Online Viewing @ TheAuteurs

If Polanski: Unauthorized wasn't all you'd hoped and dreamed it'd be, you can go ahead and check out the director's first feature film (Polanski, not Damian Chapa, ha!), Knife in the Water [Nóż w wodzie], for free at The Auteurs, courtesy of Criterion's free monthly series on the site. Currently, the focus is on directors' first films. Check out one of my very favorite films, Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, if you haven't already. The other films in this series: Jane Campion's wonderful Sweetie, Agnès Varda's La pointe-courte, Sam Fuller's I Shot Jesse James and Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket [I pugni in tasca] (the latter not being one of my favorites by any means, but hey, if you've already seen the other five...)

Cannes 2009 Line-Up

Heavy competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which was announced earlier today in France. As stated earlier, the new Pixar 3D film Up! will open the fest, and it will be closed by that other Coco Chanel film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, from director Jan Kounen (Dobermann) with Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen. New films from a number of previous Palme d'Or winners will screen in competition, from Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark), Jane Campion (The Piano), Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds) and Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley). More films in the other various programs will be announced tomorrow. Actress Isabelle Huppert is the head of this year's jury.

In Competition

Bright Star - dir. Jane Campion - UK/Australia/France - with Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Abbie Cornish

Spring Fever - dir. Ye Lou - China/France

Antichrist - dir. Lars von Trier - Denmark/Sweden/France/Italy - with Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Enter the Void - dir. Gaspar Noé - France/Japan

Face [Visages] - dir. Tsai Ming-liang - France/Taiwan/Netherlands/Belgium - with Laetitia Casta, Lee Kang-sheng, Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Baye

Les herbes folles - dir. Alain Resnais - France/Italy - with André Dussollier, Emmanuelle Devos, Sabine Azéma, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny

À l'origine [In the Beginning] - dir. Xavier Giannoli - France - with Gérard Depardieu, Emmanuelle Devos, François Cluzet

Un prophète [A Prophet] - dir. Jacques Audiard - France - with Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup

The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band] - dir. Michael Haneke - Austria/Germany/France - with Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur

Vengeance - dir. Johnnie To - France/Hong Kong/USA - with Johnny Hallyday, Simon Yam, Sylvie Testud

The Time That Remains - dir. Elia Suleiman - Israel/France/Belgium/Italy

Vincere - dir. Marco Bellocchio - Italy/France - with Giovanna Mezzogiorno

Kinatay - dir. Brillante Mendoza - Philippines

Thirst - dir. Park Chan-wook - South Korea/USA - with Eriq Ebouaney, Song Kang-ho

Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces] - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - Spain - with Penélope Cruz, Ángela Molina, Lola Dueñas, Rubén Ochandiano, Blanca Portillo, Rossy de Palma, Chus Lampreave

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo - dir. Isabel Coixet - Spain - with Rinko Kikuchi, Sergi López

Fish Tank - dir. Andrea Arnold - UK/Netherlands - with Michael Fassbender, Harry Treadaway

Looking for Eric - dir. Ken Loach - UK/France/Italy/Belgium

Inglourious Basterds - dir. Quentin Tarantino - USA - with Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Kruger, Mike Myers, Eli Roth, Cloris Leachman, Til Schweiger, Michael Fassbender, Maggie Cheung, Daniel Brühl

Taking Woodstock - dir. Ang Lee - USA - with Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Emile Hirsch, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Paul Dano, Eugene Levy, Kelli Garner, Imelda Staunton, Katherine Waterson

Out of Competition

Drag Me to Hell - dir. Sam Raimi - USA - with Justin Long, Alison Lohman

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - dir. Terry Gilliam - France/Canada - with Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Jude Law, Tom Waits

Agora - dir. Alejandro Amenábar - USA/Spain - with Rachel Weisz

Coming (or Not Coming) in 2009: Part 3

Part three of my posts looking at a number of films that may show up at film festivals during 2009 will focus on the continent of Asia, as well as a pair from Australia/New Zealand. Previous posts have covered France and the rest of Europe, and earlier posts about the Berlinale mentioned the new film from Chen Kaige.

Blake Williams first gave me word of the new film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century). You can find more information here on the director, and his latest project Primitive: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives which is going into production shortly via this link. Thanks Blake.

The latest film from Johnnie To (Mad Detective, Election) will be a French/Hong Kong co-production and filmed in English, entitled Vengeance. Filming now, Vengeance stars Johnny Hallyday, Simon Yam and Sylvie Testud. Variety reports that this is not the planned remake of Le cercle rouge, however. It is slated to be released in France on 20 May.

Following Lust, Caution, Ang Lee returns to the US for Taking Woodstock, which is set to be released in the States in August. It will be the third teaming in a row for Lee with Focus Features. Taking Woodstock stars, among many others, Emile Hirsch, comedian Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Paul Dano, Kelli Garner, Imelda Staunton, Katherine Waterston, Eugene Levy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Dan Fogler.

Like Hou Hsiao-hsien before him, Tsai Ming-liang will make his next feature in France, entitled Visage [Face]. The film explores the myth of Salomé, the biblical figure who performed the Dance of the Seven Veils which resulted in the beheading of John the Bapist. The dream cast includes Laetitia Casta as Salomé, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Mathieu Amalric, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye and frequent actor Lee Kang-sheng. No dates set, but check this link (thanks to Nimzo!) for more information.

Hong Sang-soo's latest You Don't Even Know is currently filming. I couldn't find much information about the film, but it does star Kim Tae-woo and Go Hyun-jung from Woman on the Beach as well as Ye Ji-won from Turning Gate.

