Understandably, everybody is getting excited about the elite crop of films that will be shown at Cannes. One of the great joys of being a cinema lover is when you find directors that you love, and then can look forward to their next films. Of the Cannes crop, the latest efforts from
Wong Kar-Wai,
Emir Kusturica,
Carlos Reygadas and
Harmony Korine particularly excite me. But I'm also looking forward to a number of upcoming films from directors who won't be on the Croisette in May.
First of all, there's the new one from
Takeshi Kitano, about a director who attempts to work in seven different genres.
Kantoku: Banzai! (which roughly translates as
Hooray for the Director!) sees Kitano parodying everything from Ozu-esque 50s dramas to the yakuza movie, a genre he has made his own. It's the first film in which Kitano's
Beat Takeshi persona (his zany comic side) is at the fore directorially (rather than his serious, credible Takeshi Kitano persona), and from the
Japanese trailer it looks very silly, but very fun. The film will be released in Japan in June, and you can read more about it
here.
And then there's
Lights in the Dusk, from Finland's finest,
Aki Kaurismäki, which premiered at last year's Cannes. It's the final part of Kaurismäki's "unemployment trilogy" - following
Drifting Clouds (1999) and
The Man Without A Past (2002) - and is about an impoverished nightwatchman lured into crime by a femme fatale. Here's a
great interview with Kaurismäki, and you can watch the trailer (with French subtitles, I'm afraid...)
here. Strand Releasing puts the film out in the U.S. on June 13.
A few days ago, IFC picked up the U.S. rights to
Shane Meadows' latest unconventional take on British life,
This Is England. It will get a day-and-date release through their First Take arm in July, but will screen before that (on May 2, 3 and 4) at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival in New York. To get a taste of it, you can check out the
film's official site, which has the trailer and numerous other goodies, or read an interview with
the always entertaining Meadows.
The Boss of It All looks to be the first film since
The Idiots in which
Lars von Trier is actually having some fun. The movie has a
jaunty little website, which is well worth a look - although you might not want to have the sound on your computer too loud if you're checking it out at work... A safer option would be to read von Trier's feelings on
The Boss of It All in a relatively
rare interview from last year. The film gets its U.S. release, also through IFC, on May 25.
# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/19/2007 04:01:00 PM
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