Toronto Deals, Part 1

The first three major deals of Toronto have been made, as Kino picks up Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth, IFC buys Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising and The Weinsteins drop seven figures on Tom Ford's A Single Man. It looks as though TWC is going to push A Single Man for this year's award season, gauging Hollywood's love for the tortured homosexuals in prestige pictures. The fashion designer's directorial debut stars Colin Firth (who won the Best Actor prize at Venice a few days ago; though for my money, if I'm going to see Firth gaying it up, my money's with Apartment Zero), Julianne Moore, Ginnifer Goodwin and Matthew Goode. After the Pusher series and Bronson, I can't get excited over anything Nicolas Winding Refn is up to, but I'm extremely excited about the Dogtooth deal. Expect more purchases later this week; Sony Pictures Classics hasn't even made their first bite yet.

DVD and Acquisition Updates - 14 September 2009

Three new IFC/MPI titles and a slew of films from Asia are on the bill for this DVD round-up.

- Silence, ça tue!, 2008, d. Christophe Lamont, Brink/MVD, 22 September
- Decoder, 1984, d. Muscha, Cobraside/MVD, 29 September, w. William S. Burroughs, FM Einheit, Genesis P-Orridge
- The Asphyx, 1973, d. Peter Newbrook Hens Tooth, 27 October
- Bloody Beach, 2000, d. Kim In Soo, Pathfinder, 3 November
- Fear of Fiction, 2000, d. Charlie Ahearn, Brink/MVD, 17 November, w. Melissa Leo, Sam Trammell, Penn Jillette, Reno
- Hansel & Gretel, 2007, d. Yim Pil-sung, Tokyo Shock, 17 November
- Teacher's Pet, 2005, d. Chung Ji Woo, Pathfinder, 17 November
- Thirst, 2009, d. Park Chan-wook, Focus Features, 17 November
- Green Fish, 1997, d. Lee Chang-dong, Pathfinder, 24 November
- Peter Pan Formula, 2005, d. Cho Chang-ho, Pathfinder, 24 November
- Devilman, 2004, d. Hiroyuki Nasu, Tokyo Shock, Special Edition, 24 November
- Dog Eat Dog [Perro come perro], 2008, d. Carlos Moreno, IFC Films, 8 December
- Ghosted, 2009, d. Monika Treut, First Run Features, 8 December
- Home Movie, 2008, d. Christopher Denham, IFC Films, 8 December
- Prima Ballerina, 2009, d. Laurent Gentot, First Run, 8 December
- The Skeptic, 2009, d. Tennyson Bardwell, IFC Films, 8 December
- The Year of the Jellyfish [L'année des méduses], 1984, d. Christopher Frank, Televista, 22 December
- Kid with the Golden Arm, 1979, d. Chang Cheh, Tokyo Shock, 29 December

Date Changes

- Spectacle: Elvis Costello with…, 3 November, also on Blu-ray
- Janky Promoters, 24 November
- Lesbian Vampire Killers, 29 December
- Antichrist, Artificial Eye/UK, 11 January

In acquisition news, you've probably already read about the strange distribution deal Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles is (finally) receiving nearly a year after its premiere at Toronto. Sony Pictures Classics nabbed Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs [Micmacs à tire-larigot]. National Geographic Films announced their second theatrical release in Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death. Kino will release Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani's Ajami, which received a Special Mention for the Camera d'Or at Cannes this year. IFC took Mia Hansen-Løve's Father of My Children [Le père de mes enfants]. And Zeitgeist picked up Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar's A Town Called Panic [Panique au village].

Magnolia disclosed that they're planning to release Bong Joon-ho's Mother, which South Korea announced recently as their Academy Award submission for 2009. In addition to Mother, they also took the US rights to Bong's first film, Barking Dogs Don't Bite, from 2000 (likely for just a DVD release, but I'm not sure). The director's The Host was one of the company's biggest successes to date.

Thanks to Eric from ioncinema for directing me to this: Mark Urman, former head of ThinkFilm, has started a new company called Paladin. Their first title Steve Jacobs' Disgrace, which stars John Malkovich and Eriq Ebouaney, was released in New York City this past Friday, and before the end of the year, Paladin will roll out Splinterheads, a comedy written and directed by Brant Sersen (Blackballed), and Jodie Markell's adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Evans, Ann-Margret, Ellen Burstyn and David Strathairn. Early next year, they'll release the new Bette Gordon (Variety) feature Handsome Harry, with Jamey Sheridan, Steve Buscemi, Aidan Quinn, John Savage, Campbell Scott, Karen Young and Bill Sage.

And finally, perhaps I mentioned this before, but I remember reading somewhere that Lorber Films will be picking up Ursula Meier's extraordinary debut feature Home, which stars Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet, for a 2010 release. Fingers crossed! All for now.

Samuel Maoz's Lebanon Takes the Golden Lion

Samuel Maoz's Lebanon, which is set during the First Lebanon War in 1982, took home the Golden Lion in Venice today, wrapping up the annual festivities. Ang Lee, who's won two Golden Lions himself in the past five years (for Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution) was the head of this year's jury, which also included Sandrine Bonnaire, Sergei Bodrov, Liliana Cavani, Joe Dante, Anurag Kashyap and Luciano Ligabue. The awards are all listed below.

