behalf of the filmmakers.

President of IFC Entertainment Jonathan Sehring said: “TINY FURNITURE is one of the great discoveries of the year. Lena Dunham has a completely original voice and we’re thrilled to be able to work with her and her team on bringing the film to a wider audience on all of our plaforms.

“I can’t imagine a better home for the movie than IFC, a company that has supported so many of my favorite independent films and filmmakers,” says Dunham. “The producers and I feel very fortunate that they’ll be applying their expertise to the task of releasing TINY FURNITURE.”

IFC acquired worldwide rights on the film, excluding United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, France, Benelux, New Zealand and Australia.

About the Filmmaker
Lena Dunham graduated from Oberlin College in 2008, where she studied Creative Writing. Her first short film, Dealing, premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival. Her first feature, Creative Nonfiction, premiered at SXSW 2009 and enjoyed a theatrical premiere at Anthology Film Archives. She has made two webseries, “Tight Shots” (www.nerve.com) and “Delusional Downtown Divas” (www.delusionaldowntowndivas.com). In 2009, she was commissioned to make ten more episodes of DDD to project at the Guggenheim’s first annual
Art Awards, an event for which she also hosted and wrote the teleplay. In 2009, she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” She writes about film and interesting characters for various publications, including Interview Magazine, Onion A/V Club, HammertoNail.com, and she loves to tweet (twitter.com/lenadunham).

New York (NY) (April 16, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today it is acquiring U.S. rights to the French smash hit HEARTBREAKER (L’ARNACOEUR), the debut feature from Pascal Chaumeil. The film is produced by Nicolas Duval Adassovsky, Yann Zenou, and Laurent Zeitoun, with a screenplay by Laurent Zeitoun, Jeremy Doner, and Yoann Gromb. The film will have its North American premiere on April 19 at COLCOA (City of Lights City of Angels) in Los Angeles and will then make its East Coast premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 22.

The deal for HEARTBREAKER was negotiated by Arianna Bocco and Lizzie Nastro for IFC Films and with Grégoire Melin of Kinology.

Set against the glamorous backdrop of Monte Carlo, HEARTBREAKER is an action-packed romantic comedy, starring César Award winner Vanessa Paradis (Girl on the Bridge, The Key) and art house heartthrob Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Paris, Russian Dolls). Professional “Don Juan” Alex (Duris), his sister (Julie Ferrier), and her husband (François Damiens) have a budding young business: they break hearts for a living. When a client hires Alex and his team to help break up a happily engaged couple before their wedding day, they find themselves facing their toughest job yet.

IFC Films will release HEARTBREAKER 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.

President of IFC Entertainment Jonathan Sehring said: “HEARTBREAKER is one of the most charming romantic comedies to be made on either side of the Atlantic in many years. We’re absolutely delighted to be in business with Grégoire Melin of Kinology and look forward to bringing this hit film by the very gifted Pascal Chaumeil to American audiences.”

HEARTBREAKER recently opened in France to critical praise and has quickly become an audience favorite and box office success.

About the Filmmaker
Pascal Chaumeil wrote and directed his first short film in 1995, Des Hommes Avec Des Bas, which was awarded Best Short at the 1996 Festival du Film Policier in Cognac. He followed with the science-fiction short Liens Sacrés (2001). Before directing Heartbreaker, his first feature, Chaumeil worked on several feature films with Luc Besson as a First Assistant Director (The Professional) and Second Unit Director (The Fifth Element, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc). He has also directed over 100 commercials and directed films for television such as Clémence (2003) and Mer Belle à Agitée (2006), as well as episodes for the acclaimed TV series Spiral (2005), L’État de Grâce (2006), Desperate Parents (2007/2008) and Duel en Ville (2008).

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 16, 2010

Negar and Ashkan are two young people — it’s possible that they’re a couple, but you can’t quite be sure — who want to start a band. The style they favor is what they call indie rock, an apt enough designation for the sweet, moody songs they perform together, which would not sound out of place on the soundtrack of a movie at the Sundance Film Festival.
More About This Movie

Negar (Negar Shaghaghi) and Ashkan (Ashkan Koshanejad) are part of a vibrant and varied music scene. In their search for other musicians who will help them fulfill their dream of playing some gigs in Europe, they encounter kindred spirits devoted to other familiar genres: metalheads, female folk singers and a rapper who rhymes about the tough streets of his hometown.

These earnest, impetuous young artists, scrambling to find space and time for rehearsal, may seem familiar to American and other Western audiences. You encounter their kind in Austin, Brooklyn, Amsterdam and beyond. In this case, beyond is Tehran.

And of course circumstances for iconoclastic, bohemian young people in Iran are not what they are elsewhere. Both the pathos and the buoyant energy of “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” Bahman Ghobadi’s bouncy, seething new film, come from the sense that Negar, Ashkan and their friends are bravely laying claim to creativity, idealism and free expression in defiance of an authoritarian state that seeks to deny them those universal birthrights of modern youth.

Not that any of them indulge in self-pity, even though some of the song lyrics in “Persian Cats” throb with anger and disillusionment. The musicians — essentially playing themselves in re-enactments of events that more or less really happened — are focused much of the time on practical matters. They need to arrange visas for foreign travel or permits allowing them to perform in Iran. They have to audition new talent and work on their material. Above all, they must avoid the police, who are a constant, mostly unseen menace — a minor inconvenience, a source of absurd frustration and also, sometimes, a serious, even mortal threat.

Stubborn, high-spirited and carefully calculated rebellion is Mr. Ghobadi’s subject, and also the prevailing ethic of his film. An Iranian Kurd whose previous films (including “A Time for Drunken Horses” and “Turtles Can Fly”) have been set in the rural villages of his native region, he approaches Negar, Ashkan and the other younger, urban characters in this film with sympathetic curiosity.

Mr. Ghobadi, who wrote the screenplay with his fiancée, the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, also appears on camera from time to time, a bookish, worried-looking presence in the midst of the hipsters and hip-hoppers. His solidarity with them percolates through the film, most concretely in the simple fact that he made it, shooting quickly and clandestinely with a lightweight digital camera, always ready to pack up and flee the unwanted attention of the authorities.

This method creates some jumpy narrative rhythms, but it also gives “Persian Cats” a nervous, freewheeling dynamism. Negar, a pretty, nerdy young woman with a plaintive manner and a delicate singing voice, and the gentle Ashkan are fairly diffident, as if searching for the Persian word for mumblecore.

But Nadar (Hamed Behdad), their manager, fixer and all-purpose rock ’n’ roll Svengali, is another matter. A nonstop talker with six solutions for every problem and a mental Rolodex that contains everyone who’s anyone in the Tehran cultural underground, he zips around the city on his motorbike with both of his protégés squeezed onto the seat behind him, hatching plans and dodging scrapes with the law.

Mr. Ghobadi punctuates these excursions with what are, in effect, music videos, in which songs in various styles by local groups (Take It Easy Hospital is the name of Negar and Ashkan’s nascent act) are accompanied by montages of daily life in Iran’s sprawling capital. The images evoke extremes of wealth and poverty, the heavy hand of the government and also the defiance and beauty of children, teenagers and university students.

“Persian Cats” was shown in Cannes last May, just a few weeks before the Iranian presidential election, the aftermath of which demonstrated to the world how serious and brave the young people of Iran could be.

The film is careful to avoid explicit political statement, but its reticence makes its critique of the Iranian regime all the more devastating. It will also make anyone who had grown cynical about the transformative, galvanizing power of popular music — an idea that might seem quaint in Western democracies, though less so in the former police states of the Warsaw Pact — think, and possibly believe, again.

NEW OFFICIAL TRAILER: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/thehumancentipede/
OFFICIAL ONE-SHEET ARTWORK: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/19653
CONCEPT ART: http://www.joblo.com/arrow/index.php?id=21407
EXCLUSIVE FAN INTERVIEW WITH TOM SIX: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/19755

Breaking Upwards is now playing at the IFC Center, nationwide on demand, and will expand to Los Angeles on 4/9 and San Francisco on 4/15.

By LARRY ROHTER
Published: March 26, 2010

“THERE are low-budget films, there are micro-budget films, and then there is “Breaking Upwards.” It may be hard to imagine how someone could make a feature-length romantic comedy in New York City for just under $15,000, but Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones managed to do it.

The making of “Breaking Upwards,” which opens Friday both at the IFC Center and on cable through video on demand, is almost a tutorial in how a do-it-yourself ethos can overcome the tough economics of the movie business. And that is not simply because the couple collaborated on the script, played the lead roles and produced the film together, with him also directing and her in charge of tasks ranging from writing the lyrics for the songs to cooking meals for cast and crew….

Click here to download a PDF copy of the program, featuring:

- An essay on the films by David Thomson entitled ‘Murder in the North’
- Detailed biographies of the many characters that populate this epic story
- An exclusive interview with novelist David Peace, screenwriter of all three films Toni Grisoni, the projects’ visionary producer Andrew Eaton, and the trio of directors: Julian Jarold (1974), Oscar-winner James Marsh (1980), and Anand Tucker (1983)
- And a gallery of poster alts and artwork.

