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The programme for the 2021 Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Campion, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michelangelo Frammartino, Pablo Larraín, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, and more.Parallel MothersCOMPETITIONParallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (Ana Lily Amirpour)Un Autre Monde (Stephane Brize)The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)America LatinaL’Evenement (Audrey Diwan)Official CompetitionThe Hole (Michelangelo Frammartino)Sundown (Michel Franco)Lost Illusions (Xavier Giannoli)The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)Spencer (Pablo Larrain)Freaks Out (Gabriele Mainetti)Qui Rido Io (Mario Martone)On The Job: The Missing 8 (Erik Matti)Leave No Traces (Jan P. Matuszyński)Captain Volkonogov EscapedThe Card Counter (Paul Schrader)The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino)Reflection (Valentyn Vasyanovych)The Box (Lorenzo Vigas)Out Of COMPETITIONFeaturesDune (Denis Villeneuve)Il Bambino Nascosto (Roberto Andò)Les Choses Humaines (Yvan Attal)Ariaferma (Leonardo Di Costanzo)Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green...

In good news for fans of Ingmar Bergman and Bruno Dumont, the Criterion Collection has announced its June titles. Three from the Swedish master are making the upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray, with Dumont’s “La vie de Jésus” and “L’humanité” making their Criterion debut. Also joining the collection are John Cameron Mitchell’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” George Stevens’ “Swing Time,” and Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic adaptation of “War and Peace.”

More information below, as well as the ever-alluring cover art:

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman

In 1960, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began work on three of his most powerful and representative films, eventually recognized as a trilogy. Already a figure of international acclaim for such masterpieces as The Seventh Seal and The Magician, Bergman turned his back on the expressionism of his fifties work to focus on a series of chamber dramas exploring belief and alienation in the modern age.

“I am an agnostic filmmaker…”

Perhaps it is a quite fitting conclusion that the final film of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s “Poetic trilogy” is also the one which sparked the most controversy. “Gabbeh” and “The Silence”, the two other entries in the film series, were banned in Iran for supporting the views of Sufism, a branch of Islam which has been subject of persecution in Iran, Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia. The final movie, however, led to Iranian authorities asking for the removal of Makhmalbaf’s films from the records of the Iranian Cinema Organization. In the end, the already troubled history Makhmalbaf had in his home country continued, resulting in a permanent exile from his home country for himself and his family.

In the film, Makhmalbaf, together with his son Maysam, travels to the Bahá’í gardens in Israel, one of the central holy places of the Bahá’í faith. The religion,...

Former Global Road and Im Global exec John Zois has been hired as Evp Acquisitions & Co-Productions at Anton, the global film and TV producer, financier and distributor whose credits include Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop and the Paddington and Shaun the Sheep franchises. He will be tasked with growing the company’s film business while working to establish Anton’s TV studio in the U.S.

Anton currently has a slate of 4-5 films a year focusing on kids/family and sci-fi/genre fare, with budgets up to $50 million. In TV, recent projects include McMafia from the BBC and AMC, and Tom Hooper’s upcoming His Dark Materials for HBO. Zois will report to Anton founder and CEO Sebastien Raybaud.

At Global Road, Zois was Head of Acquisitions & Co-Productions and oversaw the acquisition and productions of the likes of The Secret Garden starring Colin Firth and The Silence starring Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci.

John Zois, a former executive with Global Road and Im Global, has joined the production company Anton as Evp of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, the company announced Friday.

Zois’ mission is to grow the company’s film business and help establish Anton’s TV studio in the U.S. In film, Zois will work alongside London based president of distribution, Harold van Lier, to grow Anton’s slate to 4 to 5 films a year, with budgets of up to $50 million, with a strong focus on kids and family films and and sci-fi films. Zois will report to Anton Founder and CEO Sebastien Raybaud.

“John is an incredibly seasoned and well-liked executive and the perfect person to expand our footprint in the U.S.,” Raybaud said in a statement.

Also Read: Donald Tang's Global Road Files for Bankruptcy After Just 1 Year in Business

Prior to joining Anton, Zois was the Head of Acquisitions & Co-Productions at Global Road,...

Anton’s upcoming features include Greenland, animation Fireheart.

On the eve of Efm, finance, production and sales company Anton has announced that former Global Road and Im Global executive John Zois has joined as executive vice-president of acquisitions and co-productions.

Zois will help to grow the company’s global film business alongside London-based president of distribution Harold van Lier. The company has targetted a slate of four to five films a year budgeted up to $50m, with a strong focus on children / family and sci-fi / genre.

The new arrival will also work to establish Anton’s TV studio in the Us.

While many of us assumed upon the announcement that Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters 3 would see the torch pass to a new generation of leads, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the next set of busters will be a fair bit younger than we initially anticipated.

Earlier this month, the word got out that one of the main characters in the upcoming sequel will be a 12-year-old girl with an interest in science. Sure enough, Hn Entertainment has now reported of some unearthed audition tapes which reveal that 12-year-old Sarah Abbott has tried out for a part that seems to fit with the previously leaked description. The young Canadian actress is perhaps best known for appearing in the 2017 Black Mirror episode “Arkangel,” and is also set to play a role in the upcoming horror movie The Silence.

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War no longer recognizes ‘innocent bystanders’: a married couple seeks to sidestep ‘civil disturbances’ by relocating to a rural island, only for the war to descend on them from all sides. Forget escapist post-apocalyptic fantasies: Ingmar Bergman demonstrates how the terror of war obliterates human values at the personal level. Human trust and morals fall fast under pressure — atom bombs aren’t needed to return us to the stone age of dog-eat-dog. Bergman stages impressive large-scale ‘action’ scenes, yet always relates the terror without to psychological traumas within. It’s one of the director’s most affecting films.