Golden Lion: Lebanon - d. Samuel Maoz
Silver Lion, for Best Director: Shirin Neshat - Women Without Men
Special Jury Prize: Soul Kitchen - d. Fatih Akin
Coppa Volpi for Best Actor: Colin Firth - A Single Man
Coppa Volpi for Best Actress: Xenia Rappoport - La doppia ora
Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor: Jasmine Trinca - Il grande sogno
Osella for Best Technical Contribution: Sylvie Olivé, production designer - Mr. Nobody
Osella for Best Screenplay: Todd Solondz - Life During Wartime

The Decade List: Flandres (2006)

Flandres [Flanders] - dir. Bruno Dumont

[Edited from an earlier post]

At one point a couple years ago, I (along with a handful of others) noticed a trend in contemporary French cinema. There was this abundance of films coming from the country that were branded with a certain blend of controversy. Most of them were minimalist examinations of human relations that traveled beyond realism to metaphysical art pieces. They usually contained unsimulated sex, though it was never for titillation or even a pragmatic depiction of life. Some of them were gruesome, films whose minimalism aided in the dread and shock of the eventual violence. They were generally considered part of a movement of French extremism, though a friend of mine preferred something along the lines of analytical, anatomical art films. Catherine Breillat was their unofficial leader, if for no other reason than the residual hatred she stirred from her films as a result of her uncompromising forcefulness and (perhaps) her detractors' underlying misogyny. Bruno Dumont was one of the chief filmmakers of this so-called movement, whose The Life of Jésus [La vie de Jésus] and L'humanité won him praise that was swiftly taken away with 2003’s Twentynine Palms. Naturally, I loved Twentynine Palms, but people certainly stopped paying as close of attention to Dumont afterward. Flandres was awarded the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but with little fanfare. No US distributor wanted it, and it was released on a total of two screens sometime in May of 2007.

It makes a kind of unfortunate sense that no one knew quite what to do with Flandres. On its surface, Flandres is a war film about no war in particular. The decision to leave the war unnamed poses as difficult in marketing in a country that’s still at war. Audiences want their war films didactic, whether undeniably patriotic or bluntly skeptical, and they want a name. It’s that name that gives these films their so-called power and keeps them from revealing any form of art. But that’s being hypothetical; the box office failures of Rendition and Lions for Lambs proved that American audiences really didn't want anything to do with their own war when Flandres was released… at least not in their cinema. The Hurt Locker's recent success among the arthouse crowd may suggest things have changed, or may just speak for the film's quality (and Rendition and Lions for Lambs' lack thereof). On another surface level, Flandres retains the minimalist approach Dumont exhibited in Twentynine Palms. In fact, I’m not terribly sure what I took or what I’m supposed to take from the film. Yet I can’t say it hasn’t found its place in my afterthoughts. It reminds me a bit of Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day. Both films appear to give the viewer close to nothing in way of plot or action (though still notably violent and grisly), yet there’s something unnerving at work. Some of the most difficult films I’ve ever watched appear simple, a sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing, though seeing Béatrice Dalle bite the flesh off a young boy or a soldier being castrated aren’t the images you’d associate with a sheep.

On another level, Flandres is about the effects of war on life and vice versa. Dumont introduces the film with two friends, quiet farm boy Demester (Samuel Boidin) and neighbor Barbe (Adélaïde Leroux). They go on walks together and fuck apathetically in the grass. Barbe meets Blondel (Henri Cretel) at a bar, fucks him in the back of his car, and introduces him to her and Demester’s small circle of friends. It turns out that Demester and Blondel are both enlisted in the same squadron. Thus a love triangle begins, but Dumont isn’t as interested in the triangle as much as the psychology of those involved and their subsequent actions. The story is as stripped down as the characters, who Dumont never seems to recognize as "human beings." As usual for Dumont (outside of L'humanité), he uses non-actors to play the parts (I’d be surprised if you’d heard of any of Dumont’s actors, save Katerina Golubeva who appeared in a few Claire Denis film and infamously had unsimulated sex with Guillaume Depardieu in Pola X, though you’ve probably already forgotten about that). His use of non-actors, especially as homely as they tend to be, is just as effective as Catherine Breillat’s casting of a Gucci model and a porn star in her super-meta Anatomy of Hell [Anatomie de l'enfer]. Without asking for “performances,” he boils Flandres down to implications and intentions. One isn’t supposed to deduce motive or understanding from the actor’s face as you might in an Isabelle Huppert film, but instead make assertions from actions. Flandres is a film whose understanding is completely onscreen and, at the same time, nowhere to be found within the frame.