The trilogy is now in national release and available on demand. Visit http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/the-red-riding-trilogy for full info.

Manohla Dargis of the NY Times calls it an “aesthetically exhilarating howl of a film,” continuing to point out that “the veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio brilliantly personalizes Mussolini’s rise to power through a fictional retelling of his seduction and catastrophically violent betrayal of his reputed first wife, Ida Dalser. Like much of Italy, Dalser abandoned herself to him body and soul.”

Andrew O’Hehir of Salon: “This eye-popping, quasi-historical collage film stars the gorgeous Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Il Duce’s first love…the knockout new film by Marco Bellocchio, who might be the greatest living Italian director but at age 70 remains almost totally unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Sometimes it feels utterly pointless to call out yet another artfully made foreign-language flick amid the unending stream of pop-clutter. I get it: You’ve barely got time to answer work e-mails and read your friends’ Facebook posts. Some Italian movie you’ve never heard of? Forget it. Well, if you care about movies, I’m telling you to carve out time for “Vincere,” a strange and powerful blend of historical fact and dreamlike imagination that captures both the charisma and the murderous madness of the young Benito Mussolini.”

Ella Taylor of NPR:
“Vincere, which comes as close to grand opera as can be achieved without anyone actually bursting into song, feels like a big movie — handsomely mounted, full of dark shadows counterpointed with stray shafts of light, with dramatic close-ups of faces driven by passion and madness and heavy silences brutally interrupted by clashing tympani.

Yet the movie’s scale is small and resolutely personal, filtering politics discreetly through character and individual destiny. Played with quiet ferocity by the stunning green-eyed actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who lost out to the better-known Penelope Cruz for Best Actress at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Ida is one of those women who, given the space to nurture her talents, might have become a rock star in her own right, yet chose instead to attach herself to a man she saw as more powerful than herself.”

Rob Nelson of the Village Voice:
“Vincere…is the veteran director’s stylistic knockout, a movie whose audacious editing fully captures the hot and heavy relationships between past and present, sex and politics, reality and, yes, cinema….Giovanna Mezzogiorno…[is] A fiercely committed actor, at least the equal of Antichrist’s Charlotte Gainsbourg (who snatched last year’s Cannes prize out from under her), Mezzogiorno does a full-on Maria Falconetti number here, quivering half-stoically in close-ups as her character is condemned by an all-male jury. Climbing the bars of the asylum as snow falls (a gorgeous image in a film that’s full of them)…

Its title translating as “Win,” Vincere is a victory for the doomed Dalser only in the sense that she’s finally gotten a camera’s attention, but, of course, that’s a lot. “You’re my woman,” Il Duce tells his secret lover early on in the movie. “So be quiet.” Her refusal to do so is Bellocchio’s cause for celebration—and his audience’s good fortune.”

David Edelstein in New York Magazine: “The movie, a near-masterpiece, is a monument to intoxication: of sexual conquest, of military conquest, and, most of all, of cinema.”

Lovers of Hate, Austin filmmaker Bryan Poyser’s third feature film, isn’t a comedy any more than his debut film, 2004’s Dear Pillow was, but both movies – and indeed all of Poyser’s body of work so far – elicit intimate, often cringe-based laughter from audiences. Which is fine with the director. Comedy, as some wag once said, isn’t pretty. In Lovers of Hate, it evolves around the borderline creepy edges of obsession, emotional devastation, and the barren, rocky coastline of the human heart.

That’s the most challenging kind of humor for a filmmaker to attempt because it relies on the audience to not only recognize a kinship with often desperate, damaged characters living less than laudable lives but also empathize with the worst in people. Poyser’s characters more often than not reach for the gold ring only to realize that they’ve already pawned it. But then, perhaps, if they search their souls hard enough, they’ll find that crumpled, dirty claim ticket still there, ready and waiting for redemption.

Shot almost entirely within the confines of Austin Film Society board member Deborah Green’s labyrinthine Park City, Utah, mansion – the site of the society’s annual Sundance Film Festival parties and the Austin film community’s unofficial Utah headquarters – Lovers of Hate follows the sideways spiral of the woeful Rudy (Chris Doubek), a failed writer recently separated from his wife, Diana (Heather Kafka), who’s had all the Rudy she can take and ends up falling for Paul (Alex Karpovsky), Rudy’s sibling rival, a successful writer of children’s books. Extremely awkward quasi-hilarity (and no small amount of self-loathing from virtually the entire, uniformly excellent cast) ensues.

The Austin Chronicle sat down with Poyser to discuss his film’s just-announced Sundance sale to the Independent Film Channel and the challenges of exploring the darker reaches of the human heart for the humor inherent in the naked truth.

Austin Chronicle: So what’s the story on the IFC sale? Congratulations are in order.

Bryan Poyser: Thanks. Essentially they’re going to do the same thing they did at the last South by Southwest with Joe Swanberg’s movie Alexander the Last, where it premieres at South by Southwest and then it’s released on video on demand day-of or the next day for a limited time. It’s definitely exciting. It’s the first movie I’ve ever made that’s made a dime, which is wonderful. And although it’s not a big sale, we knew we didn’t really need a big sale to make our money back. Because we got into Sundance, we’re part of that Sundance “brand,” and now we’re going to be part of the IFC brand, which is also really great. The way most people see independent films these days is at home, anyway, so IFC’s VOD strategy makes perfect sense.

AC: Lovers of Hate is – I think – a comedy, but the humor in it is so dark and so spiteful – so human, in other words – that I’m wondering how you describe the film to people who ask you the eternal question: “What’s it about?”

BP: If I were trying to get people to come see it, I would say that it’s a comedy, because the first way to not get people to be interested in your movie is to say, “It’s a drama!” That immediately elicits snores from most people. So, yes, it’s a comedy, but to me it’s comedy that is born out of an uncomfortable, rather terrible situation. I think we’ve all had relationships in the past where things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. In writing the movie, I was thinking, “What if you could witness the love affair that happens right after you with the person that you were in love with?” If you could see what happens, would you?

AC: You can do that now thanks to Facebook.

BP: Yeah, right? It all feeds into this obsessive, almost masochistic need to know. Why doesn’t [the character of Rudy] just leave? It’s horrible what he’s doing to himself, but I think a lot of people, if given that situation, as horrible as it would be, would want to see what would happen and what their ex would say about them.

AC: It’s a bit like slowing down to watch your own car crash.

BP: Right. And while that is a horrible concept, it was something that I wanted to explore. And I think it’s easier to explore it if comedy is involved. Comedy helps people get on board with the darker stuff.

It was very important to me to make Rudy a character who never does anything too crazy that quite takes him beyond the point of relatability. That might make it more of a genre movie and therefore easier to sell or market, but I just didn’t want to do that. I wanted to play with the tension of “Oh my god, what is he going to do next?” and play with it through comedy. But it’s a very specific, uncomfortable, squirmy kind of comedy.

AC: Chris Doubek is painfully believable as Rudy. You’ve worked with him before, but why, specifically, did you cast him here?

BP: For one thing, he’s a very gifted physical actor because he’s been trained in the theatre, where your whole body is your instrument. He can engage his entire body in the scene, whereas a lot of film actors are unused to that kind of full-body expression. The character of Rudy really doesn’t have very many lines, particularly in the last two-thirds of the film, so we’re relying on his physical presence for a lot of the comedy and as a means of expressing what’s going on in Rudy’s head.

Chris is kind of heroic to me, because he’s figured out a way to make his life be totally about acting. He doesn’t accrue anything else that would make that not possible. He doesn’t have any responsibilities, he lives in a tiny little apartment that he’s lived in for years, he works as a substitute teacher for AISD, he’s not married, he doesn’t have a kid, and he’s barely got a car. He’s just there and ready to act.

AC: Which is kind of similar to the character of Rudy.

BP: Yeah, Rudy is in his own way very resourceful. In the movie, we see him at the lowest point in his life. It’s abject. But he doesn’t just sit around and mope about it, he does something about it. What he does is not necessarily healthy or positive or what he should do, but at the same time he’s someone who’s not just going to sit around. He’s going to exact his twisted revenge and do whatever damage is necessary to make it happen.

AC: The character of Rudy almost comes off as a ghost haunting both his own life and that of his ex-wife, Diana.

BP: Yeah, he’s passive in that he’s hiding, but he’s active in the shadows. And that was definitely intentional in the last third of the film where we, as the audience, don’t even know where he is. There’s a sense of him being this invisible hand manipulating the events but also second-guessing what Diana and Paul’s reactions are going to be and trying to orchestrate his revenge. There’s a sense, at the end, of the characters not necessarily achieving redemption but of at least getting to the point where they can reflect on their actions and maybe have a chance to redeem themselves in some way.

AC: Are the characters of Rudy, Diana, and Paul drawn from people you know in real life? Because onscreen they come across as instantly familiar, albeit in a warped sort of way.

BP: They all definitely portray certain aspects of me, although it’s not autobiographical, thank God. But parts of it are drawn from things that I’ve done or things that I’ve thought about doing and then thought better of doing. In writing the three characters, I definitely wanted them to be relatable to me and therefore relatable to the audience. I wanted them all to push the edge of likability. In movies and television, there’s an obsession with trying to make characters likable. For me, likable is not as important as watchable.