Shame (Skammen)

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 961

1968 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 103 min. / Skammen) / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 5, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow, Sigge Fürst, Gunnar Bjürnstrand, Birgitta Valberg.

Cinematography: Sven Nykvist

Film Editor: Ulla Ryghe

Produced by Lars-Owe Carlberg

Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar...

“If you close your eyes, you’ll learn better.”

Although it might strike an audience as unbelievable, but some of the story of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s “The Silence” is actually a recollection of his childhood. While he is not blind, he certainly recalls being blind to other forms of expression and joy in the world, most of all music and movies. Branded as sinful by his grandmother, Makhmalbaf recalls not having stepped foot inside a cinema until he was in his late teens. However, he eventually encountered music much by chance, and like the protagonist of the second part of his “Poetic Trilogy”, it was Ludwig van Beethoven’s iconic notes which enchanted him.

In interviews, Makhmalbaf often claims the films of the “Poetic Trilogy” are essentially works about the art of cinema itself. While “Gabbeh” focuses on sight and visuals, “The Silence” is a film about sound and music.

Global Road Entertainment’s film division is looking to sell off finished movies to recoup investments and stave off bankruptcy, a knowledgable insider told TheWrap.

“The Silence,” a horror film lead by “Mad Men” star Kiernan Shipka, the live action-animation hybrid “Playmobil” and the recently shelved Johnny Depp true-life detective story “City of Lies” are among the projects on the market, said the insider.

Global Road’s film division was effectively taken over by its creditors earlier this week, after previously operating under the control of CEO Rob Friedman. Lenders are hoping to set meetings and set up screenings with several top indie distributors to unload much of the existing slate of film projects, a second individual said.

Global Road declined to comment on the state of the company.

Also Read: Global Road Film Division Seized by Creditors

Top lenders to Global Road include Bank of America, which is taking the lead on sales,...

Global Road Entertainment is in the hands of two banks that are seeking to sell off its film assets, sources tell Variety. Bank of America is taking the lead and East West Bank is a participant in the credit facility, as the studio appears to have run out of runway on its ambitions to become a film giant with worldwide reach.

The studio has been making overtures to competitors in recent days and is scheduling screenings for films in various stages of production. It has signaled that it is open to entertaining offers for “City of Lies,” a crime thriller with Johnny Depp that it recently yanked from the release calendar. The banks are also shopping “The Silence,” a horror movie with Kiernan Shipka, and “Playmobil: The Movie,” which blends live-action and animation. Global Road is also backing out of “The Secret Garden,” a co-production with StudioCanal that is in development.

North American release of A.X.L. remains on schedule for Friday.

Lenders have taken control of Global Road Entertainment’s domestic feature production and distribution division as the company’s financial woes deepen.

Global Road management met with staff on Tuesday (August 21) to explain the situation. Screen understands that at time of writing there was no mention of lay-offs at the company formed by Donald Tang’s (pictured) Tang Media Partners (Tmp).

Furthermore the development is not believed to impact the television or sales divisions, which according to sources remain going concerns.

In situations when a lender assumes control of a company,...

North American release of A.X.L. remains on schedule for Friday.

Lenders have taken control of Global Road Entertainment’s domestic feature production and distribution division as the company’s financial woes deepen.

Global Road management met with staff on Tuesday (August 21) to explain the situation. Screen understands that at time of writing there was no mention of lay-offs at the company formed by Donald Tang’s (pictured) Tang Media Partners (Tmp).

Furthermore the development is not believed to impact the television or sales divisions, which according to sources remain going concerns.

In situations when a lender assumes control of a company,...

TheWrap is pleased to announce the 12 finalists in the seventh annual ShortList Film Festival, launching today online.

The finalists, hand-picked from the world’s top film festivals over the last year, will stream on the site starting today through August 22, 2018 — allowing visitors to vote on their favorites.

The Audience Prize and The Industry Prize winners will each receive a $5,000 cash prize during a ceremony to take place at the AMC Century City in Los Angeles on Thursday, August 23.

The films in the main competition are a mix of foreign language, drama, comedy and animation created by filmmakers from around the globe.

Also Read: Meet: The 2018 ShortList Film Festival Jurors!

In addition, eight student films from top colleges and universities included in TheWrap’s ranking of film schools have been named finalists in a sidebar competition.

The contenders come from filmmakers who studied at USC, UCLA, University of North Carolina School of the Arts,...

Laura Vandervoort (Supergirl), Kyle Breitkopf (The Whispers) and Kimberly-Sue Murray (Crimson Peak) have been cast opposite Ian Somerhalder, Adrian Holmes, Jacky Lai and Peter Outerbridge in Netflix’s upcoming vampire drama V-Wars.

The book, published in 2012 by Idw Publishing, debuted as a collection of prose stories that chronicles the first Vampire War. In the series, Somerhalder will star as Dr. Luther Swann, who enters a world of untold horror when a mysterious disease transforms his best friend, Michael Fayne (Holmes), into a murderous predator who feeds on other humans. As the disease spreads and more people are transformed, society fractures into opposing camps pitting normal people against the growing number of these “vampires.” Swann races against time to understand what’s happening, while Fayne rises to become the powerful underground leader of the vampires.

Vandervoort will play Mila, Breitkopf is Dez and Murray will portray Danika.

Brad Turner will direct the pilot episode and executive produce. William Laurin and Glenn Davis will serve as showrunners. Eric Birnberg and Thomas Walden will executive produce for High Park, with David Ozer and Ted Adams for Idw Entertainment and James Gibb for Marada Pictures. V-Wars is produced by High Park in association with Idw.

Actress, writer and producer Vandervoort is known for her roles on Supergirl, Smallville, V and Bitten, among others. She’s repped by Abrams Artists Agency, Industry Entertainment and Noble Caplan Abrams.

Breitkopf had a lead role in ABC’s summer drama series The Whispers and will next be seen in Netflix’s upcoming feature film The Silence. He’s repped by Innovative Artists and Noble Caplan Abrams.

