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Indie Sales has acquired Japanese director Momoko Seto’s “Dandelion’s Odyssey,” an ecological fable animated by Guionne Leroy (“Toy Story”) and scored by Nicolas Becker (“Sound of Metal”) and Quentin Sirjacq.

Shot from Japan to Iceland, “Dandelion’s Odyssey” is an adventure set in a dystopian world and is reminiscent of “Microcosmos,” with plants and animals as the main characters. The feature boasts a mix of timelapse photography, as well as live-action shooting and 3D animation. Most of the production is being done in France, where Seto is based. Seto is best known for her shorts “Planet A,” “Planet Z” and “Planet ∑,” which played at Locarno and the Berlin Film Festival, respectively.

“Dandelion’s Odyssey” is produced by Miyu Productions and Ecce Films, and co-produced by Arte Cinéma and U Media in Belgium. It received the support of the French Gan Cinema Foundation.

“Dandelion’s Odyssey” follows the journey of four friends,...

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

In 2001, Agnès Godard became the first woman to win the Césare award for Best Cinematography on her own (Marie Perennou shared it with three men in 1997 for her documentary “Microcosmos”). Godard’s prize was for shooting Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail,” the poetic riff on “Billy Budd” that investigates masculinity in the French Foreign Legion.

“I thought it was funny because the film was about all these men,” she said, sitting down for an interview in New York ahead of a new film series of her work. “It was kind of ironic. I was smiling a bit. It wasn’t revenge. But it was funny.” But the milestone moment didn’t generate any headlines. “At the time, nobody mentioned it,” she said.

While the number of female cinematographers worldwide has inched up in recent years, it was a much narrower field when the 71-year-old Godard entered the profession over 30 years ago.

21st century Pop Icons BTS wrapped up their ‘BTS 2021 Muster Sowoozoo’ that amassed 1.33 million viewers from 195 countries/regions across two days.

In celebration of their 8th anniversary, the septet held a two-day live-streamed fanmeet entitled BTS 2021 Muster Sowoozoo on June 13 and 14. The festive event saw the band perform 15 songs, respectively, on an outdoor stage. True to the concept of “adventure,” the venue featured various planet installations and an entire stage in the form of the number ‘8’ that stands for both their 8th year since formation and the infinity sign.

The septet performed many of their recent releases including “Life Goes On,” “Butter,” “Dynamite,” “Stay” and “Fly To My Room”. The viewers also were treated to special performances of Suga (Agust D)’s “Daechwita” and j-hope’s “Chicken Noodle Soup” with all seven members.

Apart from the multi-view system that enabled viewers to choose and watch from 6 different screens, the fanmeet...

BTS have released a holiday remix of “Dynamite,” their biggest hit song to date.

The new version comes with a Yuletide music video, in which the group members (minus Suga) dance and sing around a Christmas tree, posing and taking photos of each other with selfie sticks.

BTS released their album Be earlier this fall, and the release skyrocketed to the top of the Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums chart. At just 28 minutes long, the album amassed more than 136,000 sales and 27.2 million streams, and its eight songs combined earned close to 242,000 downloads.

Justine Smith

Bright Star, Jane Campion

Orlando, Sally Potter

Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis

Cleo 5 a 7, Agnes Varda

A New Leaf, Elaine May

The Night Porter, Liliana Cavani

American Psycho, Mary Harron

Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat

Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow

Everyone Else, Maren Ade

Ricky D

Connection, Shirley Clarke

Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold

35 Shots of Rhum, Claire Denis

Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Derin

Seven Beauties, Lina Wertmuller

The Hitch-Hiker, Ida Lupino

Lina Wertmuller- Swept Away

Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt

Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel

Xxy, Lucía Puenzo

Special mention:

Skyscraper – Shirley Clarke

Wasp – Andrea Arnold

On Dangerous Ground – Ida Lupino (uncredited)

Wanda

Chris Clemente

Little Miss Sunshine, Valerie Faris

American Psycho, Mary Harron

Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola

We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay

Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold

Monster, Patty Jenkins

A League of Their Own, Penny Marshall

Wayne’s World, Penelope Spheeris

Clueless, Amy Heckerling

Point Break,...

Okay, I’m aware that anyone can use Flickchart to filter their favorite documentaries. That’s Flickchart 101, Derek.

But I decided to focus on documentaries this week because I made an organic list of my ten favorite documentaries for a post I wrote last year on my own blog. This was at a time when I wasn’t aware of Flickchart’s potential to do the same thing, or at least, didn’t yet use the site that way, if I did know.

What truer measure of the effectiveness of Flickchart at distilling my true feelings, than to compare a list I produced from my brain with one produced from Flickchart’s algorithms? As an added bonus, Flickchart might also help me identify a movie I didn’t realize I loved as much as I do. Here is the list I came up with organically, to prepare you for what...

The Third Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) has announced its gala screenings for its festival, October 8-17. The festival’s Centerpiece film will be the documentary “Oceans” by “Microcosmos” directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud. The Closing Night film for the festival will be Grant Heslov’s “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” The festival announced earlier this week that the Egyptian film “The Traveler will open …...

In 2002, French producer Jacques Perrin had a modest international hit with Winged Migration, a beautifully photographed film about the astonishing journey birds make each year from one habitat to another. Buoyed by contemplative music, minimal-but-well-placed narration, and non-enhanced close-ups of birds in flight, Winged Migration followed the old Disney “true-life adventure” mold in subtle ways, crafting the migratory patterns of birds into mini-narratives marked by perilous encounters with pollution and hunters. Perrin, whose Microcosmos took an intimate look at the world of insects, prefers immersion to explication with his nature films, but like most movies about the animal kingdom ...