CINEMA | ARCHITECTURE

A BIGGER SPLASH starring David Hockney

2012-01-26T13:57:00.001Z

LITTLE JOE MAGAZINE launches A LITTLE FILM CLUB

with A BIGGER SPLASH starring David Hockney

Tuesday 31 January 7pm, Cinema Museum, Kennington

Little Joe, a magazine about queers and cinema, mostly, will launch A Little Film Club, a monthly screening programme in London, supported by Film London's new Community Pilot Fund Scheme.

A Little Film Club will alternate between The Cinema Museum in Kennington and the Rio Cinema in Dalston and develops the concept of the magazine into an unique space for the exhibition and discussion of films that inspire alternative discourse. Incorporating an eclectic programme of films mapping the subterranean queer canon of cinema, the screenings will also feature extended introductions, discussions and social events.

The programme begins with Jack Hazan’s A Bigger Splash, a unique insight into the world of David Hockney at the height of his fame during the 1970s, at the Cinema Museum on Tuesday 31 January. Little Joe is proud to welcome Jack Hazan who will be in conversation with Stuart Comer (Curator of Film at Tate Modern) following the screening.

Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London said: “Film London is delighted to support Little Joe’s screening programme via the new Community Pilot Fund. The fund is set up to allow us to support new and innovative community based projects that will extend the cultural film offer to audiences across the capital and we look forward to working with Little Joe to achieve this.”

Little Joe’s A Little Film Club is supported by Film London’s Community Pilot Fund through National Lottery Funding on behalf of the BFI.

Event Information

Little Joe presents A Bigger Splash
with director Jack Hazan in conversation with Stuart Comer
Tuesday 31 January 2012, 7pm
The Cinema Museum, 2 Dugard Way, London SE11 4TH
Tickets: £7.50 / £5.00 concessions / Free for Film Club Members.
Available online at littlejoebiggersplash.eventbrite.co.uk

A Bigger Splash, Jack Hazan, UK, 1973, 106mins
From 1971-1973, Jack Hazan gained intimate access to David Hockney and his circle of friends and lovers to create A Bigger Splash. Using a 'structured reality' format rather than pure documentary, he crafted a mesmerising film, groundbreaking in style and daring in nature.

A Bigger Splash will be released on BFI Dual Format (Blu-ray and DVD) on 30 January 2012.

Forthcoming Events

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968) will be screened on Saturday 25 February, 11.30pm at the Rio Cinema, 103-107 Kingsland High Street, E8 2PB.

Membership

Little Joe is offering membership to A Little Film Club. For the introductory price of £30, members will receive free access to our initial 6-month screening programme at the Cinema Museum and the Rio Cinema between January – June 2012. Members also receive a copy of Little Joe magazine and all six limited edition film posters from each event. The membership scheme is currently limited to 30 members.

To become a member or to find out more information, please email michael@littlejoemagazine.com

For Updates

For updates about the rest of our screening programme, follow Little Joe on Facebook and Twitter (@littlejoemag).

www.littlejoemagazine.com

www.cinemamuseum.org.uk

Patience (After Sebald), House of Tolerance, Acts of Godfrey, A Monster in Paris, The Descendants and other UK releases

2012-01-26T13:18:00.001Z

This week opens with Grant Gee's documentary Patience (After Sebald) at the ICA cinema, London; Curzon Renoir, Curzon Wimbledon and around the country, as part of their important initiative, TheNew British Cinema Quarterly.

Bertrand Bonello's House of Tolerance depicts the final days of a fin-de-siècle brothel in Paris in a highly stylized manner.

Acts Of Godfrey is the first British film written entirely in verse. Described as a modern twist on Shakespeare, it mixes humour with revenge, betrayal, love and magic.

We also have The Descendants, with Oscar nominated George Clooney, a French 3D animation offering with A Monster in Paris, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Intruders, and other releases.

Thursday 26th of January 2012

Agneepath (15)

Director: Karan Malhotra

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Rishi Kapoor, Katrina Kaif

In a small Indian village Mandwa, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan (Hrithik Roshan) is taught by his principled father about the path of fire - AGNEEPATH. His life is completely shattered when the evil drug dealer Kancha (Sanjay Dutt) hangs his father to death. Vijay leaves for Bombay with his pregnant mother and has only one mission in life- to come back to Mandwa and bring back the glory of his father's name. In Bombay, 12-yr-old Vijay is taken under the wings of the city gang lord Rauf Lala (Rishi Kapoor). From then on it is a journey of revenge where he makes and breaks many relationships only to get closer to his aim. Vijay finds support only in his best friend Kaali (Priyanka Chopra), who stands by him at every moment in his life. Fifteen years later his hatred for Kancha takes him back to Mandwa where life comes full circle.

Distributor: Eros International | Venue: Key cities

Friday 27th of January

Patience (After Sebald) (12A)

Director: Grant Gee

Cast: Tacita Dean, William Firebrace, Dan Gretton, Barbara Hui, Arthur Lubow

Patience (After Sebald) is a multi-layered film essay on landscape, art, history, life and loss by the acclaimed documentary film-maker Grant Gee. It is an exploration of the work and influence of German writer WG Sebald (1944 – 2001), told via a long walk through coastal East Anglia tracking his most famous book The Rings of Saturn. The book mixed history, travelogue, memoir, meditation, fiction and images to explore the personal, public and often overlooked histories of Suffolk.