Murray’s credits include My Perfect Romance for Netflix, Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak and Lifetime’s The Lizzie Borden Chronicles. She’s repped by Amanda Rosenthal Talent Agency and Van Johnson Company.

Tomorrow is the centenary of the birth of one of cinema’s greatest directors, Ingmar Bergman, and to celebrate, The Criterion Collection has announced of their most expansive releases ever. This November, they will release Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, a 39-film box set comprising nearly all of his work, including 18 films never before released by Criterion. Curated akin to a film festival, the set features Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Films, with many double features in between. The set also features 11 introductions and over five hours of interviews with the director himself, six making-of documentaries, a 248-page book, and much more.

As we await for its November 20 release, check out an overview from Criterion below, as well as the box art, the trailer, and the full list of films, in curated order. One can also see much more about each release and the special features on the official site.

With the...

The lineup for this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, which celebrates its 71st edition, has arrived. Among the most-anticipated titles in the lineup there’s a new feature from Hong Sang-soo titled Hotel by the River and the latest film from Tuesday, After Christmas director Radu Muntean, Alice T. Also in the slate is Man in the Well, a short film from Hu Bo, made before his first and final feature An Elephant Sitting Still. Ahead of our coverage, check out the full lineup below (via Mubi), also featuring previously premiered films from Spike Lee, Kent Jones, Ethan Hawke, Ciro Guerra & Cristtina Gallego, Aneesh Chaganty, and more.

Piazza Grande

BlackKkansman

Blaze

Coincoin et les Z’inhumains

I Feel Good

Le vent tourne

Les Beaux Esprits

Liberty

L’ordre des medecins

L’ospite

Manila in the Claws of Light

Birds of Passage

Ruben Brandt, Collector

Se7en

Searching

The Equalizer 2...

