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A Pennsylvania police department has asked a local "prankster" to please stop tying red, helium-filled balloons to sewer grates around town, which were obviously set in reference to Andres Muschietti's It remake. Though the police department appreciates the creativity, the creepy promotion has been gaining a lot of attention from people familiar with It and its upcoming release while puzzling residents who have no idea what the heck is going on. The buzz has gotten a little out of hand after the Lititz Borough Police Department posted about the incident on social media and now the department seems to be having more fun with It after their original post became a viral hit.

The Lititz Borough Police Department's Facebook page originally posted an image of the red balloon and even quoted the tagline: "You'll Float Too" in their response to the clever "prankster." The police department admits to being "completely...

“Columbus” director Kogonada is the latest director to share his 10 favorite movies of the last 10 years on Grasshopper Film’s Transmissions. Sean Baker, Andrew Rossi, and Benjamin Crotty have all done likewise in the past; like theirs, Kogonada’s 10/10 is heavy on auteur favorites. Here’s the list in alphabetical order:

Read More:‘Columbus’ Review: Kogonada’s Directorial Debut Is a Feast for the Eyes and the Heart “35 Shots of Rum” (Claire Denis, 2008) “Amour” (Michael Haneke, 2012) “The Arbor” (Clio Barnard, 2010) “Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo” (Jessica Oreck, 2009) “Before Midnight” (Richard Linklater, 2013) “Clouds of Sils Maria” (Olivier Assayas, 2014) “Flight of the Red Balloon” (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007) “I Wish” (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2011) “Nostalgia For the Light” (Patricio Guzmán, 2010) “The Wind Rises” (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013) Read More:Supercut Guru Kogonada: How He Leapt from Small Screens to Sundance Next with the Mysterious ‘Columbus’

Kogonada also included a list of the five directors whom he feels “ruled this era”: Olivier Assayas,...

There have been a lot of lists about the best films of the 21st century. IndieWire has been digging through the last two decades one genre at a time; meanwhile, the New York Times’ top movie critics provided their own takes. J. Hoberman, the longtime Village Voice film critic who now works as a freelancer, decided to join the fray. Here’s his take, also available at his site, and republished here with permission.

People have been asking me, so I thought I might as well join (or crash) the party initiated by the New York Times and put in my two cents regarding the 25 Best Films of the 21st Century (so far). I don’t see “everything” anymore and I haven’t been to Cannes since 2011.

There is some overlap but this is not the same as the proposed 21-film syllabus of 21st Century cinema included in my book “Film After Film.” Those were all in their way pedagogical choices. Begging the question of what “best” means, these are all movies that I really like, that I’m happy to see multiple times, that are strongly of their moment and that I think will stand the test of time.

My single “best” film-object is followed by a list of 11 filmmakers and one academic production company (in order of “best-ness”) responsible for two or more “best films,” these followed by another eight individual movies (again in order) and finally four more tentatively advanced films (these alphabetical). I’m sure I’m forgetting some but that’s the nature of the beast.

Christian Marclay: “The Clock”

Lars von Trier: “Dogville” & “Melancholia” (and none of his others)

Hou Hsiao Hsien: “The Assassin” & “Flight of the Red Balloon”

Jean-Luc Godard: “In Praise of Love” & “Goodbye to Language”

David Cronenberg: “Spider,” “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises,” & “A Dangerous Method”

David Lynch: “Mulholland Drive” & “Inland Empire”

Ken Jacobs: “Seeking the Monkey King,” “The Guests” (and more)

Cristi Puiu: “The Death of Mr Lazarescu” & “Aurora”

Chantal Akerman: “No Home Movie” & “La Captive” (assuming that 2000 is part of the 21st Century)

Paul Thomas Anderson: “The Master” & “There Will Be Blood”

Kathryn Bigelow: “The Hurt Locker” & “Zero Dark Thirty”

Alfonso Cuarón: “Gravity” & “Children of Men”

Sensory Ethnology Lab: “Leviathan,” “Manakamana,” & “People’s Park”

