In what was to be his last film, the final chapter of the director’s trilogy considers our incurious habits by brooding on coincidence and fate
Krzysztof Kieślowski completed his Three Colours trilogy with what was to be his final film. With music by Zbigniew Preisner, it is an almost supernatural contrivance: brooding on coincidence, fate and the insoluble mystery of other people’s lives, with some cosmic parallels and existential echoes that recall his earlier film The Double Life of Véronique. And all in a tone somehow both playful and laden with gnomic seriousness.
At its centre is Valentine, played by Irène Jacob, a model who has a job posing for a chewing gum billboard campaign; her image is to dominate the city streets and she briefly achieves a kind of anonymous celebrity – a part of the story which makes Three Colours: Red a New Wave sort of film.
Krzysztof Kieślowski completed his Three Colours trilogy with what was to be his final film. With music by Zbigniew Preisner, it is an almost supernatural contrivance: brooding on coincidence, fate and the insoluble mystery of other people’s lives, with some cosmic parallels and existential echoes that recall his earlier film The Double Life of Véronique. And all in a tone somehow both playful and laden with gnomic seriousness.
At its centre is Valentine, played by Irène Jacob, a model who has a job posing for a chewing gum billboard campaign; her image is to dominate the city streets and she briefly achieves a kind of anonymous celebrity – a part of the story which makes Three Colours: Red a New Wave sort of film.
- 4/11/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The middle film in the Colours trilogy features Julie Delpy as it takes a dagger to both France and Poland’s conception of equality and meritocracy
This is the second movie in Krzystztof Kieslowski’s great Colours trilogy, now on rerelease; here white is the colour of death, the colour of winter, the colour of orgasm and also the colour of a clean slate and a fresh start about to be muddied and spoiled. Theoretically, it addresses not just the middle colour of the French flag, but the second tenet of the revolution as well – equality – which it does by dramatising some outrageous inequality. It also satirises the specious new equality and meritocracy of gangster capitalism, on the rise in post-Soviet Poland.
Working again with composer Zbigniew Preisner, Kieslowski audaciously jolts the tone away from the dreamy, tragic and cosmic loneliness of Blue to a vinegary black comedy of marital breakdown,...
This is the second movie in Krzystztof Kieslowski’s great Colours trilogy, now on rerelease; here white is the colour of death, the colour of winter, the colour of orgasm and also the colour of a clean slate and a fresh start about to be muddied and spoiled. Theoretically, it addresses not just the middle colour of the French flag, but the second tenet of the revolution as well – equality – which it does by dramatising some outrageous inequality. It also satirises the specious new equality and meritocracy of gangster capitalism, on the rise in post-Soviet Poland.
Working again with composer Zbigniew Preisner, Kieslowski audaciously jolts the tone away from the dreamy, tragic and cosmic loneliness of Blue to a vinegary black comedy of marital breakdown,...
- 4/5/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Tár writer/director Todd Field discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
You Only Live Twice (1967) – Dana Gould’s trailer commentary
Tár (2022)
Man With A Movie Camera (1929)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
The Big Parade (1925)
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
The Crowd (1928)
Star Wars (1977)
The Servant (1963)
Parasite (2019) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s review
The Three Musketeers (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary
Figures In A Landscape (1970)
M (1931)
M (1951)
I Am Cuba (1964)
The Cranes Are Flying (1957) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review
Letter Never Sent (1960)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
The Towering Inferno (1974) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary
The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
The Sting (1973)
The World of Henry Orient (1964) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary
Thelma And Louise (1991)
Murmur Of The Heart (1971)
The Silent World (1956)
Opening Night (1977)
The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) – Larry Karaszewski’s...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
You Only Live Twice (1967) – Dana Gould’s trailer commentary
Tár (2022)
Man With A Movie Camera (1929)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
The Big Parade (1925)
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
The Crowd (1928)
Star Wars (1977)
The Servant (1963)
Parasite (2019) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s review
The Three Musketeers (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary
Figures In A Landscape (1970)
M (1931)
M (1951)
I Am Cuba (1964)
The Cranes Are Flying (1957) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review
Letter Never Sent (1960)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
The Towering Inferno (1974) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary
The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
The Sting (1973)
The World of Henry Orient (1964) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary
Thelma And Louise (1991)
Murmur Of The Heart (1971)
The Silent World (1956)
Opening Night (1977)
The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) – Larry Karaszewski’s...
- 1/10/2023
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
Director Agnieszka Holland pulls off a difficult task — her true-life Holocaust tale neither trivializes the horror nor glamorizes individualized victims at the expense of the big picture. Marco Hofschneider is the inexperienced German teenager who by strange quirks of fate becomes a staunch Stalinist in a Communist school, then a Nazi war hero and candidate for Hitler Youth honors and adoption by a Nazi officer… if he can avoid being uncovered as a Jew in hiding. It sounds tasteless but it’s not — the true story of Solomon Perel reveals the ‘fluidity’ of ideology when survival is on the line. Our young hero must keep ‘becoming’ what he pretends to be. With André Wilms, René Hofschneider and Julie Delpy as a rabid Hitlerite.
Europa Europa
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 985
1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...
Europa Europa
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 985
1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...
- 4/25/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
El olvido que seremos
Spain’s Fernando Trueba is on the verge of one of his most prolific periods it seems, and we’ll next seem him with Caracol TV’s produced El Olvido que Seremos, starring Javier Camara. Based on the popular novel by Hector Abad Faciolince, the project is lensed by Sergio Ivan Castano. Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner (Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy and The Double Life of Veronique) provides the score.
The well-traveled Trueba scored an international breakthrough in 1992 when Belle Epoque took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and his 2010 film Chico & Rita received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.…...
Spain’s Fernando Trueba is on the verge of one of his most prolific periods it seems, and we’ll next seem him with Caracol TV’s produced El Olvido que Seremos, starring Javier Camara. Based on the popular novel by Hector Abad Faciolince, the project is lensed by Sergio Ivan Castano. Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner (Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy and The Double Life of Veronique) provides the score.
The well-traveled Trueba scored an international breakthrough in 1992 when Belle Epoque took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and his 2010 film Chico & Rita received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.…...
- 12/31/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
“I am far from an ideal person, but I’m a person with ideals.” Say what you will about exiled businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky — formerly one of the seven oligarchs who controlled 50% of the money in post-Soviet Russia, and now an enemy of the state who Putin would personally throw into prison for the rest of his life should he ever touch foot on home soil again — but the guy is more self-aware than most of the bastards who have shaped the modern world.
That alone would make him a natural subject for a documentary about the current state of his birth country, but Alex Gibney’s “Citizen K” is only tangentially concerned with what makes Khodorkovsky tick. Gibney is more interested in using the billionaire pariah as a pinhole into the guts of gangster capitalism; as a lens through which to consider that capitalism and democracy might be theologically incompatible.
That alone would make him a natural subject for a documentary about the current state of his birth country, but Alex Gibney’s “Citizen K” is only tangentially concerned with what makes Khodorkovsky tick. Gibney is more interested in using the billionaire pariah as a pinhole into the guts of gangster capitalism; as a lens through which to consider that capitalism and democracy might be theologically incompatible.
- 11/20/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Mubi's Krzysztof Kieslowski Retrospective runs August 10 – October 28, 2019 in most countries around the world.Camera Buff“It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world that divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things that unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine; it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way.
- 9/3/2019
- MUBI
“He wants to be Jesus Christ, but he has a past.” So says one political commentator about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the mercurial political activist under scrutiny in “Citizen K,” and if the remark seems blandly unfair on the face of it — who doesn’t have a past? — it’s hard to imagine Jesus himself gaining much moral authority with this particular background. A self-made billionaire and former oil oligarch who at one point could claim to be the wealthiest man in Russia, he was liberalized by a ten-year spell in prison under the Putin regime, emerging as a power-challenging dissident, and founding the pro-democracy initiative Open Russia. Khodorkovsky’s is a political about-face that feels almost too good, too neat, to be true: In Alex Gibney’s chewy, engrossing documentary, it’s a reversal that unlocks many of the conflicts and contradictions ailing post-Soviet Russia’s capitalist democracy.
Authoritative and dense...
Authoritative and dense...
- 8/31/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: U.S. label Rock Salt Releasing is re-launching acclaimed Argentine-Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco’s (Kiss Of The Spider Woman) final film My Last Friend in the international and U.S markets.
Willem Dafoe stars in the 2015 feature about a film director who learns he is on the brink of death. Rock Salt Releasing will launch international sales on the film, also known as My Hindu Friend, in Cannes.