AC: Your first feature, Dear Pillow, and Lovers of Hate have a certain intensity of longing for unsullied human connection. Is there a Bryan Poyser aesthetic that’s emerging here?

BP: I guess I’m interested in making movies about writers or creative people, but I’m also very wary of that because I never want to make angst-filled movies about unsung creative geniuses. That to me is boring. I’m more interested in what underlies the creative impulse. The movies that I’ve done are all about characters who either strive for or avoid getting to some kind of truth in their lives.

“…[O]ne of the few remaining distributors willing to take a chance on more
intellectually ambitious fare.” —Dave Kehr, The New York Times

Brooklyn, February 24, 2010—BAMcinématek presents Focus on IFC Films, the third
annual salute to the bold, adventurous independent film distributor, from March 19–21.
The series comprises a selection of IFC Films’ upcoming theatrical and video on demand
releases from its IFC In Theaters and Festival Direct platforms. This year’s Focus on IFC
Films line-up provides a snapshot of the 2009 international film festival circuit to New York
audiences, bringing sneak previews of new films from acclaimed directors including Claire
Denis, Bruno Dumont, Ken Loach, Johnnie To, Christophe Honoré, Elia Suleiman and
more.

Since its first release in 2000, IFC Films has become one of the preeminent distributors of
vital independent, international and documentary film. In the first half of the decade, with
Alfonso Cuarón’s career-defining Y tu mamá también (2001), the phenomenon My Big
Fat Greek Wedding (2002), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s lauded drama Nobody Knows (2004),
and Miranda July’s quirky charmer Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), IFC
Films quickly made a name for itself as a purveyor of critically and culturally relevant
cinema. In more recent years, IFC Films continues that trend by distributing works like 4
Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, the searing Romanian 2007 Palme d’Or winner at
Cannes, Matteo Garrone’s penetrating look at the mob in Naples, Gomorrah (2008),
Olivier Assayas’ sublime Summer Hours (2008), Armando Iannucci’s Oscar-nominated In
the Loop (2009), and Steven Soderbergh’s daringly experimental two-part biopic epic Che
(2008). Beyond its impressive theatrical release schedule, IFC Films is at the forefront of
the video on demand movement, setting the standard for building wider audiences for
smaller, previously less-accessible films.

Focus on IFC Films opens on Friday March 19 with the New York premiere of IFC Films’
third release from British social-realist auteur Ken Loach, Looking for Eric (2009), about a
down and out fan and his Manchester United idol, the footballer superstar, Eric Cantona;
followed by The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2009—screening March 20), a “japchae western,” i.e., an audacious Korean-take on the spaghetti western from A Tale of Two Sisters’ helmer Kim Ji-woon; and, screening on March 21, the latest from Hong Kong’s action laureate Johnnie To, Vengeance (2009).

The program also features 2009 festival hits including Claire Denis’ White Material (March 20), starring the inimitable Isabelle Huppert in one of her most daring performances yet; The Time That Remains (March 20), which Time Out New York’s Joshua Rothkopf calls “a decades-spanning autobiography” from Palestinian actor-director Elia Suleiman, a “sad-eyed Buster Keaton with the skills of an ace political satirist;” Hadewijch (March 21), Bruno Dumont’s latest probing philosophical exploration; and Tales from the Golden Age (March 21), an omnibus film of Romanian life during dictator Ceausescu’s regime, spearheaded by Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days).

Finally, on March 20, BAMcinématek is pleased to present director Christophe Honoré and actress
Chiara Mastroianni in person for a Q&A following the screening of their new film, Making Plans for
Lena (2009), the fourth IFC Films release of an Honoré picture. This screening is presented in
collaboration with Unifrance and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, as part of Rendez-Vous with
French Cinema. And preceding Focus on IFC Films on March 13, BAMcinématek will screen Riad
Sattouf’s raunchy teen sex comedy, The French Kissers (2009), followed by a Q&A with the director, also as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

For press information, please contact
For BAM: Gabriele Caroti at 718.636.4125 x3 / gcaroti@bam.org

FOCUS ON IFC FILM SCHEDULE
Note: all prints are 35mm

Friday, March 19
6:50pm: Looking for Eric
9:15pm: White Material

Saturday, March 20
3pm: The Time That Remains
5:30: Making Plans for Lena, Q&A with Christophe Honoré and Chiara Mastroianni
8:30pm: The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Sunday, March 21
3pm: Hadewijch
5:30pm: Tales from the Golden Age
9pm: Vengeance

Detailed film descriptions for Focus on IFC Films:

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) 130min
Directed by Kim Ji-woon
With Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-sung Jung
Arguably Korea’s most entertaining filmmaker, Kim Ji-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters) returns with this
spectacular Korean spaghetti western. Visually audacious and with a heart attack-inducing pace, Kim’s film needs to be seen on the big screen for its beautiful widescreen visuals and stylish action setpieces. The plot may not make too much sense, but who cares when you’re having this much fun?!
Opening April 23, 2010.
Sat, Mar 20 at 8:30pm

Hadewijch (2009) 120min
Directed by Bruno Dumont
With Julie Sokolowski, Yassine Salime, David Dewaele
Deeply devout Céline (Sokolowski in a mesmerizing debut) is let go from a convent because of her
too-fervent faith. Forced to explore the outside world, she discards her haute bourgeois upbringing
after meeting Arab boy Yassine (Salime, also in an impressive debut). When Yassine introduces her to his brother, a Muslim fundamentalist zealot, Céline’s ardent Catholicism takes an unusual (and precarious) turn.
Sun, Mar 21 at 3pm

Looking for Eric (2009) 116min NEW YORK PREMIERE
Directed by Ken Loach
With Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, Stephanie Bishop
After a failed second marriage and with a mid-life crisis looming, postman and soccer supporter Eric
(played with brio by rocker-turned-actor Steve Evets), is searching for inspiration—and who better to turn to than Man U football legend Eric Cantona—famous for his philosophizing on and off the pitch. This is Play It Again, Sam for the Brit working-class footy fan via English auteur Loach. Opening May 14, 2010.
Fri, Mar 19 at 6:50pm

Making Plans for Lena (Non ma fille, tu n’iras pas danser) (2009) 105min
Directed by Christophe Honoré
With Chiara Mastroianni, Marina Foïs, Marie-Christine Barrault
Honoré (Love Songs) returns with a sharply observed holiday family drama à la Desplechin. After
splitting with her husband, single mom Mastroianni (in one of her best performances) escapes Paris
for her parents’ home in Brittany with two kids in tow. But what to expect when her ex comes
knocking? Features a cameo by Louis Garrel and XTC on the soundtrack.
Sat, Mar 20 at 5:30pm
*Q&A with Christophe Honoré and Chiara Mastroianni

Tales from the Golden Age (Amintiri din Epoca de Aur) (2009) 155min
Directed by Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru
Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days) conceived, produced, and wrote this darkly funny
portmanteau anthology of five different stories (by five different directors, including Mungiu himself)— urban myths from life under the last years of Romanian dictator Ceausescu’s regime.
Sun, Mar 21 at 5:30pm

The Time That Remains (2009) 109min
Directed by Elia Suleiman
With Ali Suliman, Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri
The director of Divine Intervention returns with another personal and episodic feature about Arab life in Israel, adapted from his mother’s letters and his father’s diaries, written while his father was a scruffy Palestinian resistance fighter in 1948. Hearkening both Keaton and Tati, Suleiman’s idiosyncratic film is both a deadpan comedy and a poignant exploration of Palestinian identity over the last six decades.
Sat, Mar 20 at 3pm

Vengeance (2009) 108min
Directed by Johnnie To
With Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Testud, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang
HK action auteur To (alongside long-time collaborator/screenwriter Wai Ka-Fai) helms a revenge
fantasy starring aging Gallic rocker Hallyday as “Costello,” an ex-hitman turned chef who travels to
Asia to avenge his daughter (Testud) and her husband. “With his ruined face and pale snake eyes Mr. Hallyday holds the screen while Mr. To shakes it up.” —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Sun, Mar 21 at 9pm

White Material (2009) 100min
Directed by Claire Denis
With Isabelle Huppert, Isaach De Bankolé, Christopher Lambert
The latest from living legend Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum, Beau Travail) is as richly textured, freeflowing, and multisensory an experience as audiences have come to expect from her. The director returns to her homeland of Africa for this story about a relentlessly unyielding woman (Isabelle Huppert) who refuses to abandon her coffee plantation even as violence and civil war erupt around her and her family. An evocative examination of post-colonial African political strife that resists easy answers and opts for a far more personal, philosophical approach to a complex subject.
Fri, Mar 19 at 9:15pm

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

BAMcinématek
BAM Rose Cinemas “offers one of the most civilized movie–going experiences in the city”
—The New York Times

The four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas (BRC) opened in 1998 to offer Brooklyn audiences alternative
and independent films that might not play in the borough otherwise, making BAM the only performing arts center in the country with two mainstage theaters and a multiplex cinema. In July of 1999, beginning with a series celebrating the work of Spike Lee, BAMcinématek was born as Brooklyn’s only daily year-round repertory film program. BAMcinématek presents new and rarely seen contemporary films, classics from cinema history, work by local artists, and festivals of films from around the world, often with special appearances by directors, actors, and other guests.
Entering its 10th year, BAMcinématek has not only presented major retrospectives by well-known
filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Shohei Imamura, Manoel de Oliveira, and Luchino
Visconti, but it has also introduced New York audiences to contemporary artists such as Nuri Bilge
Ceylan, Arnaud Desplechin, and Hong Sang-soo. BAMcinématek has also featured innumerable
guests during this period, including Gena Rowlands, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Robert Altman, Jim
Jarmusch, Milos Forman, David Byrne, Jonathan Demme, Isabella Rossellini, Paul Thomas Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Larry Clark, D.A. Pennebaker, and many more.
Credits Leadership support for BAMcinématek is provided by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust.