Interview'The messages from women have been very fulfilling': Anjali Patil to Tnm on 'Kaala'.Sowmya RajendranFacebook/Anjali PatilShe is an award-winning actor with several critically acclaimed films to her name. But for the Tamil audience, she is Puyal, the fiery young woman from Kaala, who has taken everyone by storm with her performance. Anjali Patil always thought her role in the film was a small one. But after the Pa Ranjith directorial released on June 7, Anjali's character has been among the most discussed aspects in the film.  The one scene that has struck people powerfully is when Puyal is stripped by policemen during a protest. Instead of picking up her clothes, she picks up a stick lying next to it and continues to attack the cops. Speaking to Tnm, Anjali recalls how they shot that scene. "We were shooting in the middle of the night and I was probably the only woman on the sets. There was an assistant and we were surrounded by a mob of 500-600. But you know, I come from very strong training. I've spent 7 years in drama school. So the things we're trained to do make us practical and professional. While doing the scene, I had only one job - to make it look very normal. Because if it is not normal and casual when I shoot, my co-actors, the cops would feel uncomfortable and we would not get good shots. So it boils down to getting the shots right and getting good performances on camera." Anjali had the option of using a body double for the scene - a man - but she decided to do the scene herself. "We had a body double who was wearing exactly my clothes. But I didn't use him. I didn't like the idea of someone else doing it for me. I had to show them how to do it - especially the police guys - if you hold me in the air like this and if you pull my pants like this, it's going to be easy," she says.  'An emotionally exhausting job' Looking at Anjali's body of work, it's not surprising that Pa Ranjith cast her for Puyal's role. In films like With You, Without You (for which she won the Silver Peacock for Best Actor (Female) at the Iffi), Na Bangaaru Talli, and The Silence, Anjali has played characters who've stood up to gender violence - though each of those characters has been unique.  Does she find it emotionally draining to play such roles? "Of course, it drains me a lot. When I did With You, Without You and Na Bangaaru Talli, I was almost in depression for a really long time; they take so much out of you as an actor. It's something you don't even realise. When I came out of With You, Without You, I didn't realise that the film would affect me so much for so many years. After Na Bangaaru Talli, I decided that I wouldn't do heavy duty films like this anymore because it was affecting me mentally and physically as well," Anjali says. In Na Bangaaru Talli, the actor's award-winning Telugu film, Anjali plays the daughter of a man who trafficks women and girls into sex work. In With You, Without You, a Sri Lankan film, Anjali plays a Tamil woman from a war-torn region who ends up marrying an ex-solider. "When I was doing Na Bangaaru Talli, I lost hair. Physically, my hair was pulled out of my scalp. When I did With You, Without You, I thought I probably would never fall in love or be a normal girl because I was, in a way, affected by the character a lot," she shares. Do these roles allow her a catharsis at some level? Anjali thinks for a moment and says, " I don't know about catharsis - most people think of actors who get these huge pay cheques and they get all these comforts and luxuries. I have a very different view of it, especially in the last couple of years. It's a very difficult job, it's an emotionally exhausting job. Na Bangaaru Talli we were shooting for so many nights. We were shooting for almost a month at nights. So sleeping in the day and waking up at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and then staying awake for the entire night is a very, very demanding job." On Kaala Coming back to Kaala, which draws several parallels to the epic Ramayana, I ask Anjali if her character was based on Shurpanaka. With a laugh, she says, "No, that wasn't in the brief I received. There are a lot of parallel things which you draw and it is very beautifully crafted, the way Ranjith details things. But Puyal wasn't supposed to be Shurpanaka...her nose didn't get cut! She was one of those contemporary characters, a girl of today who is equal in every way." With You, Without You had a limited release in Chennai. It was Pa Ranjith's assistants who watched the film and told the director about Anjali's performance in it.  "The assistants called me and told me about this role. Very clearly, the best part about this entire film was that everyone always knew what sort of actor I am and what kind of work I do. There was tremendous respect when they called me. I remember them being very open to the fact that I might say no to the entire thing because I have been doing very strong lead roles and this might not be something I'm interested in. That honesty touched me," Anjali reveals. Anjali speaks fondly of her first meeting with Pa Ranjith. Calling him a "sensitive and sensible human being", Anjali says that they had a great conversation about colours, their ideas on politics, and so on. "That was important for me more than anything else. I felt this director is trying to do something huge. And I have been doing films, I have been standing up with people who've been associated with doing such substantial things - not paper horses. That's how I said yes, even though it was a tiny part in many ways. I always thought of Puyal like that. But when the film came out, the impact was huge," she says. Love for Puyal Anjali goes on to add that the love she has received for the character has been incredible and unexpected. For several women who watched the film, Puyal choosing to hit back instead of succumbing to patriarchal ideas of 'honour' that Tamil cinema has fed them for years, came as a relief. "I can totally understand that. I've been getting messages from boys also but the amount of messages I've been getting from girls, women, it's so fulfilling. It's amazing that girls want to see this, girls want to be this, more than their shame and so-called womanhood which is pushed on us," says Anjali.  Anjali recognises that films have played a big role in selling such ideas to women.  "Films have done some amount of damage in many ways. It's very fulfilling (to do a role like Puyal) because I'm not a damsel in distress. I'm a very independent woman and I've been independent since the time I was 16. I'm earning my money, earning my food. I choose to be with people I want to be. I choose my opinion, and I don't take anyone's opinion because I owe them anything. Economic independence gives me my emotional independence. I'm not dependent on any man to be happy. That's something every woman should know," she asserts. Off screen, within the film industry, Anjali believes there can be gender equality only when social attitudes change - a lot of women, too, are patriarchal, she points out.  Small-scale Vs Mainstream In Newton, a 2017 release, Anjali played Malko, an adivasi woman. The film centred around subaltern politics, much like Kaala, but was very different in style. For one, Kaala was made on a massive budget and was sold as a 'Superstar' film, with Rajinikanth in the lead. For Anjali, however, the format of the film has never mattered. She sees these films as part of a continuum.  "Not really. It has never made any difference to the work I have done. Of course, when Newton came out, it was written about all over. All the universities, professors, students, everyone was writing about it. It was incredible. It was really overwhelming, the way it was received. Then there was Kaala, a mainstream film. Thousands are watching it and then I get messages like 'Oh we've seen you in Newton' or 'Oh we've seen you in With You, Without You'. After Kaala, some people go back and see the work I've done." Calling Kaala a huge magnum opus, especially in comparison to the small-scale films she's known for, Anjali says that as an actor, she learnt to adapt "like a chameleon." She dubbed for herself in Kaala, as she has for most of her films across languages. In fact, right now, Anjali is learning Spanish for the fun of it.  Kaala's women Kaala had two other pivotal women characters - Selvi (Easwari Rao) and Zarina (Huma Qureshi). The three women characters came together in quite a few scenes and although they did not always speak to each other, the dynamics between them was apparent in their glances and gestures.  Anjali says that off screen, too, the three of them shared a camaraderie which made the shoot enjoyable.  "I'm in love with Easwari akka. She's so beautiful, she's beauty personified. She's very loving. When I saw her for the first time, she came to me and said 'Ohh, you were in Bangaaru Talli!' - I guess because she's Telugu. It was very gracious of her. She was one of those people I'd see on the set and I'd just want to smile. She was quiet - I can see similarities between her and me. She'd work and then keep quiet, she'd sit by herself," says Anjali. Huma, on the other hand, was the opposite. "Huma is a prankster. She'd play cricket with the ball and the bat. She pulled me in as well. She knew I'm an introvert, so she'd try to draw me in. And when it came to speaking Tamil, I'd buck Huma up and tell her that she could do it if she had really long lines. We were the only two 'Hindi girls' in the sets, so we had that solidarity," says Anjali, with a smile. Looking back at her career thus far, Anjali has no regrets.  "All the choices I've made so far made this painting of films and awards. It's made me who I am as an artiste," she says. She goes on to add, "There is no end to our desire for money and power. When I know this now for sure, I'd rather do cinema by which I'm remembered. Now even if I die in the next 4-5 years, it's fine. My films are there, they will always be there." After Kaala, Anjali has received more offers from the Tamil film industry.  "Most of the people who approach me come with very strong idea of what I do as an artiste. They have known my work and that's why they come. So whatever role requires that kind of quotient or beauty - they'd never dare to come to me because they just know! It works in good favour for me because I don't have to convince them that just being fair doesn't mean beautiful," she says.  Also read: 'Thought it was a prank when I was asked to play young Dulquer': Actor Shalu Rahim  ...

Jantje Friese and Baran Bo Odar will produce new series and projects for the company.

Netflix has announced an exclusive multi-year overall series deal with Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the creators of its sci-fi series ‘Dark’.

The German pair, who are both graduates of the University of Television and Film in Munich, will produce new series and projects for the streaming service.

They have worked together since Odar’s directing debut with The Silence in 2010, and their most recent feature was 2014’s Who Am I with Tom Schilling and Elyas M’Barek.

The deal is the first European...

Netflix has struck its first overall deal in Europe, teaming with Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, the team behind hit German-language series “Dark.”

The pair will create new shows for Netflix that the streaming service will launch globally. “The promise of Netflix is entertainment transcending borders, where a hit show can come from anywhere in the world,” said Erik Barmack, VP of international originals for Netflix. “We’re tremendously happy to announce our overall deal that continues our collaboration with Bo and Jantje, whose invigorating work has engaged and thrilled audiences globally. We thank both for their trust and are beyond excited to support their vision and art as storytellers.”

Mystery drama “Dark” has been an international hit for Netflix. In March the streamer said that 90% of viewing of the scripted show came from outside of its native Germany. A second series of the semi-supernatural series was greenlit late last year.