Originally released in Brazil, the English-language movie internationally premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival in 2016 where Dafoe was awarded Best Actor. The film’s release was put on hold, however, due to Babenco’s untimely death in July 2016. Rock Salt’s parent company TriCoast Worldwide picked up the O2 Production feature on the advice of The Movie Agency.
Co-written by Guilherme Moraes Guintella (Principal Dancer), the project was inspired by Babenco’s own life story, starring his friends and family as characters.
Willem Dafoe stars in the 2015 feature about a film director who learns he is on the brink of death. Rock Salt Releasing will launch international sales on the film, also known as My Hindu Friend, in Cannes.
Originally released in Brazil, the English-language movie internationally premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival in 2016 where Dafoe was awarded Best Actor. The film’s release was put on hold, however, due to Babenco’s untimely death in July 2016. Rock Salt’s parent company TriCoast Worldwide picked up the O2 Production feature on the advice of The Movie Agency.
Co-written by Guilherme Moraes Guintella (Principal Dancer), the project was inspired by Babenco’s own life story, starring his friends and family as characters.
- 5/14/2019
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
The festival programme includes a tribute to director Agnès Varda.
Haifa International Film Festival has unveiled the opening and closing night films, as well as a series of other additions to the programme, for its 34th edition (September 22 - October 1).
The festival will open with The Other Story, directed by Ari Nesher and starring Sasson Gabai, Joy Rieger, Yuval Segal, Maya Dagan and Nathan Goshen.
Co-written by Nesher and psychologist Noam Shpancer, the film follows a young secular woman who decides to get engaged to a hedonistic musician now living as an ultra-Orthodox Jew. This causes her divorced parents and...
Haifa International Film Festival has unveiled the opening and closing night films, as well as a series of other additions to the programme, for its 34th edition (September 22 - October 1).
The festival will open with The Other Story, directed by Ari Nesher and starring Sasson Gabai, Joy Rieger, Yuval Segal, Maya Dagan and Nathan Goshen.
Co-written by Nesher and psychologist Noam Shpancer, the film follows a young secular woman who decides to get engaged to a hedonistic musician now living as an ultra-Orthodox Jew. This causes her divorced parents and...
- 9/7/2018
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Six year-old Aslak (Adam Ekeli) lives a quiet life with his single mother Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland) in a rural town adjacent to farmland and a mountaintop forest. He’s too young to understand all that’s happening around him — especially considering he’s generally told to keep away from the adults when they’re speaking — but he knows enough to gauge the strained atmosphere and heavy emotion growing. So he looks through keyholes and gazes out windows, everything he sees simultaneously meaningful and yet without meaning. When things get too intense he hides in his closest. When he begins to feel alone he finds his dog Rapp. And as tension mounts at home (police chatter about his estranged brother puts Astrid on edge), a monster begins lurking in the distant trees.
Let’s put “monster” in quotes because the word is used more as a concept than literal manifestation of...
Let’s put “monster” in quotes because the word is used more as a concept than literal manifestation of...
- 9/9/2017
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series starts this Friday, March 10th. — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.
All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional,...
All films are screened at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional,...
- 3/6/2017
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The Ninth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional, we also offer a silent film with live music, and audiences are sure to delight in the Poor People of Paris...
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, which this year includes films by two New Wave masters: Jacques Rivette’s first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us,” and François Truffaut’s cinephilic love letter, “Day for Night.” The fest also provides one of the few opportunities available in St. Louis to see films projected the old-school, time-honored way, with both Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad” and Robert Bresson’s “Au hasard Balthazar” screening from 35mm prints. Even more traditional, we also offer a silent film with live music, and audiences are sure to delight in the Poor People of Paris...
- 1/31/2017
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Like a divine consolation for our collective heartache, the world was gifted with an absurd volume of beautiful new things to listen to in 2016. But epochal new albums from the likes of Radiohead, Anohni, Frank Ocean, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and the sisters Knowles (to name just a few) only told a small part of the story, as much of the year’s best new music was Trojan horse-ed into our lives via the movies.
The Best of 2016: IndieWire’s Year in Review Bible
Conner4Real wrote pop songs as catchy and profound as anything by The Weeknd, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling exchanged a series of bittersweet ballads, and a Polynesian princess followed her voice over the horizon. But it was the instrumental pieces that cut the deepest, as many of the best new films were proudly inextricable from their scores. “Moonlight” and “La La Land,” currently dominating the awards circuit,...
The Best of 2016: IndieWire’s Year in Review Bible
Conner4Real wrote pop songs as catchy and profound as anything by The Weeknd, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling exchanged a series of bittersweet ballads, and a Polynesian princess followed her voice over the horizon. But it was the instrumental pieces that cut the deepest, as many of the best new films were proudly inextricable from their scores. “Moonlight” and “La La Land,” currently dominating the awards circuit,...
- 12/19/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Last year gave us Jacques Rivette’s Out 1, and this year has given us Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog—two works that until their recent releases, Out 1 by Arrow and Dekalog by The Criterion Collection, have been extremely difficult to see on account of their length, which suited them to European television rather than theatrical distribution. It’s fitting that each film’s re-release comes in an era in which on-demand or day-and-date video releases are common distribution models, streaming services rather than cinemas are seen as the primary viewing platforms for so many, and the television season—many of which arrive all at once—and not film is the dominant moving image medium. If all this is true, is there anything challenging or even unusual about a 10 or 12 hour moving image work designed for us to watch all at once from the comfort of our homes, preferably in a small number of binges?...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
Krzysztof Kieślowski's magnum opus for Polish Television is a transcendent 'cycle' of moral tales, each based on one of the Ten Commandments. But sometimes it's difficult to get the connection -- these brilliant mini-movies are pretty tricky. Dekalog Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 837 1988 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame; 1:70 widescreen / 583 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 27, 2016 / 99.95 Starring Aleksander Bardini, Janusz Gajos, Krystyna Janda, Bugoslaw Linda, Daniel Olbrychski many others. Cinematography Witold Adamek, Jacek Blawut, Slavomir Idziak, Andrzej Jaroszewicz, Edward Klosinski, Dariusz Kuc, Krzysztof Pakulski, Piotr Sobocinski, Wieslaw Zdort Film Editor Ewa Smal Original Music Zbigniew Preisner Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Plesiewicz Produced by Ryszard Chutkowski Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Back in the early 1990s I believe my first access to Polish director Krzystof Kieślowski was a laserdisc of his film The Double Life of Veronique. I also remember a big reaction in 1996 when...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Back in the early 1990s I believe my first access to Polish director Krzystof Kieślowski was a laserdisc of his film The Double Life of Veronique. I also remember a big reaction in 1996 when...
- 10/17/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Criterion’s been on a bit of a Krzysztof Kieślowski tear as of late, having just given his towering Dekalog a Blu-ray release. One doesn’t need much of an excuse to pay the Polish great some attention, however, so take the following post as an all-purpose sharing of material — after all, you can’t go wrong with some Zbigniew Preisner, whose gentle, flowing musical compositions were the perfect complement to Kieślowski’s gentle, flowing tales of moral quandary and self-discovery. Want to soundtrack your own moral quandaries and self-discoveries? Your ultimate Spotify playlist is here!
Shared below is a 27-track Preisner collection, as well as a video of Kieślowski on the Dekalog set. It’s brief, sure, but a rather direct discussion of his strange project’s plurality of tones, as well as the question of it being or not being a television production. (What a debate that would’ve sparked if made today!
Shared below is a 27-track Preisner collection, as well as a video of Kieślowski on the Dekalog set. It’s brief, sure, but a rather direct discussion of his strange project’s plurality of tones, as well as the question of it being or not being a television production. (What a debate that would’ve sparked if made today!
- 10/3/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
It doesn’t quite measure up to the incredible set photos, but above, see the first official look at Tilda Swinton (Nancy Mirando) and Giancarlo Esposito (Frank Dawson) in Bong Joon-ho‘s Okja, arriving on Netflix in 2017.
Park Chan-wook‘s The Handmaiden will hit theaters on October 14. See our Cannes review.
Ahead of a Criterion release, Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s Decalogue will hit theaters nationwide thanks to Janus Films:
The complete 10-part epic, newly-restored on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Kieślowski’s death, will begin its Us theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York on September 2nd, Los Angeles on September 17th at Cinefamily,...
It doesn’t quite measure up to the incredible set photos, but above, see the first official look at Tilda Swinton (Nancy Mirando) and Giancarlo Esposito (Frank Dawson) in Bong Joon-ho‘s Okja, arriving on Netflix in 2017.
Park Chan-wook‘s The Handmaiden will hit theaters on October 14. See our Cannes review.
