A24 has acquired domestic North American rights to “Parthenope,” the new film by Academy Award winner director Paolo Sorrentino, which will premiere in official competition at 77th Festival de Cannes, the company announced on Friday morning.
The official logline is as follows: “Parthenope,” born in the sea of Naples in 1950, searches for happiness over the long summers of her youth, falling in love with her home city and its many memorable characters. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino comes a monumental and deeply romantic story of a lifetime.
The film stars, in alphabetical order, Dario Aita, Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvia Degrandi, Isabella Ferrari, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Biagio Izzo, Marlon Joubert, Peppe Lanzetta, Nello Mascia, Gary Oldman, Silvio Orlando, Luisa Ranieri, Daniele Rienzo, Stefania Sandrelli and Alfonso Santagata.
The film, shot between Naples and Capri, is an Italian-French co-production written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
“Parthenope” is a Fremantle film produced by The Apartment Pictures,...
The official logline is as follows: “Parthenope,” born in the sea of Naples in 1950, searches for happiness over the long summers of her youth, falling in love with her home city and its many memorable characters. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino comes a monumental and deeply romantic story of a lifetime.
The film stars, in alphabetical order, Dario Aita, Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvia Degrandi, Isabella Ferrari, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Biagio Izzo, Marlon Joubert, Peppe Lanzetta, Nello Mascia, Gary Oldman, Silvio Orlando, Luisa Ranieri, Daniele Rienzo, Stefania Sandrelli and Alfonso Santagata.
The film, shot between Naples and Capri, is an Italian-French co-production written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
“Parthenope” is a Fremantle film produced by The Apartment Pictures,...
- 5/3/2024
- by Umberto Gonzalez
- The Wrap
In the first major sale ahead of the Cannes Film Festival, A24 has acquired the North American rights to the competition title “Parthenope” from director Paolo Sorrentino, the distributor announced Friday, May 3.
“Parthenope” is the latest film from the Oscar winner Sorrentino, who will be competing for the Palme d‘Or for the seventh time. A24 describes the film as a “monumental and deeply romantic story of a lifetime.”
The film follows the titular character Parthenope, who is born in the sea of Naples in 1950 and searches for happiness over the long summers of her youth, falling in love with her home city and its many memorable characters. From Sorrentino, who also wrote the script, we expect a lot of lush Italian vistas and colorful, garish interiors.
The film features Gary Oldman and also stars, in alphabetical order, Dario Aita, Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvia Degrandi, Isabella Ferrari, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Biagio Izzo,...
“Parthenope” is the latest film from the Oscar winner Sorrentino, who will be competing for the Palme d‘Or for the seventh time. A24 describes the film as a “monumental and deeply romantic story of a lifetime.”
The film follows the titular character Parthenope, who is born in the sea of Naples in 1950 and searches for happiness over the long summers of her youth, falling in love with her home city and its many memorable characters. From Sorrentino, who also wrote the script, we expect a lot of lush Italian vistas and colorful, garish interiors.
The film features Gary Oldman and also stars, in alphabetical order, Dario Aita, Celeste Dalla Porta, Silvia Degrandi, Isabella Ferrari, Lorenzo Gleijeses, Biagio Izzo,...
- 5/3/2024
- by Brian Welk
- Indiewire
Exclusive: A24 has acquired North American rights to Parthenope, the new film from Oscar winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, ahead of its world premiere at the 77th Festival de Cannes.
Parthenope is the seventh Sorrentino movie to play the Croisette following 2004’s The Consequences of Love, 2008’s Il Divo which won the Jury Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize, 2011’s This Must Be the Place starring Sean which also won the Ecumenical Jury Prize, 2013’s The Great Beauty and 2015’s Youth. The Great Beauty would go on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2014.
Sorrentino’s previous directorial, The Hand of God, inspired by his youth, received a 2022 Oscar nomination for Best International Film and was released on Netflix stateside.
Pathe is handling foreign sales and is releasing the movie in France and Switzerland.
The movie follows Parthenope, who born in the sea of Naples in 1950, searches for happiness...
Parthenope is the seventh Sorrentino movie to play the Croisette following 2004’s The Consequences of Love, 2008’s Il Divo which won the Jury Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize, 2011’s This Must Be the Place starring Sean which also won the Ecumenical Jury Prize, 2013’s The Great Beauty and 2015’s Youth. The Great Beauty would go on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2014.
Sorrentino’s previous directorial, The Hand of God, inspired by his youth, received a 2022 Oscar nomination for Best International Film and was released on Netflix stateside.
Pathe is handling foreign sales and is releasing the movie in France and Switzerland.
The movie follows Parthenope, who born in the sea of Naples in 1950, searches for happiness...
- 5/3/2024
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
When Is The Netflix Limited Series The Leopard Coming? Well, Netflix continues to expand its presence in Europe, and one of its latest works is the Italian production, The Leopard.
This new limited series, currently in production, is based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s renowned novel, The Leopard.
The director Tom Shankland aims to bring a modern twist to this timeless tale, delving into the lives of the Prince of Salina and his family, showing both the Italy of the past and the Italy of today.
Shankland will direct episodes 1, 2, 3, and 6, while directors Giuseppe Capotondi and Laura Luchetti will helm episodes 4 and 5, respectively.
Richard Warlow, the series’ writer, creator, and executive producer, collaborates with Benji Walters. The cinematography is handled by Nicolaj Bruel, while costume designs are masterminded by Carlo Poggioli and Edoardo Russo. The announcement of this six-episode series coincided with Netflix’s revelation of a new office...
This new limited series, currently in production, is based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s renowned novel, The Leopard.
The director Tom Shankland aims to bring a modern twist to this timeless tale, delving into the lives of the Prince of Salina and his family, showing both the Italy of the past and the Italy of today.
Shankland will direct episodes 1, 2, 3, and 6, while directors Giuseppe Capotondi and Laura Luchetti will helm episodes 4 and 5, respectively.
Richard Warlow, the series’ writer, creator, and executive producer, collaborates with Benji Walters. The cinematography is handled by Nicolaj Bruel, while costume designs are masterminded by Carlo Poggioli and Edoardo Russo. The announcement of this six-episode series coincided with Netflix’s revelation of a new office...
- 7/5/2023
- by Om Prakash Kaushal
- https://dailyresearchplot.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/new-sam
Roman Polanski’s “The Palace” has been set for release in Italian theatres in September, prompting speculation that the controversial director’s black comedy set in a posh hotel in the Swiss Alps resort of Gstaad on the eve of the new millennium could be launching from the Venice Film Festival.
Italy’s Rai Cinema, which is a main backer of Polanski’s new film, has slated a September 28 local release date via its 01 Distribuzione unit for “The Palace,” which has an ensemble cast including Mickey Rourke, John Cleese and Fanny Ardant. Other key cast members include German actor Oliver Masucci (“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore”); Portugal’s Joaquin De Almeida; the U.K.’s Bronwyn James (“The Dig”) and Italy’s Fortunato Cerlino (”Gomorrah”).
The Palace/Courtesy Rai Cinema
Besides announcing the release date, production company Eliseo Entertainment and Rai Cinema have also issued a dippy decadent poster...
Italy’s Rai Cinema, which is a main backer of Polanski’s new film, has slated a September 28 local release date via its 01 Distribuzione unit for “The Palace,” which has an ensemble cast including Mickey Rourke, John Cleese and Fanny Ardant. Other key cast members include German actor Oliver Masucci (“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore”); Portugal’s Joaquin De Almeida; the U.K.’s Bronwyn James (“The Dig”) and Italy’s Fortunato Cerlino (”Gomorrah”).
The Palace/Courtesy Rai Cinema
Besides announcing the release date, production company Eliseo Entertainment and Rai Cinema have also issued a dippy decadent poster...
