10. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The first novel in Philip Roth’s American Trilogy, American Pastoral is a recollection of the life of one Seymour “Swede” Levov, a picture-perfect citizen. Levov’s peaceful upper-middle-class life in the post-war prosperity years was disrupted by the turmoil of the 1960s, with his daughter’s going terrorist delivering the biggest blow to him.
9. 1984 by George Orwell
The one dystopia to rule them all, 1984 was George Orwell’s final novel. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of personality cults, police states, and total surveillance; a story about a little man living in a world where truth and facts are manipulated to the point where these words don’t carry any meaning anymore.
8. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy’s fifth novel, is stuck between being an anti-Western and the Great American Novel.
The first novel in Philip Roth’s American Trilogy, American Pastoral is a recollection of the life of one Seymour “Swede” Levov, a picture-perfect citizen. Levov’s peaceful upper-middle-class life in the post-war prosperity years was disrupted by the turmoil of the 1960s, with his daughter’s going terrorist delivering the biggest blow to him.
9. 1984 by George Orwell
The one dystopia to rule them all, 1984 was George Orwell’s final novel. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of personality cults, police states, and total surveillance; a story about a little man living in a world where truth and facts are manipulated to the point where these words don’t carry any meaning anymore.
8. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy’s fifth novel, is stuck between being an anti-Western and the Great American Novel.
- 5/5/2024
- by dean-black@startefacts.com (Dean Black)
- STartefacts.com
Book Soup has canceled a March 27 appearance by Stranger Things actor and author Brett Gelman.
The store claimed that escalating threats “became a safety risk we were not willing to take.” The store has hosted many controversial authors over the years and has rarely canceled, but said “the current charged environment” forced its hand.
Gelman has been outspoken in his support of Israel in the wake of Oct. 7, but claims the cancellations on his book tour were because of his emphasis on his “Jewish identity.”
Gelman’s book, The Terrifying Realm of the Possible: Nearly True Stories, is not overtly political and in the vein of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. The anthology weaves five interconnected short stories told through the perspective of five different Jewish characters. Gelman describes it as a “return to the literature that I loved and that I felt wasn’t being represented — dark Jewish humor.
The store claimed that escalating threats “became a safety risk we were not willing to take.” The store has hosted many controversial authors over the years and has rarely canceled, but said “the current charged environment” forced its hand.
Gelman has been outspoken in his support of Israel in the wake of Oct. 7, but claims the cancellations on his book tour were because of his emphasis on his “Jewish identity.”
Gelman’s book, The Terrifying Realm of the Possible: Nearly True Stories, is not overtly political and in the vein of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. The anthology weaves five interconnected short stories told through the perspective of five different Jewish characters. Gelman describes it as a “return to the literature that I loved and that I felt wasn’t being represented — dark Jewish humor.
- 3/7/2024
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
On Feb. 20, 1939, more than 20,000 yelling, cheering people packed New York City’s Madison Square Garden. They weren’t there for a basketball game or a concert. They were supporters of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization that was ready for an alternative to democracy. They waved Swastika flags and raised quite a ruckus. And they were hardly alone in their mission, as the new PBS American Experience documentary Nazi Town, USA makes abundantly clear.
While most Americans identified fascism and the Third Reich as existential threats to civilization, many...
While most Americans identified fascism and the Third Reich as existential threats to civilization, many...
- 1/23/2024
- by Chris Vognar
- Rollingstone.com
Renowned French auteur Arnaud Desplechin, whose latest film “Brother and Sister” competed at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, is currently wrapping his next directorial effort, “Spectateurs!”
Les Films du Losange, which handles French distribution and international sales rights to the title, has unveiled a first still (above) in the run-up to the Unifrance Rendez-Vous With French Cinema market, where it will introduce the film to buyers.
The hybrid project weaves documentary and fiction with a cast including Milo Machado Graner, the young breakthrough actor of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” and well-known French actors Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) and Françoise Lebrun (“The Book of Solutions”).
Now in post, the docufiction is described by Les Films du Losange as “a love letter to cinema, freely inspired by the director’s own discovery and passion for cinema.”
A Croisette regular, Desplechin previously directed “Deception,” an adaptation of...
Les Films du Losange, which handles French distribution and international sales rights to the title, has unveiled a first still (above) in the run-up to the Unifrance Rendez-Vous With French Cinema market, where it will introduce the film to buyers.
The hybrid project weaves documentary and fiction with a cast including Milo Machado Graner, the young breakthrough actor of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” and well-known French actors Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) and Françoise Lebrun (“The Book of Solutions”).
Now in post, the docufiction is described by Les Films du Losange as “a love letter to cinema, freely inspired by the director’s own discovery and passion for cinema.”
A Croisette regular, Desplechin previously directed “Deception,” an adaptation of...
- 1/4/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Ruth Seymour, the longtime leader of Santa Monica-based public radio station Kcrw died Friday, station president Jennifer Ferro confirmed to Deadline. She was 88.
Seymour was at the from station 1977 to 2010. In that time she transformed it from a quality radio outlet run out of a junior high school classroom to one of the most influential NPR stations in the country produced in a state of the art studio at Santa Monica College.
Seymour initially came on as a consultant and became General Manager in 1978. Her ascension to a management role roughly coincided with the station moving to a powerful new transmitter, which greatly expanded its reach.
At about the same time, National Public Radio launched Morning Edition. Seymour decided to make a morning block of the 2-hour show, running it three times 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. The move helped Kcrw become a mainstay in many Angelenos’ lives.
“That way...
Seymour was at the from station 1977 to 2010. In that time she transformed it from a quality radio outlet run out of a junior high school classroom to one of the most influential NPR stations in the country produced in a state of the art studio at Santa Monica College.
Seymour initially came on as a consultant and became General Manager in 1978. Her ascension to a management role roughly coincided with the station moving to a powerful new transmitter, which greatly expanded its reach.
At about the same time, National Public Radio launched Morning Edition. Seymour decided to make a morning block of the 2-hour show, running it three times 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. The move helped Kcrw become a mainstay in many Angelenos’ lives.
“That way...
- 12/22/2023
- by Tom Tapp
- Deadline Film + TV
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Age of Panic (Justine Triet)
In her feature debut, recent Palme D’Or Winner Justine Triet charts a young French couple’s marital drama against the backdrop of 2012’s presidential election. Fusing fiction and vérité filmmaking tactics, it stars beloved French actors Vincent Macaigne and Laetitia Dosch, as well as Arthur Harari, Triet’s parter and co-screenwriter on her latest film Anatomy of a Fall, which took the top prize at Cannes this year and is arriving in U.S. theaters, courtesy Neon, today.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)
Like Judy Blume’s treasured young adult classic, Kelly Fremon Craig’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret begins in...
Age of Panic (Justine Triet)
In her feature debut, recent Palme D’Or Winner Justine Triet charts a young French couple’s marital drama against the backdrop of 2012’s presidential election. Fusing fiction and vérité filmmaking tactics, it stars beloved French actors Vincent Macaigne and Laetitia Dosch, as well as Arthur Harari, Triet’s parter and co-screenwriter on her latest film Anatomy of a Fall, which took the top prize at Cannes this year and is arriving in U.S. theaters, courtesy Neon, today.
Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)
Like Judy Blume’s treasured young adult classic, Kelly Fremon Craig’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret begins in...
- 10/13/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Penélope Cruz is set to star as Olga, a writer forced to give up her artistic ambitions when her husband suddenly leaves her and their two young daughters, in Isabel Coixet’s English-language adaptation of Italian author Elena Ferrante’s “The Days of Abandonment.”
The deal to make the film, which is now in development, was signed before the SAG-AFTRA strike. While Cruz did not attend the Venice Film Festival, she elicited raves from critics on the Lido for her performance in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” as the angry, lonely, grief-ravaged Laura Ferrari, emotionally estranged from her husband Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver).
“The Days of Abandonment,” which will transpose the novel’s original Italian setting to America, reunites the two top Spanish talents following their collaboration on another U.S.-set film, the 2008 drama “Elegy” an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novella “The Dying Animal,” about an affair between a...
The deal to make the film, which is now in development, was signed before the SAG-AFTRA strike. While Cruz did not attend the Venice Film Festival, she elicited raves from critics on the Lido for her performance in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” as the angry, lonely, grief-ravaged Laura Ferrari, emotionally estranged from her husband Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver).
“The Days of Abandonment,” which will transpose the novel’s original Italian setting to America, reunites the two top Spanish talents following their collaboration on another U.S.-set film, the 2008 drama “Elegy” an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novella “The Dying Animal,” about an affair between a...
- 9/6/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli and Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Ewan McGregor not only received a lifetime achievement award, but also much love and adoration during a brief, but emotional ceremony at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Saturday night.
During the event at the big cinema celebration in the Czech spa town, organizers and fans feted the Scottish actor, director and producer as the President’s Award for lifetime achievement was bestowed upon him. On Friday’s opening night of the fest, Alicia Vikander received the same award, while Russell Crowe was honored with the festival’s Crystal Globe.
A warm welcome to McGregor by a host was followed by a particularly well-received career highlights reel that repeatedly drew laughs and cheers for scenes from the likes of the Star Wars universe, I Love You Phillip Morris and, of course, Trainspotting.
“This is like a dream to see that,” McGregor told the audience at the Hotel Thermal, the...
During the event at the big cinema celebration in the Czech spa town, organizers and fans feted the Scottish actor, director and producer as the President’s Award for lifetime achievement was bestowed upon him. On Friday’s opening night of the fest, Alicia Vikander received the same award, while Russell Crowe was honored with the festival’s Crystal Globe.
A warm welcome to McGregor by a host was followed by a particularly well-received career highlights reel that repeatedly drew laughs and cheers for scenes from the likes of the Star Wars universe, I Love You Phillip Morris and, of course, Trainspotting.
“This is like a dream to see that,” McGregor told the audience at the Hotel Thermal, the...
- 7/1/2023
- by Georg Szalai
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: Oscar-shortlisted Panamanian filmmaker Abner Benaim (Plaza Catedral) is gearing up to direct a feature adaptation of Nemesis, the final bestseller by Philip Roth to be published prior to the famed author’s 2018 passing.
Dealing with such timely themes as an epidemic and antisemitism, Nemesis was described in The New Yorker as having “the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama.” The novel published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October of 2010 is set in the summer of 1944, examining the impact of a polio epidemic on a Newark, NJ community and its children.
Peter Glanz (The Longest Week) adapted the screenplay. Pablo Larraín, Juan de Dios Larraín and Andrew Hevia will produce for Fabula — the production company behind Foreign Language Oscar winner A Fantastic Woman, the Kristen Stewart starrer Spencer, and the upcoming drama Maria starring Angelina Jolie. Fernando Loureiro produces for Tigresa.
Dealing with such timely themes as an epidemic and antisemitism, Nemesis was described in The New Yorker as having “the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama.” The novel published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October of 2010 is set in the summer of 1944, examining the impact of a polio epidemic on a Newark, NJ community and its children.
Peter Glanz (The Longest Week) adapted the screenplay. Pablo Larraín, Juan de Dios Larraín and Andrew Hevia will produce for Fabula — the production company behind Foreign Language Oscar winner A Fantastic Woman, the Kristen Stewart starrer Spencer, and the upcoming drama Maria starring Angelina Jolie. Fernando Loureiro produces for Tigresa.
- 5/16/2023
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Give it up for the marvelous Ms. Myerson!
On The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 5 Episode 6, Susie finally gets her due for being the best damn manager in show business.
The show is careening towards its finale with (even more!) new characters and enough time jumps to make your head spin.
This episode will likely be polarizing for viewers. Some may love it, applauding its ambitious narrative style, while others may hate it, finding it too convoluted to enjoy.
Like many of the Susie stories told by the comedians after the ceremony, the truth likely lies somewhere in between.
Seeing Susie acknowledged and praised was satisfying, but seeing how bitter and jaded she'd become was hard.
This definitely played like a "Best Of" Susie reel. With all the time-jumping, though, we're getting less grounded and more detached from the story set in the present.
Everything Midge has been going through with...
On The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 5 Episode 6, Susie finally gets her due for being the best damn manager in show business.
The show is careening towards its finale with (even more!) new characters and enough time jumps to make your head spin.
This episode will likely be polarizing for viewers. Some may love it, applauding its ambitious narrative style, while others may hate it, finding it too convoluted to enjoy.
Like many of the Susie stories told by the comedians after the ceremony, the truth likely lies somewhere in between.
Seeing Susie acknowledged and praised was satisfying, but seeing how bitter and jaded she'd become was hard.
This definitely played like a "Best Of" Susie reel. With all the time-jumping, though, we're getting less grounded and more detached from the story set in the present.
Everything Midge has been going through with...
- 5/5/2023
- by Mary Littlejohn
- TVfanatic
Show creator and actress Aleeza Chanowitz says she writes what she knows — and what she knows is something TV has rarely offered when it comes to stories about Jewish women.
Premiering at Sundance on Tuesday as part of the Indie Episodic Program, her new series Chanshi is drawn from her own experiences as a 21-year-old woman born in Brooklyn who moves from her observant Jewish community to Jerusalem. After her titular character Chanshi decides her engagement to a nice man she barely knows — and her future as a “walking uterus” — isn’t what she wants, she sets off to Israel to actually get what she wants. And for right now, that thing is to own her sexuality.
Moved to Israel, Chanshi — having surprised her best friend, Noki, who is facing nuptials of her own — embeds herself in the world of Olim, a community of Jewish immigrants from the United States...
Premiering at Sundance on Tuesday as part of the Indie Episodic Program, her new series Chanshi is drawn from her own experiences as a 21-year-old woman born in Brooklyn who moves from her observant Jewish community to Jerusalem. After her titular character Chanshi decides her engagement to a nice man she barely knows — and her future as a “walking uterus” — isn’t what she wants, she sets off to Israel to actually get what she wants. And for right now, that thing is to own her sexuality.
Moved to Israel, Chanshi — having surprised her best friend, Noki, who is facing nuptials of her own — embeds herself in the world of Olim, a community of Jewish immigrants from the United States...
- 1/25/2023
- by Abbey White
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2022, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.
