Strand in May

Strand has announced two DVDs for the month of May, most excitingly Claire Denis' Nénette & Boni, which stars Grégoire Colin, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Vincent Gallo, Jacques Nolot and Alex Descas, for the 16th. The other is Terence Davies' Of Time and the City on the 12th. Hopefully 2009 will be the year of Claire Denis!

Slumdoggin'

Despite posting the Independent Spirit Award nominations and the National Board of Review's awards, I think I'm going to stray from reproducing all of the critics' awards and best of's for 2008, as you can easily find them on IndieWire, GreenCine or MovieCityNews if you so desire. Instead, I'll post a link here and there to the sites.

The Washington DC Critics Association named Slumdog Millionaire the best film of 2008. Kyle Smith and Lou Lumenick of the NY Post concur.

Gomorrah swept the European Film Awards, winning Best Picture, Director, Actor, Screenwriter and Cinematographer. Roger Ebert lists 20 of the best (narrative) films of 2008, and five docs, in no particular order.

Sight & Sound in the UK has posted their 50-critic poll of the best films of 2008, per UK release date (sort of). With three UK films on the list, the top 10 is as follows:

1. Hunger - dir. Steve McQueen
2. There Will Be Blood - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
3. WALL·E - dir. Andrew Stanton
4. Gomorrah - dir. Matteo Garrone
5. (tie) A Christmas Tale [Un conte de Noël] - dir. Arnaud Desplechin
5. (tie) The Class [Entre les murs] - dir. Laurent Cantet
7. Of Time and the City - dir. Terence Davies
8. Happy-Go-Lucky - dir. Mike Leigh
9. (tie) The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza] - dir. Lucrecia Martel
9. (tie) Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in] - dir. Tomas Alfredson

The Saint Louis International Film Festival 2008

For all of those living in the ‘Lou, the 17th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival line-up has been announced for the dates of Nov. 13-23. Although you can check out the schedule in pdf form here, I thought I might point out some of the more exciting inclusions this year. SLIFF will be awarding writer/director Paul Schrader a Lifetime Achievement Award and will screen his latest film Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldbum, Willem Dafoe, Moritz Bleibtreu and Derek Jacobi, as well as a restored print of Mishima: A Life in Four Parts. Following the screening of Adam Resurrected, LA Weekly film editor Scott Foundas will have a Q&A with the director.

A “Micro-Budget Filmmaking Seminar” will be conducted on the 15th at 11 am at the Tivoli. Mary Bronstein, who co-starred in Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland and whose directorial debut Yeast will be screened during the fest, is going to be one of the participants, as well as Missouri native Blake Eckard (Sinner Come Home) and St. Louisan Aaron Coffmann (Texas Snow). In addition to Bronstein’s Yeast, another mumblecore flick, Nights and Weekends, written, directed and starring Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig will also be screening at this year’s fest.

Humboldt County co-directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, both hailing from Saint Louis, are also making an appearance this year with a Q&A and after-party which opens the festival. The film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW fest and was just recently distributed theatrically by Magnolia, stars Fairuza Balk, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif and Chris Messina.

Steven Soderbergh’s absent-on-DVD King of the Hill, which was set and shot in Saint Louis, will be featured in a panel discussion about the translation from the book to film. There’s also going to be a film noir seminar, following a screening of Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (his last film shot in the US and also unavailable on DVD in the US). The panel will include noir expert Eddie Muller and actress Marsha Hunt, who was blacklisted from Hollywood. And rounding up the special events is a Q&A with Michael Apted (the Up! series), recipient of this year’s Maysles Brothers Lifetime Achievement Award in Documentary, conducted by Cinema Saint Louis executive director Cliff Froehlich. His latest film, The Power of the Game, will also screen this year.

And onto the big gals of this year’s fest. Darren Aronofsky’s Venice and Toronto winner The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Judah Friedlander, will close the fest before the film makes its theatrical run in the middle of December. Palme d’Or winner The Class (Entre les murs), from writer/director Laurent Cantet, is also screening on the 22nd.

Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime), starring Kristin Scott-Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as sisters, will also screen on closing night before it hits local theatres soon. Bent Hamer’s O’ Horten is also showing, after receiving a number of praises when it played at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Danny Boyle’s crowd-pleaser of a film, Slumdog Millionaire, will play on the 15th.