- 6/8/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Shooting has kicked off in Rome on limited series “The Leopard” based on the classic Sicily-set novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that marks Netflix’s most ambitious Italian original to date.
Production on the lavish period piece will take place in the Sicilian cities of Palermo, Syracuse, Catania as well as the Italian capital over the next four months.
The historical tapestry with elements comparable to “Downton Abbey” or “The Crown,” and potential to make a global mark, is a modern take on the sensual Sicilian saga famously adapted into a film by Luchino Visconti starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster. The film, now an Italian cinema classic, won the 1963 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
The six-episode epic set against the backdrop of social revolution in 1860s Sicily will star top model Deva Cassell – who is Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel’s daughter – as Angelica Sedara,...
Production on the lavish period piece will take place in the Sicilian cities of Palermo, Syracuse, Catania as well as the Italian capital over the next four months.
The historical tapestry with elements comparable to “Downton Abbey” or “The Crown,” and potential to make a global mark, is a modern take on the sensual Sicilian saga famously adapted into a film by Luchino Visconti starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster. The film, now an Italian cinema classic, won the 1963 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
The six-episode epic set against the backdrop of social revolution in 1860s Sicily will star top model Deva Cassell – who is Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel’s daughter – as Angelica Sedara,...
- 4/27/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
There was a time, not so long ago, when Roman Polanski was the toast of the film industry in France, where the director has been living since 1978, when he fled the United States before sentencing after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Despite the scandal and ongoing legal issues, the veteran auteur has flourished as a filmmaker in his adopted country, celebrated as a lifelong member of France’s illustrious Academie des Beaux Arts (Academy of Fine Arts) and showered with a half-dozen César Awards, the latest three of which, including best director, are for his 2019 drama “An Officer and a Spy.”
But things are changing. The director’s latest César win, combined with more recent allegations of sexual misconduct, sparked outrage from French feminist groups and led to the 21-member board of the organization that oversees the Césars to resign en masse. Polanski has denied the more recent misconduct allegations.
Despite the scandal and ongoing legal issues, the veteran auteur has flourished as a filmmaker in his adopted country, celebrated as a lifelong member of France’s illustrious Academie des Beaux Arts (Academy of Fine Arts) and showered with a half-dozen César Awards, the latest three of which, including best director, are for his 2019 drama “An Officer and a Spy.”
But things are changing. The director’s latest César win, combined with more recent allegations of sexual misconduct, sparked outrage from French feminist groups and led to the 21-member board of the organization that oversees the Césars to resign en masse. Polanski has denied the more recent misconduct allegations.
- 5/22/2022
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Sales
WestEnd Films has launched a global sales campaign for Guillem Morales’ (“The Miniaturist”) revenge thriller “The Duchess of Malfi,” produced by Miriam Segal’s Good Films Collective (“Postcard Killings”). Based on John Webster’s classic Jacobean play, the feature adaptation was penned by Luke Garrett (“Ruby Strangelove Young Witch”).
Casting for the period drama is led by BAFTA-nominees Morfydd Clark (“Saint Maud”) and Sam Riley (“Control”) with BIFA-nominee Dominic Cooper (“Preacher”). Equally impressive is the film’s behind-the-scenes lineup, including Academy Award-nominated DoP Pawel Edelman (“The Pianist”), BAFTA-nominated costume designer Carlo Poggioli (“Cold Mountain”), and Editor Joe Randall-Cutler (“I Hate Suzie”). Shooting will begin in November in Italy, with WestEnd set to present the film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival virtual market.
“There are no better times than these to tell the story of ‘The Duchess of Malfi.’ Webster’s masterpiece is ready for new, young...
WestEnd Films has launched a global sales campaign for Guillem Morales’ (“The Miniaturist”) revenge thriller “The Duchess of Malfi,” produced by Miriam Segal’s Good Films Collective (“Postcard Killings”). Based on John Webster’s classic Jacobean play, the feature adaptation was penned by Luke Garrett (“Ruby Strangelove Young Witch”).
Casting for the period drama is led by BAFTA-nominees Morfydd Clark (“Saint Maud”) and Sam Riley (“Control”) with BIFA-nominee Dominic Cooper (“Preacher”). Equally impressive is the film’s behind-the-scenes lineup, including Academy Award-nominated DoP Pawel Edelman (“The Pianist”), BAFTA-nominated costume designer Carlo Poggioli (“Cold Mountain”), and Editor Joe Randall-Cutler (“I Hate Suzie”). Shooting will begin in November in Italy, with WestEnd set to present the film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival virtual market.
“There are no better times than these to tell the story of ‘The Duchess of Malfi.’ Webster’s masterpiece is ready for new, young...
- 8/27/2021
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: Hot off wrapping season one of Amazon’s mega-budget The Lord Of The Rings series, Saint Maud star Morfydd Clark is attached to star alongside Sam Riley (Control) and Dominic Cooper (Preacher) in revenge thriller The Duchess Of Malfi.
Guillem Morales (Julia’s Eyes) is helming the project from Miriam Segal’s Good Films Collective (Postcard Killings). Luke Garrett has adapted the classic Jacobean play by John Webster. The story follows the recently widowed Duchess (Clark) who falls in love with her steward Antonio. Their union sets in motion a conflict with her cruel and vengeful brothers, thde Cardinal and Ferdinand, who enlist the spy Bosola to keep her from escaping their control.
WestEnd Films has picked up worldwide sales rights and will introduce the project at the virtual Toronto market. Filming is set to start in November in Italy.
Additional cast includes Freddie Fox (The Three Musketeers) and Frank Dillane...
Guillem Morales (Julia’s Eyes) is helming the project from Miriam Segal’s Good Films Collective (Postcard Killings). Luke Garrett has adapted the classic Jacobean play by John Webster. The story follows the recently widowed Duchess (Clark) who falls in love with her steward Antonio. Their union sets in motion a conflict with her cruel and vengeful brothers, thde Cardinal and Ferdinand, who enlist the spy Bosola to keep her from escaping their control.
WestEnd Films has picked up worldwide sales rights and will introduce the project at the virtual Toronto market. Filming is set to start in November in Italy.
Additional cast includes Freddie Fox (The Three Musketeers) and Frank Dillane...
- 8/27/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed and increasingly relevant political drama The Trial of the Chicago 7, which revolves around the raucous trial of a group of protesters accused of disrupting the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, took a leading four awards including best picture at the just concluded 25th annual Capri, Hollywood – The International Film Festival. If past winners at this Italian fest are any indication, the victories should give the Netflix film a boost stateside during Oscar season.
The DreamWorks production, originally put in motion 14 years ago by Steven Spielberg and written and directed by Sorkin, was originally set to be released by Paramount before the coronavirus pandemic turned the exhibition business on its heels and shut theaters — especially in key cities like New York and Los Angeles. It premiered on Netflix in October.
The film also took Capri awards for Sacha Baron Cohen as best supporting actor, film editing and a...
The DreamWorks production, originally put in motion 14 years ago by Steven Spielberg and written and directed by Sorkin, was originally set to be released by Paramount before the coronavirus pandemic turned the exhibition business on its heels and shut theaters — especially in key cities like New York and Los Angeles. It premiered on Netflix in October.
The film also took Capri awards for Sacha Baron Cohen as best supporting actor, film editing and a...
- 1/4/2021
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Principal photography has wrapped in Naples on writer-director Michele Placido’s fourteenth film as a director, Caravaggio’s Shadow (L’Ombra Di Caravaggio), about the enigmatic and genius Renaissance painter.
Today we can reveal three striking production stills from the Italian-language movie, which stars Riccardo Scamarcio (John Wick Chapter 2) as Caravaggio, Louis Garrel (Little Women) as the mysterious Shadow, Isabelle Huppert (Elle) as the Marquise Costanza Colonna, Micaela Ramazzotti (Like Crazy) as Lena and Placido in the role of Cardinal del Monte. French star Huppert will be dubbed for the film.