Just hours prior a friend asked what’s on my best-of-2022 list. (This sounds made-up; I promise it actually happened.) I could run it down with exacting detail, each entry signaling a postmark—personal, temporal, geographic, formal—in the year before one escaped me. Absolutely, entirely, gone as if never seen. Consulting my Notes app let all attendant thoughts and feelings rush back—where and when seen, fulfilled or complicated desires, fruitful conversations (including with its director) and strong recommendations all the time since.
It is a great film. Have I thought about it more than Tár (stylized as TÁR), which but minutes prior I’d asked if my companion saw? Clearly not. Tár (stylized as TÁR) also doesn’t appear here. Much as I liked Todd Field...
Just hours prior a friend asked what’s on my best-of-2022 list. (This sounds made-up; I promise it actually happened.) I could run it down with exacting detail, each entry signaling a postmark—personal, temporal, geographic, formal—in the year before one escaped me. Absolutely, entirely, gone as if never seen. Consulting my Notes app let all attendant thoughts and feelings rush back—where and when seen, fulfilled or complicated desires, fruitful conversations (including with its director) and strong recommendations all the time since.
It is a great film. Have I thought about it more than Tár (stylized as TÁR), which but minutes prior I’d asked if my companion saw? Clearly not. Tár (stylized as TÁR) also doesn’t appear here. Much as I liked Todd Field...
- 1/12/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
After searching for treasure in the Amazon and venturing to the far reaches of the galaxy, James Gray is returning home. Armageddon Time finds the director telling a partially autobiographical story as it relates to the life of Jewish family growing up in 1980s Queens. Led by Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb, Tovah Feldshuh, Ryan Sell, and Anthony Hopkins, the film premiered at Cannes Film Festival and after a few fall festival stops, it’ll come to theaters in late October. Ahead of the release, the first trailer has now arrived.
David Katz said in his review, “It finds the specific in micro-gradations of the specific rather than suggest one family’s struggle represents anything more than itself. It’s a deeply observed New York story airing a middle-class Jewish family’s dirty laundry for all to see. The relevance of bringing up these more symbolic family...
David Katz said in his review, “It finds the specific in micro-gradations of the specific rather than suggest one family’s struggle represents anything more than itself. It’s a deeply observed New York story airing a middle-class Jewish family’s dirty laundry for all to see. The relevance of bringing up these more symbolic family...
- 9/6/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
The Irish actor is compelling as a womanising professor who begins to realise his best days are over, with added Leonard Cohen
If Philip Roth had ever switched his attention from the great American novel and decided to write a lightweight indie dramedy, it might have turned out like this. Gabriel Byrne stars as poetry professor Samuel O’Shea, who is a cross between one of Roth’s protagonists and Keith Richards: a hard-drinking self-absorbed womaniser with a penchant for paisley scarves and chunky silver rings. It’s an insubstantial little film with slimly conceived characters, but Byrne adds at least 10 points to its Iq score and makes it twice as watchable.
Death of a Ladies’ Man begins promisingly enough when Sam walks into his Montreal apartment to find wife number two (she is half his age) in bed with another (even younger) man. Is it finally dawning on...
If Philip Roth had ever switched his attention from the great American novel and decided to write a lightweight indie dramedy, it might have turned out like this. Gabriel Byrne stars as poetry professor Samuel O’Shea, who is a cross between one of Roth’s protagonists and Keith Richards: a hard-drinking self-absorbed womaniser with a penchant for paisley scarves and chunky silver rings. It’s an insubstantial little film with slimly conceived characters, but Byrne adds at least 10 points to its Iq score and makes it twice as watchable.
Death of a Ladies’ Man begins promisingly enough when Sam walks into his Montreal apartment to find wife number two (she is half his age) in bed with another (even younger) man. Is it finally dawning on...
- 7/18/2022
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
Netflix is developing a miniseries based on John Steinbeck’s massive 700-page novel “East of Eden,” as reported on Tuesday. Florence Pugh is the first cast member announced, though it is unclear who she’ll be playing. (Will a modern spin change the story—a California tale loosely based on the Biblical trope of Cain and Abel—into the story of two sisters? Crazier things have happened!)
The most exciting news, however, is how this production is “keeping it in the family,” so to speak. Zoe Kazan has been announced as writer and executive producer. Her grandfather, the legendary Elia Kazan, directed the 1955 adaptation starring James Dean, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Burl Ives, and Jo Van Fleet, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Kazan was nominated for Best Director, Paul Osborn was nominated for Best Screenplay, and Dean was nominated for Best Actor, posthumously.
Zoe Kazan’s last...
The most exciting news, however, is how this production is “keeping it in the family,” so to speak. Zoe Kazan has been announced as writer and executive producer. Her grandfather, the legendary Elia Kazan, directed the 1955 adaptation starring James Dean, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Burl Ives, and Jo Van Fleet, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Kazan was nominated for Best Director, Paul Osborn was nominated for Best Screenplay, and Dean was nominated for Best Actor, posthumously.
Zoe Kazan’s last...
- 6/22/2022
- by Jordan Hoffman
- Gold Derby
It is lonely being an Anglophone Arnaud Desplechin fan, let alone one based in the U.K. A strong cult generated in the aftermath of his ’00s arthouse hits Kings and Queen and A Christmas Tale survives, but in terms of a theatrical release, his newer work will play once or twice at one-off screenings in the US, then fall to be retrieved (or ignored) in a VOD content library. And in Blighty they have lately got harsh, if uncomprehending reviews, creating further invisibility.
If the quality of Ismäel’s Ghosts, Oh, Mercy! and Deception denotes no fall-off, there’s still the impression Desplechin could use a broader hit to remind everyone how good he is, even as his reputation and industry success in France remains robust; My Golden Days had this exact impact after Jimmy P. disappointed some. Enter Brother and Sister.
Despite reports of boos at its Cannes screening,...
If the quality of Ismäel’s Ghosts, Oh, Mercy! and Deception denotes no fall-off, there’s still the impression Desplechin could use a broader hit to remind everyone how good he is, even as his reputation and industry success in France remains robust; My Golden Days had this exact impact after Jimmy P. disappointed some. Enter Brother and Sister.
Despite reports of boos at its Cannes screening,...
- 5/22/2022
- by David Katz
- The Film Stage
The brother and sister in Arnaud Desplechin’s “Brother and Sister” can’t stand each other. The sister, played by Marion Cotillard, is Alice, a theatre superstar playing to packed houses in an adaptation of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” The brother, played by Melvil Poupaud, is Louis, an award-winning author and poet.
Alice resented it when his fame briefly overtook hers, but there is more to their mutual loathing than that. For mysterious, complicated reasons, they haven’t spoken in 20 years, and when they talk about each other to other people, Alice smiles a smile of pure venom, and Louis explodes in vicious rage. What are they to do, then, when Louis has to return to his hometown of Lille to visit his dying parents? Will he and Alice be forced to confront each other at long last?
It’s a juicy premise, but Desplechin and his co-writer, Julie Peyr,...
Alice resented it when his fame briefly overtook hers, but there is more to their mutual loathing than that. For mysterious, complicated reasons, they haven’t spoken in 20 years, and when they talk about each other to other people, Alice smiles a smile of pure venom, and Louis explodes in vicious rage. What are they to do, then, when Louis has to return to his hometown of Lille to visit his dying parents? Will he and Alice be forced to confront each other at long last?