In his latest podcast, host Stuart Wright talks with the filmmaker half of I Speak Machine, Maf Lewis, about 5 Great British Horror Films – which include:

Pogle’s Wood (1965) Whistle And I will Come (1968) The Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water (1973) The Omen (1976) 28 Days Later (2002)

With nods to Don’t Look Now (1974) and Kill List (2011)

I Speak Machine are vocalist and synth-nerd Tara Busch and filmmaker Maf Lewis. Together they make brooding soundtracks and horror/sci-fi films, creating audio and visual in unison to give both elements equal prominence. The result is a “live score film”, where the film is screened only with the music performed live by Tara.

They released their first soundtrack, the score to their mindbending sci-fi short “The Silence”, in 2014 on Lex Records. They released their latest soundtrack to their short film Zombies 1985 in May of 2017 in collaboration with producer/ writer Benge. The soundtrack & film is a sinister,...

Foreplays is a column that explores under-known short films by renowned directors. Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville's Liberté et Patrie (2002) is free to watch below. Mubi's retrospective For Ever Godard is showing from November 12, 2017 - January 16, 2018 in the United States.I. One of the most beautiful essay films ever made, Liberté et Patrie (2002) turns out to also be one of the most accessible collaborations of Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. The deeply moving lyricism of this short may astonish even those spectators who arrive to it casually, without any prior knowledge of the filmmakers’s oeuvre. Contrary to other works by the couple, Liberté et Patrie is built on a recognizable narrative strong enough to easily accommodate all the unconventionalities of the piece: a digressive structure full of bursts of undefined emotion; an unpredictable rhythm punctuated by sudden pauses, swift accelerations, intermittent blackouts and staccatos; a mélange of materials where...

In this week’s edition of Canon Of Film, we take a look at one of Woody Allen‘s most popular films, ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’. For the story behind the genesis of the Canon, you can click here.

Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989)

Director/Screenwriter: Woody Allen

Part dark tragedy, part dark comedy, or is it all comedy? It’s certainly all dark to say the least. Considered by almost everybody as one of Woody Allen’s very best films (although I’m not sure Woody would agree), ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’, wasn’t his first dramatic film, that was the Ingmar Bergman-esque ‘Interiors,’ and it certainly wasn’t his last comedy, yet it clearly represents the moment in Allen’s career when he started to abandon comedy in favor of drama and tragedy. Well, maybe “abandon,” is the wrong word, but he certainly began to lose interest in comedy around here.

Simon Brew Louisa Mellor Nov 25, 2016

As Keith Lemon and Paddy McGuinness announce their own TV show of movie spoofs, we celebrate the work of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

The news today that Keith Lemon and Paddy McGuinness are joining forces for a new primetime ITV series of movie spoofs has, well, not been particularly well received (we're sticking vehemently to our rule of not judging something until we've seen it. Even on a project like, say, this one). Their new show, The Keith And Paddy Picture Show, will arrive on Saturday nights at some point in 2017. But the pair will have a high bar to aim for.

For it can’t just be us that holds in high regard the exemplary movie parody sketches of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. The pair gradually began to get higher and higher budgets from the BBC to make their spoofs and parodies...

The best-known films of director Lenny Abrahamson, Frank and the quadruple Oscar-nominee Room, follow sad, and in some cases, broken souls as they search and fight for even the tiniest glimpse of happiness. Frank follows a band with an intentionally unpronounceable name, whose lead singer (Michael Fassbender) always wears a fake plastic head, concealing his scarred face from the world. In Room, a mother (Brie Larson) and her young son (Jacob Tremblay) survive a tragic fate, held prisoner in a single room for years on end.

The two films share an acute sensitivity to the lives of characters who struggle to make the best of the often brutal fates with which they’ve been burdened. Abrahamson listed the following ten films as his favorite in 2012’s Sight and Sound poll, a brilliant mixture of stories which as he laments in his quote, could have contained far more than a mere ten selections.

Back when Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos first clambered barefaced upon the international stage with his daring Dogtooth, quite a few hastened to mention its striking resemblance to Arturo Ripstein’s similarly self-contained The Castle of Purity, made some 35 years earlier. In the wake of his first English-language effort The Lobster, one might even go further and compare all that Lanthimos has done thus far to Ripstein’s film: the imposed isolation behind walls that are both physical and psychological, creating a world whose structure is founded upon seemingly intransgressible rules and boundaries. Despite the jump in locale and language, The Lobster is very much a continuation or extension of the themes found in Dogtooth: the sequestered family abode is replaced by an isolated hotel complex; the overprotective father by a domineering hotel manager – the brilliant Olivia Colman. Perhaps the most significant difference, at least on first glance, is that...

'Fanny and Alexander' movie: Ingmar Bergman classic with Bertil Guve as Alexander Ekdahl 'Fanny and Alexander' movie review: Last Ingmar Bergman 'filmic film' Why Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander / Fanny och Alexander bears its appellation is a mystery – one of many in the director's final 'filmic film' – since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character. In fact, in the three-hour theatrical version she is not even mentioned by name for nearly an hour into the film. Fanny and Alexander should have been called "Alexander and Fanny," or simply "Alexander," since it most closely follows two years – from 1907 to 1909 – in the life of young, handsome, brown-haired Alexander Ekdahl (Bertil Guve), the original "boy who sees dead people." Better yet, it should have been called "The Ekdahls," for that whole family is central to the film, especially Fanny and Alexander's beautiful blonde mother Emilie,...

Editor's Note: RogerEbert.com is proud to reprint Roger Ebert's 1978 entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica publication "The Great Ideas Today," part of "The Great Books of the Western World." Reprinted with permission from The Great Ideas Today ©1978 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

It's a measure of how completely the Internet has transformed communication that I need to explain, for the benefit of some younger readers, what encyclopedias were: bound editions summing up all available knowledge, delivered to one's home in handsome bound editions. The "Great Books" series zeroed in on books about history, poetry, natural science, math and other fields of study; the "Great Ideas" series was meant to tie all the ideas together, and that was the mission given to Roger when he undertook this piece about film.

