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Last Year at Marienbad (1961) More at IMDbPro »L'année dernière à Marienbad (original title)

8 items from 2013

7 June 2013 11:00 AM, PDT | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

Enter an art deco mansion. A caravan of France’s most beloved actors – past and present – enter one at a time. They gather together on pristine leather seats in front of a giant screen. On that screen, a beloved playwright with whom they all worked speaks to them beyond the grave, and declares eternal appreciation to his theater troupe. The butler then projects a video of one of the late playwright’s works performed by a young traveling company. The veteran actors are so moved by their recollections of collaboration that they begin reciting the lines and acting it out, with multiple performers playing the same role. Lines of reality blur, and actors enter spaces that may be part of the mansion or may be in their imagined space of the play, as we occasionally return to their bodies, remaining firmly seated on the leather chairs. About an hour in, any »

- Landon Palmer

7 June 2013 4:05 AM, PDT | ScreenDaily | See recent ScreenDaily news »

Belgium is country of honour at summer festival in French capital which also hosts the industry-focused Paris Project co-production market.

Roman Polanski’s Venus in Fur, starring his wife Emmanuelle Seigner opposite Mathieu Amalric as an actress and director embroiled in a racy, pschological battle of the sexes, will open this year’s Paris Cinema film festival.

The summer, public-focused event has drawn heavily on Cannes for its 11th edition, running June 28 to July 9.

There will be previews of Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or winner Blue, in the presence of co-stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, as well as Ari Folman’s Directors’ Fortnight opener The Congress and Francois Ozon’s Palme d’Or contender Young and Beautiful among others.  

Some 50 upcoming titles will screen at the festival.

The International Competition includes Singaporean Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo, which won the Camera d’Or for best first feature film in Cannes, and [link=nm »

17 April 2013 7:11 AM, PDT | Vulture | See recent Vulture news »

What an odd little episode of this show of ours. Nothing particularly noteworthy happened. No battles were won or lost with any panache. The whole thing approached an almost dreamlike boringness, a Last Year at Marienbad for the 21st century. And where was our resident Carl Jung, Carson Daly? If I had my druthers, I would give the whole miserable pantomime only one star. Oh gosh. Let's embark on this sleepy journey together. Michael Austin vs. Warren Stone, "My Kinda Party" Michael and Warren are some of the only country singers on Adam's team, so naturally he put them together even though they have totally different voices that are actually quite hard to compare. Adam is a genre essentialist, but I like it! He did, however, give them a miserable polka to sing. Man, I had not heard "My Kinda Party" before, but it is a wretched song. I felt »

- Rebecca Harrington

10 April 2013 4:28 PM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 363 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies, the Up docs and Decalogue) and of those 363, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do, »

- Brad Brevet

10 April 2013 4:28 PM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 362 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies and Decalogue) and of those 362, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do, »

- Brad Brevet

18 March 2013 6:10 AM, PDT | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

Like Night of the Hunter, Tod Browning’s Freaks or Leonard Kastle’s The Honeymoon Killers, The Road to Yesterday can be ranked among the UFOs of cinema. It’s place in the heart of Cecil B. DeMille’s work proves to be in itself very distinctive. We know that, during his entire life, DeMille had virtually only one producer—Paramount (the former Famous Players Lasky)—just like Minnelli was MGM’s man and Corman American International’s. Sixty-three of his films (out of seventy) were produced at Paramount. And, oddly enough, it is among the seven outsiders, situated within a brief period from 1925 to 1931, that his best activity is to be found (I’m thinking of Madam Satan, The Godless Girl, and The Road to Yesterday)–his most audacious undertakings. To top it off, for this uncontested king of the box office, his best films were his biggest commercial failures. »

- Luc Moullet

18 February 2013 1:50 AM, PST | Den of Geek | See recent Den of Geek news »

Odd List Aliya Whiteley Feb 19, 2013

Covering 85 years of cinema, Aliya provides her pick of 25 stylish, must-see French movies...

I’m going to kick this off in best New-Wave style by pointing out that we should be praising each great director’s body of work rather than showcasing favourite movies in a list format; after all, France came up with the concept of the auteur filmmaker, stamping their personality on a film, using the camera to portray their version of the world.

Yeah, well, personality is everything. So here’s a highly personal choice, arranged in chronological order, of 25 of the most individualistic French films. They may be long or short, old or new, but they all have one thing in common – they’ve got directorial style. And by that I don’t mean their shoes match their handbags.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928)

There are no stirring battle scenes, »

- ryanlambie

7 February 2013 4:06 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Bill Murray called it 'probably the best work I've done' and, 20 years after its release, Groundhog Day can still take your breath away. Its original screenwriter Danny Rubin and admirers such as director David O Russell explain its lasting appeal

I am holding for David O Russell, the Oscar-nominated director of Silver Linings Playbook and The Fighter, who has agreed to talk about one of his all-time favourite films: the comic masterpiece Groundhog Day, released in the Us 20 years ago this month. (It reached the UK in May 1993.) But the person on the other end of the line doesn't sound like Russell: it's more of a shrill whine, the vocal equivalent of nails on a blackboard. Then the penny drops.

"Ryan? It's Ned! Ned Ryerson! Bing!" After a prolonged chuckle, Russell drops his impersonation of Groundhog Day's irksome insurance salesman, a minor but intensely memorable character, and explains excitedly »

- Ryan Gilbey

8 items from 2013