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Cinema has a wondrous, unmatched ability to take the dreams, fantasies, fears, and so forth of the artists who make movies and translate them into a medium where they can be shared by millions. Putting a lid on that ability is something one does not want to advocate for. Yet the film industry is a business, so naturally, some restrictions will occur. Fortunately, some of the greatest art of all time has been born of restriction; necessity is the mother of invention, as it were.

However, we are at a point in our cultural and economic status where everything has fallen out of balance. Things feel more restrictive than ever, and while financial backers are squeezing harder, creatives are pushing back and demanding more freedom, not less. A byproduct of this situation is the rise of the multi-part movie.

While the format (which is similar yet notably distinct from a sequel) is not new,...

My Friend Ivan LapshinImage: International Film Exchange

When I was an undergrad in film school, one of the pillar courses was a two-semester film history class that would act as a broad survey to give us a foundation as aspiring filmmakers and workers. Naturally, this course was also about its...

Terry Gilliam has been to Cannes with three of his own films since 1983, but one of his favorite memories of the festival takes him back to that very first time, at the 36th edition, as the co-writer and co-star of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Along with Graham Chapman and the film’s director Terry Jones, he’d emerged from the Carlton hotel’s iconic entrance, then bedecked with promotion for the upcoming Bond movie Octopussy, to encounter a camera crew. Jones started grabbing people at random, shouting, “Who Ees Monty Python???” in a ridiculous foreign accent, and got so carried away that, when they reached the hotel’s famous terrace, he accidentally did it to Gilliam too.

The crowd loved it, and the day only grew stranger. Out on the Carlton’s jetty, they gave an interview to British news channel ITN, with Jones hiding behind Graham...

Napoleon biopics have a history of struggling commercially and critically, with Ridley Scott's recent attempt following suit. Stanley Kubrick's canceled epic Napoleon project hinted at the challenges of capturing the emperor's life on film. Spielberg's upcoming HBO series based on Kubrick's original concept might finally bring the ambitious vision to life.

Ridley Scott's Napoleon failed to meet expectations either critically or commercially, but the movie's performance was foreseen by legendary director Stanley Kubrick long before its release. Made on an estimated budget of $130-200 million, Napoleon made just $220 million at the global box office and scored a middling 58% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, highlighting its mixed reception. However, while the film itself had problems, its overall performance was predicted long before production began.

Despite being one of the most compelling figures in modern history, Napoleon biopics have always proved problematic. Perhaps the most successful is Abel Gance's 1927 silent film which,...

“We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces,” proclaimed former silent film queen Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterwork “Sunset Boulevard.” One of the greatest faces of the era belonged to French actor Albert Dieudonne who starred in Abel Gance’s breathtaking 1927 epic “Napoleon.” With this dark eyes, distinct nose and rock star style hair, Dieudonne channels the infamous French military leader and emperor who conquered most of Europe in the early 19th century until his disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia. Exiled to Elba in 1814, he emerged once again and suffered a massive defeat at Waterloo in 1815. He died in exile six years later at the age of 51.

Dieudonne commands the 5 ½ hour film restored by Kevin Brownlow which features the jaw-dropping triptych finale that is as exciting now as it was 96 years ago. BFI states that the film is “monumental and visionary, the story’s chapters play out...

Ridley Scott has the giggles. The revelation that I’m a New Yorker has prompted the legendary director to launch into a winding tale of the time he was on a traveling scholarship after graduating from London’s Royal College of Art.

“They said, ‘Where do you want to go?’ And, being a 22-year-old in London, I said, ‘I want to go to New York,’” he recalls.

When he arrived in the Big Apple, Scott was told that the most reasonably priced place to stay while on a grant was the Ymca.

A chyron that appears at the end of “Napoleon” — after two and a half hours of turgid, grime-encrusted spectacle — informs that France’s self-anointed emperor oversaw 61 battles, listing the six that director Ridley Scott opted to stage for our benefit … or for his own glory. The director’s motives are unclear, much like those of Napoleon Bonaparte, as played by Joaquin Phoenix, who gives a mumbly and oddly anti-charismatic performance as the figure — short, slender and something of an outsider, owing to his Corsican birth — who came to rule France after the revolution.