“The Strange Case of Angelica” — Manoel de Oliviera

“Corpus Callosum” — Michael Snow

“West of the Tracks” — Wang Bing

“Carlos” — Olivier Assayas

“Che” — Steven Soderbergh

“Ten” — Abbas Kariostami

“Russian Ark” — Aleksandr Sokurov

“The World” — Jia Zhangke

“Citizenfour” — Laura Poitras

“Day Night Day Night” — Julia Loktev

“Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” — Nuri Bilge Ceylan

“Wall-e” — Andrew Stanton

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Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema announced today that, after 24 hours, the It trailer has seen more than 197 Million views globally with more than 81 million views and over 1.8 Million shares on the Us Facebook instance alone. At 36 hours, that figure stands at an astonishing 246 million views! The 197 Million views bests the previous 24 Hour record holder The Fate of the Furious who recorded 139 Million views in a single day.

30 localized versions of the trailer were released by Warner Bros. on Wednesday, 3/29 at 9am Pt. The video quickly rose to the No. 1 position on YouTube's trending videos and remained there throughout the day. The trailer helped It trend globally on Twitter with trends for It, It Movie, Pennywise and the Red Balloon Emoji all appearing. This massive support for the trailer could be the first indication of a massive box office haul when It hits theaters on September 8.

While we'll have to...

He’s one of the most praised directors of international cinema, but Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s films haven’t always received a substantial (or even negligible) release here in the United States. With his last film, the quiet epic The Assassin — which he picked up Best Director at Cannes for — getting a proper roll-out here, we hope it provokes distributors to seek out the rest of his catalogue for restoration and release treatment.

While there’s no word if it will arrive in the U.S. yet, one of his earlier films will in fact be getting a new release in the United Kingdom. Daughter of the Nile, his 1987 film which follows a young woman who struggles to support her family in Taipei, will arrive on Blu-ray in the U.K. this summer and a new trailer has now arrived. Showcasing the beautiful restoration, check it out below.

Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Assassin,...

Bill Curran reporting from the New York Film Festival. Hot takes on two titles...

Hermia and Helena

Matías Piñeiro’s newest Bard-based roundelay belongs to that venerable arthouse tradition, the stranger-here-in-this-town movie. Far from attempting a fully foreign pose, the Argentina-bred but Brooklyn-living Piñeiro is driven by the same impulse found in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon and Wim Wender’s 70’s USA road trilogy: flaunt the outsider perspective. When Carmen (Maria Villar) hustles back to Buenos Aires with an unfinished manuscript, Camila (Agustina Muñoz) all but assumes her friend’s spot—not to mention a few dangling relationships—in a literary translation fellowship in New York City. Camila’s choice of text: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, naturally, giving Hermia and Helena license to oscillate between North and South America as if they were different worlds, and to riff on the impermanency of love and self.

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s painterly tale of Tang dynasty intrigue is a magnificent blend of fleet-footed action dark magic and emotional realism

Among this year’s most galling Oscar oversights is the absence of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin from the foreign language film nominations. Hou’s first feature since 2007’s Flight of the Red Balloon (a couple of compendium contributions notwithstanding), The Assassin was several years in the making, and finds the acclaimed director of Dust in the Wind, A City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster taking a groundbreaking foray into ancient history. Yet despite garnering rave reviews at the 2015 Cannes film festival where Hou was named best director, Taiwan’s official submission for the 88th Oscars didn’t even make the nine-title shortlist from which the nominated films were chosen. If you needed proof that awards ceremonies in general – and the Academy Awards in particular – are nonsense,...

The venerable, Taiwanese filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou has persistently transcended the tropes of the genre in which he is tackling. With a career behind the camera spanning 35 years, presenting features such as A Time to Live, a Time to Die to the more recent endeavours Three Times and Flight of the Red Balloon, here is

The post Exclusive Interview: Legendary filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou speaks to HeyUGuys about The Assassin appeared first on HeyUGuys.

St. Louis-based We Are Movie Geeks readers may have seen The Assassin when it played at The St. Louis International Film Festival this past November but if you missed it, you can still see it on the big screen when it plays at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium January 15th through the 23rd.

