“TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY” – A HAMMER TO NAIL REVIEW

By Michael Nordine

(Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It is being released theatrically by Focus Features on 12.09.11.)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy plays out like a long game of chess whose pieces are constantly being moved across the board without ever reaching checkmate. Each of the many players thinks himself a king, but one by one they’re shown to be little more than glorified pawns. The narrative they collectively form is at once dense but fluttering, broken into tiny fragments whose value as clues and signifiers is constantly being called into question and, once thoroughly vetted, reassembled into something resembling a coherent whole. This is the work of the viewer as much as it is of George Smiley, the outed member of ’70s-era British Intelligence (“the Circus,” as it’s called in-house) with whom we partake in the intrigue. What with its code names, double agents, and international romance, Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Le Carré’s revered novel has all the telltale trappings of a typical spy yarn, but it so deftly alters these conventions that there’s seldom a moment at which we’ve any real idea of what might happen next. Like the characters themselves, neither Alfredson nor the film as a whole are given to revealing their next move; the constant guesswork that accompanies this slow unraveling is by turns thrilling and puzzling. The specter of communism haunts and informs these agents’ every action as they scramble about to discover which of them has jumped ship and joined the Russians, but it’s an afterthought compared to the shared realization that the prospect isn’t without its merits.

If, as one character suggests late in the film, the already-blurry line between East and West is now eroded to the point of negligibility, then no one is above suspicion. What they once thought of as a hierarchical binarism has been reduced to a simple (and, more often than not, petty) task of choosing sides. Loyalty is a nonentity, moral reckoning a distraction. The value of any given relationship can be reduced to how much or how little … Read the rest

“CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN” IS ALWAYS A GLASS MOSTLY EMPTY: ON “THE IDES OF MARCH”

By Brandon Harris

Note: the following piece contains spoilers.

One time in my fleeting youth, I encountered George Clooney in the Warner Brothers screening room on 53rd Street after a National Board of Review screening of Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German. This is before I had, despite my ongoing poverty and lack of renown, spent ample time around movie stars and the merely sort-of famous at sundry locations, both foreign and domestic, becoming relatively at ease in their strange company. I still often felt not unlike the protagonist of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, as he follows William Holden through a blustery New Orleans afternoon, sensing some protean, dynamic aura from a man he had only seen as light reflected off of (or emanating from) the movie screen. I nervously approached Clooney, as he began to exit the screening room’s staging area after enduring a surely exhausting series of boredom-inducing exchanges with the tired old rich ladies that lunch who make up the NBR’s rank and file. “Cincinnati boy who’s done the town proud,” I said. He stopped and smiled at me. “True enough. I spent most of my time in Northern Kentucky though… Are you from Cincinnati?” he asked, before we briefly talked about high schools (He wished he had played football for Moeller), neighborhoods (“Barry Larkin is from Silverton, right?” he tried to remember) and favorite chili parlors (Ft. Thomas, Kentucky Skyline, he said), his handlers waiting awkwardly on either side to usher him out the door. He parted with a handshake and quickly disappeared into the gray Manhattan day, the whole exchange lasting perhaps two minutes and feeling like an hour.

I can’t help but recall that moment after catching Clooney’s The Ides of March at the 7th annual Zurich Film Festival. A film about the political and moral machinations behind Ohio’s Democratic Presidential Primary in some unnamed year after the beginning of the Iraq War (but with no mention of the financial crisis), when clearly a black man being a potential Vice President let alone #1 isn’t such a big deal, The Ides of March is at once deeply … Read the rest

SONY CLASSICS TAKES CRONENBERG’S “A DANGEROUS METHOD”

By Jason Guerrasio

In a press release sent out today, Sony Pictures Classics has announced that they have acquired the U.S. rights to David Cronenberg‘s next film, A Dangerous Method.

Starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Vincent Cassel and Cronenberg regular Viggo Mortensen, the film follows how the intense relationship between Carl Jung (Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) gives birth to psychoanalysis. Knightley plays their patient, Cassel plays Freud disciple, Otto Gross.