Sebald has profoundly influenced some of today's leading writers, thinkers and artists. Some of these – interviewed for the film include Adam Philips, Robert Macfarlane, Rick Moody and Tacita Dean.

Patience is being released in the UK by leading independent distributors SodaPictures on Friday 27th January, at the ICA cinema, London; Curzon Renoir, Curzon Wimbledon and around the country, as part of their important initiative, The New British Cinema Quarterly.

Following premieres at New York and Vancouver Film Festivals last Autumn, it will also be distributed in the United States in late April by Cinema Guild.

Distributor: Soda Pictures | Venue: Key cities

House Of Tolerance (18)

Director: Bertrand Bonello

Cast: Hafsia Herzi, Celine Sallette, Jasmine Trinca

Bertrand Bonello’s highly stylized look at the final days of a fin-de-siècle brothel in Paris conjures up the languid beauty and frank sexuality of French Romantic painting. Its visual sumptuousness lands somewhere between Ingres and Renoir but with stylistic provocations worthy of a time-travelling Baudelaire.

In the nineteenth century, much of the Parisian sex trade was confined to grands maisons, populated by elegant madams and a vetted clientele. They were akin to social clubs, with the gentleman participants expected to be as charming and witty as they might be in more respectable drawing rooms. The ladies were provocatively dressed and, upstairs, occupied numerous boudoirs ready for carnal pleasures. Even in such a controlled environment, dangers still lurked: disease was rampant and lethal, and sometimes even a gentleman might lose his temper and harm one of the women.

House of Tolerance immerses us in this long-abandoned world, awash with opium, champagne and the inevitable rush of semen. The film’s pace accentuates the languor of the place, its many personages slowly revealing their life journeys like an old-fashioned striptease. Several of the stories are grim: country girls desperate for money, dumped from failed relationships or, most difficult to watch, slashed with a knife for little apparent reason.

And yet there is grace, especially in the daytime moments of sisterly camaraderie and the casual yet oddly affectionate deceits of the madam (in a stern turn from the formidable Noémie Lvovsky). This spirit carries into moments when modernity intrudes, most notably in a penultimate dance — as the brothel is about to be closed under order of the mayor — to the tune of an oddly appropriate “Nights in White Satin.” –TIFF

Distributor: The Works | Venue: Key cities

Acts Of Godfrey (15)

Director: Johnny Daukes

Cast: Simon Callow, Harry Enfield, Iain Robertson

Acts Of Godfrey is a truly original new British film from writer/director Johnny Daukes which began as a poem, progressed into a story and then a full-length screenplay, making it the first feature film written entirely in verse. Described as a modern twist on Shakespeare, Acts Of Godfrey mixes humour with revenge, betrayal, love and magic. The result is a sharp and witty black comedy full of clever word play.

When Godfrey decides to improve the flagging prospects of Vic, by pairing him up with the unprincipled and sexually predatory Mary, through the creation of a wager and the addition of the sexual wonder drug ‘Poke’, he reckons without the interference of a psychotic geriatric, a long-dead twin and a terrible case of mistaken identity.

A country house hotel is the setting for a motivational course for successful selling ‘Win! Only Win!’. Godfrey (Simon Callow), sets the tone by informing us that we have no control over our lives and are merely his pawns in his own elaborate game.

The hapless Vic Timms (Iain Robertson), has been sent on this course by his employers in the hope that he’ll develop some killer instinct. Godfrey has decided that he’s going to reverse Vic’s losing streak with the ladies and get him to seal the deal with Mary MacDalen (Myfanwy Waring) the gorgeous and predatory estate agent.

Also on the course (run by one of Godfrey’s emissaries, Brad Angel) are the medical reps Terry (Ian Burfield) and Phil (Jay Simpson) who are pushing a drug that’s a combination of Viagra and coke called ‘Poke’. We also meet the geriatric conman Malcolm (Harry Enfield) and unwilling partner in crime, his dowdy Indian assistant Gita (Shobu Kapoor).

As night falls and drink is consumed, Godfrey makes Mary strike a wager with the blonde bombshell Jacqui (Doon Mackichan) that the two women can seduce Vic and the young boy-band manager Jamie (Michael Wildman).

The conference progresses, and like a twisted Agatha Christie novel, a web of connections is revealed and past actions crowd in on an increasingly suspenseful present.

The morning after however, brings a truly terrible surprise and a final twist that is literally devilish…

Distributor: Guerilla Films | Venue: Special

The Descendants (15)

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: George Clooney, Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Robert Forster, Shailene Woodley

From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning SIDEWAYS, set in Hawaii, THE DESCENDANTS is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.

Distributor: 20th Century Fox | Venue: Saturation

A Monster In Paris (3D)

Director: Bibo Bergeron

Cast: Voiced by: Vanessa Paradis, Sean Lennon

Paris,1910. Emile, a shy movie projectionist, and Raoul, a colorful inventor, find themselves embarked on the hunt for a monster terrorizing citizens. They join forces with Lucille, the big-hearted star of the Bird of Paradise cabaret, an eccentric scientist and his irascible monkey to save the monster, who turns out to be an oversized but harmless flea, from the city's ruthlessly ambitious police chief. Written by The Film Catalogue

Distributor: Entertainment One UK | Venue: Saturation

Intruders (15)

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Cast: Clive Owen, Izan Corchero, Ella Purnell

INTRUDERS centres on an eleven-year-old girl whose vivid story of a make-believe monster called Hollowface unleashes it into the real world with terrifying effects on herself and her family.