Veteran Italian filmmaker Placido, who also directed Scamarcio in hit 2005 crime drama Romanzo Criminale, has spent four years working and preparing for the film, which will focus on the adventurous and controversial life of the great painter from the 1600s. The movie will show the artist as a rebel without a cause, a man of huge talent but...
Today we can reveal three striking production stills from the Italian-language movie, which stars Riccardo Scamarcio (John Wick Chapter 2) as Caravaggio, Louis Garrel (Little Women) as the mysterious Shadow, Isabelle Huppert (Elle) as the Marquise Costanza Colonna, Micaela Ramazzotti (Like Crazy) as Lena and Placido in the role of Cardinal del Monte. French star Huppert will be dubbed for the film.
Veteran Italian filmmaker Placido, who also directed Scamarcio in hit 2005 crime drama Romanzo Criminale, has spent four years working and preparing for the film, which will focus on the adventurous and controversial life of the great painter from the 1600s. The movie will show the artist as a rebel without a cause, a man of huge talent but...
- 12/10/2020
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Italy is putting forward Gianfranco Rosi’s latest documentary Notturno as its candidate for the 2021 International Oscar race.
Anica, the country’s national film body, oversaw the selection process with the jury consisting of Nicola Borrelli, Simone Gattoni, Paolo Genovese, Carlo Poggioli, Cristina Priarone, Gloria Satta and Baba Richerme.
The pic premiered at Venice in Competition and picked up a handful of prizes. It it an immersive portrait of those trying to survive in the war-torn Middle East.
The deadline for submissions to the Oscar race is December 1, with the 2021 ceremony scheduled to take place April 25. The shortlist for the International Oscar will be unveiled February 9 and nominations will be announced March 15.
Italy is the most successful nation in the International / Best Foreign Film Oscar category with a total of 11 wins (plus three “honorary” wins in the early days of the awards). It last triumphed in 2013 with Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty.
Anica, the country’s national film body, oversaw the selection process with the jury consisting of Nicola Borrelli, Simone Gattoni, Paolo Genovese, Carlo Poggioli, Cristina Priarone, Gloria Satta and Baba Richerme.
The pic premiered at Venice in Competition and picked up a handful of prizes. It it an immersive portrait of those trying to survive in the war-torn Middle East.
The deadline for submissions to the Oscar race is December 1, with the 2021 ceremony scheduled to take place April 25. The shortlist for the International Oscar will be unveiled February 9 and nominations will be announced March 15.
Italy is the most successful nation in the International / Best Foreign Film Oscar category with a total of 11 wins (plus three “honorary” wins in the early days of the awards). It last triumphed in 2013 with Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty.
- 11/24/2020
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
Géza Röhrig: “Since Son of Saul I was privileged to work with Elizabeth McGovern and Jesse Eisenberg, Matthew Broderick. And so for me to work with these people, it’s the real school of life.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Géza Röhrig, star of László Nemes’ Oscar-winning Son Of Saul and a partner in crime with Matthew Broderick in Shawn Snyder’s To Dust, produced by Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, is cousin Georges to Jesse Eisenberg’s Marcel Marceau in Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Resistance with Clémence Poésy, Edgar Ramírez (Roberto Durán in Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone) and Matthias Schweighöfer. Géza’s upcoming roles include playing Jesus in Terrence Malick’s The Last Planet, costumes by Carlo Poggioli, and Z in Chino Moya’s Undergods.
Jesse Eisenberg as Marcel Marceau with Clémence Poésy as Emma
Early last year, I moderated a post-screening discussion with Géza Röhrig and Shawn Snyder for the To Dust theatrical premiere.
Géza Röhrig, star of László Nemes’ Oscar-winning Son Of Saul and a partner in crime with Matthew Broderick in Shawn Snyder’s To Dust, produced by Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, is cousin Georges to Jesse Eisenberg’s Marcel Marceau in Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Resistance with Clémence Poésy, Edgar Ramírez (Roberto Durán in Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone) and Matthias Schweighöfer. Géza’s upcoming roles include playing Jesus in Terrence Malick’s The Last Planet, costumes by Carlo Poggioli, and Z in Chino Moya’s Undergods.
Jesse Eisenberg as Marcel Marceau with Clémence Poésy as Emma
Early last year, I moderated a post-screening discussion with Géza Röhrig and Shawn Snyder for the To Dust theatrical premiere.
- 3/28/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Ann Roth won an Oscar for Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
For Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, shot by John Seale, Oscar-winner Ann Roth and her then assistant Carlo Poggioli dressed Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine, Ralph Fiennes as Almásy, Juliette Binoche as Hana, Naveen Andrews as Kip, Willem Dafoe as Caravaggio, and Colin Firth as Katharine’s husband Geoffrey.
Ralph Fiennes as Almásy
The English Patient won Oscars for Best Picture (producer Saul Zaentz), Director, Actress in a Supporting Role (Binoche), Cinematography, Editing (Walter Murch), Original Dramatic Score (Gabriel Yared), Art Direction, and Sound, and BAFTAs for Best...
For Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, shot by John Seale, Oscar-winner Ann Roth and her then assistant Carlo Poggioli dressed Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine, Ralph Fiennes as Almásy, Juliette Binoche as Hana, Naveen Andrews as Kip, Willem Dafoe as Caravaggio, and Colin Firth as Katharine’s husband Geoffrey.
Ralph Fiennes as Almásy
The English Patient won Oscars for Best Picture (producer Saul Zaentz), Director, Actress in a Supporting Role (Binoche), Cinematography, Editing (Walter Murch), Original Dramatic Score (Gabriel Yared), Art Direction, and Sound, and BAFTAs for Best...
- 1/20/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Carlo Poggioli with Anne-Katrin Titze: “Satyricon by Fellini was one that made me think about Fellini and cinema costumes. And then Amarcord. Following this idea, that for me, the cinema was Federico Fellini. And when I worked with him, my dream came true.” Photo: Virginia Cademartori
In 2020, Terrence Malick’s The Last Planet, starring Matthias Schoenaerts, Géza Röhrig (László Nemes’s Oscar-winning Son Of Saul) and Tawfeek Barhom (Reed Morano’s The Rhythm Section) with Ben Kingsley, Mark Rylance and Joseph Mawle, and Paolo Sorrentino’s The New Pope series are two of the most anticipated projects.
Jude Law and John Malkovich star in Paolo Sorrentino’s The New Pope
Carlo Poggioli is the consummate, imaginative costume designer for both and has worked with Paolo Sorrentino since 2015.
When I met Carlo Poggioli at Ann Roth’s apartment on a rainy fall afternoon, the day after her birthday, Ann and Carlo...
In 2020, Terrence Malick’s The Last Planet, starring Matthias Schoenaerts, Géza Röhrig (László Nemes’s Oscar-winning Son Of Saul) and Tawfeek Barhom (Reed Morano’s The Rhythm Section) with Ben Kingsley, Mark Rylance and Joseph Mawle, and Paolo Sorrentino’s The New Pope series are two of the most anticipated projects.
Jude Law and John Malkovich star in Paolo Sorrentino’s The New Pope
Carlo Poggioli is the consummate, imaginative costume designer for both and has worked with Paolo Sorrentino since 2015.
When I met Carlo Poggioli at Ann Roth’s apartment on a rainy fall afternoon, the day after her birthday, Ann and Carlo...
- 1/2/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Ann Roth on her backstory for dressing Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley: “I knew where he went to prep school and I knew that his father, who was an international guy, had assorted New York Saville Row clothes.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In the third part of my series of conversations with Ann Roth, we discuss one of her first jobs in the “movie business”, which was working with costume designer Irene Sharaff on Vincente Minnelli’s Brigadoon, starring Gene Kelly, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse. Sharaff, a five-time Oscar winner had wanted Ann Roth to come to California.