Ahead of a Criterion release, Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s Decalogue will hit theaters nationwide thanks to Janus Films:
The complete 10-part epic, newly-restored on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Kieślowski’s death, will begin its Us theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York on September 2nd, Los Angeles on September 17th at Cinefamily,...
- 7/19/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
In just two weeks, Alamo Drafthouses nationwide will host screenings of A24's The Witch. More details on that story after the jump. Also in this round-up: a trailer for Night Terrors, Angelica release details, a new clip from The Final Project, and four images from The Terrible Two.
The Witch: Press Release: "Austin, TX - Feb 3, 2016 - The Alamo Drafthouse is excited to announce A24's chilling new horror film The Witch as the latest Drafthouse Recommends title. The film will open at Alamo Drafthouse locations nationwide with "sneak preview" screenings on the night of Feb. 18th, 2016. In the lead up to that opening date, select Alamo locations will also host free retrospective screenings of witchcraft horror classics to get audiences in the, er, spirit and to set the stage for director Robert Eggers' debut feature and groundbreaking new take on the genre.
And, for a limited time this month,...
The Witch: Press Release: "Austin, TX - Feb 3, 2016 - The Alamo Drafthouse is excited to announce A24's chilling new horror film The Witch as the latest Drafthouse Recommends title. The film will open at Alamo Drafthouse locations nationwide with "sneak preview" screenings on the night of Feb. 18th, 2016. In the lead up to that opening date, select Alamo locations will also host free retrospective screenings of witchcraft horror classics to get audiences in the, er, spirit and to set the stage for director Robert Eggers' debut feature and groundbreaking new take on the genre.
And, for a limited time this month,...
- 2/4/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett to discuss Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Véronique.
About the film:
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s international breakthrough remains one of his most beloved films, a ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and human intuition. Irène Jacob is incandescent as both Weronika, a Polish choir soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an enigmatic, emotional bond, which Kieślowski details in gorgeous reflections, colors, and movements. Aided by Slawomir Idziak’s shimmering cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting, operatic score, Kieślowski creates one of cinema’s most purely metaphysical works. The Double Life of Véronique is an unforgettable symphony of feeling.
Subscribe to the podcast via RSS or in iTunes
Buy The Film On Amazon:
Watch the trailer:
Episode Links:
The Double Life of Véronique (1991) – The...
About the film:
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s international breakthrough remains one of his most beloved films, a ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and human intuition. Irène Jacob is incandescent as both Weronika, a Polish choir soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an enigmatic, emotional bond, which Kieślowski details in gorgeous reflections, colors, and movements. Aided by Slawomir Idziak’s shimmering cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting, operatic score, Kieślowski creates one of cinema’s most purely metaphysical works. The Double Life of Véronique is an unforgettable symphony of feeling.
Subscribe to the podcast via RSS or in iTunes
Buy The Film On Amazon:
Watch the trailer:
Episode Links:
The Double Life of Véronique (1991) – The...
- 8/3/2015
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grande Bellezza” (The Great Beauty) (2013)
Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty has two small yet important facets in common with Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Both films begin with a profound quote that provides a key to the viewer for a full understanding of the film that follows. Both films use the music of “Dies Irae” (Requiem for my Friend, which includes Lacrimosa 2) by Zbigniew Preisner (the talented composer of Kieslowski’s Dekalog and The Three Colors trilogy) and Henryk Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony.
Just as Mallick used an interesting quote from the Book of Job, the opening quote for The Great Beauty is from Sorrentino’s favorite author Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night.
The quote is “To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary,...
Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty has two small yet important facets in common with Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Both films begin with a profound quote that provides a key to the viewer for a full understanding of the film that follows. Both films use the music of “Dies Irae” (Requiem for my Friend, which includes Lacrimosa 2) by Zbigniew Preisner (the talented composer of Kieslowski’s Dekalog and The Three Colors trilogy) and Henryk Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony.
Just as Mallick used an interesting quote from the Book of Job, the opening quote for The Great Beauty is from Sorrentino’s favorite author Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night.
The quote is “To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary,...
- 2/24/2014
- by Jugu Abraham
- DearCinema.com
Any regular readers of Sound On Sight, or listeners of our Sordid Cinema podcast, should know that I am a huge fan of horror films. I recently published a 75 000 + word article counting down the 100 greatest horror films ever made – and every year, I whip a list of the best horror films released. This year, the terror is accompanied by demonic possession, cannibalistic rituals, low-budget zom-coms, Tarantino’s favourite film, and the dark side of Disney.
Note: I’ve included three special mentions – all of which could be labeled horror, but I felt work best as thrillers instead. Enjoy!
****
Special Mention: Stoker
Directed by Chan-wook Park
Written by Wentworth Miller
USA, 2013
Chan-wook Park’s Stoker is a Gothic fairy tale, a family drama, and a beautifully twisted, pitch-black coming-of-age story, all at once. This slow-burning psychological thriller isn’t afraid to cross into uncomfortable places, often edging close to taboo territory.
Note: I’ve included three special mentions – all of which could be labeled horror, but I felt work best as thrillers instead. Enjoy!
****
Special Mention: Stoker
Directed by Chan-wook Park
Written by Wentworth Miller
USA, 2013
Chan-wook Park’s Stoker is a Gothic fairy tale, a family drama, and a beautifully twisted, pitch-black coming-of-age story, all at once. This slow-burning psychological thriller isn’t afraid to cross into uncomfortable places, often edging close to taboo territory.
- 12/14/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Here’s what we know on A.J. Edwards. He’s worked in the editor capacity on The New World and To the Wonder and was an “artistic consultant” on The Tree of Life. The Terrence Malick magic-hour stamp of approval will certainly help along in determining where the formerly titled The Green Blade Rises lands in 2014′s film fest circuit (Malick is among the producers on the film as well) and while I wouldn’t call Park City the lieu for presidential biopics, they are prime place for filmmaker debuts. Production on The Better Angels took place in late September of 2012, so one year’s worth of post-production time for a filmmaker with a background in editing means he has time to find his film (if the film needs finding that is). With a small news blurb stating that Zbigniew Preisner helped affix the film’s score. Diane Kruger, Wes Bentley,...
- 11/18/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
These days you can watch any movie you desire online. Yet there's still one thing the magical wonders of instant streaming haven't solved for indecisive movie-lovers: what the heck to watch! Moviefone is here to recommend the best streaming movies from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant each week in the Moviefone Stream.
This week's Moviefone Stream picks range from a goofball summer camp comedy to a violent shark thriller. We know you need something to help ease you out of your summer vacay, so check out our picks below. Happy streaming!
Comedy: 'Wet Hot American Summer'
The best way to end the summer is to go back to summer camp . This cult comedy may have been under your radar due to its handful of bad reviews, but "Wet Hot American Summer" has some ridiculously funny moments. It stars comedy favorites Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler,...
This week's Moviefone Stream picks range from a goofball summer camp comedy to a violent shark thriller. We know you need something to help ease you out of your summer vacay, so check out our picks below. Happy streaming!
Comedy: 'Wet Hot American Summer'
The best way to end the summer is to go back to summer camp . This cult comedy may have been under your radar due to its handful of bad reviews, but "Wet Hot American Summer" has some ridiculously funny moments. It stars comedy favorites Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler,...
- 9/13/2013
- by Erin Whitney
- Moviefone
Rather than exhorting the depressed to help themselves, fiction can provide a welcome realisation that we are not alone in despair
The plan to refer people with mild depression and anxiety to books has provoked some fascinating discussions, not least the discussion here of how fiction can be more helpful than non self-help. Having studied philosophy, I still have Elizabeth Anscombe's injunction to stop doing philosophy and start reading novels ringing in my ears, so this is no surprise. What I want to make the case for is those works of fiction that go beyond the positive, beyond stories of survival, works many wouldn't imagine offering help, would even want to keep out of the hands of the mentally fragile.
I made the case for the dangerousness of the blanket prescription of self-help in the comments on other posts here, the guilt when we do not succeed in pulling ourselves from the mire,...
The plan to refer people with mild depression and anxiety to books has provoked some fascinating discussions, not least the discussion here of how fiction can be more helpful than non self-help. Having studied philosophy, I still have Elizabeth Anscombe's injunction to stop doing philosophy and start reading novels ringing in my ears, so this is no surprise. What I want to make the case for is those works of fiction that go beyond the positive, beyond stories of survival, works many wouldn't imagine offering help, would even want to keep out of the hands of the mentally fragile.
I made the case for the dangerousness of the blanket prescription of self-help in the comments on other posts here, the guilt when we do not succeed in pulling ourselves from the mire,...