Given the venue he was writing for, it's probably wisest to look at Roger's long, wide-ranging piece as a snapshot of the...

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is definitely one of the finest active filmmakers today. His 2014 film “Winter Sleep” won the Golden Palm (the biggest award) at the Cannes film festival. His “Winter Sleep” is not easy viewing—it is more than 3 hours long and is word heavy. It is a sensitive cinematic work where egos of men clash with those of women, the views of the rich clash with those less financially secure, and theatre performers become actors in their daily life on screen. Who is Ceylan and why are we discussing him?

Turkey is sandwiched between Europe and Asia. Ceylan as a young man went West to do his University studies and was disillusioned with life and attitudes there. With very little money on him, he went East, more precisely to India and then to Nepal, following his passion for mountain climbing, to find answers in life. He felt more comfortable in the East.

You know the hair. The glasses. The voice. The sheer talent. Richard Ayoade spoke to HeyUGuys about The Double, which is out now on DVD and Blu Ray. Other subjects included The It Crowd, a new book, Ingmar Bergman, and trying not to bore audiences.

I’d like to start by going back a little bit to your first feature, which was obviously Submarine. I think for many people, they didn’t realise that a comedy actor was also going to be a great director. So I was wondering, did you feel that was a liberating experience?

Erm, I don’t know. I’d directed TV before – I directed a show called Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, and music videos and things, so the main thing at the time [was I] felt the writing of something that was much longer than anything I’d done, and the structure of doing a film that has ninety minutes to it.

If there is an essential problem that all art must confront, it is the vast and uncrossable gulf between individual human experience. All expression is flawed in that it can never express completely, because no point of view is perfectly able to be communicated between two beings. Something must always get lost in the shuffle. All communication (and art is, at its core, communication, even if the private artist communicates only with themselves) is approximation with a goal not of internalization but of baseline comprehension. It is in this problem that we find our own inescapable loneliness, a burden that, to live, must either be embraced completely or totally ignored; when we reach out to touch others, we must do so with the knowledge or ignorance that all connection is imperfect, and that even the most complete moments of connection are simply echoes of our own perspectives, not bridges between distant islands.

And here we are. The day after Easter and we’ve reached the top of the mountain. While compiling this list, it’s become evident that true religious films just aren’t made anymore (and if they are, they are widely panned). That being said, religious themes exist in more mainstream movies than ever, despite there being no deliberate attempts to dub the films “religious.” Faith, God, whatever you want to call it – it’s influenced the history of nations, of politics, of culture, and of film. And these are the most important films in that wheelhouse. There are only two American films in the top 10, and only one of them is in English.

courtesy of hilobrow.com

10. Andrei Rublev (1966)

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

A brutally expansive biopic about the Russian iconographer divided into nine chapters. Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) is portrayed not as a silent monk, but a motivated artist working against social ruin,...

Welcome, beloved guests. The time has come to check-in to The Grand Budapest Hotel. Upon arrival, be sure to take in the beautiful world surrounding you, as created by director and co-writer Wes Anderson, as well as the wonderful hotel aesthetic, brought to you by production designer Adam Stockhausen. This week, Wamg and a few members of the press sat down (in a roundtable discussion) with Anderson and Stockhausen to talk about Anderson’s all new caper The Grand Budapest Hotel. Check it out below!

The Grand Budapest Hotel recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars; and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting; a raging battle for an enormous family fortune; a desperate chase on motorcycles, trains, sleds, and skis; and the sweetest...

Terrence Malick has made only five feature films to date, all made in the Us. None of those five films has won an Oscar although many of his films have made the grade of garnering numerous unsuccessful Oscar nominations. On the other hand, Malick’s The Thin Red Line won the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival, Days of Heaven won the Best Director award at Cannes, and now The Tree of Life has won the coveted Golden Palm at Cannes, awards that have eluded many Oscar winners. These facts themselves speak loudly about the quality of Malick’s cinema, appreciated more in Europe than in the Us.

For this critic, too, only three of the five Malick feature films, the same three that won acclaim in Europe, bear the stamp of truly outstanding cinema. In contrast, many American viewers to this day find his debut film Badlands, which has...

"It's hard to think about the films of Ingmar Bergman in the wake of something so tremendously humanistic and so irrepressibly joyful, despite horror both realistic and fantastic strewn among the emotional and physical landscape, as Fanny and Alexander," writes Chris Cabin in Slant. "The ghosts that hide, shake, and scream out in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, the ink-black blood relations of The Silence and Through a Glass Darkly, even the cherubic perversions of Smiles of a Summer Night don't so much burn or wash away, but rather seem like snapshots from what would become the film of Bergman's life. For in this case, we are, to be perfectly frank, speaking of one of the towering visions of cinema, one of those masterpieces that plainly presents itself as a work that transcends even the long career of a great artist." Fanny and Alexander (1982) is out on Blu-ray and...

The "The Jazz Singer" launched the age of the "talkie" for film in 1927, and ever since then spoken language has been a part of watching movies, no matter how goofy or totally made up it may be. Today, we salute the filmmakers and actors out there who have gone to the next level and brought entirely new rules for speech and grammar to the big screen.

William Shatner gets an honorable shout-out for his work learning Esperanto for "Incubus" in 1966, but our ten favorite fictional film languages of all time get even crazier. They are funny, occasionally creepy and almost always put more pressure on their subtitles, but all of these foreign tongues defined their movies and breathed life into their elaborately imagined cultures.