The film, Cronenberg’s 19th, is currently in post production and was shot mostly in Germany by the director’s longtime DP Peter Suschitzky. The composer is Howard Shore and adapted from Christopher Hampton‘s play.

Sony Classics also released Cronenberg’s Spider in 2002. No word yet on when A Dangerous Method will be released, however it will screen at the Venice Film Festival in late August.… Read the rest

ARONOFSKY’S “BLACK SWAN” TO OPEN VENICE

Announced earlier today on indieWIRE, the 67th Venice International Film Festival will open with Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan, a thriller set in the world of ballet starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey.

The film will screen in competition, debuting Sept. 1 in the Sala Grande, following the opening ceremony. Aronofsky won the Golden Lion at the fest in 2008 for The Wrestler.

The Venice Film Festival runs Sept. 1 -11. Fox Searchlight will release Black Swan later this year.… Read the rest

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL By Belle N. Burke

While construction of a new Palazzo del Cinema is under way in the center of the film festival venue, causing some dislocation and confusion, Venice’s 66th edition (Sept. 2 – Sept. 12) produced a festival it can be proud of, diversified enough to offer something of quality for everyone but catering to no one. Among 75 official selections from 25 countries (the largest number in Venice’s history) featuring 71 world premieres, there is a deliberate mix of what Marco Muller, the festival director, calls highbrow and popular art. Films that pleased, offended, or were remakes of previous films engendered debate and emotional reactions, which is what I believe a film festival should do.

The official sections included Venezia 66, whose jury, headed by Ang Lee, awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film to Lebanon, based on Israel’s invasion of that country in 1982, in which the director, Samuel Maoz, participated as a young soldier, and for the past 20 years has been trying to come to terms with the experience. He is the third Israeli director to deal with the horrors of that war, after Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir) and Joseph Cedar (Beaufort), and can expect a mixed reception in Israel.

Six U.S. films competed for the prestigious Golden Lion, among them Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story and Oliver Stone’s South of the Border. As disparate as they appear, there were perhaps inevitable comparisons, e.g., two American documentaries exposing the flaws of capitalism, Moore’s receiving clamorous applause for its content and courage while Stone’s became a media event as Hugo Chavez appeared on the red carpet (just another celebrity?), smiling, waving, and signing autographs. The press and the public were out in force in a surreal scene (think Fidel Castro at a film festival!) as Chavez basked in an incalculable amount of free publicity. Orchestrated by Stone, who insists that Chavez is misunderstood and unjustly criticized in the U.S., ignoring his decision to remove term limits on his presidency and other annoying facts that didn’t fit his script, the film also includes … Read the rest

“WRESTLER” BIG WINNER AT VENICE

Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The film, starring Mickey Rourke, is also gaining a lot of buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival where it screened over the weekend.

Full list of Venice winners below.

GOLDEN LION for Best Film:

The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky (USA)

SILVER LION for Best Director to:

Aleksey German Jr. for Bumažnyj Soldat (Paper Soldier) (Russia)

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE to:

Teza by Haile Gerima (Ethiopia, Germany, France)

COPPA VOLPI for Best Actor:

Silvio Orlando for Il papà di Giovanna by Pupi Avati (Italy)

COPPA VOLPI for Best Actress:

Dominique Blanc for L’autre by Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic (France)

MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD for Best Young Actor or Actress:

Jennifer Lawrence for The Burning Plain by Guillermo Arriaga (USA)

OSELLA for Best Cinematography to:

Alisher Khamidhodjaev and Maxim Drozdov for Bumažnyj Soldat (Paper Soldier) by Aleksey German Jr. (Russia)

OSELLA for Best Screenplay to:

Haile Gerima for Teza by Haile Gerima (Ethiopia, Germany, France)

SPECIAL LION for Overall Work to:

Werner Schroeter

The Jury decided to award a Special Lion for his uncompromising and relentlessly innovative work over a period of 40 years to Werner Schroeter.

“LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM

The “Luigi De Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film Jury at the 65th Venice Film Festival, comprised of Abdellatif Kechiche (President), Alice Braga, Gregory Jacobs, Donald Ranvaud, and Heidrun Schleef, has unanimously decided to award the

“LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM to:

Pranzo Di Ferragosto by Gianni Di Gregorio (SIC – International Critics’ Week, Italy)

Aurelio De Laurentiis and Filmauro award a cash prize, of 100,000 USD, to the winning first film (50,000 to the director, 50,000 to the producer). To the director, an additional film voucher for 40,000 Euro will also be awarded, offered by Kodak.… Read the rest

NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER!

By Admin

American filmmaker Jon Jost, attending the 61st Venice International Film Festival with his most recent feature, Homecoming in the Cinema Digitale competition, announced the upcoming production of a new film, a documentary essay which will deal with the “kidnapping” of his daughter, Clara Jost, on November 2, 2000, by her mother, Portuguese film director Teresa Villaverde.

According to the press release: “Clara Jost was illegally taken from Italy by Teresa Villaverde… and has since been held in Portugal…. Following the advice of the US Consulate General and of his lawyer in Portugal, Mr. Jost went through the legal procedures in Portugal only to find that the entire system was utterly corrupted, and that legality, in any meaningful sense, simply does not exist in that country. Following an illegal ruling by the Portuguese Appeals Court (Tribunal do Relacoes) in October, 2001, Mr. Jost commenced an Internet exposure of the corruption of Portugal’s Judiciary, its Attorney General, and finally of its President, all of whom are involved in this case. In June, 2002, in response to this internet-based effort, the Portuguese newspaper, O Independente, published an article on the matter, ending with the statement that, ‘The writer of these e-mails does not know that corruption is a Portuguese illness seldom mentioned and never investigated.’

“The as-yet untitled work is being made with BulletProof Film, of Chicago, IL, and with the collaboration of … 26-4… an organization for Portuguese parents who have had to deal with the juvenile court systems of that country, which have chronically shown themselves to be corrupted and to operate in illegal manners, most frequently adversely to fathers.”

Additional information about the case, and about Josts’s forthcoming documentary — which he hopes to complete in time for next year’s Venice Film Festival — can be found on his Web site.
… Read the rest

ITALIAN B-MOVIE KINGS

By Admin

Fernando Di Leo’s La Mala Ordina (The Italian Connection)

The retrospective of the 61st Venice International Film Festival, September 1-11, will focus on the pioneers of Italian genre films.

Italian Kings of the Bs (1960-1980) will include 30 to 35 films by directors such as the late “maestro of mayhem” Fernando Di Leo, who made notable contributions to the spaghetti western and slasher films but is best known for his “Milieu Trilogy” of noir thrillers (Milano Calibro 9, La Mala Ordina, and Il Boss), which depict Italy’s cities as seedy hotbeds of crime and corruption; gothic horror director Mario Bava, who created and defined the giallo, a form of the thriller which concentrates on violent death as opposed to prosaic police procedural; Vittorio Cottafavi, director of historical fantasy films such as The Legions of Cleopatra, Goliath and the Dragon and Hercules and the Captive Women; the Italian “godfather of gore,” Lucio Fulci; musical comedy director Antonio Margheriti; crime film helmer Sergio Sollima, best known for the pre-Godfather mob story The Violent City; and exploitation specialist Sergio Martino, who created many notable crime films, sex comedies and giallos, along with many other directors.

Among those expected to attend the festival to introduce films in the retrospective are Quentin Tarantino and Joe Dante.

According to Variety: “This year’s 20- to 25-pic Venice retro is part of a broader four-year rediscovery and restoration project called ‘A Secret History of Italian Cinema,’ for which the fest’s parent org, the Venice Bienniale, has teamed up with the Prada Foundation…

“From the 1930s onward, Italian cinema developed and grew… thanks to lowbrow movies, in which filmmakers dared to create the country’s first genre films, capturing the market without relinquishing their innovative charge,’ said fest director Marco Muller.”
… Read the rest