- 2/4/2013
- by Dan Holloway
- The Guardian - Film News
While it may not bear a Directed By credit, the upcoming "Green Blade Rises" seems to be putting together a lot of ingredients familiar to producer Terrence Malick. The project will be directed by A.J. Edwards, a protegé of the filmmaker who was an editor on "To The Wonder" and served various roles on "The New World" and "The Tree Of Life." Moreover, it features Wes Bentley and Jason Clarke (along with Diane Kruger and Brit Marling), who both appear (or at least shave shot scenes) for Malick's "Knight Of Cups." And now a composer who will be familiar to Malick fans has come aboard. Zbigniew Preisner has signed on to score "Green Blade Rises" -- so, who is he? Well, film buffs should know he was a frequent collaborator with Krzysztof Kieslowski, penning the music for "The Three Colors" trilogy and "The Double Life Of Veronique," among others. While Malick-heads will remember that.
- 10/3/2012
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Another Lincoln-centric film, The Green Blade Rises, the directorial debut of Aj Edwards is already in the works.
Brit Marling (Another Earth) and Wes Bentley (The Hunger Games) have joined the cast of upcoming feature film about Honest Abe’s formative years – Bentley will play the President’s first teacher, while Marling will play Lincoln’s biological mother Nancy who passed away when he was nine.
They join Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) and Jason Clarke (Public Enemies), who are already on-board as Lincoln’s step-mother and father.
Edwards worked with Terrence Malick as an editor on The New World, The Tree of Life, and To the Wonder, so it’s no wonder why Malick agreed to produce Edwards directorial debut with the original script he also wrote.
The role of a baby boy Abraham Lincoln has not yet been cast, but with filming to take place this fall, we’ll soon find out.
Brit Marling (Another Earth) and Wes Bentley (The Hunger Games) have joined the cast of upcoming feature film about Honest Abe’s formative years – Bentley will play the President’s first teacher, while Marling will play Lincoln’s biological mother Nancy who passed away when he was nine.
They join Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) and Jason Clarke (Public Enemies), who are already on-board as Lincoln’s step-mother and father.
Edwards worked with Terrence Malick as an editor on The New World, The Tree of Life, and To the Wonder, so it’s no wonder why Malick agreed to produce Edwards directorial debut with the original script he also wrote.
The role of a baby boy Abraham Lincoln has not yet been cast, but with filming to take place this fall, we’ll soon find out.
- 9/29/2012
- by Nick Martin
- Filmofilia
Shortly after 9/11, and very definitely as a personal response to that event, I wrote an article about Requiems for Cdnow, where I worked at the time (just a few blocks away from Ground Zero; fortunately our workday started at 10 Am, so I wasn't there yet that day, but in the weeks that followed there were days where, if the wind came from the wrong direction, we would go home early, it made us so sick). In the years since, I have written about music composed in response to that tragedy, such as John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls. But now I find myself being drawn back to the Requiem idea. Here's a much-expanded take on it.
This roughly chronological list confines itself to works with a sacred basis, though the 20th century yielded secular Requiems, most notably Paul Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom...
This roughly chronological list confines itself to works with a sacred basis, though the 20th century yielded secular Requiems, most notably Paul Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom...
- 9/11/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Sundance London
You won't bump into Robert Redford in a ski-lift queue, but you're at least promised the cream of Us indie cinema in the top festival's first event outside of Utah – plus some music. Redford will be at the opening night gig with T Bone Burnett, and introducing a documentary on that indie-est of subjects, Prince Charles. You also get 14 highlights from Sundance proper, including time-travel romcom Safety Not Guaranteed and college drama Liberal Arts, plus prize-winning documentaries The House I Live In and The Queen Of Versailles.
The O2, SE10, Thu to 29 Apr
Sensoria, Sheffield
Film and music come together in mysterious and moving ways here, in a rare festival that's equal parts both. So you get some "straight" live music (if the experimentalism of Laurie Anderson can be described as such), and a variety of music-related movies, whether it's those with great scores (such as Zbigniew Preisner...
You won't bump into Robert Redford in a ski-lift queue, but you're at least promised the cream of Us indie cinema in the top festival's first event outside of Utah – plus some music. Redford will be at the opening night gig with T Bone Burnett, and introducing a documentary on that indie-est of subjects, Prince Charles. You also get 14 highlights from Sundance proper, including time-travel romcom Safety Not Guaranteed and college drama Liberal Arts, plus prize-winning documentaries The House I Live In and The Queen Of Versailles.
The O2, SE10, Thu to 29 Apr
Sensoria, Sheffield
Film and music come together in mysterious and moving ways here, in a rare festival that's equal parts both. So you get some "straight" live music (if the experimentalism of Laurie Anderson can be described as such), and a variety of music-related movies, whether it's those with great scores (such as Zbigniew Preisner...
- 4/20/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Criterion Collection: Three Colors [Blu-ray] Movie: Disc: Click here to read the dvd review! "Not only is the trilogy of a decidedly anti-collectivist mindset, each film offers a rich and rewarding stand-alone cinematic experience. Related only by the slimmest of narrative threads - a thread that actually seems quite jarring once it's finally revealed - Blue,White and Red employ different cinematographers, different actors and take place in a variety of European cities. While each film presents a variation in visual aesthetics, the mournful tones of composer Zbigniew Preisner give the pieces a vital kinship, and provide critical psychological linkage."...
- 12/20/2011
- IONCINEMA.com
Chicago – Movies don’t get much more personally influential than Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Blue,” “White,” and “Red,” collectively known as the “Three Colors” trilogy, and recently released in one gorgeous box set from The Criterion Collection. As we all do, I was a bit concerned that perhaps my memory of these films had been enhanced with time, but I found the opposite — they’re even better with age and stand as one of the best film achievements of not just their era but of all time. I can’t say enough about Kieslowski’s talent as a director and, while some may point to the “Decalogue” films or “The Double Life of Veronique,” I’ve always considered “Three Colors” to be the greatest accomplishment of one of history’s greatest directors. And Criterion has done one of their most notable acquisitions justice with one of their best releases of the year.
- 11/28/2011
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
It’s a little daunting writing about Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. Filmed back to back and released to universal acclaim at consecutive Venice (Blue, 1993), Berlin (White, 1994) and Cannes (Red, 1994) Film Festivals, the Polish director’s disparate trilogy has taken on a kind of legendary status, with each film recognised as a classic even if removed from the pretence of any overarching theme (nominally that each film represents a French revolutionary ideal: liberty, equality and fraternity) or strained attempt at inter-film continuity (all three stories touch on each other in ways which are arguably entirely superfluous).
Each film is entirely different, not only in terms of story but in genre, setting and mood. Blue, which stars Juliette Binoche as a widow living in the shadow of a car crash which has killed her husband and daughter, is a tragedy and deeply introverted drama about a person’s longing to...
Each film is entirely different, not only in terms of story but in genre, setting and mood. Blue, which stars Juliette Binoche as a widow living in the shadow of a car crash which has killed her husband and daughter, is a tragedy and deeply introverted drama about a person’s longing to...
- 11/21/2011
- by Robert Beames
- Obsessed with Film
From 7pm GMT Peter Bradshaw liveblogged the final part in Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy, which you can stream on our site. Also in the mix: a reader, and a drinking game …
3.00pm: And so we face the final frontier. Last night Andrew Pulver chuckled his way through Three Colours White. On Tuesday, Xan Brooks juggled pizza and existentialism during Three Colours Blue.
Tonight, Peter Bradshaw is in the hotseat, squished up alongside competition winner Joe Websper and Catherine Shoard, who'll be wrangling comments and overseeing the incredibly classy Three Colours Red drinking game (see below).
The third in the trilogy, Three Colours Red is also the most acclaimed. It's about a student (Irene Jacob) who befriends a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is spying on his neighbours.
Some tips on how to fill the four hours till we begin:
• Study some more information about what we're up to, and some FAQs.
3.00pm: And so we face the final frontier. Last night Andrew Pulver chuckled his way through Three Colours White. On Tuesday, Xan Brooks juggled pizza and existentialism during Three Colours Blue.
Tonight, Peter Bradshaw is in the hotseat, squished up alongside competition winner Joe Websper and Catherine Shoard, who'll be wrangling comments and overseeing the incredibly classy Three Colours Red drinking game (see below).
The third in the trilogy, Three Colours Red is also the most acclaimed. It's about a student (Irene Jacob) who befriends a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is spying on his neighbours.
Some tips on how to fill the four hours till we begin:
• Study some more information about what we're up to, and some FAQs.
- 11/17/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
This week we're reminding you of your invitation to join us at 7pm tonight when Peter Bradshaw (and a reader) will be liveblogging Three Colours Red on the site. And did anyone mention a drinking game … ?