BAM Rose Cinemas are named in recognition of a major gift in honor of Jonathan F.P. and Diana Calthorpe Rose. BAM Rose Cinemas would also like to acknowledge the generous support of The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Estate of Richard B. Fisher, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Bloomberg, and Time Warner Inc. Additional support for BAMcinématek is provided by The Cultural Heritage Preservation Fund, The Grodzins Fund, and The Liman Foundation.

Special thanks to Ryan Werner, Courtney Ott, and Dan Goldberg/IFC Films and Susan Norget.

General Information
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, BAMcafé, and Brownstone Books at BAM are located in the Peter Jay Sharp building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (between St Felix Street and Ashland Place) in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located two blocks from the main building at 651 Fulton Street (between Ashland and Rockwell Places). BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn’s only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. BAMcafé, operated by Great Performances, is open for dining prior to Howard Gilman Opera House performances. BAMcafé also features an eclectic mix of spoken word and live music for BAMcafé Live on Friday nights with a special BAMcafé Live menu
available starting at 8pm.

Subway: 2, 3, 4, 5, Q, B to Atlantic Avenue;
D, M, N, R to Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street; C to Lafayette Avenue
Train: Long Island Railroad to Flatbush Avenue
Bus: B25, B26, B41, B45, B52, B63, B67 all stop within three blocks of BAM
Car: Commercial parking lots are located adjacent to BAM

For ticket and BAMbus information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.

Film to close Gen Art Film Festival on April 13th

New York (NY) (March 9, 2009) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today it is acquiring North American rights to the romantic drama MERCY, the debut film from Patrick Hoelck. The film was written by Scott Caan and produced by Scott Caan, Vince Palomino and Phil Parmet. Scott Caan, Wendy Glenn, Troy Garity, Erika Christensen, Alexie Gilmore, John Boyd, Dylan McDermott, Whitney Able and James Caan star. MERCY marks the first time father and son, James and Scott, have shared significant on screen time together (they previously appeared in a few scenes in 1995’s A BOY CALLED HATE).

MERCY will be the closing night film of the 2010 Gen Art Film Festival (presented by Acura) on April 13th in New York City. The film will open Friday, April 30th at the IFC Center in NYC and Friday, May 7th at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles and be available nationwide on video on demand on Wednesday, April 28th.

The deal for MERCY was negotiated by Lizzie Nastro, IFC Films Director of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, with Ben Weiss of Paradigm.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment said, “More than a few American independent filmmakers have attempted to make films about the nature of love but MERCY actually succeeds. It’s a beautifully crafted, truly romantic film that is going to get a lot of attention for Patrick Hoelck and continues to showcase the diverse talents of Scott Caan. We’re thrilled to be in business with them and look forward to getting this film out to the largest audience possible through all of our platforms.”

In a joint statement, Patrick Hoelck, Scott Caan and Vince Palomino said: “We are pleased to have found a home for MERCY with IFC. Their dedication to this project has been wonderful and we look forward to a long relationship.”

SYNOPSIS:
Johnny Ryan (Scott Cann) is a successful young romance novelist who doesn’t actually believe in love. When he meets the beautiful and mysterious Mercy (Wendy Glenn) at the launch party of his latest book, Johnny’s world is suddenly turned upside down. Shockingly, she is the only major critic who dislikes his book. A cynic by nature, Johnny becomes determined to find the depth that Mercy says he is lacking and, in the process, falls in love. He turns to his father (James Caan) for advice. MERCY explores the struggle of maintaining a relationship, and the possibility of losing it all.

2ND ANNUAL PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN IFC FILMS AND THE 2010 SOUTH-BY-SOUTHWEST FILM FESTIVAL TO BRING FILMS FROM SXSWTO A NATIONAL AUDIENCE VIA CABLE’S MOVIES ON-DEMAND PLATFORM

“Direct From SXSW” to feature three films premiering simultaneously at SXSW and nationally on demand:

• Bryan Poyser’s Sundance hit LOVERS OF HATE
• Shane Meadows’ hilarious comedy LE DONK & SCOR-ZAY-ZEE
• Emmett Malloy’s documentary THE WHITE STRIPES UNDER GREAT WHITE NORTHERN LIGHTS

New York, NY – March 4, 2010 – IFC Films, the leading foreign and independent film distributor and an innovator in the movies-on-demand alternative film distribution movement, announced today its second annual partnership with Austin’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival, one of America’s most vibrant and exciting film festivals, in which three films screening at SXSW will simultaneously be available nationwide via the movies-on-demand platform of major national cable systems. Following last year’s partnership, which helped bring Joe Swanberg’s ALEXANDER THE LAST significant national attention, this year’s program offers simultaneous festival and on demand premieres of three new films: Bryan Poyser’s LOVERS OF HATE, Shane Meadows’ LE DONK & SCOR-ZAY-ZEE and Emmett Malloy’s THE WHITE STRIPES UNDER GREAT WHITE NORTHERN LIGHTS. Also available exclusively on demand are two acclaimed films from SXSW 2009: Daryl Wein’s BREAKING UPWARDS and John Bryant’s THE OVERBROOK BROTHERS.

Beginning simultaneously with the start of SXSW, the films featured in the “Direct From SXSW” partnership will be available on the movies-on-demand page of most major cable systems, including Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner and Bright House, and will be available in approximately 40 million homes.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment, said, “Last year’s collaboration with SXSW was both groundbreaking and successful, and we are thrilled to be partnering with them again to bring an exceptional new selection of films from one of the country’s very best film festivals to a wide national audience.”

Janet Pierson, Conference & Festival Producer, SXSW, said: “We’re all thrilled to be working with IFC Films again to bring the SXSW experience to a national audience. It’s important to us to continue to help filmmakers find bigger audiences both during and after the festival and this is a great opportunity.”

Films selected for “Direct from SXSW” are:

Premiering at SXSW on Monday, March 15th is Austin-based Bryan Poyser’s acclaimed LOVERS OF HATE, which IFC Films recently bought international rights to following its world premiere at Sundance 2010. A savage comedy about deceit and sibling rivalry, LOVERS OF HATE centers on two estranged brothers, Rudy (THE CASSIDY KIDS’ Chris Doubek) and Paul (BEESWAX’s Alex Karpovsky), who have nothing in common but their love for the same woman, Rudy’s soon-to-be ex-wife Diana (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE’s Heather Kafka). When opportunistic Paul whisks Diana away to a romantic mountain retreat, he has no idea that Rudy has made it there first, and from the shadows of the posh chalet, Rudy tries desperately to sabotage the relationship. LOVERS OF HATE, which had its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, and played there in competition, is produced by Megan Gilbride (THE CASSIDY KIDS) and executive produced by Athina Rachel Tsangari (DOGTOOTH), and Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass (THE PUFFY CHAIR, CYRUS). LOVERS OF HATE is the 2nd feature directed by Bryan Poyser to be showcased at SXSW. His first, DEAR PILLOW, earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination in 2005.

Making its North American premiere at SXSW on Tuesday, March 16 is the comedy LE DONK & SCOR-ZAY-ZEE from acclaimed British director Shane Meadows (THIS IS ENGLAND). In the spirit of SPINAL TAP and A MIGHTY WIND, the film is a highly improvised comedy about rock roadie and failed musician Le Donk (IN AMERICA’s Paddy Considine). Le Donk is a bit of a loser; he’s recently lost his girlfriend (Olivia Colman), his career is dead-in-the-water, and his life has completely gone down the tubes. So he tries to turn his life around by making rap prodigy Scor-zay-zee (real life Nottingham-based rapper also known as Dean Palinczuk) a star, with a little help from the rock band the Arctic Monkeys. Meadows’ film, which follows the duo on a hilarious journey to improbable rock stardom, is an unpredictable, irrepressible ode to spontaneous filmmaking. Made in five days, LE DONK is the first in what Meadows hopes will be a wave of five-day features designed to encourage first-time filmmakers.

Having its US premiere on Friday March 12 is Emmett Malloy’s THE WHITE STRIPES UNDER GREAT WHITE NORTHERN LIGHTS, a visually and emotionally powerful feature length concert film documenting The White Stripes groundbreaking 2007 tour of Canada which culminated in a spectacular 10th anniversary show at the historic Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. An intimate look at an enigmatic band, THE WHITE STRIPES UNDER GREAT WHITE NORTHERN LIGHTS documents a wide array of shows played at off-kilter venues including local bowling alleys and city buses. Along the way, the cameras capture the life of one of music’s most mysterious duos, Jack and Meg White, as they share casual conversations, fire cannons, and play a ‘one note show.’ The limited edition box set, DVD and soundtrack for the film will be released on March 16th, and are available for pre-order at www.whitestripes.com.