Gene Kelly and Van Johnson in Vincente Minnelli’s Brigadoon - costumes by Irene Sharaff
The Civil War era costumes by Plunkett in Victor Fleming’s Gone With The Wind under David O Selznick and Ann Roth’s (BAFTA...
In the third part of my series of conversations with Ann Roth, we discuss one of her first jobs in the “movie business”, which was working with costume designer Irene Sharaff on Vincente Minnelli’s Brigadoon, starring Gene Kelly, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse. Sharaff, a five-time Oscar winner had wanted Ann Roth to come to California.
Gene Kelly and Van Johnson in Vincente Minnelli’s Brigadoon - costumes by Irene Sharaff
The Civil War era costumes by Plunkett in Victor Fleming’s Gone With The Wind under David O Selznick and Ann Roth’s (BAFTA...
- 12/27/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Outside of a few interviews around the time of Badlands, Terrence Malick has stayed out of the press spotlight, only re-appearing recently for a talk before the shooting of A Hidden Life and then for the SXSW premiere of Song to Song, as well as appearing at the Cannes premiere of his new work. He’s now, fittingly, ventured to the most holy of places–the Vatican, specifically to their Filmoteca–for a screening of his latest film. While there, he shared a few words about his WWII feature and his next film, the Biblical drama The Last Planet.
“Franz [Jägerstätter, played by August Diehl] is a martyr, because he chose to be faithful to his conscience,” Malick said of A Hidden Life, as reported by La Repubblica via One Big Soul. “As his father-in-law says in the film, it’s better to be a victim of injustice than to perpetuate an injustice.
“Franz [Jägerstätter, played by August Diehl] is a martyr, because he chose to be faithful to his conscience,” Malick said of A Hidden Life, as reported by La Repubblica via One Big Soul. “As his father-in-law says in the film, it’s better to be a victim of injustice than to perpetuate an injustice.
- 12/4/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Ann Roth with Carlo Poggioli and Anne-Katrin Titze on the late great costume designer: “Piero Tosi was the god!” Photo: Virginia Cademartori
Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer Ann Roth and Carlo Poggioli who shared a BAFTA Best Costume Design nomination with Roth gave me some insight on their work and personal relationship when I met with them last week. Carlo also assisted Ann on The Talented Mr Ripley and The English Patient.
Ann Roth on Ralph Fiennes as Almásy and Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine in The English Patient: “I don't think Ralph is a man's man, as they say. She on the other hand, women, everybody, loved her.”
Carlo Poggioli who started out with designers Gabriella Pescucci, Piero Tosi and Maurizio Millenotti (Ruppert Everett’s...
Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer Ann Roth and Carlo Poggioli who shared a BAFTA Best Costume Design nomination with Roth gave me some insight on their work and personal relationship when I met with them last week. Carlo also assisted Ann on The Talented Mr Ripley and The English Patient.
Ann Roth on Ralph Fiennes as Almásy and Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine in The English Patient: “I don't think Ralph is a man's man, as they say. She on the other hand, women, everybody, loved her.”
Carlo Poggioli who started out with designers Gabriella Pescucci, Piero Tosi and Maurizio Millenotti (Ruppert Everett’s...
- 11/7/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The bond between American and Italian costumers has been a strong and long-lasting one that has contributed to some of the best-looking movies ever made, says acclaimed Italian costume designer Carlo Poggioli. “We are the country that has won the most Oscars, both for set design and costumes, after the Americans,” says Poggioli, head of Italy’s costume and production designers guild. “The Italian flag stands high.”
That bond will be celebrated with a master class series of panels set for Oct. 31, Nov. 13 and Dec. 5 at the City University of New York, in which Piera Detassis, president of Italy’s David di Donatello Awards — the country’s equivalent of the Oscars — will lead a discussion among Italian designers Poggioli and Milena Canonero (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and Americans Ann Roth (“The English Patient”) and Donna Zakowska (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”).
When she started prepping the HBO miniseries “John Adams,” Zakowska...
That bond will be celebrated with a master class series of panels set for Oct. 31, Nov. 13 and Dec. 5 at the City University of New York, in which Piera Detassis, president of Italy’s David di Donatello Awards — the country’s equivalent of the Oscars — will lead a discussion among Italian designers Poggioli and Milena Canonero (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and Americans Ann Roth (“The English Patient”) and Donna Zakowska (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”).
When she started prepping the HBO miniseries “John Adams,” Zakowska...
- 10/31/2019
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The Oscar frontrunner for Best Costume Design, “Phantom Thread,” stumbled at the guild awards on Feb. 20, losing the Best Period Film category to one of its Oscar rivals, “The Shape of Water.” Another Oscar nominee, “Beauty and the Beast,” lost the Fantasy Film race to “Wonder Woman.” The other two Academy Awards contenders — “Darkest Hour” and “Victoria and Abdul” — were snubbed by the Costume Designers Guild at its 20th annual awards, which took place at the Beverly Hilton .
But don’t rule out “Phantom Thread” for the Oscar just yet. Remember, only nine of the most recent 19 Oscar champs for Best Costume Design came into the evening with a Cdg award on their mantle. Indeed, just last year the academy went with the fantasy film “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which had lost at the guild to “Doctor Strange.”
Predict Oscar winners now; change them till March 4
The...
But don’t rule out “Phantom Thread” for the Oscar just yet. Remember, only nine of the most recent 19 Oscar champs for Best Costume Design came into the evening with a Cdg award on their mantle. Indeed, just last year the academy went with the fantasy film “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which had lost at the guild to “Doctor Strange.”
Predict Oscar winners now; change them till March 4
The...
- 2/21/2018
- by Paul Sheehan
- Gold Derby
The Costume Designers Guild nominees for the 20th annual Cdg Awards in film, TV, and shortform costume design have landed. Three costume categories separate contemporary, period, and fantasy/sci-fi, so there’s room for more contemporary titles such as “I, Tonya” and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” which are less likely to make it to the big Oscar show. Period films like “Phantom Thread” and “The Shape of Water” and big-scale fantasies like “Thor: Ragnarok” tend to make the Oscar grade. Given the number of slots, among the notable snubs are period films “Darkest Hour” (which boasts more showy costumes than nominated “Dunkirk”), “The Post,” “The Beguiled,” “Victoria & Abdul,” and “Mudbound.”
On the television side, a number of popular picks emerged with nods, including “Game of Thrones,” “Black Mirror,” “The Crown,” and “Stranger Things.” Like the film nods, each category is divided by contemporary, period, and fantasy/sci-fi designations.
Read...
On the television side, a number of popular picks emerged with nods, including “Game of Thrones,” “Black Mirror,” “The Crown,” and “Stranger Things.” Like the film nods, each category is divided by contemporary, period, and fantasy/sci-fi designations.
Read...
- 1/10/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
The Costume Designers Guild nominees for the 20th annual CDG Awards in film, TV, and shortform costume design have landed.
Three costume categories separate contemporary, period, and fantasy/sci-fi, so there’s room for more contemporary titles such as “I, Tonya” and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” which are less likely to make it to the big Oscar show. Period films like “Phantom Thread” and “The Shape of Water” and big-scale fantasies like “Thor: Ragnarok” tend to make the Oscar grade. Given the number of slots, among the notable snubs are period films “Darkest Hour” (which boasts more showy costumes than nominated “Dunkirk”), “The Post,” “The Beguiled,” “Victoria & Abdul,” and “Mudbound.”
On the television side, a number of popular picks emerged with nods, including...