The big story
And so we face the final frontier. Last night Andrew Pulver chuckled his way through Three Colours White. On Tuesday, Xan Brooks juggled pizza and existentialism during Three Colours Blue.
Tonight, Peter Bradshaw is in the hotseat, squished up alongside competition winner Joe Websper and Catherine Shoard, who'll be wrangling comments and overseeing the incredibly classy Three Colours Red drinking game (see below).
The third in the trilogy, Three Colours Red is also the most acclaimed. It's about a student (Irene Jacob) who befriends a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is spying on his neighbours.
The big story
And so we face the final frontier. Last night Andrew Pulver chuckled his way through Three Colours White. On Tuesday, Xan Brooks juggled pizza and existentialism during Three Colours Blue.
Tonight, Peter Bradshaw is in the hotseat, squished up alongside competition winner Joe Websper and Catherine Shoard, who'll be wrangling comments and overseeing the incredibly classy Three Colours Red drinking game (see below).
The third in the trilogy, Three Colours Red is also the most acclaimed. It's about a student (Irene Jacob) who befriends a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is spying on his neighbours.
- 11/17/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
You suggested we ask Kieslowski scholar Nicholas Reyland to tell us what to listen out for while watching Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy. Here, he offers a rhapsody in Blue (and White and Red)
• You can already stream the Three Colours trilogy on our site; join us from 7pm this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when we'll be liveblogging the films, and enter our competition for a chance to feed into Peter Bradshaw's blog for Three Colours Red on the final evening
The Three Colours Trilogy marked the culmination a decade of collaborations between director Krzysztof Kieslowski and composer Zbigniew Preisner. Their film work is characterised by musical moments which illuminate the story and open up channels of interpretation between the work and the audience. These are cinematic narratives – as Stanley Kubrick once said of Kieslowski's The Decalogue – which dramatise ideas, rather than merely talk about them. Preisner's music is central to that process.
• You can already stream the Three Colours trilogy on our site; join us from 7pm this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when we'll be liveblogging the films, and enter our competition for a chance to feed into Peter Bradshaw's blog for Three Colours Red on the final evening
The Three Colours Trilogy marked the culmination a decade of collaborations between director Krzysztof Kieslowski and composer Zbigniew Preisner. Their film work is characterised by musical moments which illuminate the story and open up channels of interpretation between the work and the audience. These are cinematic narratives – as Stanley Kubrick once said of Kieslowski's The Decalogue – which dramatise ideas, rather than merely talk about them. Preisner's music is central to that process.
- 11/14/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Over the next few weeks, we're going to be hearing quite a bit about Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy — Blue (1993), White (1994) and Red (1994) — on both sides of the Atlantic. On Friday, the Guardian will begin streaming all three films in the UK and Eire, and you can read about the concurrent live-blogging sessions here. On Tuesday, Criterion will release the trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray and, on November 21, Artificial Eye will follow with its R2 Blu-ray package.
The Guardian has set up a special section on trilogy, gathering several related reviews and interviews it's run over the years. Dipping in, we can begin with Richard Williams, who wrote in 2006, "When Krzysztof Kieslowski died on March 13, 1996, it was as though a certain kind of cinema had come to an end along with him. The calm, reflective, compassionate gaze he brought to bear on the dilemmas faced by his characters made...
The Guardian has set up a special section on trilogy, gathering several related reviews and interviews it's run over the years. Dipping in, we can begin with Richard Williams, who wrote in 2006, "When Krzysztof Kieslowski died on March 13, 1996, it was as though a certain kind of cinema had come to an end along with him. The calm, reflective, compassionate gaze he brought to bear on the dilemmas faced by his characters made...
- 11/10/2011
- MUBI
Derek Malcolm's review of the first in the Three Colours trilogy, originally published on 14 Oct 1993
Krzysztof Kieslowski, Europe's most highly-praised working director, beavered away for 15 years without much recognition and now gets prizes thrown at him like confetti. He won a share of Venice's Golden Lion (with Altman's forthcoming Short Cuts) for Three Colours Blue, the first of a new trilogy exploring the present meaning of the French Revolution's liberty, equality and fraternity. And, without doubt, he has made another brilliantly fashioned tale to put beside the Decalogue and The Double Life Of Veronique.
Yet there is something missing from his first entirely French production which was also missing from the last (French) half of Veronique. It may simply be that he is no longer working in the communist and post-communist world that his often pessimistic ironies illustrate with such emotional and psychological certainty. It may also be that...
Krzysztof Kieslowski, Europe's most highly-praised working director, beavered away for 15 years without much recognition and now gets prizes thrown at him like confetti. He won a share of Venice's Golden Lion (with Altman's forthcoming Short Cuts) for Three Colours Blue, the first of a new trilogy exploring the present meaning of the French Revolution's liberty, equality and fraternity. And, without doubt, he has made another brilliantly fashioned tale to put beside the Decalogue and The Double Life Of Veronique.
Yet there is something missing from his first entirely French production which was also missing from the last (French) half of Veronique. It may simply be that he is no longer working in the communist and post-communist world that his often pessimistic ironies illustrate with such emotional and psychological certainty. It may also be that...
- 11/9/2011
- by Derek Malcolm
- The Guardian - Film News
Release Date: Nov. 15, 2011
Price: DVD $59.95, Blu-ray $79.95
Studio: Criterion
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blue, White and Red receive the Criterion treatment this November.
Legendary Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, a boldly cinematic trio of stories about love and loss, was a defining event of the art house boom of the 1990s. The films — Blue (1993), White (1993) and Red (1994) — were named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. But that only hints at the film’s beauty, richness and humanity.
Set in Paris, Warsaw and Geneva, Blue, White, and Red (Kieślowski’s final film) range from tragedy to drama to comedy. They follow a group of ambiguously interconnected people experiencing profound personal disruptions.
Marked by intoxicatingly lush cinematography and memorable performances by such actors as Juliette Binoche (Chocolat), Julie Delpy (Guilty Hearts), Irène Jacob (Beyond the Clouds) and...
Price: DVD $59.95, Blu-ray $79.95
Studio: Criterion
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blue, White and Red receive the Criterion treatment this November.
Legendary Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, a boldly cinematic trio of stories about love and loss, was a defining event of the art house boom of the 1990s. The films — Blue (1993), White (1993) and Red (1994) — were named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. But that only hints at the film’s beauty, richness and humanity.
Set in Paris, Warsaw and Geneva, Blue, White, and Red (Kieślowski’s final film) range from tragedy to drama to comedy. They follow a group of ambiguously interconnected people experiencing profound personal disruptions.
Marked by intoxicatingly lush cinematography and memorable performances by such actors as Juliette Binoche (Chocolat), Julie Delpy (Guilty Hearts), Irène Jacob (Beyond the Clouds) and...
- 8/15/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures To be fair, this one minute and 49 second clip hardly does justice to the sequence in which Terrence Malick depicts the creation of the Earth and the cosmos in The Tree of Life, but it is all Fox Searchlight is offering at the moment so I can't exactly present you anything more. Here's how I described the full sequence from the film in my review from the Cannes Film Festival: For what seemed like about 20 minutes, the creation of the universe plays out before your eyes as the cosmos shift and change, volcanoes erupt and dinosaurs walk the earth. It's a creative counterpart to the star-filled embryonic fluid of the infinite found in Kubrick's 2001. Without much embellishment, this is a sequence that equals a modern day pinnacle of filmmaking.
The rafters of the 2,300 seat Grand Theatre Lumiere literally shook as molten lava spewed from the Earth's...
The rafters of the 2,300 seat Grand Theatre Lumiere literally shook as molten lava spewed from the Earth's...
- 6/20/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique is more of a fascination for me than anything else. I would certainly never go to the lengths Roger Ebert has in expressing his love for it, listing it as one of his great movies just as he does Kieslowski's The Decalogue and Three Colors trilogy.
That said, Criterion's recent Blu-ray release of The Double Life of Veronique is a virtual no-brainer, not in terms of your need to purchase it, but because it's a visual marvel. Slawomir Idziak's cinematography is a thing of beauty and is likely the reason the film resonates with viewers above anything else. In high definition his yellowish-green filters looks marvelous. The release also comes with a DTS-hd Master Audio soundtrack that soars as it needs to. Veronique is just as much an aural film as it is a visual one, playing with the ideas of...
That said, Criterion's recent Blu-ray release of The Double Life of Veronique is a virtual no-brainer, not in terms of your need to purchase it, but because it's a visual marvel. Slawomir Idziak's cinematography is a thing of beauty and is likely the reason the film resonates with viewers above anything else. In high definition his yellowish-green filters looks marvelous. The release also comes with a DTS-hd Master Audio soundtrack that soars as it needs to. Veronique is just as much an aural film as it is a visual one, playing with the ideas of...