LOVERS OF HATE director Bryan Poyser commented, “”I’m thrilled that LOVERS OF HATE has found a home at IFC Films, which has been at the forefront of developing new ways to get great films to audiences. I’m doubly thrilled that the film’s unique release will coincide with what is, without a doubt, my favorite 10 days of the year - the SXSW Film Festival, a home for my work for years.”

Also included as part of the initiative are two celebrated films from the 2009 SXSW Festival: BREAKING UPWARDS, Daryl Wein’s acclaimed romantic comedy centering on a young New York couple who decide to strategize their own break up; and John Bryan’s road-trip comedy THE OVERBROOK BROTHERS, about two bitter, arch rival brothers who discover they’re adopted and begin a hilarious cross-country journey in search of their biological parents. These films will also be available in the special “SXSW” branded section on each cable company’s main movies-on-demand channel. BREAKING UPWARDS will be released theatrically in NY on April 2nd; LA on April 9th; with other cities to follow.

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 five 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.

About Rainbow Media Holdings LLC
Rainbow Media Holdings LLC is a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC). Rainbow Media is a leading producer of targeted, multiplatform content for global distribution, creating and managing some of the world’s most compelling and dynamic entertainment brands, including AMC, IFC (The Independent Film Channel), WE tv, Sundance Channel, IFC Entertainment and VOOM HD Networks. Through IFC Entertainment, Rainbow Media also owns and manages the following: IFC Films, a leading U.S. distributor of independent and foreign film with a unique day and date distribution model, “IFC In Theaters,” that makes films available to a national audience by releasing them simultaneously in theaters as well as on cable’s On Demand platform; IFC Festival Direct features titles acquired from major international film festivals and initially offers them exclusively through On Demand; IFC Productions, a feature film production company; and IFC Center, a state-of-the-art cinema in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Rainbow Media also operates Rainbow Advertising Sales Corporation, an advertising sales company; Rainbow Network Communications, a full service network programming origination and distribution company; and 11 Penn TV, a company that manages Rainbow Media’s NYC studios and post-production facilities.

About South by Southwest Film Conference & Festival
The SXSW Film Conference and Festival is a uniquely creative environment featuring the dynamic convergence of talent, smart audiences and industry heavyweights. A hotbed of discovery and interactivity, the event offers lucrative networking opportunities and immersion into the art and business of the rapidly evolving world of independent film.

Over the first five days, the Film Conference buzzes as world-class speakers, creative minds, and notable mentors tackle the latest filmmaking trends amidst the unmatched social atmosphere of the SXSW experience. Simultaneously, the internationally acclaimed, nine-day Festival celebrates raw innovation and emerging talent, with a truly diverse program ranging from provocative documentaries to subversive Hollywood comedies. For more information, visit www.sxsw.com/film.

MAKING PLANS FOR LENA Director Christophe Honoré and actress Chiara Mastroianni in person at BAM for Q&A on Saturday, March 20

“…[O]ne of the few remaining distributors willing to take a chance on more intellectually ambitious fare.” —Dave Kehr, The New York Times

BAMcinématek presents Focus on IFC Films, the third-annual salute to the bold, adventurous independent film distributor, from March 19–21. The series comprises a selection of IFC Films’ upcoming theatrical and video on demand releases from its IFC In Theaters and Festival Direct platforms. This year’s Focus on IFC Films line-up provides a snapshot of the 2009 international film festival circuit to New York audiences, bringing sneak previews of new films from acclaimed directors including Claire Denis, Bruno Dumont, Ken Loach, Johnnie To, Christophe Honoré, Elia Suleiman and more.

Since its first release in 2000, IFC Films has become one of the preeminent distributors of vital independent, international and documentary film. In the first half of the decade, with Alfonso Cuarón’s career-defining Y Tu Mamá También (2001), the phenomenon My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), Hirokazu Kore-eda’s lauded drama Nobody Knows (2004), and Miranda July’s quirky charmer Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), IFC Films quickly made a name for itself as a purveyor of critically and culturally relevant cinema. In more recent years, IFC Films continues that trend by distributing works like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, the searing Romanian 2007 Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, Matteo Garrone’s penetrating look at the mob in Naples, Gomorrah (2008), Olivier Assayas’ sublime Summer Hours (2008), Armando Iannucci’s Oscar-nominated In the Loop (2009), and Steven Soderbergh’s daringly experimental two-part biopic epic Che (2008). Beyond their impressive theatrical release schedule, IFC Films is at the forefront of the video on demand movement, setting the standard for building wider audiences for smaller, previously less-accessible films.

Focus on IFC Films opens on Friday March 19 with the New York premiere of IFC Films’ third release from British social-realist auteur Ken Loach, Looking for Eric (2009), about a down and out fan and his Manchester United idol, the footballer superstar, Eric Cantona; followed by The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2009—screening March 20), a “japchae western,” i.e., an audacious Korean-take on the spaghetti western from A Tale of Two Sisters’ helmer Kim Ji-woon; and, screening on March 21, the latest from Hong Kong’s action laureate Johnnie To, Vengeance (2009). The program also features 2009 festival hits including Claire Denis’ White Material (March 20), starring the inimitable Isabelle Huppert in one of her most daring performances yet; The Time That Remains (March 20), which Time Out New York’s Joshua Rothkopf calls “a decades-spanning autobiography” from Palestinian actor-director Elia Suleiman, a “sad-eyed Buster Keaton with the skills of an ace political satirist;” Hadewijch (March 21), Bruno Dumont’s latest probing philosophical exploration; and Tales From the Golden Age (March 21), an omnibus film of Romanian life during dictator Ceausescu’s regime, spearheaded by Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days).

Finally, on March 20, BAMcinématek is pleased to present director Christophe Honoré and actress Chiara Mastroianni in person for a Q&A following the screening of their new film, Making Plans for Lena (2009), the fourth IFC Films release of an Honoré picture. This screening is presented in collaboration with Unifrance and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. And preceding Focus on IFC Films on March 13, BAMcinématek will screen Riad Sattouf’s raunchy teen sex comedy, The French Kissers (2009), followed by a Q&A with the director, also as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

For press information, please contact
For BAM: Gabriele Caroti at 718.636.4125 x3 / gcaroti@bam.org

FOCUS ON IFC FILM SCHEDULE
Note: all prints are 35mm

Friday, March 19
6:50pm: Looking for Eric
9:15pm: White Material

Saturday, March 20
3pm: The Time That Remains
5:30: Making Plans for Lena, Q&A with Christophe Honoré and Chiara Mastroianni
8:30pm: The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Sunday, March 21
3pm: Hadewijch
5:30pm: Tales from the Golden Age
9pm: Vengeance

Detailed film descriptions for Focus on IFC Films:

The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008) 130min
Directed by Kim Ji-woon
With Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, Woo-sung Jung
Arguably Korea’s most entertaining filmmaker, Kim Ji-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters) returns with this spectacular Korean spaghetti western. Visually audacious and with a heart attack-inducing pace, Kim’s film needs to be seen on the big screen for its beautiful widescreen visuals and stylish action set-pieces. The plot may not make too much sense, but who cares when you’re having this much fun?! Opening April 23, 2010.
Sat, Mar 20 at 8:30pm

Hadewijch (2009) 120min
Directed by Bruno Dumont
With Julie Sokolowski, Yassine Salime, David Dewaele
Deeply devout Céline (Sokolowski in a mesmerizing debut) is let go from a convent because of her too-fervent faith. Forced to explore the outside world, she discards her haute bourgeois upbringing after meeting Arab boy Yassine (Salime, also in an impressive debut). When Yassine introduces her to his brother, a Muslim fundamentalist zealot, Céline’s ardent Catholicism takes an unusual (and precarious) turn.
Sun, Mar 21 at 3pm

Looking for Eric (2009) 116min NEW YORK PREMIERE
Directed by Ken Loach
With Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, Stephanie Bishop
After a failed second marriage and a mid-life crisis looming, postman and soccer supporter Eric (played with brio by rocker-turned-actor Steve Evets), is searching for inspiration—and who better to turn to than Man U football legend Eric Cantona—famous for his philosophizing on and off the pitch. This is Play It Again, Sam for the Brit working-class footy fan via English auteur Loach. Opening May 14, 2010.
Fri, Mar 19 at 6:50pm

Making Plans for Lena (Non ma fille, tu n’iras pas danser) (2009) 105min
Directed by Christophe Honoré
With Chiara Mastroianni, Marina Foïs, Marie-Christine Barrault
Honoré (Love Songs) returns with a sharply observed holiday family drama à la Desplechin. After splitting with her husband, single mom Mastroianni (in one of her best performances) escapes Paris for the parents’ home in Brittany with two kids in tow. But what to expect when her ex comes knocking? Features a cameo by Louis Garrel and XTC on the soundtrack.
Sat, Mar 20 at 5:30pm
*Q&A with Christophe Honoré and Chiara Mastroianni