Distributor: Universal Pictures | Venue: Key cities

All's Well That Ends Well (12A)

Director: Chan Hing Ka, Janet Chun

Cast: Donnie Yen

A divorcée creates a website that links up single men and women.

Distributor: Metrodome | Venue: Special: London and Manchester venues only

Like Crazy (12A)

Director: Drake Doremus

Cast: Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin

A love story is both a physical and emotional tale, one that can be deeply personal and heartbreaking for an audience to experience. Director Drake Doremus’ film Like Crazy beautifully illustrates how your first real love is as thrilling and blissful as it is devastating. When a British college student (Felicity Jones) falls for her American classmate (Anton Yelchin) they embark on a passionate and life-changing journey only to be separated when she violates the terms of her visa. Like Crazy explores how a couple faces the real challenges of being together and of being apart. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Picture at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and of the Special Jury Prize for Best Actress for Felicity Jones, Like Crazy depicts both the hopefulness and the heartbreak of love.

Distributor: Paramount | Venue: Saturation

The Grey (15)

Director: Joe Carnahan

Cast: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, James Badge Dale, Nonso Anozie

In The Grey, Liam Neeson leads an unruly group of oil-rig roughnecks when their plane crashes into the remote Alaskan wilderness. Battling mortal injuries and merciless weather, the survivors have only a few days to escape the icy elements and a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt before their time runs out.

Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors | Venue: Saturation

Mercenaries

Cast: Billy Zane (Titanic, Dead Calm), Vas Blackwood (Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels), Robert Fucilla (The Big I Am)

Andy Marlow is an ex-British S.A.S serviceman turned mercenary who is working covertly at an observation post in the Balkans after a military coup has resulted in the assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister. The coup has been instigated by Olodan Cracovic, the ex-commander of the Croat Army and wanted war criminal. During the unrest, Olodan’s army raided the U.S. Embassy and has taken the U.S Ambassador and his aide captives. The decision is taken to send in Mercenaries to carry out the top secret rescue.

Marlow and his team are sent into Srebrenica under the cover of darkness. US Military personnel posing as United Nations peacekeepers are playing a support role, but cannot take part in active operations. Covertly, Andy and his team infiltrate Olodan’s headquarters, taking him captive and releasing the Ambassador and his aide. However the rescue is far from over. Now they are faced with transporting them back to a safe area twenty five miles south where US troops are waiting. With Olodan’s right hand man in pursuit, their mission takes an unexpected turn. They find themselves outnumbered, outgunned and fighting what could easily be a losing battle.

Distributor: Kaleidoscope Entertainment

Trailers and images © The Distributors and Producers

BEFORE THE FALL dvd

2012-01-24T11:21:00.006Z

BEFORE THE FALL

DVD Release date: 23rd January 2012

Running Time: 110 Minutes DVD RRP: £15.99 Cert: TBC

Distributed in the UK by
Metrodome Distribution

Inspired by true life events, BEFORE THE FALL is a fascinating, enthralling and ultimately powerful depiction of life inside the military schools Hitler set up, in order to groom young soldiers for positions of power.

Set in 1942, Fredreich Weimer (Max Riemelt) is desperate for a life filled with more than working in a factory. He enrols in a high school focused on producing elite Nazi soldiers. He soon discovers more than he bargained for, as he experiences first hand the atrocities and cruelty taking place.

With his innocence lost Fredreich soon tries to rebel against the repressive system, but is he in too deep? BEFORE THE FALL takes a unique viewpoint on World War II and is filled with performances that offer intricate layers of feeling.

Receiving critical acclaim from several festivals worldwide, director Dennis Gansil has created a work of exemplary craftsmanship and is set to become a classic coming of age story for many years to come.

MAGMART | VIDEO UNDER VOLCANO

2012-01-23T16:20:00.000Z

International Videoart Festival - VII Edition

The VII edition of Magmart has over the first 100 videos, and we are always on the run...

In this days, is closing the exhibit Women's glance, 12 artists for 12 videos, the first step of a show-way parallel to festival, that we are currently producing.

At this time, we have add a new element, 6 interview to the 6 italian artists of the show, about the videos: below, you'll find the links to them (just in italian).

For next February, we have already planning the second step, Norse video, 6 scandinavian artists for 12 videos. We are selecting the artists... And we'll interview them too.

Both the exhibits are located at PAN - Palazzo del Arti Napoli a prestigeous palace in downtown Naples, that has become our partner, and where will have place the main event of Magmart festival, on April.

Is now starting the new edition of Magmart, the well-know and wide participated Festival of videoart.

We are planning all the events that will join the festival, along the next months.

On october, 25-30 at Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, will have place the show women's glance, 12 artists women for 12 videos.

On 2012, february, 21-25, always at P.A.N., will have place the show norse video, 12 artists from Sweden, Norway and Finland, for 12 videos.