Here, from the master of the modern epic, comes an undeniably impressive technical achievement: a bombastic old-school “great man” movie of the sort that dominated Hollywood in the late ’50s and early ’60s. But times are not the same, and though Scott is wise to which way the wind blows (he demonstrated as much in his underrated...

Napoleon Bonaparte fanatics, I have some very bad news for you. And for you non-fanatics, I've got some delicate explaining to do.

As you hopefully learned in school, Napoleon was one of the greatest military strategists in world history. He scored decisive victories against the massive Russian and Austrian militaries at Austerlitz in 1805, and served as Emperor of the French twice for a combined 11 years. His brilliance has been analyzed in countless books and dramatized in many movies (from Sergei Bondarchuk's masterful "War and Peace" to Stephen Herek's equally masterful "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure").

He was a fascinating man, and, ultimately, hubristic. He suffered a severe setback when he invaded Russia in 1812, and famously endured his final comeuppance at Waterloo, which resulted in the British exiling him to the island of Saint Helena where he died at the age of 51.

His life will once again be explored on...

Steven Spielberg is retooling Stanley Kubrick's unproduced Napoleon movie into a limited series for HBO, marking the second time Spielberg has brought an unmade Kubrick project to fruition. Spielberg previously finished Kubrick's A.I. Artificial Intelligence film after Kubrick's death, which was a great success at the box office and even garnered Academy Award nominations. Spielberg's previous success with A.I. suggests that his adaptation of Kubrick's Napoleon has the potential to be just as great, given Spielberg's talent and Kubrick's extensive research on the project.

Steven Spielberg is hard at work retooling Stanley Kubrick’s famously unproduced Napoleon movie into a limited series for HBO, and it’s not the first time that Spielberg has revived a Kubrick project. Spielberg has been working for a decade to reimagine Kubrick’s unmade Napoleon Bonaparte biopic as a seven-part miniseries for HBO (via Deadline). The Schindler’s List director has...

Ridley Scott's Napoleon is a historical tale of devastating war, limitless ambition and doomed romance. The Joaquin Phoenix-led film looks truly massive -- exactly the kind of scope that the story of the French empire deserves. But 2023 isn't the first time someone has attempted to bring the story to cinematic audiences.

One of the most iconic filmmakers in Hollywood history spent years trying to make a Napoleon movie. Although Stanley Kubrick never got the chance to complete it, his other work -- influenced by his time on the film -- helped shape cinema into its current form. Kubrick's valiant attempt at telling Napoleon's story ultimately helped make Scott's Napoleon possible.

Related: Best Historical Figures in the Napoleon Movie, From Josephine to Marshal Davout

Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, Explained

As documented by Salon and other sources, following the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick planned for his next film...

The 1970 film Waterloo still has the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, and it is unlikely to ever be unseated. Waterloo is a co-production between Italy and the then Soviet Union. Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, this classic movie won several notable awards, including the 1971 David di Donatello for Best Film. Waterloo stars Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte and Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington.

Waterloo, as one might expect, follows the story of Napoleon's infamous defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon, one of the greatest military commanders ever, was defeated for the final time at Waterloo, ending his reign as Emperor of the French. Waterloo, one of the best military movies ever, tells the story of Napoleon's exile after the Battle of Leipzig, and his subsequent return to power a short time later. After returning from exile, Napoleon rallies the French to his side, causing the other European powers...

Steven Spielberg confirmed that he is involved in turning Stanley Kubrick's greatest unrealized project, Napoleon, into an HBO limited series. Napoleon will not be Spielberg's first attempt at reviving a Kubrick project. Spielberg also directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence in 2001, which Kubrick was unable to realize because of limited CGI technology at the time. Eventually, Kubrick handed the project off to Spielberg in 1995, with Spielberg staying close to Ian Watson and Kubrick's original story treatment.

Speaking at the Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, Spielberg, who was there doing the rounds for his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, spoke about the upcoming Napoleon series and what they're planning to do with the Kubrick project (via Deadline). Check out what Spielberg said in the tweet below:

Steven Spielberg told #Berlinale2023 that he's adapting Stanley Kubrick's lost film 'Napoleon' into a limited series for HBO pic.twitter.com/PBqHzPQNkt — Deadline Hollywood...