Tales from the Golden Age (Amintiri din Epoca de Aur) (2009) 155min
Directed by Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru
Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days) conceived, produced and wrote this darkly funny portmanteau anthology of five different stories (by five different directors, including Mungiu himself)—urban myths from life under the last years of Romanian dictator Ceausescu’s regime.
Sun, Mar 21 at 5:30pm

The Time That Remains (2009) 109min
Directed by Elia Suleiman
With Ali Suliman, Elia Suleiman, Saleh Bakri
The director of Divine Intervention returns with another personal and episodic feature about Arab life in Israel, adapted from his mother’s letters and his father’s diaries, written while his father was a scruffy Palestinian resistance fighter in 1948. Hearkening both Keaton and Tati, Suleiman’s idiosyncratic film is both a deadpan comedy and a poignant exploration of Palestinian identity over the last six decades.
Sat, Mar 20 at 3pm

Vengeance (2009) 108min
Directed by Johnnie To
With Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Testud, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang
HK action auteur To (alongside long-time collaborator/screenwriter Wai Ka-Fai) helms a revenge fantasy starring aging Gallic rocker Hallyday as “Costello,” an ex-hitman turned chef who travels to Asia to avenge his daughter (Testud) and her husband. “With his ruined face and pale snake eyes Mr. Hallyday holds the screen while Mr. To shakes it up.” —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Sun, Mar 21 at 9pm

White Material (2009) 100min
Directed by Claire Denis
With Isabelle Huppert, Isaach De Bankolé, Christopher Lambert
The latest from living legend Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum, Beau Travail) is as richly textured, free-flowing, and multisensory an experience as audiences have come to expect from her. The director returns to her homeland of Africa for this story about a relentlessly unyielding woman (Isabelle Huppert) who refuses to abandon her coffee plantation even as violence and civil war erupt around her and her family. An evocative examination of post-colonial African political strife that resists easy answers and opts for a far more personal, philosophical approach to a complex subject.
Fri, Mar 19 at 9:15pm

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

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, IFC Festival Direct, IFC Productions, and the IFC Center. IFC Films is a leading U.S. distributor of independent and foreign films with a unique day and date distribution model, “IFC In Theaters,” that makes films available to a national audience by releasing them simultaneously in theaters as well as on cable’s On Demand platform, reaching 50 million homes. IFC Festival Direct features a wide selection of titles acquired from major international film festivals and initially offers them exclusively through On Demand. IFC Productions is a feature film production company that provides financing for select independent film projects. IFC Center is a five 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.

BAMcinématek

BAM Rose Cinemas “offers one of the most civilized movie–going experiences in the city”
—The New York Times

The four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas (BRC) opened in 1998 to offer Brooklyn audiences alternative and independent films that might not play in the borough otherwise, making BAM the only performing arts center in the country with two mainstage theaters and a multiplex cinema. In July of 1999, beginning with a series celebrating the work of Spike Lee, BAMcinématek was born as Brooklyn’s only daily year-round repertory film program. BAMcinématek presents new and rarely seen contemporary films, classics from cinema history, work by local artists, and festivals of films from around the world, often with special appearances by directors, actors, and other guests.

Entering its 10th year, BAMcinématek has not only presented major retrospectives by well-known filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Shohei Imamura, Manoel de Oliveira, and Luchino Visconti, but it has also introduced New York audiences to contemporary artists such as Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Arnaud Desplechin, and Hong Sang-soo. BAMcinématek has also featured innumerable guests during this period, including Gena Rowlands, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Robert Altman, Jim Jarmusch, Milos Forman, David Byrne, Jonathan Demme, Isabella Rossellini, Paul Thomas Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Larry Clark, D.A. Pennebaker, and many more.

Credits

Leadership support for BAMcinématek is provided by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust.

BAM Rose Cinemas are named in recognition of a major gift in honor of Jonathan F.P. and Diana Calthorpe Rose. BAM Rose Cinemas would also like to acknowledge the generous support of The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Estate of Richard B. Fisher, Jim & Mary Ottaway, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Bloomberg, and Time Warner Inc. Additional support for BAMcinématek is provided by The Cultural Heritage Preservation Fund, The Grodzins Fund, and The Liman Foundation.

Special thanks to Ryan Werner, Courtney Ott, and Dan Goldberg/IFC Films and Susan Norget.

General Information

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, BAMcafé, and Brownstone Books at BAM are located in the Peter Jay Sharp building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (between St Felix Street and Ashland Place) in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located two blocks from the main building at 651 Fulton Street (between Ashland and Rockwell Places). BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn’s only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. BAMcafé, operated by Great Performances, is open for dining prior to Howard Gilman Opera House performances. BAMcafé also features an eclectic mix of spoken word and live music for BAMcafé Live on Friday nights with a special BAMcafé Live menu available starting at 8pm.

Subway: 2, 3, 4, 5, Q, B to Atlantic Avenue;
D, M, N, R to Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street; C to Lafayette Avenue
Train: Long Island Railroad to Flatbush Avenue
Bus: B25, B26, B41, B45, B52, B63, B67 all stop within three blocks of BAM
Car: Commercial parking lots are located adjacent to BAM

For ticket and BAMbus information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.

DEBUT FILM FROM NATALIA SMIRNOFF HAD ITS PREMIERE IN COMPETITION AT THE 2010 BERLINALE

New York (NY) (February 19, 2009) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today it is acquiring North American rights to the crowd pleasing Argentine film PUZZLE, the debut feature from Natalia Smirnoff which had its world premiere in competition at the 2010 Berlinale. The film is produced by Carousel Films’ Gabriele Pastore and Caroline Dhainaut from La Ninas Pictures. IFC Films plans to take the film to upcoming fall film festivals and release the film shortly thereafter.

The deal for PUZZLE was negotiated by Elizabeth Nastro, IFC Films Director of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, with Emilie Georges and Tanja Meissner of Memento Films International.

In PUZZLE, Maria del Carmen (Maria Onetto) is a forty-something housewife whose only concern over the past twenty years has been the well-being of her husband (Gabriel Goity) and of her now grown-up kids. But when she is offered a puzzle for her birthday, she suddenly discovers she has a very special gift: she can assemble puzzles very fast. It’s not long before she takes on a training partner, a suave millionaire (Arturo Goetz) who opens her eyes to her gifts. Maria’s family has no idea about her new passion since it means nothing to either her husband or her sons. But before long her puzzle mania becomes a serious testing ground, and Maria must decide how much she can expect from her men.

IFC Films will release PUZZLE 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.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented, “PUZZLE completely charmed our entire team at the Berlinale. It is one of the rare crowd pleasers that manages to respect its audience and deliver profound thrills due to top notch direction by Natalia Smirnoff and fantastic performances. We think this film is going to connect with American audiences in a big way on all of our platforms and are thrilled to be in business with Natalia Smirnoff and Memento Films.”

Tanja Meissner of Memento Films said, “As one of the hottest titles at the Berlinale market, PUZZLE has already sold in over 15 territories with several others still under negotiation. IFC Films is the perfect home for PUZZLE in the U.S. and we are thrilled with their team’s enthusiasm for the film.”

About the Filmmaker
Natalia Smirnoff was born in Buenos Aires in 1972. After studying engineering she took up studies in film directing at film school in Buenos Aires. She has worked as a casting director on films such as Lucreta Martel’s 3 films TH HEADLESS WOMAN, THE HOLY GIRL and LA CIENEGA and as assistant director for Pablo Treero, Jorge Gaggero, Alajnadro Argresti. PUZZLE is her debut film.

Theatrical release set for April 16, 2010 in New York
and April 23, 2010 in Los Angeles with an accompanying nationwide VOD release

New York (NY) (February XX, 2009) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired U.S. rights to the Iranian film sensation NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS, an exuberant look at Tehran’s youth and underground music scene and their unapologetic desire for creative expression in the face of an oppressive government. The fifth film from the award-winning filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS was the opening night film of the Un Certain Regard section of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Prize.

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS marks a reunion for Bahman Ghobadi with IFC Films who previously released his acclaimed 2004 feature TURTLES CAN FLY. The film was written by Ghobadi, Roxana Saberi, Hosein M. Abkenar. Saberi is the Iranian-American journalist who was accused of spying last spring and held in custody for several months.

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS had its North American premiere at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles in November of last year, and will also be a special presentation at the upcoming SXSW Film Festival in March. The film will also be shown in April at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as the centerpiece screening of a Bahman Ghobadi retrospective. The retrospective takes place April 14 and 15 and includes all his feature films (A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq, Turtles Can Fly and Half Moon). Please visit www.filmlinc.com for complete information.

The deal for NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, IFC Films VP of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, with Carole Baraton of Wild Bunch.

IFC Films will release NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS 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.