Park Chan-wook's Thirst looks to be ready in time for Cannes. The film already has distribution in France (Wild Side), the UK (Palisades Tartan), South Korea (CJ Entertainment) and the US (Focus Features) and will hopefully be out by the end of the year, before the Old Boy remake hits theatres. Thirst stars Song Kang-ho (The Host), Shin Ha-kyun (No Mercy for the Rude), Mercedes Cabral (Serbis) and Eriq Ebouaney (35 rhums).

I Come with the Rain will be Tran Anh Hung's first film since The Vertical Ray of the Sun in 2000. Produced by France, I couldn't find any substantial release dates for the film, but it stars Josh Hartnett, Elias Koteas, Lee Byung-hun (The Good, the Bad, the Weird), Simón Andreu and Takuya Kimura (2046).

No one seems to know what's going on with Wong Kar-wai's intended remake of The Lady from Shanghai after star Nicole Kidman dropped out. If I hear anything, I'll let you know.

The new film from director Mira Nair will be an American biopic of Amelia Earheart, with Hilary Swank as the doomed pilot. The film, called Amelia, will be released by Fox Searchlight in October. Amelia also stars Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Virginia Madsen and Joe Anderson.

John Woo's Red Cliff Part 2 was released in China on 8 January; the first installment was released last summer, though it doesn't look like any US distributor has picked up either. Red Cliff 2 stars Chang Chen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung.

Abbas Kiarostami's Copie conforme [Certified Copy] is currently in production and is set to star Juliette Binoche (she really does get to work with the world's best directors, doesn't she?). mk2 will release the film in France when it's completed.

The Duel will be the first American film from director Dover Koshashvili (Late Marriage). It looks to be finished filming, but I couldn't find anything further about the film.

Jane Campion will follow the terrible In the Cut with Bright Star, which examines the relationship between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Pathé should release the film by the end of the year in the UK. It stars Ben Wishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider and Kerry Fox.

The new film from John Hillcoat (The Proposition), called The Road, was bumped from last fall to sometime this year. The cast includes Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garret Dillahunt, Michael K. Williams and Molly Parker. The Road is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

As there always seems to be one, I forgot to mention the two new films from Fatih Akin (The Edge of Heaven) when doing my European post. Soul Kitchen is to be released in France on 11 November by Pyramide Distribution; the film stars Moritz Bleibtreu and Birol Ünel. The other film is a documentary entitled Garbage in the Garden of Eden.

Adventures In Awesome: Want! Now! (4)

While wasting time farting about on AV Club last night, the subject of Brasseye and The Day Today came up during a discussion of UK comedy, as it usually does. Understandable, considering the massive effect it had on pretty much everyone who saw it and clasped it to their bosom. Even though it was broadcast over a decade ago, I can't think of any other UK comedy that has come close to that level of brilliance except The Thick Of It. Don't get me wrong, I have loved many shows made since then; Father Ted and Black Books, The Office, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Big Train, and Outnumbered spring to mind immediately, and my DVDs of those shows comprise almost the entirety of my UK TV collection amid swathes of US boxsets. Even so, none of those shows have had the same effect on me as Chris Morris' work. Here is the great man hanging around at CERN, which he apparently visited recently.


During the AV Club chat, I remembered the radio predecessor to The Day Today; On The Hour, four episodes of which had previously been released by the BBC. My cassette copy bit the dust a while back from overuse, leaving me bereft. But now my pain is over. Inspired by that seemingly pointless chat, a quick search revealed that I had been horribly oblivious to Warp Records' release of the complete On The Hour in two CD boxsets (and on iTunes).


My life is a little more complete now. Finally I can find out what happened to Alan Partridge and his zombie wife after all these years (On The Hour was possibly even more willing to indulge in flights of fancy than the TV version, which was hobbled by budget restrictions, obviously). This revelation - which is old news to fans, I'm sure - comes after the recent screening of Armando Iannucci's feature debut, In The Loop, the feature version of The Thick of It, at Sundance.


This is probably the movie I'm most excited about this year (and have already gone on about it at length), a fact made even more remarkable by the fact that it's made by BBC Films, who had seemed to have abandoned their boldness (see their previous support for Lynne Ramsay and Pawel Pawlikowski as a kind of proof) in favour of endless costume dramas and literary navel-gazing. A new version of Brideshead Revisited? An out-of-date adaptation of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road? The love life of Dylan Thomas? It's been a crummy 2008 for them, especially as the other major film investor in the UK, FilmFour, had returned from financial collapse to bring us In Bruges, Hunger, and Slumdog Millionaire. Yes yes, I might not like that film, but it's way more daring than some turgid, poorly-cast adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl.


Luckily for BBC Films, they now have a roster containing In The Loop, An Education (starring Carey "Sally Sparrow" Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard sans his recent egregious Trigorin beard that he had cultivated for his run in The Seagull), Grant Heslov's directorial debut Men Who Stare At Goats, the Churchill-tastic Into The Storm, Bright Star (yes, a historical drama about literary figures, but it's by Jane Campion so I'm bound to be interested), Martin Campbell's remake of his rightly celebrated Edge of Darkness, and Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, which will hopefully be as good as her excellent feature debut Red Road. Fair to say things are looking up. Those first two movies, Loop and Education, have been shown at Sundance, and according to Storyville editor Nick Fraser and Indie journo Gaynor Flynn, they have been rapturously embraced by audiences. It's rare that I endorse UK culture on this blog, but when it's promising, or distinct, or truly wonderful, it needs to be praised to the highest of high heavens.