It’s a juicy premise, but Desplechin and his co-writer, Julie Peyr,...
- 5/21/2022
- by Nicholas Barber
- The Wrap
Whatever other flaws “Brother and Sister” may have, you absolutely cannot accuse it of being slow to build. Within its first 10 minutes, two estranged siblings bawl each other out at a dead child’s wake, one declaring the other “an indecent monster”; a screechingly staged single-vehicle car crash imperils an elderly couple and paralyzes a teenage driver; then, a barrelling truck at the scene brings further tragedy. Even before we’ve had time to gather the principals’ names, French director Arnaud Desplechin’s latest dysfunctional family tableau makes no bones about its dialed-to-11 melodramatic agenda; that attention-grabbing intensity soon dissipates, however, in the gauzy, maudlin study of toxic sibling relations that ensues. Marion Cotillard’s headlining presence may pique international interest in a talky piece likely to play better on home turf.
The outward signs were promising for Desplechin’s swift follow-up to his stuffy Philip Roth adaptation “Deception,” which...
The outward signs were promising for Desplechin’s swift follow-up to his stuffy Philip Roth adaptation “Deception,” which...
- 5/20/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Armageddon Time is the sort of film usually invoked as a “portrait of the nation” or “state of the union address,” something taking the temperature of a country—most likely the United States—at a particular time in history. But it’s also a work that makes self-consciousness a virtue: its wonderful writer-director, James Gray, is informed up to his eyes about the virtues and pitfalls of films like these, and here makes something so idiosyncratically his own but that audiences and critics might still mislabel with one of those aforementioned ideas.
It finds the specific in micro-gradations of the specific rather than suggest one family’s struggle represents anything more than itself. It’s a deeply observed New York story airing a middle-class Jewish family’s dirty laundry for all to see. The relevance of bringing up these more symbolic family struggles is this: Armageddon Time could well be one in a lesser guise,...
It finds the specific in micro-gradations of the specific rather than suggest one family’s struggle represents anything more than itself. It’s a deeply observed New York story airing a middle-class Jewish family’s dirty laundry for all to see. The relevance of bringing up these more symbolic family struggles is this: Armageddon Time could well be one in a lesser guise,...
- 5/20/2022
- by David Katz
- The Film Stage
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)
The horrors of war are often told through male-centric narratives. Heroes who go through hell on the battlefield, brothers who sacrifice everything for each other, soldiers who return home scarred for life etc., all of which we’ve seen put on the big screen time and again. But wars are of course collective nightmares, tears in the fabric of history that leave no one–men, women, children–unscathed. This is the premise of Russian writer–director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature Beanpole, a radical relationship drama that examines the trauma of war from a distinctly female perspective. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: Ovid.tv
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Junta Yamaguchi)
The logistics behind Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes...
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)
The horrors of war are often told through male-centric narratives. Heroes who go through hell on the battlefield, brothers who sacrifice everything for each other, soldiers who return home scarred for life etc., all of which we’ve seen put on the big screen time and again. But wars are of course collective nightmares, tears in the fabric of history that leave no one–men, women, children–unscathed. This is the premise of Russian writer–director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature Beanpole, a radical relationship drama that examines the trauma of war from a distinctly female perspective. – Zhuo-Ning Su (full review)
Where to Stream: Ovid.tv
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Junta Yamaguchi)
The logistics behind Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes...
- 5/20/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
As the Canadian master of the perverse returns to Cannes with his first film in eight years, what better time to look back at his career, from Shivers to Crash
As you read this, I will be packing my tuxedo, linen shirts and several packets of ibuprofen for the Cannes film festival, which kicks off on Tuesday – back where it belongs in the calendar, in the springy blush of May. At last year’s pandemic-delayed July edition, a wildcard Palme d’Or win for Julia Ducournau’s genderqueer cars-and-carnality freakout Titane seemed an apt response to the humid conditions.
For viewers at home, Mubi’s Cannes takeover season offers some highlights from festivals past, from little-seen finds such as Mauritanian director Med Hondo’s powerful 1967 immigrant portrait Oh, Sun to more recent successes such as Laurent Cantet’s impassioned schoolroom debate The Class. Three of Mubi’s selections are from last year’s festivals,...
As you read this, I will be packing my tuxedo, linen shirts and several packets of ibuprofen for the Cannes film festival, which kicks off on Tuesday – back where it belongs in the calendar, in the springy blush of May. At last year’s pandemic-delayed July edition, a wildcard Palme d’Or win for Julia Ducournau’s genderqueer cars-and-carnality freakout Titane seemed an apt response to the humid conditions.
For viewers at home, Mubi’s Cannes takeover season offers some highlights from festivals past, from little-seen finds such as Mauritanian director Med Hondo’s powerful 1967 immigrant portrait Oh, Sun to more recent successes such as Laurent Cantet’s impassioned schoolroom debate The Class. Three of Mubi’s selections are from last year’s festivals,...
- 5/14/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- The Guardian - Film News
‘Brother and Sister’ Trailer: Arnaud Desplechin Directs Marion Cotillard in Cannes Competition Title
An Arnaud Desplechin film showing up in the Cannes competition lineup is as expected as the changing seasons. An Arnaud Desplechin film starring two titans of French cinema, Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud? Even more welcome. “Brother and Sister” is among the main competition titles heading to this year’s festival, which runs May 17 through May 28. Ahead of the film community’s big return to the Croisette, watch the first trailer for the film, exclusive to IndieWire, below.
In “Brother and Sister,” or “Frère et Soeur” as it’s known in French, Alice (Cotillard) and Louis (Poupaud) are siblings. She is an actress, while he was a teacher and a poet. For the past two decades, Alice has resented him, and they’ve remained estranged for the last 20 years. That is, until their parents become involved in a serious accident, and they are forced to toss blood under the bridge and reconcile anew.
In “Brother and Sister,” or “Frère et Soeur” as it’s known in French, Alice (Cotillard) and Louis (Poupaud) are siblings. She is an actress, while he was a teacher and a poet. For the past two decades, Alice has resented him, and they’ve remained estranged for the last 20 years. That is, until their parents become involved in a serious accident, and they are forced to toss blood under the bridge and reconcile anew.
- 5/9/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
There are times in nonfiction film when daring — and magic — arrives in a surprisingly simple and quiet way. “Hello, Bookstore” is a documentary about a venerable and beloved independent bookstore in Lenox, Mass. The place is called The Bookstore, and it first opened its doors in 1973. Ever since 1976, it has been owned and operated by Matthew Tannenbaum, a tall, solicitous, eccentric, engagingly garrulous lover of stories and words and literature who ritually answers the phone with a jaunty nerdish “Hello, bookstore!” Handsome in an eagle-ish way, with an easy smile and a full mop of gray curls, Tannenbaum, in his mid-70s, has the look and attitude of a debonair English professor, but he’s a more modest mensch than that — a boomer bibliophile without a glint of pretension, one who happily spends his days stocking shelves, poring over invoices he should have digitized years ago, and chatting away with his customers,...