Back with his first film in eight years, award-winning Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flight of the Red Balloon, Three Times) wowed this year’s Cannes Film Festival (where he won Best Director) with his awe-inspiring The Assassin is a martial arts film like none other. The visually stunning, action-packed film blends tragic historical drama with thrilling swordplay and martial arts in this story of an exiled assassin (Shu Qi, Tai Chi Hero, The Transporter) who must choose between love or duty when she receives orders to kill a man (Chang Chen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Grandmaster) from her past.

St. Louis-based We Are Movie Geeks readers may have seen The Assassin when it played at The St. Louis International Film Festival this past November or can still see it on the big screen when it plays at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium January 15th through the 23rd. If you can’t see it there, the good news is that the acclaimed film arrives on Blu-ray (and DVD) on January 26th.

Back with his first film in eight years, award-winning Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flight of the Red Balloon, Three Times) wowed this year’s Cannes Film Festival (where he won Best Director) with his awe-inspiring The Assassin, debuting on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital HD January 26 from Well Go USA Entertainment. Rich with shimmering, breathing texture and punctuated by brief but unforgettable bursts of action, The Assassin is a martial arts film like none other. The visually stunning, action-packed...

Best Song Oscar 2016 contender 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' with Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. 74 entries in contention for 2016 Best Song Academy Award 'Tis the season for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to announce the semi-finalists – in some instances, the semi-semi-finalists – for the Academy Awards. Today, the Academy released the list of songs eligible for the 2016 Best Song – or rather, Best Original Song – Oscar. There are 74 contenders, with titles ranging from “Happy” and “I'll See You in My Dreams” to “Hypnosis” and “Bhoomiyilenghanumundo.” Curiously, apart from the inevitable animated and/or kiddie flicks (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, Anomalisa, Pan, Shaun the Sheep Movie, Home, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water, etc.) most of this year's contenders are songs from smaller movies and Bollywood/South Asian releases. Exceptions include Sam Taylor-Johnson's Fifty Shades of Grey, Ryan Coogler's Creed, Kenneth Branagh's...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 74 songs from eligible feature-length motion pictures released in 2015 are in contention for nominations in the Original Song category for the 88th Academy Awards.

The original songs, along with the motion picture in which each song is featured, are listed below in alphabetical order by film title and song title:

“Happy” from “Altered Minds”

“Home” from “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip”

“None Of Them Are You” from “Anomalisa”

“Stem To The Rose” from “Becoming Bulletproof”

“The Mystery Of Your Gift” from “Boychoir”

“I Run” from “Chi-Raq”

“Pray 4 My City” from “Chi-Raq”

“Sit Down For This” from “Chi-Raq”

“Strong” from “Cinderella”

“So Long” from “Concussion”

“Fighting Stronger” from “Creed”

“Grip” from “Creed”

“Waiting For My Moment” from “Creed”

“Don’t Look Down” from “Danny Collins”

“Hey Baby Doll” from “Danny Collins”

“Dreamsong” from “The Diary of a Teenage Girl...

Hou Hsiao-Hsien strives for realism, not magic. That's why he took the Cannes Best Director prize this year for "The Assassin" back to Taiwan, where the master auteur has been making films ("The Puppetmaster," "A City of Sadness," "Millennium Mambo," "Flight of the Red Balloon") for over three decades. The China-financed film endured decades of stop-and-go development and production before becoming Hou's seventh Cannes competition contender. A departure from his recent dramas including "La Belle Epoque," this modestly scaled martial arts epic shows Hou painting on a much bigger canvas — but with tweezers. Starring Shu Qi as the titular warrior, "The Assassin" is set in 9th-century, Tang Dynasty China, where the 10-year-old daughter of a general is abducted by a nun who transforms her into an efficiently badass martial arts assassin tasked with wiping out corrupt governors. After failing an assignment, as seen...

"In films such as Good Men, Good Women and Flowers of Shanghai and Flight of the Red Balloon, the viewer is at once asked to luxuriate in a minutely detailed filmic space (requiring a purely aesthetic sensibility) and follow the intricacies of plot, character, and history that flesh out and enliven those spaces (demanding a strict, close narrative reading)," writes Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot. Hou Hsiao-hsien won Best Director in Cannes and, with eleven nominations, The Assassin leads the race for the Golden Horse Awards. We collect a second round of reviews, the trailer and clip, plus a Master Class with Hou conducted by Olivier Assayas. » - David Hudson...