Three costume categories separate contemporary, period, and fantasy/sci-fi, so there’s room for more contemporary titles such as “I, Tonya” and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” which are less likely to make it to the big Oscar show. Period films like “Phantom Thread” and “The Shape of Water” and big-scale fantasies like “Thor: Ragnarok” tend to make the Oscar grade. Given the number of slots, among the notable snubs are period films “Darkest Hour” (which boasts more showy costumes than nominated “Dunkirk”), “The Post,” “The Beguiled,” “Victoria & Abdul,” and “Mudbound.”
On the television side, a number of popular picks emerged with nods, including...
- 1/10/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
The Costume Designers Guild has announced nominations for its 18th annual Cdg Awards! "Mad Max: Fury Road" will duke it out with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," "Cinderella," "Ex Machina," and "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2" for the Fantasy Film category. I think "Cinderella" should win, don't you?
We'll find out the winners on February 23rd!
Here's the full list of nominees of the 18th annual Cdg Awards:
Excellence in Contemporary Film
Beasts of No Nation . Jenny Eagan
Joy . Michael Wilkinson
Kingsman: The Secret Service . Arianne Phillips
The Martian . Janty Yates
Youth . Carlo Poggioli
Excellence in Period Film
Brooklyn . Odile Dicks-Mireaux
Carol . Sandy Powell
Crimson Peak . Kate Hawley
The Danish Girl . Paco Delgado
Trumbo . Daniel Orlandi
Excellence in Fantasy Film
Cinderella . Sandy Powell
Ex Machina . Sammy Sheldon Differ
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 . Kurt and Bart
Mad Max: Fury Road . Jenny Beavan
Star Wars: The Force Awakens . Michael Kaplan...
We'll find out the winners on February 23rd!
Here's the full list of nominees of the 18th annual Cdg Awards:
Excellence in Contemporary Film
Beasts of No Nation . Jenny Eagan
Joy . Michael Wilkinson
Kingsman: The Secret Service . Arianne Phillips
The Martian . Janty Yates
Youth . Carlo Poggioli
Excellence in Period Film
Brooklyn . Odile Dicks-Mireaux
Carol . Sandy Powell
Crimson Peak . Kate Hawley
The Danish Girl . Paco Delgado
Trumbo . Daniel Orlandi
Excellence in Fantasy Film
Cinderella . Sandy Powell
Ex Machina . Sammy Sheldon Differ
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 . Kurt and Bart
Mad Max: Fury Road . Jenny Beavan
Star Wars: The Force Awakens . Michael Kaplan...
- 1/7/2016
- by Manny
- Manny the Movie Guy
Excellence in Contemporary Film Beasts of No Nation – Jenny Eagan Joy – Michael Wilkinson Kingsman: The Secret Service – Arianne Phillips The Martian – Janty Yates Youth – Carlo Poggioli Excellence in Period Film...
- 1/7/2016
- by Sasha Stone
- AwardsDaily.com
Photo by Gianni Fiorito. © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved
From Paolo Sorrentino, the director of Italy’s Oscar foreign language winner The Great Beauty comes Youth, about two longtime friends vacationing in the Swiss Alps.
Oscar winning actor Michael Caine plays Fred, an acclaimed composer and conductor, who brings along his daughter (Rachel Weisz) and best friend Mick (Harvey Keitel), a renowned filmmaker.
While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. The two men reflect on their past, each finding that some of the most important experiences can come later in life.
Fox Searchlight has released an emotional new clip from the upcoming movie.
The film features an original score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, who first met Sorrentino when his composition “I Lie” was used in The Great Beauty.
From Paolo Sorrentino, the director of Italy’s Oscar foreign language winner The Great Beauty comes Youth, about two longtime friends vacationing in the Swiss Alps.
Oscar winning actor Michael Caine plays Fred, an acclaimed composer and conductor, who brings along his daughter (Rachel Weisz) and best friend Mick (Harvey Keitel), a renowned filmmaker.
While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. The two men reflect on their past, each finding that some of the most important experiences can come later in life.
Fox Searchlight has released an emotional new clip from the upcoming movie.
The film features an original score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, who first met Sorrentino when his composition “I Lie” was used in The Great Beauty.
- 11/18/2015
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Costume catch up time.
Puttin’ on the Glitz
Clothes on Film editor Christopher Laverty will be teaming up with the incomparable Amber Jane Butchart for an exciting talk at the British Library.
Man of Steel
Michael Wilkinson talks about his design process on the film, plus his overall approach to costuming in general at this Lacma event. For Tyranny of Style, Brianne Gillen records the details.
Divergent
Carlo Poggioli’s costume sketches and character info. Looks good, but will probably save reading this until after watching. Due 21st.
Constantine
First look at the trenchcoat wearing, Sting-alike lead character for NBC’s new television series.
True Detective
Costume designer Jenny Eagan talks about keeping it subtle for the biggest TV event of the year so far.
Game of Thrones
Vanity Fair’s of the best costume looks so far, plus a sneak peek at those to come. Where’s April already?...
Puttin’ on the Glitz
Clothes on Film editor Christopher Laverty will be teaming up with the incomparable Amber Jane Butchart for an exciting talk at the British Library.
Man of Steel
Michael Wilkinson talks about his design process on the film, plus his overall approach to costuming in general at this Lacma event. For Tyranny of Style, Brianne Gillen records the details.
Divergent
Carlo Poggioli’s costume sketches and character info. Looks good, but will probably save reading this until after watching. Due 21st.
Constantine
First look at the trenchcoat wearing, Sting-alike lead character for NBC’s new television series.
True Detective
Costume designer Jenny Eagan talks about keeping it subtle for the biggest TV event of the year so far.
Game of Thrones
Vanity Fair’s of the best costume looks so far, plus a sneak peek at those to come. Where’s April already?...
- 3/15/2014
- by Lord Christopher Laverty
- Clothes on Film
Interview Ryan Lambie 14 Mar 2014 - 06:29
We talk to the legendary director Terry Gilliam about his new film The Zero Theorem, 12 Monkeys, social media and much more...
In person, Terry Gilliam's every bit as mischievous, funny, generous and entertaining as you'd hope. The director of some wonderful science fiction and fantasy films, from Jabberwocky to Time Bandits and Brazil to The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys, he's one of the most imaginative and individual filmmakers working - and then there are the wonderful animated short films he created, which came to international prominence thanks to Monty Python's Flying Circus.
When we meet Mr Gilliam on the fifth floor of a London hotel, the sun's shining through the window and the director's positively beaming. He's encouraged because there's plenty of light and fresh air in the room - a stark contrast, he says, to the sometimes dark and claustrophobic rooms he...
We talk to the legendary director Terry Gilliam about his new film The Zero Theorem, 12 Monkeys, social media and much more...
In person, Terry Gilliam's every bit as mischievous, funny, generous and entertaining as you'd hope. The director of some wonderful science fiction and fantasy films, from Jabberwocky to Time Bandits and Brazil to The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys, he's one of the most imaginative and individual filmmakers working - and then there are the wonderful animated short films he created, which came to international prominence thanks to Monty Python's Flying Circus.
When we meet Mr Gilliam on the fifth floor of a London hotel, the sun's shining through the window and the director's positively beaming. He's encouraged because there's plenty of light and fresh air in the room - a stark contrast, he says, to the sometimes dark and claustrophobic rooms he...
- 3/13/2014
- by ryanlambie
- Den of Geek
We've had our calendars marked for months, and March 21 pretty much can't come soon enough. Why, you ask? It's the release date for the gotta-see-it movie Divergent, staring Shailene Woodley, Theo James and Kate Winslet. We devoured the book series, and we've been waiting for months for the movie to finally hit theaters. But in the meantime, we've got something that we're pretty sure will tide you over: an exclusive sneak peek at the costumes! We caught up with renowned costume designer Carlo Poggioli, who has been in the industry for decades and worked on movies like Romeo and Juliet staring Hailee Steinfeld and The Zero Theorem staring Christoph Waltz. Carlo gave us a special look...