One of Stanley Kubrick’s lost projects, a large-scale biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, has been in the works for HBO for the last seven years.

Steven Spielberg, who has been involved for at least ten years, now says he is “mounting a big production” and the project will become a seven-part series for the premium cable network.

It’s not clear whether the project is still in the development stages or has a series order.

Speaking at the Berlin Film Festival, The Fabelmans director said, “With the co-operation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan, we’re mounting a large production for HBO on based on Stanley’s original script Napoloeon. We are working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series,” he said.

Kubrick had originally planned the film after the success of 2001 and did extensive research on the French Revolutionary leader. He had planned to film the movie across Europe,...

This past year, we've had a lot of discussions about whether Brendan Fraser should have been cast in Darren Aronofsky's "The Whale" due to him requiring a fat suit to play the role. On the one hand, we are all happy to see Fraser be given a lead role by a major director, which hasn't happened in many years. On the other, it is yet another entry on the long list of roles that should presumably have gone to fat actors but didn't. The likelihood that a central character is explicitly written to be large is already incredibly small, but if all those parts are getting taken by actors who need padding and prosthetics to make themselves appear large, when else are fat actors going to be given opportunities to lead films?

As someone who is indeed fat, I often find myself frustrated by this, but I also understand...

"Exhaustive, spectacular, often dazzling in its ambition... one of the wonders of epic cinema." Janus Films has unveiled a grand new trailer and a beautiful new poster for the restored re-release of War and Peace, director Sergey Bondarchuk's epic Soviet Russian film from 1966 (which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1969). This eight-hour long epic, based on Leo Tolstoy's book, contains two main story-lines that are complex and intertwined. One is the love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov, who is unhappy in his marriage. The other story is the "Great Patriotic War" of 1812 against the invading Napoleon's Armies. The people of Russia from all the classes of society stand up united against the enemy. Janus Films will re-release this cinematic epic starting this month in NYC, featuring a digital restoration of the picture and sound using a 2K scanner. Check...

The most expensive Soviet film in history has been stunningly restored. Sergey Bondarchuk’s seven-hour-plus epic War and Peace, of course adapting Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel, has been given an update courtesy of Mosfilm Cinema Concern and Janus Films. Ahead of a theatrical run starting this month at NYC’s Film Society of Lincoln Center, a new trailer has arrived.

If you don’t live in NYC, considering this presentation comes from Janus we can expect a home video release from The Criterion Collection by the end of the year, but if you’re lucky enough to be close to this rare opportunity, it’s certainly one to seek out. Judging from the trailer, it looks like a gloriously beautiful cinematic experience like none other this year. Check it out below.

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo...

The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 71st edition of the festival:COMPETITIONEverybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi)At War (Stéphane Brizé)Dogman (Matteo Garrone)Le livre d'images (Jean-Luc Godard)Netemo Sameteo (Asako I & II) (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)Sorry Angel (Christophe Honoré)Girls of the Sun (Eva Husson)Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)Shoplifter (Hirokazu Kore-eda)Capernaum (Nadine Labaki)Burning (Lee Chang-dong)BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)Three Faces (Jafar Panahi)Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)Lazzaro Felice (Alice Rohrwacher)Yomeddine (A.B. Shawky)Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov)Un couteau dans le cœur (Yann Gonzalez)Ayka (Sergei Dvortsevoy)The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)Out Of COMPETITIONSolo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard)Le grand bain (Gilles Lelouch)The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier)Un Certain REGARDGräns (Ali Abbasi...

Despite Netflix removing all of its films from the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Orson Welles will still be represented on the Croisette next month. The festival has announced the official lineup for this year’s Cannes Classics sidebar, and included on the list is the FilmStruck-produced documentary “The Eyes of Orson Welles,” from British documentarian Mark Cousin.

Netflix had originally been set to bring Welles’ unfinished film, “The Other Side of the Wind,” to the festival’s Out of Competition section, but the streaming giant announced it would not be attending the festival in any capacity after Cannes reinstated a rule preventing films without French theatrical distribution from competing for the Palme d’Or. The rule would not have affected “The Other Side of the Wind,” but Netflix wasn’t going to make an exception.