- 5/9/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
It was just yesterday I remarked how Arnaud Desplechin’s recent work has been severely overlooked here in America, naming his riveting Philip Roth adaption Deception as the top pick to see this month. The French director is now back with another film at Cannes Film Festival, Frère et soeur aka Brother and Sister, and now the first trailer has arrived ahead of its premiere and subsequent release in France on May 20.
Led by Marion Cotillard & Melvil Poupaud, the film follows the siblings as they near the age of 50. Cotillard plays Alice, an actress, while Poupaud is Louis, a teacher and a poet. After being estranged for many years, the death of their parents brings them closer together. While the first trailer lacks English subtitles, it gives a strong sense of the drama at hand, in the story which Desplechin says explores coming to the end of a long-standing hatred.
Led by Marion Cotillard & Melvil Poupaud, the film follows the siblings as they near the age of 50. Cotillard plays Alice, an actress, while Poupaud is Louis, a teacher and a poet. After being estranged for many years, the death of their parents brings them closer together. While the first trailer lacks English subtitles, it gives a strong sense of the drama at hand, in the story which Desplechin says explores coming to the end of a long-standing hatred.
- 5/4/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Exclusive: Verve has inked 3x Oscar-nominated filmmaker, producer and former Focus Features Features CEO James Schamus in all areas.
Early in his career, Schamus formed a creative partnership with filmmaker Ang Lee, and would go on to found production company Good Machine alongside Ted Hope and David Linde, which eventually sold to Universal Studios. Following that in 2002, as the CEO of Focus Features, Schamus went on to oversee a bulk of award-winning and Oscar lauded, generation-defining classics such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain among many others.
Schamus was nominated as producer for Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, and received nods for Adapted Screenplay and Original Song (“A Love Before Time”) for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That pic, on which Schamus was also an EP, notched 4 Oscar wins including Best Foreign Language Film, Art Direction, Original Score, and Cinematography.
In addition to his Oscar nominations,...
Early in his career, Schamus formed a creative partnership with filmmaker Ang Lee, and would go on to found production company Good Machine alongside Ted Hope and David Linde, which eventually sold to Universal Studios. Following that in 2002, as the CEO of Focus Features, Schamus went on to oversee a bulk of award-winning and Oscar lauded, generation-defining classics such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain among many others.
Schamus was nominated as producer for Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, and received nods for Adapted Screenplay and Original Song (“A Love Before Time”) for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That pic, on which Schamus was also an EP, notched 4 Oscar wins including Best Foreign Language Film, Art Direction, Original Score, and Cinematography.
In addition to his Oscar nominations,...
- 4/28/2022
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
“When I met you, you were ripe,” says Denis Podalydès’s Philip to his younger mistress (Léa Seydoux) in Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie). She responds: “No, I was rotting on the floor under a tree.”
Arnaud Desplechin’s Frère Et Sœur (Brother And Sister), starring Marion Cotillard, Golshifteh Farahani, Melvil Poupaud, and Cosmina Stratan has been selected to screen in the 75th anniversary edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Arnaud’s Ismael's Ghosts was the 2017 Cannes Opening Night Gala selection and his Philip Roth adaptation Deception was a 2021 highlight.
Arnaud Desplechin with Anne-Katrin Titze on Philip Roth: “He’s as is, he’s absolutely imperfect, selfish as I was saying.”
Desplechin will have had ten world premieres at Cannes: Oh Mercy!; My Golden Days; Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian; A Christmas Tale; Esther Kahn...
Arnaud Desplechin’s Frère Et Sœur (Brother And Sister), starring Marion Cotillard, Golshifteh Farahani, Melvil Poupaud, and Cosmina Stratan has been selected to screen in the 75th anniversary edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Arnaud’s Ismael's Ghosts was the 2017 Cannes Opening Night Gala selection and his Philip Roth adaptation Deception was a 2021 highlight.
Arnaud Desplechin with Anne-Katrin Titze on Philip Roth: “He’s as is, he’s absolutely imperfect, selfish as I was saying.”
Desplechin will have had ten world premieres at Cannes: Oh Mercy!; My Golden Days; Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian; A Christmas Tale; Esther Kahn...
- 4/19/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
“I’m 33 and I won’t say my name” states Léa Seydoux’s character at the start of Arnaud Desplechin’s labyrinthine Deception (Tromperie), adapted with Julie Peyr from the novel by Philip Roth. The woman says that she met Philip (Denis Podalydès) in London. London and New York will be the physical and spiritual locations of the tale, as a short introduction that makes you think of Woody Allen’s heyday, informs. The music by Desplechin’s longtime collaborator Grégoire Hetzel perfectly accompanies and subtly comments on the shifts in mood. We see the couple. He asks her to close her eyes and describe the room. Could this be a therapy session, we may think. No, he is testing how perceptive she is.
The terra-cotta-coloured walls, the baseball on his desk, the shelves with books by Heinrich Heine and Hannah Arendt, “only Jewish books” as she...
The terra-cotta-coloured walls, the baseball on his desk, the shelves with books by Heinrich Heine and Hannah Arendt, “only Jewish books” as she...
- 3/24/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Denis Podalydès as Philip with Léa Seydoux in Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie).
In the second of my series of conversations with Arnaud Desplechin we discuss filming Frère Et Sœur, starring Marion Cotillard with Golshifteh Farahani and Melvil Poupaud, and working on Deception (Tromperie) with longtime collaborator composer Grégoire Hetzel (Oh Mercy!; Ismael's Ghosts; My Golden Days; La Forêt; A Christmas Tale; Kings & Queen) and for the first time with cinematographer Yorick Le Saux.
Marion Cotillard stars in Arnaud Desplechin’s upcoming Frère Et Sœur Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg was a highlight of the 74th Cannes Film Festival and New York’s Rendez-Vous with French...
In the second of my series of conversations with Arnaud Desplechin we discuss filming Frère Et Sœur, starring Marion Cotillard with Golshifteh Farahani and Melvil Poupaud, and working on Deception (Tromperie) with longtime collaborator composer Grégoire Hetzel (Oh Mercy!; Ismael's Ghosts; My Golden Days; La Forêt; A Christmas Tale; Kings & Queen) and for the first time with cinematographer Yorick Le Saux.
Marion Cotillard stars in Arnaud Desplechin’s upcoming Frère Et Sœur Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg was a highlight of the 74th Cannes Film Festival and New York’s Rendez-Vous with French...
- 3/23/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Fatal Attraction (1987)The next season of Karina Longsworth's podcast You Must Remember This will focus on the thorny and sumptuous erotic films of the 1980s and 1990s, including films by Adrian Lyne, Brian De Palma, and Stanley Kubrick. The two-part season will start on April 5. Ahead of its theatrical release, the long-delayed Top Gun: Maverick will play at a special screening in Cannes for the 75th edition of the festival in May. This year's Cannes Film Festival also has a new official partner: TikTok. The partnership will include exclusive festival-related content for users and an in-app competition called #TikTokShortFilm. James Morosini's I Love My Dad and Rosa Ruth Boesten's documentary Master of Light lead this year's SXSW Film Festival awards. Actor William Hurt has died at the age of 71. Hurt was known...