- 3/10/2014
- E! Online
What a busy twelve months it’s been for costume design. Really though, this art, or craft, or business (Deborah Nadoolman Landis insists it is definitely a business) gets more talked about each year. 2013 was especially exciting however as it seemed every month something even more thrilling arrived to fawn over. In the last few weeks alone we have had The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Sleepy Hollow, and now American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street on the horizon. Dipping back further, it was Stoker that got us excited about subtext, The Great Gatsby that slammed the lid on that twenties revival once and for all, and Behind the Candelabra that put Michael Douglas in a 16ft fox fur cape and white brocade jumpsuit.
With just so many memorable movies and TV shows to cover, Clothes on Film asked some respected contributors to the site for their opinions on the best,...
With just so many memorable movies and TV shows to cover, Clothes on Film asked some respected contributors to the site for their opinions on the best,...
- 12/28/2013
- by Lord Christopher Laverty
- Clothes on Film
One of the key elements of Shakespeare’s plays is that no matter how many times you see an adaptation of one of his works, you can derive something new from it. That’s certainly true of Carlo Carlei’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Given that the tale has been recreated countless times, the idea of a straightforward adaptation is refreshing. The story, like many of Shakespeare’s works, has been done to death, but his vivid language is seldom short of breathtaking and thus, never tiring.
There’s also a lovely score by Abel Korzeniowski, stunning costumes by Carlo Poggioli, and production designer Tonino Zera’s utilization of the still breathtaking sites of Verona and Mantua (where some of the project was shot). Unfortunately, there’s also a lot to be desired.
The film can’t compete with Franco Zeffirelli’s masterful 1968 interpretation or Baz Luhrmann’s imaginative...
There’s also a lovely score by Abel Korzeniowski, stunning costumes by Carlo Poggioli, and production designer Tonino Zera’s utilization of the still breathtaking sites of Verona and Mantua (where some of the project was shot). Unfortunately, there’s also a lot to be desired.
The film can’t compete with Franco Zeffirelli’s masterful 1968 interpretation or Baz Luhrmann’s imaginative...
- 10/11/2013
- by Justine Browning
- We Got This Covered
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed its 276-member-strong class of 2013.
The list, published by The Hollywood Reporter, includes actors, cinematographers, designers, directors, documentarians, executives, film editors, makeup artists and hairstylists, "members-at-large," musicians, producers, PR folks, short filmmakers and animators, sound technicians, visual effects artists, and writers.
Jason Bateman, Rosario Dawson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Milla Jovovich, Lucy Liu, Jennifer Lopez, Emily Mortimer, Sandra Oh, Jason Schwartzman, and Michael Peña are among the roster of actors, while "The Heat" and "Bridesmaids" helmer Paul Feig made the directors' cut.
"We did not change our criteria at all," says Academy president Hawk Koch of this year's larger-than-usual class. "Yes, this year there is a tremendous amount of women, a tremendous amount of people of color, people from all walks of life. This year, we asked the branches to look at everybody who wasn't in the Academy but who deserved to be.
The list, published by The Hollywood Reporter, includes actors, cinematographers, designers, directors, documentarians, executives, film editors, makeup artists and hairstylists, "members-at-large," musicians, producers, PR folks, short filmmakers and animators, sound technicians, visual effects artists, and writers.
Jason Bateman, Rosario Dawson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Milla Jovovich, Lucy Liu, Jennifer Lopez, Emily Mortimer, Sandra Oh, Jason Schwartzman, and Michael Peña are among the roster of actors, while "The Heat" and "Bridesmaids" helmer Paul Feig made the directors' cut.
"We did not change our criteria at all," says Academy president Hawk Koch of this year's larger-than-usual class. "Yes, this year there is a tremendous amount of women, a tremendous amount of people of color, people from all walks of life. This year, we asked the branches to look at everybody who wasn't in the Academy but who deserved to be.
- 7/4/2013
- by Laura Larson
- Moviefone
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today the 276 members of the entertainment industry invited to join organization. The list includes actors, directors, documentarians, executives, film editors, producers and more. Of those listed below, those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy's membership in 2013. "These individuals are among the best filmmakers working in the industry today," said Academy President Hawk Koch in a press release. "Their talent and creativity have captured the imagination of audiences worldwide, and I am proud to welcome each of them to the Academy." Koch also told Variety, "In the past eight or nine years, each branch could only bring in X amount of members. There were people each branch would have liked to get in but couldn't. We asked them to be more inclusive of the best of the best, and each branch was excited, because they got...
- 6/28/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
The Academy just added 276 Oscar voters.
That’s 100 more than last year, and part of an easing of a longstanding cap on the number of new members allowed to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences each year.
AMPAS usually adds between 130 and 180 new members, replacing those who have quit or passed away. The membership now stands around 6,000.
Jason Bateman, Jennifer Lopez, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emmanuelle Riva, and Chris Tucker are among the actors who have been invited to join, the organization announced today.
Other interesting additions: the musician Prince, Girls and Tiny Furniture writer/director/actress Lena Dunham,...
That’s 100 more than last year, and part of an easing of a longstanding cap on the number of new members allowed to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences each year.
AMPAS usually adds between 130 and 180 new members, replacing those who have quit or passed away. The membership now stands around 6,000.
Jason Bateman, Jennifer Lopez, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emmanuelle Riva, and Chris Tucker are among the actors who have been invited to join, the organization announced today.
Other interesting additions: the musician Prince, Girls and Tiny Furniture writer/director/actress Lena Dunham,...
- 6/28/2013
- by Anthony Breznican
- EW - Inside Movies
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is extending invitations to join the organization to 276 artists and executives who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures. Those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy’s membership in 2013.
“These individuals are among the best filmmakers working in the industry today,” said Academy President Hawk Koch. “Their talent and creativity have captured the imagination of audiences worldwide, and I am proud to welcome each of them to the Academy.”
The 2013 invitees are:
Actors
Jason Bateman – “Up in the Air,” “Juno”
Miriam Colon – “City of Hope,” “Scarface”
Rosario Dawson – “Rent,” “Frank Miller’s Sin City”
Kimberly Elise – “For Colored Girls,” “Beloved”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – “Lincoln,” “The Dark Knight Rises”
Charles Grodin – “Midnight Run,” “The Heartbreak Kid”
Rebecca Hall – “Iron Man 3,” “The Town”
Lance Henriksen – “Aliens,” “The Terminator”
Jack Huston – “Not Fade Away,” “Factory Girl”
Milla Jovovich – “Resident Evil,...
“These individuals are among the best filmmakers working in the industry today,” said Academy President Hawk Koch. “Their talent and creativity have captured the imagination of audiences worldwide, and I am proud to welcome each of them to the Academy.”
The 2013 invitees are:
Actors
Jason Bateman – “Up in the Air,” “Juno”
Miriam Colon – “City of Hope,” “Scarface”
Rosario Dawson – “Rent,” “Frank Miller’s Sin City”
Kimberly Elise – “For Colored Girls,” “Beloved”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – “Lincoln,” “The Dark Knight Rises”
Charles Grodin – “Midnight Run,” “The Heartbreak Kid”
Rebecca Hall – “Iron Man 3,” “The Town”
Lance Henriksen – “Aliens,” “The Terminator”
Jack Huston – “Not Fade Away,” “Factory Girl”
Milla Jovovich – “Resident Evil,...
- 6/28/2013
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Nicole Kidman 4 Film Collection (Cold Mountain, Dogville, The Others, Rabbit Hole)
DVD Reviews
Cold Mountain (2003)
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Renée Zellweger
Running Time: 2 hrs 34 mins
Rating: R
Due Out: April 3, 2012
Plot: As the Civil War nears its end, a Confederate soldier (Law) makes the long journey home to reunite with the woman he loves (Kidman).