- 2/15/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
PARIS -- Tim Burton will be joining the Cinefondation jury at the Festival de Cannes, organizers announced Tuesday. The Cannes section is dedicated to student and graduate films, and this year has 17 titles in competition. Burton joins previously announced jury members French actress Sandrine Bonnaire, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cisse, German actor Daniel Bruhl (Goodbye, Lenin!) and Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner.
Screened
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- "Beautiful Country" is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises.
Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father. Then again, who better to make such an immigrant story than an outsider to both cultures?
With careful handling, Sony Pictures Classics could turn "Beautiful Country" into an art house hit after building momentum on the festival circuit. Name actors such as Nick Nolte -- in a small role as the father -- Bai Ling and Tim Roth can only help.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI dad, Binh (an accomplished debut by Damien Nguyen) wears the face of the country's enemy. Such half-castes are known by a pejorative expression meaning "less than dust." Simple yet poignant scenes at the outset establish his ostracized status. Even aboard a rusty tanker ferrying human cargo to the New World, the captain (Roth) tells him he will be an outcast wherever he goes.
As Vietnam aggressively celebrates the Vietcong victory, Binh heads for Ho Chi Minh City to locate his mother (Chau Thi Kim Xuan). All he has to go by is an old photo showing a happy couple holding a baby in front of a corner building. He locates that building and soon his mom. He meets a very young half-brother (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) and then gets a job alongside his mother in the household of a rich though nasty old woman.
(A weakness in the story is that we never learn why Binh's mother more or less abandoned him or why she now greets him with such joy.)
When a household tragedy is blamed on Binh, his mother gives him enough money for him and his brother to flee the country in an open boat. In a Malaysian refugee camp, he meets Ling Bai Ling), a Chinese prostitute with whom he develops a gentle, supportive friendship. During a riot, the three escape and essentially barter their souls for passage to New York on a tanker.
Many die en route, including Binh's Little Brother. After suffering a period of virtual slavery in New York's Chinatown, he parts company with Ling to hitchhike his way to Texas in search of his dad.
Pretty familiar stuff all along the way. Yet the details are surprisingly fresh, and the characters are vividly drawn. The script by Sabina Murray and Larry Gross eschews melodrama whenever possible for a realistic portrait of the hardships of the illegal immigrant experience. People ruthlessly focus on their own self interest, but the film avoids picking out heroes or villains. This is just the way people behave on the immigrant trail.
Moland gets wonderful performances from his cast. Nguyen must be the narrative's driving force and yet perform an often-reactive role, a seeming contradiction he smoothly handles. Nolte and Roth show restraint in playing highly flawed individuals. Ling lets no sentimentality encroach on the prostitute, who is lively on the outside and dead within.
Cinematographer Stuart Dreyburgh catches the grit and beauty of the lands and seas Binh transverses. Zbigniew Preisner's music never intrudes, rather gently accompanying the perilous journey with an evocative score that pulls in themes from cultures encountered.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Sony Pictures Classics
Dinamo Story AS/Sunflower Prods.
Credits: Director: Hans Petter Moland
Writers: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross
Story: Terrence Malick
Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli, Tomas Backstrom
Director of photography: Stuart Dreyburgh
Production designer: Kalli Juliusson
Music: Zbigniew Preisner
Costume designer: Anne Petersen
Editor: Wibecke Ronseth. Cast: Binh: Damien Nguyen
Ling: Bai Ling
Tam: Tran Dang Quoc Thinh
Captain Oh: Tim Roth
Snakehead: Temuera Derek Morrison
Steve: Nick Nolte
Running time -- 137 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- "Beautiful Country" is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises.
Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father. Then again, who better to make such an immigrant story than an outsider to both cultures?
With careful handling, Sony Pictures Classics could turn "Beautiful Country" into an art house hit after building momentum on the festival circuit. Name actors such as Nick Nolte -- in a small role as the father -- Bai Ling and Tim Roth can only help.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI dad, Binh (an accomplished debut by Damien Nguyen) wears the face of the country's enemy. Such half-castes are known by a pejorative expression meaning "less than dust." Simple yet poignant scenes at the outset establish his ostracized status. Even aboard a rusty tanker ferrying human cargo to the New World, the captain (Roth) tells him he will be an outcast wherever he goes.
As Vietnam aggressively celebrates the Vietcong victory, Binh heads for Ho Chi Minh City to locate his mother (Chau Thi Kim Xuan). All he has to go by is an old photo showing a happy couple holding a baby in front of a corner building. He locates that building and soon his mom. He meets a very young half-brother (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) and then gets a job alongside his mother in the household of a rich though nasty old woman.
(A weakness in the story is that we never learn why Binh's mother more or less abandoned him or why she now greets him with such joy.)
When a household tragedy is blamed on Binh, his mother gives him enough money for him and his brother to flee the country in an open boat. In a Malaysian refugee camp, he meets Ling Bai Ling), a Chinese prostitute with whom he develops a gentle, supportive friendship. During a riot, the three escape and essentially barter their souls for passage to New York on a tanker.
Many die en route, including Binh's Little Brother. After suffering a period of virtual slavery in New York's Chinatown, he parts company with Ling to hitchhike his way to Texas in search of his dad.
Pretty familiar stuff all along the way. Yet the details are surprisingly fresh, and the characters are vividly drawn. The script by Sabina Murray and Larry Gross eschews melodrama whenever possible for a realistic portrait of the hardships of the illegal immigrant experience. People ruthlessly focus on their own self interest, but the film avoids picking out heroes or villains. This is just the way people behave on the immigrant trail.
Moland gets wonderful performances from his cast. Nguyen must be the narrative's driving force and yet perform an often-reactive role, a seeming contradiction he smoothly handles. Nolte and Roth show restraint in playing highly flawed individuals. Ling lets no sentimentality encroach on the prostitute, who is lively on the outside and dead within.
Cinematographer Stuart Dreyburgh catches the grit and beauty of the lands and seas Binh transverses. Zbigniew Preisner's music never intrudes, rather gently accompanying the perilous journey with an evocative score that pulls in themes from cultures encountered.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Sony Pictures Classics
Dinamo Story AS/Sunflower Prods.
Credits: Director: Hans Petter Moland
Writers: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross
Story: Terrence Malick
Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli, Tomas Backstrom
Director of photography: Stuart Dreyburgh
Production designer: Kalli Juliusson
Music: Zbigniew Preisner
Costume designer: Anne Petersen
Editor: Wibecke Ronseth. Cast: Binh: Damien Nguyen
Ling: Bai Ling
Tam: Tran Dang Quoc Thinh
Captain Oh: Tim Roth
Snakehead: Temuera Derek Morrison
Steve: Nick Nolte
Running time -- 137 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Screened
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- Beautiful Country is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises.
Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father. Then again, who better to make such an immigrant story than an outsider to both cultures?
With careful handling, Sony Pictures Classics could turn Beautiful Country into an art house hit after building momentum on the festival circuit. Name actors such as Nick Nolte -- in a small role as the father -- Bai Ling and Tim Roth can only help.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI dad, Binh (an accomplished debut by Damien Nguyen) wears the face of the country's enemy. Such half-castes are known by a pejorative expression meaning "less than dust." Simple yet poignant scenes at the outset establish his ostracized status. Even aboard a rusty tanker ferrying human cargo to the New World, the captain (Roth) tells him he will be an outcast wherever he goes.
As Vietnam aggressively celebrates the Vietcong victory, Binh heads for Ho Chi Minh City to locate his mother (Chau Thi Kim Xuan). All he has to go by is an old photo showing a happy couple holding a baby in front of a corner building. He locates that building and soon his mom. He meets a very young half-brother (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) and then gets a job alongside his mother in the household of a rich though nasty old woman.
(A weakness in the story is that we never learn why Binh's mother more or less abandoned him or why she now greets him with such joy.)
When a household tragedy is blamed on Binh, his mother gives him enough money for him and his brother to flee the country in an open boat. In a Malaysian refugee camp, he meets Ling Bai Ling), a Chinese prostitute with whom he develops a gentle, supportive friendship. During a riot, the three escape and essentially barter their souls for passage to New York on a tanker.
Many die en route, including Binh's little brother. After suffering a period of virtual slavery in New York's Chinatown, he parts company with Ling to hitchhike his way to Texas in search of his dad.
Pretty familiar stuff all along the way. Yet the details are surprisingly fresh, and the characters are vividly drawn. The script by Sabina Murray and Larry Gross eschews melodrama whenever possible for a realistic portrait of the hardships of the illegal immigrant experience. People ruthlessly focus on their own self interest, but the film avoids picking out heroes or villains. This is just the way people behave on the immigrant trail.