- 3/16/2022
- MUBI
Rarely have I been able to chart my relationship with a film like Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception. When we spoke in fall 2015 he told me Philip Roth’s slim, dialogue-driven novel was something of a millstone: “Perhaps it’s a book that I will never be able to adapt for the screen, and I know I will regret it for the rest of my days.” You can imagine my thrill at the news, in December 2020, that he pulled it off with Léa Seydoux and Denis Polydalès, but even by these metrics I wasn’t prepared for the film that, by acting as a faithful rendition of Roth’s barely fictional novel (largely dialogue between lovers written as he was engaging in an actual affair), is perhaps (hopefully) the closest we’ll ever get to a Roth biopic—the rare adaptation that adds to its source’s corpus.
Though awaiting U.
Though awaiting U.
- 3/14/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Flowers, lots of them, in manic speed fill the screen. Anaïs, who is working on her thesis in literature, is played by Anaïs Demoustier in a whirlwind performance opposite Denis Podalydès and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in Anaïs In Love (Les Amours d'Anaïs). Anaïs is always late, wears red lipstick to go with floral dresses, and carries her bike up many flights of stairs because she never replaced the lock, and she is too claustrophobic to take elevators. All this we learn in the first few minutes of Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s wonderfully entertaining film. The above motifs as well as her character traits will return many times throughout this well-structured portrait of someone who cares deeply about details others might discard as superfluous, while she treats profoundly...
- 3/9/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The 27th edition of celebrating the best of contemporary French cinema offers a star-studded 23 film lineup. And after going all virtual last year due to the pandemic, this year's Rendez-Vous is back at the beloved Walter Reade Theater, Film at Lincoln Center, NY. The festival runs March 3-13. The opening night film is a highly anticipated Berlinale winner, Claire Denis's drama, Fire, starring Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon. Other notables include Mathieu Amalric's Hold Me Tight with Vicky Krieps as a grieving French housewife, Jacques Audiard's contemporary romance Paris, 13th District, Christophe Honoré's stage adaptation of Proust going awry during Covid-19 in Guermantes, and Arnaud Desplechin's adaptation of Philip Roth's Deception, starring Léa Seydoux. For showtimes and tickets, please visit Flc website. Here are some...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 3/2/2022
- Screen Anarchy
Deception director Arnaud Desplechin tells Anne-Katrin Titze about the Emmanuelle Devos Kings & Queen connection to Andrew Wylie that led to a phone call from Philip Roth.
Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg, is a highlight of the 27th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York. Claire Denis’s Fire (Avec Amour Et Acharnement), starring Juliette Binoche (in a Free Talk with Constance Meyer’s Robust star Déborah Lukumuena), Grégoire Colin (Nora Martirosyan’s Should The Wind Drop), and Vincent Lindon is the Opening Night selection. Jim Jarmusch is the Guest of Honour of this year’s festival.
An in-person Q&a with Kent Jones and Arnaud Desplechin will follow a screening of Diane at the French Institute Alliance Française Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Our Love Affairs: Arnaud Desplechin...
Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg, is a highlight of the 27th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York. Claire Denis’s Fire (Avec Amour Et Acharnement), starring Juliette Binoche (in a Free Talk with Constance Meyer’s Robust star Déborah Lukumuena), Grégoire Colin (Nora Martirosyan’s Should The Wind Drop), and Vincent Lindon is the Opening Night selection. Jim Jarmusch is the Guest of Honour of this year’s festival.
An in-person Q&a with Kent Jones and Arnaud Desplechin will follow a screening of Diane at the French Institute Alliance Française Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Our Love Affairs: Arnaud Desplechin...
- 2/23/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
After highlighting the most overlooked films of 2021, today we put our spotlight on those that need a home in the first place: movies we loved on the festival circuit—from Berlinale, SXSW, Sundance, TIFF, NYFF, Rotterdam, and beyond—still seeking U.S. distribution.
For acting also as a 2021 retrospective, we hope that highlighting these titles spurs some distributor interests and a release in the next twelve months. Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest distribution updates. As we move into 2022, one can also track our upcoming festival coverage here.
We should note that The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Taming the Garden, and Liborio nearly made the cut, but they’ll get a digital premiere on Mubi this month.
Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard)
It’s so rare to find a romance between two middle-aged characters in which the main conflict is just baggage of past relationships and past hurt.
For acting also as a 2021 retrospective, we hope that highlighting these titles spurs some distributor interests and a release in the next twelve months. Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest distribution updates. As we move into 2022, one can also track our upcoming festival coverage here.
We should note that The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Taming the Garden, and Liborio nearly made the cut, but they’ll get a digital premiere on Mubi this month.
Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard)
It’s so rare to find a romance between two middle-aged characters in which the main conflict is just baggage of past relationships and past hurt.
- 1/3/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
You have to feel for Léa Seydoux, the star who was slated to be the all-but-official face of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with four vehicles in the official selection. Covid intervened, preventing her representing any of them in person. But the one she’s best in was also the lowest-profile.
Placed out of competition in the new Premieres sidebar, Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” is a strange, stifling but frequently intriguing attempt to find a cinematic match for the literary voice of Philip Roth, from his autofictional 1990 novel of the same name. It often succeeds, which is to say the filmmaking often appropriates the self-aggrandizing indulgences and knowingly oppressive masculinity of a work that isn’t among the author’s finest. But it’s Seydoux’s sly, bright presence, as an obscure object of desire who gradually places the protagonist’s failings in relief, that keeps us involved.
That...
Placed out of competition in the new Premieres sidebar, Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” is a strange, stifling but frequently intriguing attempt to find a cinematic match for the literary voice of Philip Roth, from his autofictional 1990 novel of the same name. It often succeeds, which is to say the filmmaking often appropriates the self-aggrandizing indulgences and knowingly oppressive masculinity of a work that isn’t among the author’s finest. But it’s Seydoux’s sly, bright presence, as an obscure object of desire who gradually places the protagonist’s failings in relief, that keeps us involved.
That...
- 8/30/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The year of 1969 saw the moon landing of the Apollo 11’s Eagle module, Richard Nixon sworn in as the 37th president of the United States, the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village ushering in the gay rights movement, the Tate-La Bianca murders by the Manson Family, the landmark Woodstock Music and Arts Fair which attracts 400,000, the tragic and violent Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway and even Tiny Tim marrying Miss Vicki on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”
But one major event was basically ignored by the mainstream media: the Harlem Cultural Arts Festival which took place June 29-August 24 at the Mount Morris Park. Founded by Tony Lawrence, the festival celebrating Black pride, music and culture features such landmark performers as Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension and Mahalia Jackson. And when the NYPD refused to supply security,...
But one major event was basically ignored by the mainstream media: the Harlem Cultural Arts Festival which took place June 29-August 24 at the Mount Morris Park. Founded by Tony Lawrence, the festival celebrating Black pride, music and culture features such landmark performers as Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension and Mahalia Jackson. And when the NYPD refused to supply security,...
- 7/17/2021
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
In Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” (“Tromperie”), one character’s husband is described as “passionate about dazzling, interesting women.” In this adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel of the same name, one can’t help but wish the director shared the character’s interest. Instead, Desplechin and his film seem to have a perverse and single-minded fixation not on “dazzling, interesting” women, but lost, tragic ones—women who can gravitate toward and glom onto Philip (Denis Podalydès), an inexplicably francophone version of the author, who lavishes the attention.