Who’S It For? Anyone who appreciates an old-fashioned romance, horrific depictions of war, or rich production values should find something to like about Cold Mountain. Though not ideal if you want a lightweight love story, it’s worth watching once.
Movie:
Cold Mountain is an occasionally great film, but the best word to describe it is “grueling.” Some of that feeling is appropriate, such as in the brutal opening war scene; unfortunately, more is due to it being overlong. While there are a handful of great moments, this isn...
DVD Reviews
Cold Mountain (2003)
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Renée Zellweger
Running Time: 2 hrs 34 mins
Rating: R
Due Out: April 3, 2012
Plot: As the Civil War nears its end, a Confederate soldier (Law) makes the long journey home to reunite with the woman he loves (Kidman).
Who’S It For? Anyone who appreciates an old-fashioned romance, horrific depictions of war, or rich production values should find something to like about Cold Mountain. Though not ideal if you want a lightweight love story, it’s worth watching once.
Movie:
Cold Mountain is an occasionally great film, but the best word to describe it is “grueling.” Some of that feeling is appropriate, such as in the brutal opening war scene; unfortunately, more is due to it being overlong. While there are a handful of great moments, this isn...
- 4/3/2012
- by Shane T. Nier
- The Scorecard Review
A new image of "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" has gone online. The picture sees Benjamin Walker's character of America's 16th President addressing the crowd in the Timur Bekmambetov-directed film.
"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" revolves around the title character whose mother was killed by vampires. Later, the title character resolves to end slavery in the country. According to The New York Times, the vampires are involved in the slave trade but they are not all bad.
This leads to a moral dilemma for the President. In relation to the involvement of the vampires, a State Historian is hired to help the filmmakers slip the blood-sucker creatures in the Lincoln story with minimum damage to the historical record.
Also to the site, costume designers Carlo Poggioli and Varya Avdyushko admitted they have made or rented more than 8,000 costumes for the film. The costumes are planned to be shredded or burnt...
"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" revolves around the title character whose mother was killed by vampires. Later, the title character resolves to end slavery in the country. According to The New York Times, the vampires are involved in the slave trade but they are not all bad.
This leads to a moral dilemma for the President. In relation to the involvement of the vampires, a State Historian is hired to help the filmmakers slip the blood-sucker creatures in the Lincoln story with minimum damage to the historical record.
Also to the site, costume designers Carlo Poggioli and Varya Avdyushko admitted they have made or rented more than 8,000 costumes for the film. The costumes are planned to be shredded or burnt...
- 5/10/2011
- by AceShowbiz.com
- Aceshowbiz
This review was written for the festival screening of "Silk".Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival screening of "Silk".Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than "Silk" has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid "The Red Violin") stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than Silk has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid The Red Violin) stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
TORONTO -- The arresting European and Japanese locales, period costumes, sets and props all seem poised for a much richer and more significant movie than Silk has to offer. You search its images, which seems to have more to do with mid-19th century methods of international travel than characters or events, for any sort of action to glom on to. Few movies ever have gone to such a length to tell so slight -- and, worse, unengaging -- a story.
Based on Alessandro Baricco's 1996 best-selling novel, this film by Francois Girard (who made the splendid The Red Violin) stages a love story with an O. Henry ending against the world of the silk trade in the 1860s. It's an exotic world that requires a man to make a dangerous journey from France to Japan -- prior to the Suez Canal -- no less than three times, estranging him from his wife back home but creating a romantic obsession with a Japanese girl who lives "at the end of the world."
Stars Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley are ill-suited to this period. They are modern actors who feel out of time and place despite their costumes, and their talents are poorly used by this moody tone poem of far-flung loves. Audiences will find the whole thing an alien puzzle, filled with wondrous images that are little more than postcards from the past. Knightley's current popularity and the book's admirers may create enough buzz for a solid opening. After that, boxoffice looks to be light.
Pitt's Herve Joncour appears headed for a run-of-the-mill military career until a trader named Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) plucks him from the army to journey to Africa to buy silkworm eggs to replace those ruined by a mysterious disease in Europe. However, the epidemic reaches Africa before Herve does. So the only hope for the silk mills that has caused Herve's hometown to prosper is for him to journey to Japan, a country entirely closed to foreigners, to buy pristine eggs.
His three trips to Japan, each increasingly more dangerous, drives an unspoken wedge between him and his wife, Helene (Knightley), who remains childless. Meanwhile, in a snowy mountain village in Japan, where he is led each time blindfolded, for whatever reason, he falls under the protection of a powerful baron, Hara Jubei (Koji Yakusho).
The baron's concubine intrigues him. On his second visit he is gifted with his own girl of ethereal beauty (Sei Ashina). Their lovemaking is as photogenic as Girard can make it.
Even Baldabiou warns him against a third visit. A rebellion has broken out in Japan. Yet Herve's obsession with The Girl forces him to return. So again, for a third time, the film treats the viewer to the train trip from Vienna to Moravia, a caravan to cross 3,000 miles of Russian steppes, a boat ride in a smuggler's ship and that blindfolded horse trip up the mountain. It's a long way to go to get laid.
You learn little about the silk trade or these characters or the political tumult and war that make the journeys so tricky. All Girard and co-writer Michael Golding seek out are gorgeous shots of travel, exotic lands, the picturesque French village (actually shot in Italian towns), the silk factory, steaming bathing pools in Japan surrounded by snow and lovemaking at each end of the earth.
What a gorgeous coffee table book these images would make. But what a dull movie.
SILK
Picturehouse
Picturehouse presents in association with Alliance Atlantis/Asmik Ace Entertainment/Mesuda Film a Rhombus Media/Fandango/Bee Vine Pidctures presentation
Credits:
Director: Francois Girard
Writers: Francois Girard, Michael Golding
Based on the novel by: Alessandro Baricco
Producers: Niv Fichman, Nandine Luque, Domenico Procacci, Sonoko Sakai
Executive producers: Tom Yoda, Yashshi Shina, Akira Ishii, Camela Galano, Jonathan Debin, Patrice Theroux, Alessandro Baricco
Director of photography: Alain Dostie
Production designer: Francois Seguin
Costume designers: Carlo Poggioli, Kazuko Kurosawa
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Herve Joncour: Michael Pitt
Helene Joncour: Keira Knightley
Baldabiou: Alfred Molina
Hara Jubei: Koji Yakusho
Madame Blanche: Miki Nakatani
Ludovic: Mark Rendall
Girl: Sei Ashina
Running time -- 109 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/12/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Opens Thursday, Dec. 25
It's of the year's more eagerly anticipated movies, but the journey to "Cold Mountain" may be a chilly one for adult audiences. Hewing closely to the spirit of Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel, the movie is a somber, often downbeat depiction of human savagery and treachery as well as of human kindness.
Writer-director Anthony Minghella has meticulously crafted an intimate epic that, while it does have a somewhat cerebral tone, is clearly determined to translate Frazier's vision of human hope amid great brutality to the screen. And as he did with "The English Patient", Minghella has made a war movie that is likely to intrigue women more than men. Macho pride is viewed as lethal folly, leading to unimaginable hardship and tragedy that will take generations to heal.
A solid cast plays the backwoods Southerners extremely well. Nicole Kidman is allowed to look entirely too glamorous for the period and her character's dire situation, but she does capture the yearning and hopes of a young woman waiting for her soldier to return from an increasingly senseless war. Renee Zellweger completely disappears into the person of the feisty farm girl who rescues Kidman's helpless gentlewoman farmer. While Jude Law is at times cool and remote, he makes you feel a soldier's war weariness and his determination to walk home from the battlefield.