Moland gets wonderful performances from his cast. Nguyen must be the narrative's driving force and yet perform an often-reactive role, a seeming contradiction he smoothly handles. Nolte and Roth show restraint in playing highly flawed individuals. Ling lets no sentimentality encroach on the prostitute, who is lively on the outside and dead within.
Cinematographer Stuart Dreyburgh catches the grit and beauty of the lands and seas Binh transverses. Zbigniew Preisner's music never intrudes, rather gently accompanying the perilous journey with an evocative score that pulls in themes from cultures encountered.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Sony Pictures Classics
Dinamo Story AS/Sunflower Prods.
Credits: Director: Hans Petter Moland; Writers: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross; Story: Terrence Malick; Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli, Tomas Backstrom; Director of photography: Stuart Dreyburgh; Production designer: Kalli Juliusson; Music: Zbigniew Preisner; Costume designer: Anne Petersen; Editor: Wibecke Ronseth. Cast: Binh: Damien Nguyen; Ling: Bai Ling; Tam: Tran Dang Quoc Thinh; Captain Oh: Tim Roth; Snakehead: Temuera Derek Morrison; Steve: Nick Nolte. No MPAA rating, running time 137 minutes.
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- Beautiful Country is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises.
Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father. Then again, who better to make such an immigrant story than an outsider to both cultures?
With careful handling, Sony Pictures Classics could turn Beautiful Country into an art house hit after building momentum on the festival circuit. Name actors such as Nick Nolte -- in a small role as the father -- Bai Ling and Tim Roth can only help.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI dad, Binh (an accomplished debut by Damien Nguyen) wears the face of the country's enemy. Such half-castes are known by a pejorative expression meaning "less than dust." Simple yet poignant scenes at the outset establish his ostracized status. Even aboard a rusty tanker ferrying human cargo to the New World, the captain (Roth) tells him he will be an outcast wherever he goes.
As Vietnam aggressively celebrates the Vietcong victory, Binh heads for Ho Chi Minh City to locate his mother (Chau Thi Kim Xuan). All he has to go by is an old photo showing a happy couple holding a baby in front of a corner building. He locates that building and soon his mom. He meets a very young half-brother (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) and then gets a job alongside his mother in the household of a rich though nasty old woman.
(A weakness in the story is that we never learn why Binh's mother more or less abandoned him or why she now greets him with such joy.)
When a household tragedy is blamed on Binh, his mother gives him enough money for him and his brother to flee the country in an open boat. In a Malaysian refugee camp, he meets Ling Bai Ling), a Chinese prostitute with whom he develops a gentle, supportive friendship. During a riot, the three escape and essentially barter their souls for passage to New York on a tanker.
Many die en route, including Binh's little brother. After suffering a period of virtual slavery in New York's Chinatown, he parts company with Ling to hitchhike his way to Texas in search of his dad.
Pretty familiar stuff all along the way. Yet the details are surprisingly fresh, and the characters are vividly drawn. The script by Sabina Murray and Larry Gross eschews melodrama whenever possible for a realistic portrait of the hardships of the illegal immigrant experience. People ruthlessly focus on their own self interest, but the film avoids picking out heroes or villains. This is just the way people behave on the immigrant trail.
Moland gets wonderful performances from his cast. Nguyen must be the narrative's driving force and yet perform an often-reactive role, a seeming contradiction he smoothly handles. Nolte and Roth show restraint in playing highly flawed individuals. Ling lets no sentimentality encroach on the prostitute, who is lively on the outside and dead within.
Cinematographer Stuart Dreyburgh catches the grit and beauty of the lands and seas Binh transverses. Zbigniew Preisner's music never intrudes, rather gently accompanying the perilous journey with an evocative score that pulls in themes from cultures encountered.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Sony Pictures Classics
Dinamo Story AS/Sunflower Prods.
Credits: Director: Hans Petter Moland; Writers: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross; Story: Terrence Malick; Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli, Tomas Backstrom; Director of photography: Stuart Dreyburgh; Production designer: Kalli Juliusson; Music: Zbigniew Preisner; Costume designer: Anne Petersen; Editor: Wibecke Ronseth. Cast: Binh: Damien Nguyen; Ling: Bai Ling; Tam: Tran Dang Quoc Thinh; Captain Oh: Tim Roth; Snakehead: Temuera Derek Morrison; Steve: Nick Nolte. No MPAA rating, running time 137 minutes.
Screened
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- "Beautiful Country" is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises.
Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father. Then again, who better to make such an immigrant story than an outsider to both cultures?
With careful handling, Sony Pictures Classics could turn "Beautiful Country" into an art house hit after building momentum on the festival circuit. Name actors such as Nick Nolte -- in a small role as the father -- Bai Ling and Tim Roth can only help.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI dad, Binh (an accomplished debut by Damien Nguyen) wears the face of the country's enemy. Such half-castes are known by a pejorative expression meaning "less than dust." Simple yet poignant scenes at the outset establish his ostracized status. Even aboard a rusty tanker ferrying human cargo to the New World, the captain (Roth) tells him he will be an outcast wherever he goes.
As Vietnam aggressively celebrates the Vietcong victory, Binh heads for Ho Chi Minh City to locate his mother (Chau Thi Kim Xuan). All he has to go by is an old photo showing a happy couple holding a baby in front of a corner building. He locates that building and soon his mom. He meets a very young half-brother (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) and then gets a job alongside his mother in the household of a rich though nasty old woman.
(A weakness in the story is that we never learn why Binh's mother more or less abandoned him or why she now greets him with such joy.)
When a household tragedy is blamed on Binh, his mother gives him enough money for him and his brother to flee the country in an open boat. In a Malaysian refugee camp, he meets Ling Bai Ling), a Chinese prostitute with whom he develops a gentle, supportive friendship. During a riot, the three escape and essentially barter their souls for passage to New York on a tanker.
Many die en route, including Binh's little brother. After suffering a period of virtual slavery in New York's Chinatown, he parts company with Ling to hitchhike his way to Texas in search of his dad.
Pretty familiar stuff all along the way. Yet the details are surprisingly fresh, and the characters are vividly drawn. The script by Sabina Murray and Larry Gross eschews melodrama whenever possible for a realistic portrait of the hardships of the illegal immigrant experience. People ruthlessly focus on their own self interest, but the film avoids picking out heroes or villains. This is just the way people behave on the immigrant trail.
Moland gets wonderful performances from his cast. Nguyen must be the narrative's driving force and yet perform an often-reactive role, a seeming contradiction he smoothly handles. Nolte and Roth show restraint in playing highly flawed individuals. Ling lets no sentimentality encroach on the prostitute, who is lively on the outside and dead within.
Cinematographer Stuart Dreyburgh catches the grit and beauty of the lands and seas Binh transverses. Zbigniew Preisner's music never intrudes, rather gently accompanying the perilous journey with an evocative score that pulls in themes from cultures encountered.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Sony Pictures Classics
Dinamo Story AS/Sunflower Prods.
Credits: Director: Hans Petter Moland
Writers: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross
Story: Terrence Malick
Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli, Tomas Backstrom
Director of photography: Stuart Dreyburgh
Production designer: Kalli Juliusson
Music: Zbigniew Preisner
Costume designer: Anne Petersen
Editor: Wibecke Ronseth. Cast: Binh: Damien Nguyen
Ling: Bai Ling
Tam: Tran Dang Quoc Thinh
Captain Oh: Tim Roth
Snakehead: Temuera Derek Morrison
Steve: Nick Nolte
Running time -- 137 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- "Beautiful Country" is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises.
Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father. Then again, who better to make such an immigrant story than an outsider to both cultures?
With careful handling, Sony Pictures Classics could turn "Beautiful Country" into an art house hit after building momentum on the festival circuit. Name actors such as Nick Nolte -- in a small role as the father -- Bai Ling and Tim Roth can only help.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an American GI dad, Binh (an accomplished debut by Damien Nguyen) wears the face of the country's enemy. Such half-castes are known by a pejorative expression meaning "less than dust." Simple yet poignant scenes at the outset establish his ostracized status. Even aboard a rusty tanker ferrying human cargo to the New World, the captain (Roth) tells him he will be an outcast wherever he goes.
As Vietnam aggressively celebrates the Vietcong victory, Binh heads for Ho Chi Minh City to locate his mother (Chau Thi Kim Xuan). All he has to go by is an old photo showing a happy couple holding a baby in front of a corner building. He locates that building and soon his mom. He meets a very young half-brother (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) and then gets a job alongside his mother in the household of a rich though nasty old woman.
(A weakness in the story is that we never learn why Binh's mother more or less abandoned him or why she now greets him with such joy.)