With: Adélaïde Leroux, Samuel Boidin, Henri Cretel, Inge Decaesteker, Jean-Marie Bruveart, David Poulain, Patrice Venant, David Legay
Screenplay: Bruno Dumont
Cinematography: Yves Cape
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: International Film Circuit/Koch Lorber

Premiere: 23 May 2006 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 21 April 2007 (City of Lights, City of Angels)

Awards: Grand Prix (Cannes Film Festival)

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2006)

I've been using the IMDb as a reference for film years when compiling films for the Decade List, and while I realize the site isn't always correct, it's a lot easier than looking elsewhere to find the first official screening of Phat Girlz. However, I've run into my first altercation when using the IMDb for 2006. By their records, 300, easily one of the worst films I've ever seen, is a 2006 movie because it played at something called the Austin Butt-Numb-a-Thon in December of that year. I don't know anything about this "fest," but I'm going to go ahead and disqualify that as a legitimate "film premiere." Black Snake Moan falls under the same category.

Anyway, I have little to say about the films below, but I've included links to shit I've written on them in the past. I've placed an asterisk next to the films that have a special sort of "awful" appeal, failures of a certain charm. I haven't given all of those titles a second look to gauge their level of camp appeal, but I can assure you both Snow Cake and Notes on a Scandal rise to the occasion. Cate Blanchett asking Judi Dench, "You wanna fuck me, Barbara?" and Sigourney Weaver's hilarious performance as a woman with autism in Snow Cake (not to mention how many bad-ass points Alan Rickman lost with his schoolgirl fussiness after confronting the man who killed Sigourney's daughter) are absolutely worth wasting your time over.

- Alpha Dog - d. Nick Cassavetes - USA
- Another Gay Movie - d. Todd Phillips - USA
- Art School Confidential - d. Terry Zwigoff - USA [also here]
- Basic Instinct 2 - d. Michael Caton-Jones - USA/Germany/UK/Spain [also here]
- The Black Dahlia - d. Brian De Palma - USA/Germany [also an appendix; and here]
- Boy Culture - d. Q. Allan Brocka - USA
- Broken Sky [El cielo dividido] - d. Julián Hernández - Mexico
- The Bubble - d. Eytan Fox - Israel [Winner of the "Best Way to Revive Your Otherwise Awful Film" Award at my first, and only, Fin de cinéma awards]
- Cars - d. John Lasseter, Joe Ranft - USA
- Confetti - d. Debbie Isitt - UK
- Cowboy Junction - d. Gregory Christian - USA
- Dans Paris - d. Christophe Honoré - France/Portugal
- Dirty Sanchez: The Movie - d. Jim Hickey - UK
- Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds - d. Phillip J. Bartell - USA
- Eternal Summer - d. Leste Chen - Taiwan
- Factory Girl - d. George Hickenlooper - USA
- For Your Consideration - d. Christopher Guest - USA [also here]
- The Fountain - d. Darren Aronofsky - USA*
- Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus - d. Steven Shainberg - USA
- Grimm Love [Rohtenburg] - d. Martin Weisz - Germany
- The Hills Have Eyes - d. Alexandre Aja - USA
- Idlewild - d. Bryan Barber - USA
- Marie Antoinette - d. Sofia Coppola - USA/France/Japan
- Murderous Intent [Like Minds] - d. Gregory J. Read - Australia/UK
- The Namesake - d. Mira Nair - India/USA
- Notes on a Scandal - d. Richard Eyre - UK*
- O Jerusalem - d. Elie Chouraqui - France/UK/Italy/Greece/Israel/USA [also here]
- Off the Black - d. James Ponsoldt - USA
- The OH in Ohio - d. Billy Kent - USA [also here]
- On ne devrait pas exister [We Should Not Exist] - d. Hervé P. Gustave - France
- One Third - d. Kim Yong-man - USA
- The Page Turner [La tourneuse de pages] - d. Denis Dercourt - France
- Phat Girlz - d. Nnegest Likké - USA
- Psychopathia Sexualis - d. Bret Wood - USA
- The Pursuit of Happyness - d. Gabriele Muccino - USA
- Snow Cake - d. Marc Evans - Canada/UK* [more on Sigourney]
- Southland Tales - d. Richard Kelly - USA/Germany/France*
- Tan Lines - d. Ed Aldridge - Australia
- Things to Do - d. Ted Bezaire - Canada
- The Tripper - d. David Arquette - USA
- The Unknown Woman [La sconosciuta] - d. Giuseppe Tornatore - Italy/France*
- Vacationland - d. Todd Verow - USA
- The West Wittering Affair - d. David Scheinmann - UK
- The Wicker Man - d. Neil LaBute - USA/Germany/Canada*
- The Wild - d. Steve 'Spaz' Williams - USA
- The Young, the Gay and the Restless - d. Joe Castro - USA
- Yours Emotionally! - d. Sridhar Rangayan - India/UK

Venice, Toronto 09 in Posters, Final Round

So, Toronto begins today (sadly, I will not be attending). And Venice ends on Saturday... so I've rounded up the final batch of posters for the two fests. Follow the links for Round 1 and Round 2. Some of the films featured in this update are titles I've listed prior but since found better ones. They are all of varying sizes as I couldn't muster the energy to resize 'em. I hope these posts were of some use to you.