In his novel, Frazier transposed Homer's "The Odyssey" into the waning days of the Civil War, where a wounded Confederate soldier searches for his home. Frazier drew upon stories handed down by his North Carolina ancestors to recount the journey of Inman (Law), who walks out of an army hospital for a journey through mountains and forests rife with danger. Both the book and movie cut between the episodic tales of the soldier's survival and the struggles of the woman he left behind.
Inman met Ada (Kidman) just before war broke out, so their memories of each other are few but all the more precious for their brevity. Ada's minister-father (Donald Sutherland) brought her to Cold Mountain, where he wanted to preach. But his sudden death leaves his daughter, schooled in music and French, overwhelmed by a farm she does not know how to tend. A kind neighbor (Kathy Baker) sends to her aid a tenacious local woman named Ruby (Zellweger), who may be uneducated but is tougher than most men and know every trick to running a homestead.
Inman sticks to back roads as the Home Guard roams the countryside looking for deserters to shoot. In his travels, he encounters a randy and disgraced minister Philip Seymour Hoffman), a backwoods redneck (Giovanni Ribisi) lording over a family of sluts, a frightened young widow (Natalie Portman) at the mercy of federal raiders and a guardian angel disguised as a goat keeper (Eileen Atkins).
Meanwhile, Ada and Ruby must fend off the local Home Guard, led by a treacherous Teague (Ray Winstone) and his blond-tressed henchman Bosie (Charlie Hunnam), and deal with the surprise homecoming of Ruby's wayward, fiddle-playing father (Brendan Gleeson), long thought dead but returned as a deserter along with two fellow musicians (Jack White and Ethan Suplee).
Minghella has altered and in some instances improved on the novel's episodes, sharpening the emotional connection between the long-separated lovers and underscoring the perils of a land robbed of its manners and morals by war. Combat scenes early in the film -- often shot tightly to emphasize the chaos of murderous hand-to-hand fighting in mud -- and the aftermath where flies buzz over piles of ruined corpses bring home the unfathomable carnage of the Civil War. This is in contrast to Inman's memories of the outbreak of war three years earlier, when Cold Mountain's youth all shouted with great enthusiasm, "We got our war!"
Minghella's production team -- including cinematographer John Seale, editor Walter Murch, costume designer Ann Roth (assisted by Carlo Poggioli) and production designer Dante Ferretti -- re-create in rural Romania the terrifying yet rugged beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains community and the hardscrabble wilderness through which Inman wanders. Gabriel Yared's often melancholy but always melodic music filters through folk tunes of the period, making the score feel organic to the movie.
COLD MOUNTAIN
Miramax Films
A Mirage Enterprises/Bona Fide production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Anthony Minghella
Producers: Sydney Pollack, William Horberg, Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa
Executive producers: Iain Smith, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Osher
Director of photography: John Seale
Production designer: Dante Ferretti
Music: Gabriel Yared
Costume designer: Ann Roth, Carlo Poggioli
Editor: Walter Murch
Cast:
Inman: Jude Law
Ada: Nicole Kidman
Ruby: Renee Zellweger
Maddy: Eileen Atkins
Stobrod: Brendan Gleeson
Rev. Veasey: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Sara: Natalie Portman
Junior: Giovanni Ribisi
Rev. Monroe: Donald Sutherland
Teague: Ray Winstone
Sally: Kathy Baker
Esco: James Gammon
Bosie: Charlie Hunnam
Running time -- 154 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
It's of the year's more eagerly anticipated movies, but the journey to "Cold Mountain" may be a chilly one for adult audiences. Hewing closely to the spirit of Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel, the movie is a somber, often downbeat depiction of human savagery and treachery as well as of human kindness.
Writer-director Anthony Minghella has meticulously crafted an intimate epic that, while it does have a somewhat cerebral tone, is clearly determined to translate Frazier's vision of human hope amid great brutality to the screen. And as he did with "The English Patient", Minghella has made a war movie that is likely to intrigue women more than men. Macho pride is viewed as lethal folly, leading to unimaginable hardship and tragedy that will take generations to heal.
A solid cast plays the backwoods Southerners extremely well. Nicole Kidman is allowed to look entirely too glamorous for the period and her character's dire situation, but she does capture the yearning and hopes of a young woman waiting for her soldier to return from an increasingly senseless war. Renee Zellweger completely disappears into the person of the feisty farm girl who rescues Kidman's helpless gentlewoman farmer. While Jude Law is at times cool and remote, he makes you feel a soldier's war weariness and his determination to walk home from the battlefield.
In his novel, Frazier transposed Homer's "The Odyssey" into the waning days of the Civil War, where a wounded Confederate soldier searches for his home. Frazier drew upon stories handed down by his North Carolina ancestors to recount the journey of Inman (Law), who walks out of an army hospital for a journey through mountains and forests rife with danger. Both the book and movie cut between the episodic tales of the soldier's survival and the struggles of the woman he left behind.
Inman met Ada (Kidman) just before war broke out, so their memories of each other are few but all the more precious for their brevity. Ada's minister-father (Donald Sutherland) brought her to Cold Mountain, where he wanted to preach. But his sudden death leaves his daughter, schooled in music and French, overwhelmed by a farm she does not know how to tend. A kind neighbor (Kathy Baker) sends to her aid a tenacious local woman named Ruby (Zellweger), who may be uneducated but is tougher than most men and know every trick to running a homestead.
Inman sticks to back roads as the Home Guard roams the countryside looking for deserters to shoot. In his travels, he encounters a randy and disgraced minister Philip Seymour Hoffman), a backwoods redneck (Giovanni Ribisi) lording over a family of sluts, a frightened young widow (Natalie Portman) at the mercy of federal raiders and a guardian angel disguised as a goat keeper (Eileen Atkins).
Meanwhile, Ada and Ruby must fend off the local Home Guard, led by a treacherous Teague (Ray Winstone) and his blond-tressed henchman Bosie (Charlie Hunnam), and deal with the surprise homecoming of Ruby's wayward, fiddle-playing father (Brendan Gleeson), long thought dead but returned as a deserter along with two fellow musicians (Jack White and Ethan Suplee).
Minghella has altered and in some instances improved on the novel's episodes, sharpening the emotional connection between the long-separated lovers and underscoring the perils of a land robbed of its manners and morals by war. Combat scenes early in the film -- often shot tightly to emphasize the chaos of murderous hand-to-hand fighting in mud -- and the aftermath where flies buzz over piles of ruined corpses bring home the unfathomable carnage of the Civil War. This is in contrast to Inman's memories of the outbreak of war three years earlier, when Cold Mountain's youth all shouted with great enthusiasm, "We got our war!"
Minghella's production team -- including cinematographer John Seale, editor Walter Murch, costume designer Ann Roth (assisted by Carlo Poggioli) and production designer Dante Ferretti -- re-create in rural Romania the terrifying yet rugged beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains community and the hardscrabble wilderness through which Inman wanders. Gabriel Yared's often melancholy but always melodic music filters through folk tunes of the period, making the score feel organic to the movie.
COLD MOUNTAIN
Miramax Films
A Mirage Enterprises/Bona Fide production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Anthony Minghella
Producers: Sydney Pollack, William Horberg, Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa
Executive producers: Iain Smith, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Osher
Director of photography: John Seale
Production designer: Dante Ferretti
Music: Gabriel Yared
Costume designer: Ann Roth, Carlo Poggioli
Editor: Walter Murch
Cast:
Inman: Jude Law
Ada: Nicole Kidman
Ruby: Renee Zellweger
Maddy: Eileen Atkins
Stobrod: Brendan Gleeson
Rev. Veasey: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Sara: Natalie Portman
Junior: Giovanni Ribisi
Rev. Monroe: Donald Sutherland
Teague: Ray Winstone
Sally: Kathy Baker
Esco: James Gammon
Bosie: Charlie Hunnam
Running time -- 154 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.