Read More: Cannes Film Festival 2021 Preview: 25
Films To Watch
In the stuffy and garrulous adaptation, a rotating cast of women populates Philip’s imagination: There’s an unnamed English actor, whose affair with Philip is a convenient escape from a languishing marriage with an American novelist.
Continue reading ‘Deception’: Arnaud Desplechin’s Chatty Philip Roth Adaptation With Léa Seydoux Needs Less Talking,...
Read More: Cannes Film Festival 2021 Preview: 25
Films To Watch
In the stuffy and garrulous adaptation, a rotating cast of women populates Philip’s imagination: There’s an unnamed English actor, whose affair with Philip is a convenient escape from a languishing marriage with an American novelist.
Continue reading ‘Deception’: Arnaud Desplechin’s Chatty Philip Roth Adaptation With Léa Seydoux Needs Less Talking,...
- 7/14/2021
- by Caroline Tsai
- The Playlist
Arnaud Desplechin returns to the Cannes Film Festival with Deception (Tromperie), a self-indulgent Philip Roth adaptation that’s only marginally better than 2017’s derided Ismael’s Ghosts. One of the late Roth’s most openly personal novels, it details a string of affairs conducted by Jewish-American writer “Philip,” here played by French actor Denis Podalydes, speaking French. In clearly delineated chapters, he ruminates on a long-term affair with an English actress (Léa Seydoux). Known as The English Lover, she also speaks French. We’ve seen enough films where German characters speak with heavily-accented English, for example, so this choice feels excusable. But it does undermine the script’s many references to cultural identity. Perhaps it’s meant to play with them, but as the chapters wear on and more lovers are revealed, this begins to feel more and more like a French film made by Woody Allen, and not in a good way.
- 7/14/2021
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
In normal times it should be fairly easy to separate the content of a certain piece from the circumstances of its creation, but we haven’t exactly been living in normal times of late, have we?
And so it wouldn’t feel right to describe Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception,” his Philip Roth adaptation that screened on Tuesday as part of Cannes’ new Cannes Premiere sidebar, as “airless” without mentioning that the film was made during France’s long national lockdown last year.
The French director had long dreamed of adapting Roth’s slim 1990 novel, but never thought realizing those dreams was entirely likely – the text, after all, was nothing but snippets of dialogue with little more by way of organizing structures than periods and commas.
Covid restrictions thus proved rather fortuitous for a film shot entirely in a studio. Save for one scene, it never featured more than two actors in the frame,...
And so it wouldn’t feel right to describe Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception,” his Philip Roth adaptation that screened on Tuesday as part of Cannes’ new Cannes Premiere sidebar, as “airless” without mentioning that the film was made during France’s long national lockdown last year.
The French director had long dreamed of adapting Roth’s slim 1990 novel, but never thought realizing those dreams was entirely likely – the text, after all, was nothing but snippets of dialogue with little more by way of organizing structures than periods and commas.
Covid restrictions thus proved rather fortuitous for a film shot entirely in a studio. Save for one scene, it never featured more than two actors in the frame,...
- 7/13/2021
- by Ben Croll
- The Wrap
The previous films of French director Arnaud Desplechin have included, on a semi-regular basis, scenes of long, cerebral post-coital discussions (My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument); characters who are either Jewish (Esther Kahn) or linked to the former Easter Bloc (The Sentinel); narratives that break down the barriers between theater, cinema and non-fiction (Playing ‘In the Company of Men’); and sometimes all of the above at once (Ismael’s Ghosts, which opened Cannes in 2017).
It therefore comes as no surprise that Desplechin has been a longtime fan of Philip Roth, whose books are marked by many of the ...
It therefore comes as no surprise that Desplechin has been a longtime fan of Philip Roth, whose books are marked by many of the ...
- 7/13/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The previous films of French director Arnaud Desplechin have included, on a semi-regular basis, scenes of long, cerebral post-coital discussions (My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument); characters who are either Jewish (Esther Kahn) or linked to the former Easter Bloc (The Sentinel); narratives that break down the barriers between theater, cinema and non-fiction (Playing ‘In the Company of Men’); and sometimes all of the above at once (Ismael’s Ghosts, which opened Cannes in 2017).
It therefore comes as no surprise that Desplechin has been a longtime fan of Philip Roth, whose books are marked by many of the ...
It therefore comes as no surprise that Desplechin has been a longtime fan of Philip Roth, whose books are marked by many of the ...
- 7/13/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
As we’ve noted in the last two weeks of this ongoing Cannes Film Festival, Léa Seydoux is the belle of the ball, and she has four films playing at Cannes, three of them in competition. The French actress has a leading role in “The Story Of My Wife,” a smaller role in Wes Anderson‘s “The French Dispatch,” the lead part in Arnaud Desplechin’s steamy Philip Roth adaptation “Deception” (playing outside competition), and then lastly, the film you’re here for, Bruno Dumont’s “France.” The Cannes Film Fest website doesn’t have much to say about the film, “France is all at once the portrayal of an anchorwoman, of a country, and of the media,” is all it has for a logline, but there’s more from the past.
Continue reading ‘France’ Trailer: Celebrity Journalist Léa Seydoux Has A Crisis Of Vocation Conscience For Director Bruno Dumont at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘France’ Trailer: Celebrity Journalist Léa Seydoux Has A Crisis Of Vocation Conscience For Director Bruno Dumont at The Playlist.
- 7/12/2021
- by Edward Davis
- The Playlist
Though Léa Seydoux’s trip to the Cannes Film Festival is now in question after a positive Covid-19 diagnosis, the French actress still has a handful of movies headed to the Croisette this month. Along with “The French Dispatch” from Wes Anderson, “The Story of My Wife” from Ildikó Enyedi, and “On a Half Clear Morning” from Bruno Dumont, the “Blue Is the Warmest Color” Palme d’Or winner also stars in Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception.” Adapted from Philip Roth’s slim 1990 novel, the film bows in the Cannes Premiere section, and a first trailer in French has arrived. Check it out below.
Desplechin, known for films like “Kings & Queen” and “My Golden Days,” had a tricky adaptation on his hands in bringing a novel built entirely on dialogue between two adulterous lovers to the screen. The original book centers on a married American man named Philip, now an expat in London,...
Desplechin, known for films like “Kings & Queen” and “My Golden Days,” had a tricky adaptation on his hands in bringing a novel built entirely on dialogue between two adulterous lovers to the screen. The original book centers on a married American man named Philip, now an expat in London,...
- 7/10/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Léa Seydoux Enters Erotic Entanglement In Trailer for Arnaud Desplechin’s Cannes Selection Deception
Few films in Cannes, competition or otherwise, have us excited like Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception, the director’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s erotic, dialogue-laden novel. That combination’s sufficient reason for attention, but it’s not like we’ve just heard about the thing: Desplechin—a certified Film Stage Favorite—first told us about the film in 2015, saying “Perhaps it’s a book that I will never be able to adapt for the screen, and I know I will regret it for the rest of my days.” In 2016 we talked further:
“This book fascinates me because it’s just pure dialogue — the most beautiful dialogue I’ve read between a man and a woman. The film, it’s about intimacy — so how are you dealing with a worldwide political issue when the film is dealing with intimacy? So today, I guess, my perspective is that it would be a wonderful thing,...