“The Eyes of Orson Welles” includes access to a lifetime of private drawings and paintings by Welles,...

Orson Welles will be featured at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. It still won’t be via his previously unfinished The Other Side Of The Wind, which recently got caught in the scrum between the festival and Netflix. Rather, Welles will be represented in The Eyes Of Orson Welles, a new documentary from Mark Cousins that’s part of the Cannes Classics selection.

The festival today unveiled its full roster for the Classics sidebar which includes tributes and documentaries about film and filmmakers, and restorations presented by producers, distributors, foundations, cinemathèques and rights holders. Among the attendees this year are Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda, Christopher Nolan and John Travolta.

The Eyes Of Orson Welles is a journey through the filmmaker’s visual process. Thanks to Welles’ daughter Beatrice, Cousins (The Story Of Film) was granted access to never-before-seen drawings, paintings and early works that form a sketchbook from his life.

Contemporary Moscow becomes a battleground for the survival of the human race in Attraction, a bombastic alien-invasion thriller whose familiar plot is elevated by world-class visual effects. Director Fyodor Bondarchuk is the son of the late Soviet-era Oscar-winning filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk and a public supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is arguably reflected in this film’s patriotic political subtext, although Bondarchuk insists the message is more universal than local. Prior to this, his most recent project was the 2013 epic Stalingrad, which Russia pitched unsuccessfully to the Academy Awards.

Attraction is already a box-office hit domestically, where it played...

The 16th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival announced its line-up in a press conference today.

Here is the complete list of films which will be screened at the festival:-

International Competition

Difret

Dir.: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari (Ethiopia / 2014 / Col / 99)

History of Fear (Historia del miedo)

Dir.: Benjamin Naishtat (Argentina-France-Germany-Qatar-Uruguay / 2014 / Col / 79)

With Others (Ba Digaran)

Dir.: Nasser Zamiri (Iran / 2014 / Col / 85)

The Tree (Drevo)

Dir.: Sonja Prosenc (Slovenia / 2014 / Col / 90)

Next to Her (At li layla)

Dir.: Asaf Korman (Israel / 2014 / Col / 90)

Schimbare

Dir.: Alex Sampayo (Spain / 2014 / Col / 87)

Fever

Dir.: Raphaël Neal (France / 2014 / Col / 81)

Court

Dir.: Chaitanya Tamhane (India (Marathi-Gujarati-English-Hindi) / 2014 / Col / 116)

Macondo

Dir.: Sudabeh Mortezai (Austria / 2014 / Col / 98)

India Gold Competition 2014

The Fort (Killa)

Dir.: Avinash Arun (India (Marathi) / 2014 / Col / 107)

Unto the Dusk

Dir.: Sajin Baabu (India (Malayalam) / 2014 / Col / 118)

Names Unknown (Perariyathavar)

Dir.: Dr. Biju (India (Malayalam) / 2014 / Col / 110)

Buddha In a Traffic Jam

Dir.

“It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.” – Stanley Kubrick, Oct. 20, 1971.

There are few unrealized projects in the history of cinema more tantalizingly fascinating than Stanley Kubrick’s planned feature about Napoleon. Even in 1967, at the time of its initial pre-production (the first time around), it seemed like a potentially great idea. But now, looking back with Kubrick’s entire body of work as a reference point, it truly does stand as a project this legendary filmmaker should have been destined to make. Thanks to a mammoth and comprehensive collection of materials fashioned into Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, edited by Alison Castle and published by Taschen, we can for the first time see how Kubrick prepared for the film and what he had in mind for its ultimate big-screen presentation.

Colombia Pictures is bringing Fedor Bondarchuk’s Russian smash to the Us and has struck a deal with IMAX for a one-week nationwide engagement starting on February 28.

The 3D WWII drama is Russia’s foreign-language Oscar submission and became the highest grossing Russian film ever on $66.1m in six weeks.

The producers also claim it is the first Russian film made completely in 3D and the first Russian film to be released in the IMAX format.

Ilya Tilkin and Sergey Snezhkin wrote the screenplay from the novel Life And Fate by Vasiliy Grossman. Thomas Kretschmann, Petr Fedorov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Mariya Smolnikova and Yanina Studilina star.