[#10-6]   [#5-1]   [Index]

10. Martian, "Mars Attacks!" (1996)

The aliens in this Tim Burton cameo-orgy spoke with a vocabulary just slightly bigger than that of the teacher in the "Peanuts" cartoons,...

It’s another week which means another round up of all the titles Criterion has put up on their Hulu Plus page. And it’s a great smorgasbord of releases that will keep your eyes full until the next installment. Also, thanks again to everyone who has signed up for Hulu Plus via our referral page. Please sign up and let us know what you think of the service. Enough of this small talk, let’s get into the nitty gritty.

Last week’s article spoke about Louis Malle’s films being put up and sure enough, only a few days later they finally released Black Moon to their page, showing a film that will be coming out on June 28th. I love that they’re doing that with releases that are coming out, just to give their audience the film itself and if you like it, you’ll want to grab the whole package.

Some of the finest directors have produced masterful triptychs. But do we really need a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean?

It currently seems the only three that interests Hollywood relates to dimensionality. The reverence once extended to the film trilogy is fast diminishing, and although third instalments are due for Transformers, Ong-Bak, Paranormal Activity, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Men in Black, Madagascar, Batman and Iron Man, only the first two have been announced as series finales.

Indeed, with Scre4m, Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides and Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World soon to be followed by fourth entries in the Austin Powers, Mission: Impossible, Underworld and Bourne franchises, the trilogy could soon go the way of the 2D movie, as the synergy-obsessed suits controlling the multi-media conglomerates now owning the major studios adhere to the maxim that familiarity breeds both content and profit.

Ingmar Bergman

A Retrospective of the renowned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman will be presented at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival.

“Bergman is one of the few who liberated cinema, freed it from conventions and brought it to a new artistic form, which opened a new world for many cineastes”, said Rainer Rotherin, the director of the Retrospective, in an interview.

Bergman is one of the few directors who is credited to have worked with the same team over decades. Three of the actresses Bergman has worked with: Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom and Liv Ullmann, will present his films at the Berlinale. They will also converse in detail publicly about life and work with Bergman for both the screen and the stage.

The director, who died in 2007, is well known for his films like The Silence , Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander, which won him four Oscars.

The...

We start the Top 7. You finish the Top 10.

Ho, ho, hold the Avatar “Three-Disc Extended Collector’s Edition Blu-ray”, you omnipotent bearded creature of the night. If you’re looking to donate something to my life possessions that is truly special to me, I’ve got a few ideas for you. And sorry, none of them are Batman action figures. That era has passed. It’s all about Blu-rays, Criterion Collections, and a little bit of R. Kelly for me now.

What Blu-ray/DVDs are you most excited about this holiday season?

7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy)

Recap: One of last summer’s biggest sugar rushes is finally on Blu-ray, and its coming to home theaters with a lot of extras. This specific package has got four commentaries, including a cast commentary featuring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jason Schwartzman, Ellen Wong, and Brandon Routh.

• Introduction to The Great Movies III

You'd be surprised how many people have told me they're working their way through my books of Great Movies one film at a time. That's not to say the books are definitive; I loathe "best of" lists, which are not the best of anything except what someone came up with that day. I look at a list of the "100 greatest horror films," or musicals, or whatever, and I want to ask the maker, "but how do you know?" There are great films in my books, and films that are not so great, but there's no film here I didn't respond strongly to. That's the reassurance I can offer.

I believe good movies are a civilizing force. They allow us to empathize with those whose lives are different than our own. I like to say they open windows in our box of space and time.

With Criterion staple, and all around film legend (and my personal favorite filmmaker of all time) Jean Luc-Godard (Breathless, A Woman Is A Woman, Made In The U.S.A, just to name a few) set to receive an honorary Oscar from the Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts And Sciences, it looks like the Academy is set to honor yet another legend in the world of film.

According to the Criterion blog, the Academy is set to play host to the La premiere of a new exhibition, entitled Ingmar Bergman: Truth And Lies, all organized by the Deutsche Kinemathek, along with the Bergman Foundation.

Exhibition Information When September 16 through December 12, 2010 Where The Academy’s Fourth Floor Gallery Public viewing hours Tuesday – Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Saturday – Sunday: Noon to 6 p.m.*

Closed Mondays.

*Sunday, October 10: 1 to 6 p.m. Admission Free

The show will feature movie clips...

Creamed corn and the Technicolor yawn ... when did vomiting cease to be a movie taboo?

You might not want to read this over breakfast. Not long ago, in the course of a single day, I watched four films. The first three featured projectile vomiting, while the fourth showed a woman throwing up into a toilet bowl, after which she had to fish her mobile phone out of the puke. And, as an afterthought, her chewing gum as well.

Vomit has become such a recurring motif in today's cinema that it has almost ceased to make an impact, unless it comes with a gimmick, like the turbo-powered, Pepto-Bismol-coloured puke in Gentlemen Broncos, or someone being sick on a squirrel in Hot Tub Time Machine.

At what point did vomiting cease to be a movie taboo? The first instance of explicit vomiting I could think of was in The Wages of Fear...

At a meeting held Monday, the 2009 Guldbagge (Golden Beetle) jury comprised of Katinka Faragó, Nils Petter Sundgren, Pia Johansson, Jannike Åhlund, Johan Renck, Mikael Marcimain and Guldbagge jury chairman Eva Swartz Grimaldi (not voting) picked Niels Arden Oplev’s box-office smash The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as the best Swedish picture of the year. Adapted by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg (from Stieg Larsson’s novel), and starring Michael Nyqvist and best actress winner Noomi Rapace, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been compared to both The Silence of the Lambs and S7ven. The film follows a journalist trying to uncover a disappearance that took place in the mid-60s — a serial killer still on the [...]...

(Antichrist will be discussed in detail in this review.)

First off, Lars von Trier’s Antichrist is one of the best films of the year, if not the decade.