“This book fascinates me because it’s just pure dialogue — the most beautiful dialogue I’ve read between a man and a woman. The film, it’s about intimacy — so how are you dealing with a worldwide political issue when the film is dealing with intimacy? So today, I guess, my perspective is that it would be a wonderful thing,...
- 7/8/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Whoever “wins” the Cannes Film Festival this year, French actress Léa Seydoux will certainly be up there regardless if she takes home any awards or not. The actress has four films at Cannes, Bruno Dumont‘s “France” in competition, Wes Anderson‘s “The French Dispatch,” ldiko Enyedi‘s “The Story Of My Wife” also in competition, and Arnaud Desplechin‘s latest Cannes premiere, “Deception,” based on a story by the great Philip Roth.
Continue reading ‘Deception’ Trailer: Lea Seydoux Stars In Arnaud Desplechin’s Steamy Film Headed To Cannes at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Deception’ Trailer: Lea Seydoux Stars In Arnaud Desplechin’s Steamy Film Headed To Cannes at The Playlist.
- 7/5/2021
- by Rodrigo Perez
- The Playlist
Director and Mother!! star Morgan Spector: “There are various forms of that fantasy of a lost or impending pastoral. And that’s what we were trying to get at …”
Three highlights of the 20th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival With/In program of shorts (with music by Mark Adler) are Jonathan Cake’s life-affirming Touching, starring Julianne Nicholson, Iggy Cake, Phoebe Cake, and Jonathan; Bart Freundlich’s Intersection, starring Julianne Moore, Talia Balsam, and Don Cheadle, and Morgan Spector and Maya Singer’s Mother!!, starring Rebecca Hall, Maya Singer, and Morgan.
Morgan Spector with Anne-Katrin Titze on Batsheva Hay worn by Rebecca Hall and Maya Singer in Mother!!: “I love her clothes and I love her, she’s a wonderful person.”
During my conversation with Morgan Spector the past week, Henry David Thoreau fantasies, rewatching Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s Fight Club in 2021, Willem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara’s Siberia,...
Three highlights of the 20th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival With/In program of shorts (with music by Mark Adler) are Jonathan Cake’s life-affirming Touching, starring Julianne Nicholson, Iggy Cake, Phoebe Cake, and Jonathan; Bart Freundlich’s Intersection, starring Julianne Moore, Talia Balsam, and Don Cheadle, and Morgan Spector and Maya Singer’s Mother!!, starring Rebecca Hall, Maya Singer, and Morgan.
Morgan Spector with Anne-Katrin Titze on Batsheva Hay worn by Rebecca Hall and Maya Singer in Mother!!: “I love her clothes and I love her, she’s a wonderful person.”
During my conversation with Morgan Spector the past week, Henry David Thoreau fantasies, rewatching Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s Fight Club in 2021, Willem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara’s Siberia,...
- 7/4/2021
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Casablanca Beats is first Moroccan film to play in Cannes Competition since 1962.
Wild Bunch International (Wbi) has boarded sales on French-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s Casablanca Beats ahead of its world premiere in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in July.
The film follows a group of youngsters living in the Casablanca slum district of Sidi Moumen as they participate in a workshop encouraging them to express themselves through hip-hop music and dance.
It was shot in Casablanca’s Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen (The Stars of Sidi Moumen) cultural centre, which Ayouch created in 2014 with novelist Mahi Binebine.
Wild Bunch International (Wbi) has boarded sales on French-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch’s Casablanca Beats ahead of its world premiere in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in July.
The film follows a group of youngsters living in the Casablanca slum district of Sidi Moumen as they participate in a workshop encouraging them to express themselves through hip-hop music and dance.
It was shot in Casablanca’s Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen (The Stars of Sidi Moumen) cultural centre, which Ayouch created in 2014 with novelist Mahi Binebine.
- 6/7/2021
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
The story of Claire, played by Lena Olin, thwarted in her own artistic ambitions, could have been a force for feminism, but the camera’s gaze is instead fixated on how gorgeous she is
“I create the art. She creates the rest of life. Everything we do is up to Claire.” That’s painter Richard Smythson speaking, an artworld big gun, Jackson Pollock-meets-Philip Roth, played by Bruce Dern. He’s being interviewed in front of camera alongside his long-suffering wife Claire (Lena Olin). Her response is frozen on screen for a split second: a forced smile and behind it a flash of panicked terror and possibly rage. It’s a moment of clarity that triggers a late-marriage crisis in Tom Dolby’s tasteful drama, brilliantly acted but never entirely credible and not quite the force for feminism it wants to be.
Pretty soon it’s clear what a...
“I create the art. She creates the rest of life. Everything we do is up to Claire.” That’s painter Richard Smythson speaking, an artworld big gun, Jackson Pollock-meets-Philip Roth, played by Bruce Dern. He’s being interviewed in front of camera alongside his long-suffering wife Claire (Lena Olin). Her response is frozen on screen for a split second: a forced smile and behind it a flash of panicked terror and possibly rage. It’s a moment of clarity that triggers a late-marriage crisis in Tom Dolby’s tasteful drama, brilliantly acted but never entirely credible and not quite the force for feminism it wants to be.
Pretty soon it’s clear what a...
- 4/29/2021
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s safe to assume any movie that opens with a quote from 17th century pluralistic-Christian theologian (and big time spiritualist) Emanuel Swedenborg has a lot on its mind, and so it’s no surprise that Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s “Things Heard & Seen” isn’t the straightforward horror story that’s suggested by its ominous flash-forward of an opening scene. Indeed, Swedenborg’s insistence that “things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world” hovers over the first hour of this strange movie like a gentle hand on your shoulder, as if to say “don’t be afraid of this haunted old house in the Hudson Valley. Just because it comes with a ghost or two and a smattering of half-hearted jump-scares doesn’t mean that it’s evil. Amanda Seyfried could’ve had that freaky nightmare about pulling a...
- 4/28/2021
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
In terms of French cinema, you can’t get much better than filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin. The man behind features such as “The Sentinel,” “My Golden Days,” and “Ismael’s Ghosts” consistently brings something new to each film, often switching genres between films. So, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that, coming off of a crime drama and a Philip Roth adaptation, Desplechin is venturing into the realm of family drama for “Brother and Sister.”
Read More: ‘Deception’: Léa Seydoux Stars In Arnaud Desplechin’s Secret Drama Filmed During Lockdown
According to Arte (via The Film Stage), Arnaud Desplechin is set to begin production shortly on his next film, titled “Brother and Sister.” In addition to the film being announced, it appears the filmmaker is reteaming with French actress Marion Cotillard for the film.
Continue reading ‘Brother And Sister’: Marion Cotillard Reteams With Filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin For A...
Read More: ‘Deception’: Léa Seydoux Stars In Arnaud Desplechin’s Secret Drama Filmed During Lockdown
According to Arte (via The Film Stage), Arnaud Desplechin is set to begin production shortly on his next film, titled “Brother and Sister.” In addition to the film being announced, it appears the filmmaker is reteaming with French actress Marion Cotillard for the film.
Continue reading ‘Brother And Sister’: Marion Cotillard Reteams With Filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin For A...
- 4/12/2021
- by Charles Barfield
- The Playlist
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.