On 2012, april, the Magmart's night at P.A.N., and the final show at C.A.M. Casoria Contemporary Art Museum. Follow us, and show with us your artworks!

Our call for entry is open to all artists, without limits of age or nationality.

e invite you to participate, and to spread the world about - on your blog, your website, among your artist friends, on art-related portal and website of your country.

Connect to our website, read the rules, and be one of us!

THE VII EDITION's JURY

Agata Chiusano (artist, Suor Orsola Benincasa university professor)

Antonio Manfredi (artist, CAM Art Director)

Giuseppe De Marco (artist, Mediavox)

Jose Vieira (Fonlad’s Artistic Director)

Luca Magnoni (journalist, Hydrogen Lab)

Sotiris Iliadis (Athens Video Art Festival Executive Manager)

Enrico Tomaselli (artist, Festival Art Director)

www.magmart.it

RED LIGHT REVOLUTION reviewed

2012-01-20T16:08:00.000Z

In this film, subtitled A Sex Shop Comedy, Greek Australian director and writer Sam Voutas, the son of a diplomat who partly grew in Beijing, where he now resides, uses the genre of comedy to have a humorous, yet hard hitting on the growth of Chinese capitalism, where it seems that everybody bends, sometimes a little, sometimes much more that that, to get ahead, including estate or party officials, where becoming rich as fast as possible seems to be the only measure of success. In particular, its burgeoning sex shop industry does not only creates opportunities for suspect business ventures, but also highlights the conflict between modernity and tradition, particularly in relation to sexual values. It is indicative that Red Light Revolution, which is having a limited release in Britain on Monday 23^rd of January at The Prince Charles Cinema to coincide with the Chinese New Year celebration (click here for more information), the first ever public showing apart from last year London Far East Film Festival, has not been shown in China at all. It is doubtful that it will be ever released there at all (I hope I am wrong on this).

For contemporary Western standards, in spite of having been subtitled A Sex Shop Comedy, it is very tame, so if you, my dear reader, expect to be titillated by it, you will be wasting your money. I hope that it will have a wider release in Britain, as it is very funny, the warmth of the actors playing the roles of the protagonists being so contagious that I could not stop smiling, and laughing, all the way through at their antics and their humanity.

Shunzi (Jun Zhao), a Beijinger in his thirties, loses his job as a cab driver after a difference of opinions with the owner. The consequence being that he also loses both his home and his wife (Tess Liu), as she kicks him out, in the presence of her lover, his mistake having been to register the deeds of the house on her name. Seeking refuge in his parents home with his beloved dog, he cannot sleep because of the constant sound coming from their bedroom, which he first attributed to rats, then to... well... rabbits. He meets Lili (Vivid Wang), a bright twenty something, in a dead end job promoting a diet tea brand. Most importantly, he also bumps into an old school chum, a man who carries a gigantic dong in his briefcase, who convinces him that his future resides in opening a sex shop, as there is quick and easy money and no capital needed, a Japanese investor he knows will provide that.

This investor, Iggy (Masanobu Otsuka) more like a gangster who fancies himself as a painter with a penchant for breaking knee caps, does supplies him with a stock of sex toys, provided that Shunzi gets a business permit, but his conditions are extortionate. He partners with Lili, as she has the keys for an empty empty, and Dreams of Red Light opens for business, the first day being a disaster, as they encounter the prejudices of the older generation... but, wait... the night was something else. All the old and young owls populate the shop, their prejudices melting in the darkness, the shop becoming very popular until one day...

Disaster strucks as Shunzi forgot all about the business permit. All their attempts to get one are practically rendered useless, as they battle with government bureaucracy, going round and round, at one point we see them struggling to fill a form to enquiry for a form for a business permit. On top of that, the small “favours” given to the local neighbourhood watch official to divert his attention from their business are unfruitful, as their stock is discovered, and confiscated. Iggy is most displeased at the situation, grabbing not only all their takings, but demanding even more...

What to do?

And here is when salvation comes, in the shape of tradition...

Kudos given to Jun Zhao, as Sunzi, and Vivid Wang as Lili, as they basically carry Red Light Revolution on their shoulders with their humour and warmth, with an excellent supporting cast which, I suspect, of not professional actors, at least, most of them. Sam Voutas has a cameo appearance as Jack Deroux, the Western sex industry magnate, the man with six Ferraris in his garage.

Some information on the sex shop industry, provided by the distributor:

Fun Facts

1: Number of sex shops in Beijing in 1996

2000+: Number of sex shops in Beijing in 2010

1.3 trillion: Number of condoms made in China every year

70%: Percentage of world’s sex toys made in China

Shanghai: Site of the world’s largest sex expo

10,000 +: Number of sex toys companies in China

1: Number of feature films about these shops

Red Light Revolution is distributed in Britain by Terracota Distribution, and it is having its theatrical opening on Friday 20^th January 2012.

The DVD will be released in Britain on the 13^th February 2012.

For screenings please click HERE.

The Nine Muses, In Search of Haydn, L'Atalante, Coriolanus, Red Light Revolution and other UK releases

2012-01-19T13:28:00.000Z

This week we have John Akomfrah's cinematic poem to Caribbean and African migration to Britain. A visual jewel not to be missed (those of you who like fast action movies, you will be disappointed).