Not many are going to share this opinion, which is really a fact. Antichrist has once again sparked a current of reaction and rebellion to von Trier and his work, already always controversial. But it’s difficult to understand what exactly it is that people, or at least critics, have against von Trier. His public pronouncements seem to irritate them. His threshold-stretching films seem to make them uncomfortable, as do the similarly provocative films of Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noe, all of whom had films at the 2009 Cannes film festival. The general attitude seems to be that von Trier is something of a fraud, playing with ideas like an uncomprehending child with letter block toys. Antichrist isn’t the first film...

Storybooks with happy endings are for children. Adults know that stories keep on unfolding, repeating, turning back on themselves, on and on until that end that no story can evade. ~ Roger Ebert writing about Last Year at Marienbad in 1999 Just recently I heard Peter Cowie refer to Last Year at Marienbad in an interview I was watching related to Ingmar Bergman's The Silence due to Bergman's shooting of long corridors in that film. Another film I thought of while watching Criterion's newly released Blu-ray of Marienbad was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, only to hear Ginette Vincendeau reference Kubrick's classic in her 23-minute conversation on Marienbad in the supplemental material. Dave Kehr points out at The New York Times, Kubrick also paid the film another homage by dropping "a spaceman down into one of the baroque bedchambers of Marienbad at the end of 2001." Read most any opinion of director...

Upon receiving Criterion's brand new special edition of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal I had just finished watching his film trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence) and there couldn't have been a more appropriate time to do so. Of the three films in Bergman's trilogy, Winter Light is not only the best, it is a perfect companion piece to The Seventh Seal. Made five years after The Seventh Seal, Winter Light also touches on the "silence of God," but where these two films differ is in their outcome. While both are asking questions, Winter Light offers far more answers than The Seventh Seal, but where Winter Light finds answers and The Seventh Seal does not is exactly where both films find their charm. Criterion initially released The Seventh Seal in 1999 with only an audio commentary by Bergman expert Peter Cowie, the theatrical trailer and what...

Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director considered one of the most influential and acclaimed filmmakers of modern cinema, died at his home in Faro, Sweden, on Monday; he was 89. The death was announced by the Swedish news agency TT and confirmed by Bergman's daughter, Eva, and Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, though an official cause of death was not yet given. Nominated for nine Academy Awards throughout his career and honored with the Irving G. Thalberg award in 1971, Bergman was cited as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, with his bleak, unsparing yet highly emotional explorations of the human psyche and its relation to life, sex, and death, in both highly symbolic and intensely personal films; he most notably influenced Woody Allen, who considered him the greatest of filmmakers. His images ranged from the stark black-and-white of films like The Seventh Seal to those awash in dreadful reds such as Cries and Whispers and the holiday warmth of Fanny and Alexander, his last film for the cinema. Born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1918, Bergman was the son of a Lutheran minister, and religious imagery as well as the tumultuous relationship between his parents would pervade his work. Though growing up in an extremely strict and devout family, Bergman lost his faith at an early age and grappled with the concept of the existence of God in many of his early films. Bergman discovered the magic of imagery at the age of nine with a magic lantern, for which he would create his own characters and scenery, and this love of light and images brought him to the theater world after a brief stint at the University of Stockholm. Bergman worked in both theater and film throughout the 1940s, as part of the script department of Svensk Filmindustri and as a director and producer for numerous small theater companies. His first script to be produced was the 1944 film Torment, and began as a director with small movies that allowed him to hone his craft; among his notable earlier works were Prison, Summer Interlude, and Sawdust and Tinsel.

Bergman came to the fore of the international cinematic community with the 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, his classic melancholy comedy about the romantic entanglements of three 19th century couples during a weekend at a country estate. The film propelled him to stardom and won him a a Cannes Film Festival award for "Best Poetic Humor" (it was also later adapted by Stephen Sondheim into the musical A Little Night Music). He established his legacy and reputation with his next two films: The Seventh Seal, featuring the now-iconic imagery of Death playing chess with a tortured medieval knight (Max Von Sydow), and Wild Strawberries, the study of an aged professor (played by Victor Sjostrom) revisiting his youth and his darkest fears as he drives through the Swedish countryside. Both films were phenomenal critical and box office successes, with Wild Strawberries earning Bergman his first Oscar nomination, for Best Screenplay. Bergman's The Virgin Spring, the grim fable about two parents exacting revenge on their daughter's murderers, won the Best Foreign Language film Oscar in 1961. He followed up that film with a trilogy of films -- Through a Glass Darkly (another Foreign Language Film Oscar winner), Winter Light and The Silence -- in which he grappled most powerfully with his lack of faith and belief in the power of love.

Making as many failures as he did successes, Bergman found favor with a number of films throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including the now-famous Persona, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers (a nominee for Best Picture), Scenes from a Marriage, The Magic Flute, and Autumn Sonata. Throughout his films he used an ensemble of actors, most notably Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman, with whom he had a personal relationship and a child. He also almost always worked with the legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who won two Oscars for Cries and Whispers and 1982's Fanny and Alexander. It was that latter film that Bergman declared to be his final cinematic work, an intimate portrait of brother and sister set in early 20th century Sweden that was originally conceived as a four part TV film, and was released in the US at a truncated 188 minutes. It won four Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film. Though he officially "retired" from the film industry after Fanny and Alexander, Bergman made films for Swedish television, continued to direct theatrically (including a version of Hamlet in Swedish that traveled to the US) and wrote screenplays that were filmed by other directors, including Bille August, Bergman's son Daniel, and actress and former lover Liv Ullman. His last work as director was Saraband, a revisitation of the two lead characters (Ullman and Jospehson) from Scenes from a Marriage. Bergman was married five times, and his fifth wife, Ingrid von Rosen, passed away in 1995. He is survived by nine children from his past marriages and relationships. At press time, a funeral date had not yet been set. --Mark Englehart, IMDb staff...