"In films such as Good Men, Good Women and Flowers of Shanghai and Flight of the Red Balloon, the viewer is at once asked to luxuriate in a minutely detailed filmic space (requiring a purely aesthetic sensibility) and follow the intricacies of plot, character, and history that flesh out and enliven those spaces (demanding a strict, close narrative reading)," writes Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot. Hou Hsiao-hsien won Best Director in Cannes and, with eleven nominations, The Assassin leads the race for the Golden Horse Awards. We collect a second round of reviews, the trailer and clip, plus a Master Class with Hou conducted by Olivier Assayas. » - David Hudson...

Taking a page from Wkw, Taiwanese master filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien took a full eight years working on martial arts film, The Assassin. He first surfaced on the Croisette in Directors’ Fortnight section in 1988 with Daughter of the Nile, and since then the Main Comp have owned most of his filmography: The Puppetmaster (1993), Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996), Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Millennium Mambo (2001), Three Times (2005), Flight of the Red Balloon (2008) and let us not forget his worn out theatre segment in the 60th anniversary anthology film To Each His Own Cinema. Looking at our grid, The Assassin was either worth the weight or…was worn out long before it’s final edit. Starring Shu Qi (she made her mark on Millennium Mambo and showed up in Three Times and 2011 short film omnibus 10+10) this claws away at the decline of the Tang Dynasty. We’re hopeful that an eight year absence means quality reigns.

In his first directing effort since the 2007 Juliette Binoche vehicle Flight of the Red Balloon, art film master Hou Hsiao-Hsien confronts Taiwanese and Chinese myth, landscape and genre head-on. The Assassin (Nie Yinniang) is his first martial arts film and, at $15 million, his largest-budgeted project to date. As might be expected by those familiar with his work, this is an idiosyncratic, even personal view of the genre. Its bursts of lightning-fast swordplay interrupt long, still stretches of misty moonlit landscapes and follow a pure literary style more than current genre expectations. Detailed period costumes and

read more...

Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao Hsien is known for a kind of hyper-contemplative realism, but for his latest effort, he’s gone in a major gear shift direction by making a martial arts wuxia film. Although he’s known for polar opposite films like "Millennium Mambo" (a film we listed as one of the best movies of 2003) and "Three Times," he’s apparently always wanted to do a fighting film, and that's what he's done with his latest, “The Assassin.” This is his first film since 2008s’ “Flight of the Red Balloon.” It has been rumored to show in Cannes for the past couple of years, but he reveals he had trouble getting the backing. “I’ve always had a dream to make this story into a film. I first came across the Tang Dynasty legendary tales when I was in university studying film, and before that I had read...

It is common in horror films to use childhood relics as ominous symbols, and "Red Balloon" uses that conceit effectively. This short film marks the directorial debut of visual effects duo Damien Mace and Alexis Wajsbrot. The story is nothing groundbreaking - a young woman is baby-sitting when things go awry - but the film is a chilling and stylish 13 minutes. Check it out after the break, but be forewarned: Dailymotion embeds commercials every five minutes, regardless of where you are in the story (it can be jarring).

FrightFest’s International Short Film Showcase returns to the festival with a bang. Featuring zombies, vampires, monsters and madness… Oh, and wrestlers… and killer household appliances! Also screening in this years showcase is The End – a new short from Marc Price, the director of the £45 zombie flick Colin.

If any of these short films is half as good as Deadspeil, the zombie-curling short shown at FrightFest Glasgow earlier this year, then the London audience is in for a treat. The full list:

2.22 (USA, 8.30 mins)

Dir. Steven Shea

A night out with the girls. A hot new club and a hot new guy. For Vickie Palmer, yesterday would be her last day.

To My Mother And Father (UK/Turkey, 8.45 mins)

Dir. Can Evrenol

When Jimmy is left alone in his house he discovers an old mask and decides to scare his parents upon their arrival home.

Bon Appetit (UK, 3.49 mins)

Dir.