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS journeys into the underground music scene of Tehran where the two protagonists, Negar and Ashkan are trying to get their indie rock band, Take it Easy Hospital, together. The pop duo tirelessly meets other local bands and musicians who are in constant struggle and have to hide in order to play because western music is forbidden and deemed immoral by the current Iran regime. A window into the rich cultural scene of contemporary Tehran, the film invites the viewer to discover new, real music of current day Iran that is being created secretly in Tehran including Hip-hop, rock, metal, blues, traditional, electronic and folk. Shot in secret and featuring extraordinary performances by real underground musicians (it’s estimated there are 2,000 illegal bands in Tehran), NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS is both a serenade to and an indictment of Ghobadi’s former hometown and a vital celebration of an entire generation of Iranians striving towards personal and creative freedom.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment commented, “We are absolutely thrilled to be back in business with Bahman Ghobadi and Wild Bunch. He’s one of the world’s most distinct voices and he’s made an incredibly entertaining, fascinating and life-affirming film. We think this is going to be a great follow-up to our success with TURTLES CAN FLY.”

The soundtrack to NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS (a best-seller in Europe) will be released in the U.S. on April 13 through Milan Records.

About the Filmmaker
Bahman Ghobadi is the leading Kurdish director from Iran. Born in 1969, he served as Abbas Kiarastami’s assistant director on THE WIND WILL CARRY US. His documentary LIFE IN FOG rocketed him to fame. His debut feature A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES won the Camera d’Or in Cannes in 1999. In 2002, MAROONED IN IRAQ won the Golden Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival. TURTLES CAN FLY won the Glass Bear and Peace Film Award at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival and the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival. HALF MOON also won the Golden Shell in Sebastian in 2006.

Ensemble cast includes Danny Huston, Stellan Skarsgård, Heather Graham, Alan Cumming, Christopher Lee, Charlotte Rampling, Amanda Seyfried, Jaime Winstone and Jack Huston

Theatrical release set for April 23rd, 2010 with an accompanying nationwide VOD release

New York (NY) (February XX, 2010) – IFC Films, the leading American distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today it has acquired North American rights to Duncan Ward’s BOOGIE WOOGIE. IFC Films is releasing the film theatrically on April 23rd and nationwide on video on demand beginning April 21st.

Adapted by Danny Moynihan from his novel of the same name, BOOGIE WOOGIE is a wicked satire set against the backdrop of the contemporary London art scene where lust, ambition and power prevail while success and failure precariously balance on a knife edge. The film features an amazing ensemble cast including established stars Danny Huston, Stellan Skarsgård, Heather Graham, Alan Cumming, Christopher Lee, Charlotte Rampling, and hot up-and-comers like Amanda Seyfried, Jaime Winstone and Jack Huston. BOOGIE WOOGIE premiered last year at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

The story centres around the acquisition of Mondrian’s abstract painting “Boogie Woogie”. The film charts the schemings of the art dealers, collectors, artists and wannabees who are all willing to use any means necessary to achieve their own personal ambitions. Each parallel story plummets towards its own depraved and egotistical conclusion until the stories collide, leading to a shocking finale.

BOOGIE WOOGIE is directed by Duncan Ward. The film is an Autonomous/Colourframe Production with S Films, in association with Constance Media, Firefly Films, Muse Productions, P&C Arcade Films and Magna Films. BOOGIE WOOGIE is produced by Cat Villiers, Chris Simon, Kami Naghdi and Danny Moynihan.

The deal for BOOGIE WOOGIE was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, IFC Films VP of Acquisitions and Co-Productions.

Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment, said, “Duncan Ward and Danny Moynihan have crafted a satirical and hilarious Altman-esque send-up of an art world gone mad. We are thrilled to be working with the extraordinary cast and filmmakers of BOOGIE WOOGIE and our friends at The Works. This is a great film for all of our platforms and we are incredibly excited by its prospects.”

Carl Clifton, MD of The Works International, comments: “Boogie Woogie is outrageous, sexy and fun. IFC Films is a perfect fit for it. We’re thrilled to be partnering with them.”

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg said, “It”s been a wonderful, crazy ride with Joan and it looks like we’re in for more fun. We’re very excited to be working closely with IFC Films to bring the film to theaters across the country so her audiences - old and new - can experience Joan’s hilarious and inspiring story.”

Joan Rivers said, “It was an incredible and joyous experience and I’m proud to be a part of something so honest and amazingly produced. Now, show me the money!”

About the filmmakers:
Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, Emmy nominated for their work as co-directors and co-producers of films including the 2007 Sundance Film Festival favorit documentary The Devil Came On Horseback (2007) which was nominated for 3 Emmys including best Documentary. Stern and Sundberg also co-directed and co-produced the Emmy nominated documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt (2006 Sundance Film Festival) for which they are recipients of the Dupont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Journalism. The Trials of Darryl Hunt was short-listed for the 2007 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, and was a 2007 Independent Spirit Award nominee for Best Documentary. The film won awards at more than thirty festivals, and premiered on HBO in spring 2007, with theatrical release (ThinkFilm) in summer 2007. They are currently in post-production on Burma Soldier for HBO, about a former junta member who risks everything to become a pro democracy activist. Stern and Sundberg co-directed and co-produced The End Of America (2008) made in collaboration with best-selling author Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth); the film makes a chilling case for constitutional protections as it puts the recent gradual loss of civil liberties in the US in a historical context. The film premiered at The 2008 Hamptons Film Festival.

The Film Premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Premiere Section; Also in Competition at the Berlin Film Festival in February

Park City, UT (January 30, 2010) – IFC Films, one of the leading American distributors of independent and foreign films, announced today at the Sundance Film Festival it is acquiring U.S. distribution rights to Michael Winterbottom’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME. Since its premiere on Sunday, it has become the most provocative and discussed films at this year’s festival. Based on the novel by legendary pulp writer Jim Thompson, THE KILLER INSIDE ME stars Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Simon Baker and Bill Pullman, from a script by John Curran. It is Winterbottom’s first foray into pure American cinema. The film is a Hero Entertainment presentation of a Stone Canyon, Muse, Revolution production in association with Wild Bunch, Curiously Bright Entertainment and Indion Entertainment Group. It was produced by Chris Hanely, Bradford L. Schlei, Andrew Eaton and executive produced by Jordan Gertner and Lily Bright.

THE KILLER INSIDE ME will next be screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival in February. The deal for THE KILLER INSIDE ME was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Vice President of Acquisitions and Co-Production for IFC Films, with Graham Taylor of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment and Carole Baraton of Wild Bunch. Wild Bunch is also a co-producer on the film and handling all International Distribution. The deal marks the second time IFC Films has worked with Winterbottom and Eaton’s Revolution Films. This February, IFC Films is releasing the highly anticipated THE RED RIDING TRILOGY, a fictionalized account of the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper. THE KILLER INSIDE ME tells the story of handsome, charming, unassuming small town sheriff’s deputy named Lou Ford (Casey Affleck). The film takes place in an idyllic West Texas town in the early 1950’s. As a lifelong resident, Ford has difficulty juggling his long-term girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson), the prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba) that he mistakenly falls for, and the sociopathic tendencies inside him. In Thompson’s savage, bleak, blacker than noir universe nothing is ever what it seems.

Michael Winterbottom is a prolific filmmaker who has directed sixteen films in the past thirteen years. He began his career working in British television before moving into features. Three of his films — WELCOME TO SARAJEVO, WONDERLAND and 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE — have been in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed the socially conscious films IN THIS WORLD, WELCOME TO GUANTANAMO and A MIGHT HEART starring Angelina Jolie. Winterbottom’s most recent film, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, a documentary adaptation of the acclaimed book by Naomi Klein, also premiered at this year’s festival and is currently available nationwide on video-on-demand via Sundance Selects. Jonathan Sehring, President, IFC Entertainment said, “Since it premiered at Sundance on Sunday, we haven’t been able to stop talking or thinking about THE KILLER INSIDE ME. It is a stylish work of cinema by one of its great directors, with an incredible cast. We are incredibly excited to be working with Michael and Andrew Eaton again and we look forward to bringing this film to America via our theatrical and video-on-demand platforms.”

Check out the official premieres on Apple Trailers and New York Magazine’s Culture Vulture!