The BFI offers a re-issue of Jean Vigo's classic of French cinema, L'Atalante, while Ralph Fiennes directs Coriolanus, with himself and one of my favourite actresses of all times, Vanessa Redgrave, in the cast. A documentary exploring the real man behind legendary composer Joseph Haydn is also in this week offerings. Red Light Revolution, a light Chinese comedy, confronts modernity and tradition as an unemployed man seeks to make a living by opening a sex store. J. Edgar Hoover is given the Clint Eastwood treatment, while Steven Soderbergh and Madonna also contribute to this week releases.

Wednesday 18th of January

Haywire (15)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton

Stephen Soderbergh directs an all star cast in action thriller HAYWIRE, including mixed martial arts supremo Gina Carano as Mallory Kane, a highly-trained black ops specialist, contracted for hazardous covert missions by the US Government. When her paymaster’s point-man (Ewan McGregor) teams her with fellow agent (Channing Tatum) to extract a Chinese journalist held hostage in a Barcelona safe house, the mission swiftly unravels and she barely escapes with her life. During her next assignment in Dublin, with Irish assassin Paul (Michael Fassbender) Mallory is violently betrayed and pursued across the city by the local police and assorted ruthless hitmen.

Now the target of an international manhunt, spearheaded by the CIA official who hired her (Michael Douglas), Mallory realises she can trust no one and is forced to flee across the US from upstate New York to the New Mexico desert. There, she seeks refuge in the home of her ex-soldier father (Bill Paxton), but danger is not far behind her. As she confronts her heavily-armed pursuers, she begins to understand the cause of her betrayal, and the part played by a shadowy Spanish official (Antonio Banderas). Battling with her superiors to uncover the truth behind their deception, she sets out to exact revenge on those that want her dead.

Distributor: Paramount/Momentum | Venue: Saturation

Thursday 19th of January 2012

In Search of Haydn

Director: Phil Grabsky

Following the success of his internationally acclaimed biographical documentaries In Search of Mozart and In Search of Beethoven film-maker Phil Grabsky has embarked on a new search – to discover the real Haydn.

In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven.

In Search of Haydn will be an intricate portrait of Haydn's life told through performances and interviews from today's most admired classical musicians.

Shot entirely in HD, the film will be a visual extravaganza as well as being a revealing look at this amazing man's life.

This new film will explore a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn.

Working its way through the life story, chronologically, the film will be resplendent in interviews and live performances. This was the strength of In Search of Mozart and In Search of Beethoven; it will also be the strength of In Search of Haydn - to see leading performers play and then explain just what makes this music so unique, and will include: Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Roger Norrington, Frans Brüggen, Ronald Brautigam, Emanuel Ax, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques among others.

This is a unique film about a unique man.

Distributor: Seventh Art Productions | Venue: Key cities

Friday 20th of January 2012

The Nine Muses (PG)

Director: John Akomfrah

Cast: Trevor Mathison, David Lawson

Some films are there to be “consumed”, whilst others are to be “savoured”.

John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses falls in the later category.

A elegiac audio visual poem that explores not only Caribbean and African immigration to Britain, but the idea of memory being at the root of our humanity, the Homeric Odissey still with us...

For screenings please click HERE.

Distributor: New Wave Films | Venue: Selected Key cities

L'Atalante (R/I) (PG)

Director: Jean Vigo

Cast: Jean Daste, Dita Parlo, Michel Simon

Directed by Jean Vigo | Starring Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, Michel Simon| France
1934 | 89 mins | Cert tbc

Funny, heart-rending, erotic, suspenseful, exhilaratingly inventive... Jean Vigo's only full-length feature satisfies on so many levels, it's no surprise it's widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.

When Juliette (Dita Parlo) marries and moves in with Seine barge captain Jean (Jean Dasté), their relationship soon shows signs of strain. Sharing the cramped boat with eccentric bosun Père Jules (Michel Simon), a cabin boy and a clutter of cats doesn't help; nor do Jean's jealous tendencies or the couple's reluctance to compromise… To this simple story Vigo brings an extraordinary array of ideas and insights, while the lustrous lyricism of Boris Kaufman's camerawork, injections of surrealism and the almost childlike innocence of the performances locate the film in a fertile territory between objective realism and subjective fantasy. In their scenes together (which include one of the most erotic in cinema), Dasté and Parlo reveal an achingly vulnerable intensity. No other movie matches its mix of playfulness, poetry, sensuality and tenderness; this masterpiece is truly timeless.

Geoff Andrew

For screenings please click HERE.

Distributor: bfi Distribution | Venue: Key cities

Coriolanus (15)

Director: Ralph Fiennes

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox, Jessica Chastain

Cominius, the proud General of the Roman army, and his deputy Martius leads their troops into battle against Tullus Aufidius, commander of the rival Volscian army. Such is Martius's bravery in the line of action, he is awarded the family name of Coriolanus and he runs for the consul. The Roman Senate beckons but two tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius, scheme against Coriolanus, determined to turn the people against their hero.

Distributor: Lionsgate UK | Venue: Key cities

Red Light Revolution (18) (D)

Director: Sam Voutas

Cast: Zhao Jun, Vivid Wang, Jiang Xiduo, Masanobu Otsuka, Virgin Chen

An unemployed man, Shunzi,after having been sacked from a cab company, finds that his only option is to open a sex store. A Japanese gangster posing as a painter supports him, but his terms are extortionate. Moreover, Shunzi finds that his potential clientele is very conservative. Salvation is found, paradoxically, in tradition.