Kelly Reichardt’s much anticipated follow-up to Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, which stars Michelle Williams, is also set for the 17th. I should mention that Wendy and Lucy is probably my most anticipated film to premiere at SLIFF this year. The new film from Rian Johnson (Brick), The Brothers Bloom, is playing on the 22nd. The film, which will make its limited theatrical run beginning 19 December from Summit Entertainment, stars Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Robbie Coltrane and Rinko Kikuchi, whom you should remember as the jumper-lifting deaf girl from Babel.

As for the hot docs, Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City will screen on the 15th. I wish I could remember who exactly said it, but someone, via GreenCine Daily, called the film the real masterpiece of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, which also premiered at Cannes and will be Israel’s official submission for next year’s foreign language Oscar, will also be spotlighted on the closing day of the festival.

As for a few smaller films to pay attention to, I’ve read some wonderful things about Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town, from Thailand, which will play on the 18th. Marco Bellocchio’s The Wedding Director (Il regista di matrimoni), which stars Sergio Castellitto of Va savoir, The Last Kiss and Mostly Martha, screens on the 20th and 22nd. Beloved director Giuseppe Tornatore (whom, as you should know, I quite despise) has his most recent film, The Unknown Woman (La sconsciuta), set for the 14th and 15th. Reha Erdem’s Times and Winds, which is one of two films I’ve seen prior to the fest, is playing on the 15th. Nic Balthazar’s Ben X, the other film I’ve already seen, is playing on the 21st and 22nd. It should be mentioned that I much preferred Times and Winds to Ben X.

Director John Boorman’s (The General, Deliverance) The Tiger’s Tail, which stars Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall, Ciarán Hinds and Sinéad Cusack, will screen on both the 19th and 20th. Nacho Vigalondo’s sci-fi/horror film Timecrimes (Los cronocrímenes) will screen on the 19th, before Magnolia’s Magnet Releasing puts it in theatres sometime in December. According to the schedule, David Cronenberg is set to return to his horror roots and remake the film. The schedule also reports that Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), which screens on the 15th and is also going to be released by Magnet, is also getting a Hollywood remake (although much less exciting as it's to be directed by the asshole who made Cloverfield).

Eric Guirado’s The Grocer’s Son (Le fils de l’épicier) is going to play on the 16th and 17th. The film, which stars Nicolas Cazalé and Clotilde Hesme (Love Songs), was reported through IndieWire as being Film Movement’s highest grossing film in their existence. Also from France is Nicolas Klotz’s The Heartbeat Detector (La question humaine), which screens on the 18th and 19th, starring Mathieu Amalric. For those who can’t make it, New Yorker released the DVD back in July. Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, which hits DVD from Kino in January, will play on the 14th. And finally, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award for Israel this year, will show on the 21st and 23rd (although Kino released the DVD at the end of September).

I should be seeing a number of these films before the festival goes underway, so if any of the films happen to strike me, I’ll be sure to point you in their direction.

Koch Lorber in September + Others

I had previously announced that Koch Lorber will be releasing Céline Sciamma's Water Lilies [Naissance des pieuvres] on 2 September, but they will also be releasing Rodolphe Marconi's documentary Lagerfeld Confidential on the same day.

Additionally, Lionsgate has announced a Special Edition of Jeunet et Caro's Delicatessen for 26 August, though the shift of rights from Miramax to them is not something I'm aware of. They will also release a film called Kitchen Privileges, formally titled Housebound, starring Peter Sarsgaard, on the same day; the film is an update of Roman Polanski's Repulsion with Catherine Deneuve.

The Weinsteins have tentatively announced a special edition of Jet Li's Fist of Legend for 9 September, but I wouldn't hold my breath on this one, as the Weinsteins, particularly when under the Dragon Dynasty label, have delayed numerous releases. It should be the first time the film is available uncut and undubbed in the United States. Rhino is also set to release for the first time on DVD Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains starring a very young Diane Lane and Laura Dern on 30 September.

As mentioned by Eric, MGM will release their special edition of Night of the Hunter on 9 September. No additional material has been announced yet. Porchlight Entertainment will release the Canadian drama Normal, starring Carrie-Anne Moss, Callum Keith Rennie and Kevin Zegers on 7 October. Image will release the Pang brothers' Re-Cycle on 23 September, and HBO will have their original movie Recount, with Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Bob Balaban, Denis Leary and John Hurt, on 19 August. Miramax will have Joachim Trier's wonderful Reprise out on 2 September.