Alexander Rodnyansky, Sergey Melkumov, Dmitriy Rudovskiy and Anton Zlatopolskiy produced. The executive producer is Nataliya Gorina.

Columbia Pictures will be bringing the highest grossing Russian film of all time to U.S. audiences next month. The studio announced today that it will be releasing the World War II drama Stalingrad exclusively in IMAX 3D theaters nationwide in the U.S. starting February 28th. Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, the film takes place during the titular WWII battle and revolves around a determined band of Russian soldiers who fight to hold a strategic building in the devastated city against a ruthless German army, all the while becoming deeply connected to a Russian woman who has been living there. The pic is Russia’s first completely shot in 3D, as well as its first IMAX release, and earned $66.1 million during its six-week theatrical run. The film stars Thomas Kretschmann (King Kong, The Pianist), Petr Fedorov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Mariya Smolnikova and Yanina Studilina. Watch the Russian trailer after the jump.

Opening in the U.S. in February, Stalingrad is Russia’s official entry for the 86th Academy Awards and the first Russian motion picture to be presented in IMAX 3D. The film tells the epic story of the 1942 battle on the bank of the Volga River that changed the course of World War II and the people who managed to preserve their humanity under inhuman conditions. Directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk, the drama stars Thomas Kretschmann, Yanina Studilina, Philippe Reinhardt, Heiner Lauterbach, Pyotr Fyodorov, Mariya Smolnikova, Aleksey Barabash, Andrey Smolyakov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Dmitriy Lysenkov, Oleg Volku, and Yuriy Vladimirovich Nazarov. In an exclusive interview, Bondarchuk and producer Alexander Rodnyansky talked about what inspired them to tell a traditional World War II story in a new and visually powerful way with IMAX 3D, how they worked with a talented ensemble of actors to bring the story to life, the unique production challenges they encountered,...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: The legendary Christopher Plummer, who has been earning raves for his performance in Mike Mills’ “Beginners” as a widower embracing his homosexuality, will receive the “Hollywood Supporting Actor Award” at this year’s 15th Annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Film Awards, presented by Starz Entertainment. The event is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 24, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Plummer, an Academy Award nominee for his recent performance in “The Last Station,” has been enjoying even more awards chatter as of late for his turn as Hal, a closeted gay man who didn’t choose to come out until his wife passed away … much to the surprise of his son (Ewan McGregor).

Plummer, who can be seen in “Barrymore” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” later this year, will be on hand to accept the award.

His bio is below:

Christopher Plummer...

Italian movie tycoon whose list of credits featured as many disasters as hits

The Italian-born film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who has died aged 91, will perhaps go down in movie history as the last "transatlantic" tycoon. Over a career spanning more than 60 years, producing films on both sides of the ocean, he had as many flops as hits. But De Laurentiis almost always succeeded in staying afloat.

In Rome, he produced Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning La Strada (1954) and the grandiose spectacular War and Peace (1956), but also made The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) and Waterloo (1970), which never recovered their costs. Relocating to the Us, he enjoyed success with Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and Conan the Barbarian (1982), but had financial disasters including Year of the Dragon (1985) and a failed food emporium, which he opened in New York. De Laurentiis was also a starmaker, both in Italy, where...

Not quite but it’s up there. Finally after years of development and labor problems and losing a director, the two part film version of the The Hobbit will soon begin production directed by Peter Jackson and sources are saying that it will be one of the most expensive films ever made with a total production cost approaching $500 million.

Thought that’s a staggering sum it, doesn’t make make it the most expensive film ever made. Both the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, which were shot back-to- back, cost an estimated $450 million combined for both films and Spider Man 3 cost Sony Pictures a reported $500 million to make.

But the still the king of all expensive films still is the 8 hour long Russian film version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace directed by Sergei Bondarchuk (and which by the way is a really good film) which took 5 years to shoot released in the U.

A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and Huston

For an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland's leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the West End and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful.

There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.

In John Huston's swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction,...

Russian actor best known for his role as Bolkonsky in the epic War and Peace

The supremely handsome Russian actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who has died aged 81, seemed born to play Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Sergei Bondarchuk's magnificent War and Peace (1967), in which he carried off the difficult task of gaining sympathy for Tolstoy's melancholy, sardonic, aloof aristocrat.