Distributor: Terracotta Distribution | Venue: Key Cities

X:Night of Vengeance (18)

Director: Jon Hewitt

Cast: Viva Bianca

A jaded callgirl... a fledging hooker... the night from hell.

Holly is retiring, kissing her successful life as a high-class escort goodbye. She just has to get through one last night on the job. Shay is a teenage runaway, broke and alone. She just has to get through her first night on the streets. When a last minute cancellation and a twist of fate throws the two women together on a job that goes horribly wrong, they suddenly find themselves racing through Sydney's criminal underworld in an attempt to stay alive.

X:Vengeance is a sizzling thriller about love, chance, escape and the oldest profession in the world, as experienced by two beautiful women on one ugly night that will change their lives forever.

The latest offering from acclaimed director Jon Hewitt, X:Vengeance ups the ante on the already impressive list of elevated thrillers from the new wave of Australian auteurs.

Distributor: Revolver Entertainment | Venue: Key Cities

J. Edgar (15)

Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts

Clint Eastwood's take on J. Edgar Hoover.

As the face of law enforcement in America for almost fifty years, J. Edgar Hoover was feared and admired, reviled and revered. But behind closed doors, he held secrets that would have destroyed his image, his career and his life.

Under the direction of Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the title role of “J. Edgar,” a drama that explores the public and private life of one of the most powerful, controversial and enigmatic figures of the 20th century.

Distributor: Warner Bros. | Venue: Saturation

Underworld: Awakening (3D) (15)

Director: Mans Marlind, Bjorn Stein

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Theo James, India Eisley, Charles Dance

Kate Beckinsale, star of the first two films, returns in her lead role as the vampire warrioress Selene, who escapes imprisonment to find herself in a world where humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans, and are conducting an all out war to eradicate both immortal species.

Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors | Venue: Saturation

W.E (15)

Director: Madonna

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Abbie Cornish, James D

Madonna's W.E. is a beautifully crafted, passionate tale about the search for true love in the modern world, viewed through the prism of one of history's most fabled romances. The year is 1998, and Manhattan is abuzz with anticipation about the upcoming auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But the auction is far more than a diversion for Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a transplanted Southerner trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage. Transfixed by the exquisite artifacts of the Windsors' lives, Wally becomes obsessed with the love story of Wallis Simspon (Andrea Riseborough), the chic, charismatic American who captured the heart of King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy). As she learns more about the sacrifices Wallis made in choosing to be with Edward, Wally finds the courage to follow her own heart and create her own happiness.

Distributor: STUDIOCANAL | Venue: Saturation

The Sitter (15)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jonah Hill, Sam Rockwell

Jonah Hill as “The Sitter” is the last person you want watching your kids. But this time, The Sitter has met his match in three manipulative brats. When a shady endeavor he finds himself in goes bad, The Sitter and the malevolent youngsters embark on a wild chase through Manhattan. From the director of “Pineapple Express.”

Distributor: 20th Century Fox | Venue: Key cities

Trailers and images © The Distributors and Producers

REVENGE: A LOVE STORY reviewed

2012-01-18T13:35:00.002Z

The blindness of hatred creates an environment where only hatred flourishes.

In Revenge: a Love Story (Fuk sau che chi sei ), the DVD having been released on the 9^th January 2012 (and, yes, this review is late, I know: mea culpa), upcoming Hong Kong young director Wong Ching Po has taken a typical genre of their industry, the horror film, and transformed it into a fast pacing view not only into the violence of hatred, and the vicious environment it creates, but also into the corruption and abuse resulting from power structures. The intelligence of this film not only lies in its argument on the nature of hatred and its relationships with love and power, which is how I interpreted it, but also in that it can also be read as a visceral and extreme horror thriller, sometimes literally, with plenty of the expected violence and gore. In fact, Terracota, its British distributor, is releasing the DVD under its Terror Cota label. Hollywood B movies used to be the masters of this approach once upon a time, now that mantra has moved to East Asia.

In the opening sequence, two detectives, Jeff (Chin Siu Ho) and Kwok Wah (Tony Ho), investigate a series of murders of pregnant women, their foetuses having been crudely cut from their bodies, causing their deaths. Frog men recover a plastic bag from the river containing the remains of the unborn babies, and, as crucially for the story, the ID card of one of their colleagues, who has disappeared.

A young man is arrested as he tries to escape in a road block. After a brutal interrogation, although the proper word to describe it would be torture, the man, Chan Kit, refuses to cooperate, claiming he has been framed by the police before. The two detectives know about it, as they were part of the team that framed him six months before, earning Chan Kit a period in prison for assault on a police officer.

Intelligently weaved flashbacks reveal the romantic yet dark love story that lies behind the killings, the story of the love between two people on the margins of society, Chan Kit himself (Juno Mak, who does his own absolutely painful stunts, believe me), a low labourer, and Cheng Wing (convincingly played by Japanese porn star Sola Aoi), a mentally retarded school girl. She escapes from a Social Welfare home, where she had been taken after her grandmother, and carer, dies of natural causes, I hastily add. The chief of the local police station, confusing her for a prostitute, rapes her. Chan Kit and Wing, not realizing the identity of the rapist, report the assault. The resulting gang rape leaves her pregnant, and a cover-up that lands him six months in prison.