When a household tragedy is blamed on Binh, his mother gives him enough money for him and his brother to flee the country in an open boat. In a Malaysian refugee camp, he meets Ling Bai Ling), a Chinese prostitute with whom he develops a gentle, supportive friendship. During a riot, the three escape and essentially barter their souls for passage to New York on a tanker.
Many die en route, including Binh's little brother. After suffering a period of virtual slavery in New York's Chinatown, he parts company with Ling to hitchhike his way to Texas in search of his dad.
Pretty familiar stuff all along the way. Yet the details are surprisingly fresh, and the characters are vividly drawn. The script by Sabina Murray and Larry Gross eschews melodrama whenever possible for a realistic portrait of the hardships of the illegal immigrant experience. People ruthlessly focus on their own self interest, but the film avoids picking out heroes or villains. This is just the way people behave on the immigrant trail.
Moland gets wonderful performances from his cast. Nguyen must be the narrative's driving force and yet perform an often-reactive role, a seeming contradiction he smoothly handles. Nolte and Roth show restraint in playing highly flawed individuals. Ling lets no sentimentality encroach on the prostitute, who is lively on the outside and dead within.
Cinematographer Stuart Dreyburgh catches the grit and beauty of the lands and seas Binh transverses. Zbigniew Preisner's music never intrudes, rather gently accompanying the perilous journey with an evocative score that pulls in themes from cultures encountered.
BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Sony Pictures Classics
Dinamo Story AS/Sunflower Prods.
Credits: Director: Hans Petter Moland
Writers: Sabina Murray, Larry Gross
Story: Terrence Malick
Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Terrence Malick, Petter J. Borgli, Tomas Backstrom
Director of photography: Stuart Dreyburgh
Production designer: Kalli Juliusson
Music: Zbigniew Preisner
Costume designer: Anne Petersen
Editor: Wibecke Ronseth. Cast: Binh: Damien Nguyen
Ling: Bai Ling
Tam: Tran Dang Quoc Thinh
Captain Oh: Tim Roth
Snakehead: Temuera Derek Morrison
Steve: Nick Nolte
Running time -- 137 minutes
No MPAA rating...
BERLIN -- Film composers Zbigniew Preisner (Three Colors: Blue/White/Red) and David Holmes (Ocean's Eleven) have signed on as hosts of this year's Berlinale Talent Campus, the mini-film school event that runs concurrent with the Berlin International Film Festival, organizers said Friday. Preisner, who was twice nominated for a Golden Globe for his scores to Three Colors: Blue and At Play in the Fields of The Lord, was awarded a special Berlin Silver Bear for outstanding single achievement in 1997 for his music to Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's The Island on Bird Street. In addition to his work on Ocean's Eleven and the upcoming sequel Ocean's Twelve, Holmes composed the score for Gregor Jordan's controversial Buffalo Soldiers, which was shot almost entirely in Germany. Talent Campus organizers on Friday also announced they have selected 520 young filmmakers from 84 countries to attend this year's event. The group was chosen from more than 3600 applications. The theme of this year's Talent Campus is film sound and music. In addition to Holmes and Preisner, other hosts include director Anthony Minghella, sound and film editor Walter Murch, screenwriter/producer Eleanor Bergstein and directors Nicolas Philibert, Alan Parker and Wim Wenders.
- 1/16/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"Fairy tales can come true, they can happen to you -- if you're young at heart." That vaunted lyric sums up the theme of this wonderfully whimsical tale of two young girls who stunned the world in 1917 when they photographed a fairy in their summer garden.
A captivating children's film, this Paramount release is an appealing winner. Likely to be praised by critics, teachers and arts-council types, the only reservation one has about this ethereal gem is whether its sophisticated abstractions will connect with flesh-and-blood children.
Alas, it seems more like a movie outing for Hillary and Chelsea than one for the kids in the neighborhood. Paramount will likely find the biggest fans for this film are adults who are young at heart and appreciate the film's celebration of the magical powers of innocence.
In this auspicious storytelling, screenwriter Ernie Contreras has distilled the bare facts of two young girls' photographing a fairy and spun them around the events and thinking of the day. Incredibly, this true story lured into its philosophical midst such figures as illusionist/escape artist Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel) and the venerable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole). Contreras' scenario is well-founded and appealing, grounded in the basic kids' complaint that adults never take them seriously.
In essence, we see that adults are too serious to comprehend the real wonders of existence. The storytelling is also keenly flecked with one girl's belief that her father, who has been declared missing in action in World War I, will someday return.
Charles Sturridge's kindly directorial wand conjures up the spry and supple theme, never dwelling on didactic points or overreaching in either tenor or tone. It's a gentle tale, graced with humorous dollops. The two lead girls are well-chosen. Florence Hoath's graceful, intelligent performance as 13-year-old Elsie is a high point and 10-year-old Elizabeth Earl shows some real moxie and poise as the headstrong Frances.
The supporting performances are all top-drawer. O'Toole brings luster as the master of deduction, Conan Doyle, while Keitel imbues his Houdini character with credible scrappiness.
Fittingly, the technical contributions are magical. Michael Coulter's lush cinematography, Zbigniew Preisner's captivating compositions and Michael Howell's inviting production design are of the highest quality.
FAIRYTALE - A TRUE STORY
Paramount Pictures
Icon Prods./Wendy Finerman Prods.
Producer Wendy Finerman, Bruce Davey
Director Charles Sturridge
Screenwriter Ernie Contreras
Co-producers/co-story Albert Ash,
Tom Loughlin
Executive producer Paul Tucker
Co-producer Selwyn Roberts
Associate producer Margaret French Isaac
Director of photography Mike Coulter
Production designer Michael Howells
Editor Peter Coulson
Music Zbigniew Preisner
Costume designer Shirley Russell
Visual effects supervisor Tim Webber
Color/stereo
Cast:
Elsie Wright Florence Hoath
Frances Griffiths Elizabeth Earl
Arthur Wright Paul McGann
Polly Wright Phoebe Nicholls
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Peter O'Toole
Harry Houdini Harvey Keitel
Running time -- 98 minutes...
A captivating children's film, this Paramount release is an appealing winner. Likely to be praised by critics, teachers and arts-council types, the only reservation one has about this ethereal gem is whether its sophisticated abstractions will connect with flesh-and-blood children.
Alas, it seems more like a movie outing for Hillary and Chelsea than one for the kids in the neighborhood. Paramount will likely find the biggest fans for this film are adults who are young at heart and appreciate the film's celebration of the magical powers of innocence.
In this auspicious storytelling, screenwriter Ernie Contreras has distilled the bare facts of two young girls' photographing a fairy and spun them around the events and thinking of the day. Incredibly, this true story lured into its philosophical midst such figures as illusionist/escape artist Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel) and the venerable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole). Contreras' scenario is well-founded and appealing, grounded in the basic kids' complaint that adults never take them seriously.
In essence, we see that adults are too serious to comprehend the real wonders of existence. The storytelling is also keenly flecked with one girl's belief that her father, who has been declared missing in action in World War I, will someday return.
Charles Sturridge's kindly directorial wand conjures up the spry and supple theme, never dwelling on didactic points or overreaching in either tenor or tone. It's a gentle tale, graced with humorous dollops. The two lead girls are well-chosen. Florence Hoath's graceful, intelligent performance as 13-year-old Elsie is a high point and 10-year-old Elizabeth Earl shows some real moxie and poise as the headstrong Frances.
The supporting performances are all top-drawer. O'Toole brings luster as the master of deduction, Conan Doyle, while Keitel imbues his Houdini character with credible scrappiness.
Fittingly, the technical contributions are magical. Michael Coulter's lush cinematography, Zbigniew Preisner's captivating compositions and Michael Howell's inviting production design are of the highest quality.
FAIRYTALE - A TRUE STORY
Paramount Pictures
Icon Prods./Wendy Finerman Prods.
Producer Wendy Finerman, Bruce Davey
Director Charles Sturridge
Screenwriter Ernie Contreras
Co-producers/co-story Albert Ash,
Tom Loughlin
Executive producer Paul Tucker
Co-producer Selwyn Roberts
Associate producer Margaret French Isaac
Director of photography Mike Coulter
Production designer Michael Howells
Editor Peter Coulson
Music Zbigniew Preisner
Costume designer Shirley Russell
Visual effects supervisor Tim Webber
Color/stereo
Cast:
Elsie Wright Florence Hoath
Frances Griffiths Elizabeth Earl
Arthur Wright Paul McGann
Polly Wright Phoebe Nicholls
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Peter O'Toole
Harry Houdini Harvey Keitel
Running time -- 98 minutes...
- 9/12/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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