According to the critic Roger Ebert: "All of the actors look a little larger, nobler and more heroic than life … perhaps Tikhonov comes closest with his chiselled face." The four-part, eight-hour, 70mm, $100m epic was deservedly awarded the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1969, and Tikhonov was feted wherever it was shown.

Before War and Peace, Tikhonov had appeared in a dozen films since his debut in Sergei Gerasimov's The Young Guard (1948), which was among the better socialist realist films of the period. He played a passionate youth, one...

In the first of a new fortnightly series, Phil Hoad reviews an as-yet-unfilmed movie script. Today: Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon

This is Draft excluder, the Guardian's fortnightly review of unproduced screenplays. Whether it's the latest hot item that's got the development execs thumb-wrestling over it in the parking lot, or the great unfinishable obsession that has defeated many a director, we'll be dicing it, slicing it and making nice (or not) with it.

Remember: the scripts reviewed here are works-in-progress, and will differ from the finished film.

This week: Napoleon by Stanley Kubrick

The pitch

The rise and fall of history's greatest general by history's greatest director (if you subscribe to Empire magazine). Napoleon dynamite, surely?

The pedigree

Doesn't come any higher, really. In a career that saw a fair few get away, Napoleon became Kubrick's cream cetacean. Having tackled the entire history of humanity in 2001: A Space Odyssey,...

By Michael Atkinson

Every now and then, the natural world and the massive self-satisfying erections of man provide filmmakers with ready-made metaphors of massive torque and resonance. Werner Herzog is an expert at locating these visual/thematic El Dorados; Marker, Kiarostami and Ghobadi are current explorers of the paradigm, which necessitates an embrace of documentary reality. (Slavic artists are just beginning to make use out of the ex-Soviet landscape of unfinished and derelict public projects, from decommissioned nuclear power plants to entire cities left abandoned after infrastructure support dried up.) But Jia Zhang-ke is the filmmaker bringing new life and commitment to the idea of finding universalized meanings in real-life monstrosities. Jia's "Platform" used its traveling theater troupe as a stand-in for the average citizen watching Chinese history pass chaotically before them, but it was with "The World" that Jia discovered the surreal significances that emanated organically from the titular,...

Cologne, Germany -- The Berlin International Film Festival is going epic for 2009, with a retrospective devoted to the wide-screen panoramic images of 70mm filmmaking.

The Berlin festival will screen 22 films shot in the format, including "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "Patton" (1970) and Sergei Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" (1967).

The Retrospective program also will include a series of lectures to accompany the films. The 59th Berlinale runs Feb. 5-15.

Monster producer Mark Damon is partnering with Russia's Mosfilm Studios and Ramco Films to produce War and Peace, an eight-hour, English-language miniseries based on Leo Tolstoy's classic. The project, budgeted at $60 million-$70 million, is in preproduction and will be the most expensive ever filmed in Russia. Sets are being built at government-owned Mosfilm, the legendary studio founded in 1920 that also produced the 1968 big-screen adaptation of the epic novel by Russian filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk that won a foreign-language Oscar. Well-preserved props, weapons and costumes from the 1968 film will be used in the new mini.

COLOGNE, Germany -- German production and rights group EOS Entertainment has said it is joining forces with Italian production giant Lux Vide for a big-budget miniseries version of Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace". EOS head Jan Mojto said Friday that the companies are searching for European broadcast partners to board the multimillion-dollar production. Mojto said shooting would start as early as 2006, with a targeted delivery date of 2007. Cast and crew have yet to be finalized. EOS and Lux Vide are no strangers to big, historic miniseries. The companies teamed on the six-part Roman Empire mini "Imperium" and the two-part papal drama "Pope John XXIII", which starred Ed Asner. Tolstoy's epic, which traces the fate of Russia and its royal elite during the upheaval of the Napoleonic wars, has been adapted several times for the big and small screen. Best known are King Vidor's Oscar-nominated 1956 Hollywood production starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn, Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk's 1968 epic that won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and a 1972 U.K. miniseries that featured a BAFTA-Award winning performance by Anthony Hopkins.