SHANI ANKORI – Marketing & P.R.
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Inglorious Basterds
3. An Education
4. Funny People
5. The Messenger
6. In The Loopv
7. Up
8. I love you, man
9. Up in the Air
10. Medicine for Melancholy

NAT BARUCH – Marketing & P.R.
1. Inglorious Basterds
2. Public Enemies
3. In the Loop
4. Where the Wild Things Are
5. The White Ribbon
6. Up
7. A Serious Man
8. Hunger
9. The Hurt Locker
10. Moon
11. District 9
12. Avatar
13. Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince
14. Star Trek

JEFF DEUTCHMAN - Acquisitions
The perception of bias is probably unavoidable, but the truth is that there is a significant overlap between the films we buy and the films I love…
1. Summer Hours
2. Antichrist
3. Up
4. Afterschool
5. Tokyo Sonata
6. Sugar
7. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
8. Police, Adjective
9. Thirst
10. District 9

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Adventureland, Avatar, Beeswax, Bruno, The Carter,, Collapse, Duplicity, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Goodbye Solo, Home
The House of the Devil, Humpday, The Hurt Locker, In the Loop, The Informant!, Left Bank, Lorna’s Silence, Medicine for Melancholy, The Messenger, A Serious Man, The White Ribbon, The Windmill Movie

Jonathan Hertzberg - Distribution
1. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
2. Adventureland (Greg Mottola)
3. 35 Shots of Rhum (Claire Denis)
4. Jerichow (Christian Petzold)
5. La Vie Moderne (Modern Life) (Raymond Depardon)
6. Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
7. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
8. You, The Living (Roy Andersson)
9. Up (Pete Docter / Bob Peterson)
10. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)

KEATON KAIL – Marketing & P.R.
1. THE WHITE RIBBON - The filmmaker of the decade in near perfect command of his terribly austere vision. An evocation of malign components of human nature peppered with tenderness and bleary aesthetic yearning.
2. STILL WALKING – Joyful, affectionate, celebrates life with delicate grace.
3. THE CHASER - With obsessive intensity and pragmatic style, Na spins out one of the best horror/thrillers in recent memory. Gives terrific new life to the chase, a kinetic trope of film that others have long since quit reveling at.
4. THE SUN – An utterly strange, transfixing Petri dish study of the perfect character for Sokurov’s cockeyed, breathy lens. The sequence with the koi fish bombers is mindblowing!
5. THE HURT LOCKER - Probably the nearest to perfect a film with a Hollywood head on its shoulders will come to capturing the trap that is the Iraq War. Terrence Malick can’t visit all the wars. Impeccable title. Should win Best Picture.
6. POLICE, ADJECTIVE - Something like holding in a quick burst of laughter for two hours, finally letting it go, and then turning your head sideways and giving a faint sigh of epiphany.
7. ANTICHRIST
8. PONYO
9. DRAG ME TO HELL
10. FADOS

Of special note: AVATAR
I struggle to conclude that any great achievement of form can be truly that without substance to match it, but this film is a certain exception. AVATAR provided an experience of such wonderful cinematic immersion that I was wont to ignore – even embrace - its puerile, somewhat troubling themes and pseudo-spiritualism. The film managed even in consideration of these silly aspects to encourage the spectator to leave his body. It’s a work of such earnest, quixotic escapism as to really, truly change the course of how we enjoy cinema in years to come.
+ The first four minutes of UP
The unfortunate latter half of this film – the last installment in a decade-spanning boon to cinema that is Pixar – might be proof that some simple ideas should be realized in comparably simple bodies. But, if the wonder and charm of UP unravels in full form, the magnificent emotional reach and narrative thrift of the ‘short film’ at its beginning is cause for celebration.

Runners Up: FADOS, SUGAR, THE ROAD, CORALINE, SUMMER HOURS, IN THE LOOP, MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY
Not seen: 24 CITY, TOKYO SONATA, 35 SHOTS OF RHUM, BEACHES OF AGNES

HUMA KHAN – Legal
1. Up in the Air
2. Julie & Julia
3. Summer Hours

LIZZIE NASTRO – Acquisitions
1. Inglorious Basterds
2. Summer Hours
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox
4. In the Loop
5. Bad Lieutenant
a. The Informant
6. The Cove
7. The Hangover
8. Up
9. Avatar

*Have not seen: The Hurt Locker, Precious, A Serious Man, The Road

COURTNEY OTT – Publicity
1. Hurt Locker
2. Inglorious Basterds
3. Summer Hours
4. In The Loop
5. Funny People
6. Star Trek
7. The Hangover
8. Where The Wild Things Are

JONATHAN SEHRING – President, IFC Entertainment
1. Hurt Locker
2. Summer Hours
3. An Education
4. Bad Lieutenant
5. Avatar
6. Paranormal Activity
7. The Messenger
8. Young Victoria
9. Antichrist
10. Hunger

Most overrated movies of the year - tie: Inglorious Basterds and Up in the Air - Basterds is over long, self-indulgent and at more times than not just plain stupid and boring (except for Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender).

ROSE SURNOW – Marketing & Publicity
1. Bad Lieutenant
2. Anvilv
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Funny People
6. Sin Nombre
7. An Education
8. Food Inc
9. A Serious Man
10. Up

CHRIS WELLS – IFC Center
1. POLICE, ADJECTIVE
2. PUBLIC ENEMIES
3. THE FRONTIER OF DAWN
4. FANTASTIC MR. FOX
5. NIGHT AND DAY
6. THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
7. HOME
8. PARADISE
9. LAKE TAHOE
10. TONY MANERO

RYAN WERNER – Marketing & P.R.

** IFC Films releases omitted.

1. The Hurt Locker
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
3. Avatar
4. A Serious Man
5. The Informant!
6. Invictus
7. Inglorious Basterds
8. The Beaches of Agnes
9. Public Enemies
10. Two Lovers

Other Films I really liked (not in order); Me and Orson Welles, Tulpan, Star Trek, You, The Living, Lorna’s Silence, The Messenger, 24 City, The White Ribbon, Broken Embraces, Goodbye, Solo, Treeless Mountain, I Love You Man, Bad Lieutenant, Tokyo Sonata, The Maid, Thirst, Bruno, Il Divo, Sugar, The Headless Woman, Taking Woodstock, Thirst, Funny People, Julia, House of the Devil

Olivier Assayas’ SUMMER HOURS tops the list, making this the second year in a row that an IFC Film has been the most celebrated among the critics surveyed. Last year, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON came out on top.

SUMMER HOURS ranked high enough on 54 separate lists out of the 114 submitted to beat out A SERIOUS MAN, THE HURT LOCKER, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and many others of the best reviewed films of 2009.

Also featured prominently on the list were Corneliu Poromboiu’s POLICE, ADJECTIVE at #9, Armando Iannuci’s IN THE LOOP at #10, and Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s STILL WALKING at #12.

POLICE ADJECTIVE opens tomorrow 12/23 in New York, LA & Chicago.

IN THE LOOP will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray Jan. 12th, 2010.

IN THE LOOP
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards:
Supporting Actor, Runner-up: Peter Capaldi
Screenplay, Runner Up
National Board of Review Awards: Ten Best Films List
NY Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Screenplay
NY Film Critics Online Awards: Best Ensemble Cast

HUNGER
Toronto Film Critics Association: Best Film (tie)
NY Film Critics Circle Awards: Best First Film

EVERLASTING MOMENTS
Los Angels Times: Top 10 Foreign Language Films of 2009
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Foreign Language Film, Nominee

FLAME & CITRON
Los Angeles Times: Top 10 Foreign Language Films of 2009

BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Everlasting Moments
Lemon Tree
Seraphine

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
American Violet
Amreeka
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Inglourious Basterds
Lemon Tree
The Messenger
My Sister’s Keeper
Sweet Crude

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
The Baader Meinhof Complex
An Education
Lemon Tree
My One And Only

BEST DIRECTOR
Andrea Arnold – Fish Tank

BEST SCREENPLAY
In the Loop – Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
John Henshaw – Looking for Eric

MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER
Katie Jarvis – Fish Tank

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION
Bunny and the Bull

“Hong Sang-soo has never more disarmingly realized his bleak, sardonic view of male desire than in Night and Day”
-Reverse Shot

“Very Korean in its emotional content, while also preserving a quizzical distance that is quite French, [Night and Day] is one of his lightest and most easily digestible metaphysical meals to date”
-Variety

“Emphasis on dialogue, combined with an unapologetically stationary camera, gives Hong’s work a casual, ‘artless’ façade that belies his carefully plotted, novelistic structure — of which Night and Day may be the most ambitious to date”
-Village Voice

“Few films more knowingly illustrate the lust and confusion of the male mind”
-Slant Magazine

“The film’s deceptively placid surface — punctuated by mesmeric pans and zooms—implies that each moment is suspect and part of the self-involved [protagonist's] larger creative process, which the director lays bare with piercing, X-Acto knife precision”
-TimeOut Ny

“When I finish a film, I feel like I have overcome a certain hurdle. It’s really good for me as a human being, and I hope that for some people, my films will do the same thing.”
-Hong Sang-Soo

Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo has established himself as the poet of male narcissism, desire, and neurosis and for more than a decade, he has been quietly but consistently turning out a series of films that are somehow both self-effacing and bold, behavioral and formally experimental, including masterpieces such as Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Turning Gate and Tale of Cinema. His most recent film, Night and Day finds him experimenting with a change of scene – set in Paris rather than Korea, thereby adding an element of cultural confusion to his usual thematic arsenal. After getting busted for smoking pot with some students, 40-year-old artist Seong-nam impulsively flees to Paris, leaving his wife behind, and finds himself living in a kind of limbo. Staying in a run-down hotel inhabited mostly by fellow Korean ex-pats, Seong-nam wanders aimlessly around the city, becoming ensnared by temptation in the form of both an ex-girlfriend, and a couple of young art students. Leisurely, episodic, sharp, and deeply funny, Night and Day finds Hong Sang-soo working at the height of his powers.

Directed by Hong Sang-soo, Korea, 2008, 35mm, 144 mins. In Korean and French with English subtitles.

Fri., Dec. 4 at 6:30 & 9:15 pm
Sat.-Sun., Dec. 5-6 at 2, 4:15, 6:30 & 9:15 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Dec. 7-10 at 6:30 & 9:15 pm

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

“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.

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

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.

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!