Six months to silently endure his pain and his burning hatred of those officers, hatred coming from the guts. Quite interestingly, the question of which one of the rapists is the father of her unborn child is never raised, her subsequent action to provide an alibi for him after his arrest, accused of being the serial killer, proves her absolute love for him, a love above everything else, including her own life.

In the completely unexpected ending, utterly shocking, redemption is no longer possible as the violence of hatred has created an environment where innocence cannot flourish, not any more, where the horror of hatred broods in the hearts of those who were, once, innocents.

The original story by Juno Mak, and developed by Lai-yin Leung and Wong Ching Po, has not only produced a visceral horror thriller, but also raised questions about the nature of hatred, violence, love, and power structures. Jimmy Wong's cinematography conveys both the naturalness of their daily lives and the darkness of their story, the rape scene being particularly memorable in its chiaroscuro photography. Dan Findlay's score, also performed by him, adds to the atmosphere of the film.

Revenge: A Love Story is distributed in Britain by Terror Cota, a label of Terracota Distribution. It is already on sale.

Director’s Statement

"REVENGE: A LOVE STORY is a story about hatred. When we were drafting the story, a question arose, "who is the real victim in revenge?'

We were obsessed by this question every moment until one day, I picked up the book "Wild Grass" by Lu Xun. There was an essay entitled 0020 "Vengeance". I came up with a new thought afterwards.

Perhaps the victim is the crowd who sees the happenings but indeed doesn't know anything.

Human beings can never let go of hatred. Being in hatred is like a one way trip into darkness, you will never come back until it is settled.

We wanted the film to relieve the pain brought by hatred, but we failed. We can't imagine how torturing it is to live with hatred after all.

Now the film is finished, everyone returns to their original life. It is my time to fade out from the film. Perhaps the best way out of hatred is to leave.

Revenge: A Love Story (2010)

A Decade of Love - Sup Fun Chung Chin (2008)
Mob Sister - Ah Sou (2005)
Left Hand - Gong Wu (a.k.a. Jiang Hu) (2004)
Fu Bo (2003)

Awards

Won Silver St George Award at 33^rd Moscow International Film Festival 2011 for Best Direction Wong Ching Po and Best Director Wong Ching Po

Won 15th Puchon International Film Festival 2011, Best Actor, Juno Mak

Official nomination USA Fantastic Film Festival 2011

Technical Specifications

Bonus tracks:

Making Of,
Director Interview,
Producer Interview,
Trailers,
"What is Terracotta Festival?" Featurette.

Hong Kong 2010, Thriller; Certificate: 18.

Running time: 91 mins.

Language: Cantonese with English subtitles.

Audio- Dolby Surround

Ratio- 4:3 Letterboxed

Colour.

Shame, Tatsumi, A Useful Life, War Horse and other UK releases

2012-01-12T12:08:00.001Z

The long expected Shame has arrived to British cinemas, from Steve McQueen, who also directed the excellent Hunger.

We also have a Japanese view on the work of comics artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

Uruguayan film A Useful Life looks at the prospects of a film programmer in a Montevideo cinémathèque made redundant. A sign of things to come in the film industry? Our own Hull Screen, now incorporated into Reel Cinemas, is suffering from a lack of attendance if they show anything outside the comfort zone of the audience (which excludes most foreign language films).

Steven Spielberg giving us one of his usual epics with War Horse, and Margin Call. a Hollywood response to the financial crisis.

Friday 13th of January 2012

Shame (18)

Director: Steve McQueen

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a 30-something man living comfortably in New York balancing a busy job and active social life.

When the wayward Sissy (Carey Mulligan), turns up at his apartment unannounced, Brandon's carefully managed lifestyle spirals out of control.

From award winning director Steve McQueen (Hunger), SHAME is a compelling and timely examination of the nature of need, how we live our lives and the experiences that shape us.

Distributor: Momentum Pictures | Venue: Saturation

Tatsumi (15) (D)

Director: Eric Khoo

Cast: Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Tetsuya Bessho

TATSUMI celebrates the life and work of Japanese comics artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. In post-war occupied Japan, young Tatsumi's passion for comics eventually becomes a means of supporting his poor family. Already published as a teenager, talented Tatsumi finds even greater inspiration after meeting his idol, famous Disneyesque animator Osamu Tezuka. Despite his steady success, Tatsumi begins to question why Japanese comics should cater to children with cute and whimsical tales and drawings. In 1957, Tatsumi coins the term gekiga (dramatic pictures) and redefines the manga landscape by encouraging an alternative genre for adults. Realistic and disquieting, Tatsumi's work begins to grapple with the darker aspects of life...

Distributor: Soda Pictures | Venue: Key Cities

A Useful Life

Director: Federico Veiroj

Cast: Jorge Jellinek

Jorge (Jorge Jellinek) still lives with his parents at the age of 45. He has been the film programmer and technical support at the cinémathèque for 25 years. He also has a news show at a Montevideo radio station where he conducts interviews and talks about movies with filmmakers. Jorge’s life is consumed by movies.