On the international front, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's Actrices [Actresses], which is owned by IFC in the US, will be released in France by Wild Side Vidéo on 26 June. France Télévisions will release Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra in France on 9 July. TF1 Vidéo released David Oelhoffen's Nos retrouvailles [In Your Wake] on 7 May. Lee Chang-dong's Cannes-winning Secret Sunshine was released on the same day from TF1. I cannot vouch for subtitles on any of these discs.

In the UK, Axiom Films released the unavailable-in-the-US Alice in the Cities from 1974 and directed by Wim Wenders. Arrow Films will have a special edition of Andrew Birkin's The Cement Garden, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, on 23 June. Two months after Gaumont releases it in France, Yume Pictures brings Nagisa Oshima's Pleasures of the Flesh onto DVD on 25 August. Mr. Bongo Films has Antonioni's Identification of a Woman [Identificazione di una donna] on 30 June.

Soda Pictures will release the acclaimed La léon, from director Santiago Otheguy, on 25 August; Water Bearer Films should have the film available in the US later this year. Artificial Eye will release Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress on the same day. Artificial Eye will also have Roy Andersson's You the Living on 14 July. BFI will also have two films from Terence Davies, whose documentary Of Time and the City was widely regarded as one of the finest films to play at this year's Cannes Film Festival, on 21 July: The Long Day Closes and The Terence Davies Trilogy.

For those without a region-free player, you can find Denys Arcand's L'âge des ténèbres [The Age of Ignorance] from Alliance Atlantis on 30 June. The film stars Diane Kruger and Rufus Wainwright, among others, concludes Arcand's trilogy which began with The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions, and still has no US distributor.

Cannes 08!

Looks like Vicky Cristina Barcelona will in fact play at Cannes, though Out of Competition. And, by the way, who the fuck gave Jennifer Chambers Lynch money to make another movie? Anyway, here's the official line-up.

- Three Monkeys - dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Climates, Distant)
- Le silence de Lorna - dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
- Un conte de Noël - dir. Arnaud Desplechin (Kings & Queen) - with Catherine Deneuve, Matheiu Amalric, Chiarra Mastroianni, Emmanuelle Devos, Melvil Poupaud, Hippolyte Giradot
- Changeling - dir. Clint Eastwood - with Angelina Jolie and Amy Ryan
- Adoration - dir. Atom Egoyan - with Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard
- Waltz with Bashir - dir. Ari Folman (Saint Clara)
- La frontière de l'aube - dir. Philippe Garrel - with Louis Garrel, Laura Smet
- Gomorra - dir. Matteo Garrone (The Embalmber)
- Synecdoche, New York - dir. Charlie Kaufman - with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams
- My Magic - dir. Eric Khoo (Be with Me)
- La mujer sin cabeza - dir. Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl)
- Serbis - dir. Brillante Mendoza (The Masseur)
- Delta - dir. Kornél Mundruczó (Johanna)
- Linha de Passe - dir. Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas
- Leonera - dir. Pablo Trapero (Born and Bred, Rolling Family)
- The Palermo Shooting - dir. Wim Wenders - with Milla Jovovich, Dennis Hopper, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Sebastian Blomberg
- 24 City - dir. Jia Zhangke (Unknown Pleasures, The World)
- Che - dir. Steven Soderbergh (comprised of Guerrilla and The Argentine - with Benicio Del Toro, Franka Potente, and a bunch of others

Screening Out of Competition:
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - dir. Steven Spielberg
- Kung Fu Panda - dir. Mark Osborne, John Stevenson - with Jack Black
- The Good, The Bad, The Weird - dir. Kim Ji-Woon (Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life)
- Vicky Cristina Barcelona - dir. Woody Allen

Special Screenings:
- Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired - dir. Marina Zenovich
- Ashes of Time Redux - dir. Wong Kar-wai
- C'est dur d'être aimé par des cons - dir. Daniel Leconte
- Sangue pazzo - dir. Marco Tullio Giordana (The Best of Youth)
- Of Time and the City - dir. Terence Davies

Midnight Screenings:
- Maradona - dir. Emir Kustarica
- Surveillance - dir. Jennifer Chambers Lynch - with Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Pell James, French Stewart
- The Chaser - dir. Na Hong-jin

Sean Penn will be the president of the jury (barf), with Sergio Castellitto, Natalie Portman, Alfonso Cuaron, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Alexandra Maria Lara and Rachid Bouchareb also on the jury.

And, no, contrary to some Internet rumors, the model in the poster is not Amanda Lepore... though it was shot by David Lynch.