News

"A piece of divine madness." Rialto Pictures & Studiocanal have unveiled the new official restoration trailer for the stylish thriller Diva from 1981, which is getting a 4K re-release this year. Diva is the influential 1982 Neo-Noir thriller by the late director Jean-Jacques Beineix – an "arthouse sensation, playing for over a year in some cinemas, nabbing four French Césars, and launched the cinema du look, an explosion of visually stunning, punk-inspired, super-cool French movies in the early '80s, soon followed by the films of Luc Besson & Leos Carax." Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed all twist their way through an intricate and stylish French-language thriller. Starring opera singer Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Richard Bohringer, and Frédéric Andréi. This 4K restoration of Diva was produced from the original 35mm negative & sound negative. Then scanned in 4K by TransPerfect Media & finalized by Studiocanal.

By Michael Atkinson

Maybe it's jumping the gun to say so, but is the Romanian New Wave kaput already? The latest and most-Cannes-honored post-postmodern, hyperrealist, ex-dictatorship, young-auteur film movement seems to have already fizzled . after Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (2007) emerged with last year's Palme D'Or, nothing new has appeared at the world's festivals from Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristi Puiu, Catalin Mitulescu or Radu Jude, at a time when they should be leaping on their global visibility and market success like five-year-olds on a summer puddle. In his prime, Godard would've churned out five features and three shorts in the three years since the scent of Romanian sulfur first hit the air with Puiu's "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" (2005). Who knows what's keeping them (Puiu hasn't had a credit in three years), or what bureaucratic Kafka-ness they must battle to get one of their extraordinarily inexpensive movies made,...