Because attendance is down, the cinémathèque struggles to make a profit and shuts down, leaving Jorge unemployed. With no other skill, for the first time he is forced to change his way of life in order to adapt to the new world he faces.

In the end, maybe the movies will help him survive.

For screenings please click HERE

Distributor: Dogwoof | Venue: Key cities

War Horse (12A)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullen, Niels Arestrup, Tome Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch

DreamWorks Pictures' "War Horse," director Steven Spielberg's epic adventure, is a tale of loyalty, hope and tenacity set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. "War Horse" begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets—British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter—before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man's Land.

The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse—an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. "War Horse" is one of the great stories of friendship and war— a successful book, it was turned into a hugely successful international theatrical hit that is currently on Broadway.

Distributor: Walt Disney | Venue: Saturation

The Darkest Hour (3D) (12A)

Director: Chris Gorak

Cast: Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, Rachael Taylor, Joel Kinnaman

Four young people who find themselves stranded in Moscow, fighting to survive in the wake of a devastating alien attack, and combines mind blowing special effects from filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) with the grounded, post-apocalyptic vision of director Chris Gorak (Right At Your Door).

Distributor: 20th Century Fox | Venue: Key cities

Margin Call

Director: J.C Chandor

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Zachary Qunito, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker

Inspired by the world financial collapse in the fall of 2008, Margin Call takes place in the Wall Street offices of a powerful investment bank during the worst 24 hours in their financial history. After realizing they are looking at a financial meltdown, the executives scramble to minimize their losses at their investors' expense before the morning trading bell rings.

Distributor: Stealth Media | Venue: Saturation

Vettai (D)

Director: N Linguswamy

Cast: Madhavan, Arya, Sameera Reddy

The story of two brothers, Thiru Murthy (Madhavan) and Guru Murthy (Aarya) who are poles apart in character. Their father was a constable but after his demise, Thiru takes on the same duty. Due to his lack of bravery, Thiru find it difficult to fight crime in his town. It is in these times that Guru who is not a cop steps up and assists his elder brother. As Guru wins many of his brother's battles with crime, the accolades are showered though on Thiru to an extent that he is promoted as the Superintendent of Police. The turning point in the story arises when Thiru is caught off guard and brutally thrashed. It now becomes imperative for Guru to build his brothers courage to face his fears and overcome them. This point onwards we see Thiru stand tall and brave and how he along with Guru tackle the villains who are out to hunt them down. Written by UTV Motion Pictures

Distributor: UTV Motion Pictures | Venue: Key Cities

Trailers and images © The Distributors and Producers

John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses

2012-01-11T16:29:00.000Z

Some films are there to be “consumed”, whilst others are to be “savoured”.
John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses falls in the later category.

A elegiac audio visual poem that explores not only
Caribbean and African immigration to Britain,
but the idea of memory being at the root of our humanity,
the Homeric Odissey still with us...

The Greek goddess Mnemosyne slept with Zeus for nine nights

An exploration of the idea of a journey by itself,
as the very concept of journey is about memory,

we see it by the use of Dewald Aukema's camera which is hardly ever quiet, a camera
that is always roving over the immutable wintry landscapes of Alaska

Are they immutable?

interpoled with archive footage depicting constant movement: trucks in wintry landscapes,
gritting lorries, river flooding through flooded towns...

we being the witnesses of the passage of space and time

as we leaf through the traces left behind in our landscapes, those places we call ours
sometimes a track on the snow

not monuments as we understand them, just traces,
perhaps traces that will be forgotten if we don't witness them

if the nine muses don't sing about them,
if the nine muses don't sing about the beauty of those wintry landscapes as the storm
rages crystallizing those instants into words, into songs...

we hear the voices from times past,
those of Homer, of Milton, of Beckett, of Joyce, of Emily Dickinson,
the voice of many others...

Is there a narrative in the world, in our memories?

A narrative as we have understand it throughout the centuries,
a narrative with a beginning, a middle,an end...

such as in an Hollywood movie...

The Nine Muses is not that...
It is an intense yet contemplative reflection on the nature of memory,
on the nature of traces of the journeys of humanity,

of the journeys undertaken by those unknown yet so influential
people from the Caribbean Islands, from Africa, from Asia, from so many places

voices from a place, from a time,

shaping this island, this island we have made ours as well,
adding our invisible yet still powerful monuments to its history...

Director and writer: John Akomfrah

Original score: Trevor Mathison

Music: the voices of Wagner, Schubert, the Gundecha Brothers, Leontyne Price, and others...

There are films which are “consumed”, there are films which are “savoured”. If you are one of those people who likes the first and dislike the second, The Nine Muses is not for you. If you are one of those who likes the intensity of flavour in your cinema, The Nine Muses is for you.

Those images... traces of history already recorded in my memory...

Official Selection Orrizonti, Venice Film Festival 2010,

London Film Festival 2010, Sundance Film Festival 2011, Sheffield Documentary Film Festival 2011

UK Release date: October 2011

Showing in Selected Cinemas in London and around the country

“I am obsessed with archival material: those ghostly traces of lived moments, those pariah images and sounds that now occupy a unique space somewhere between history and myth… How does one begin to say something new about a story everyone claims to know? … what considerations should govern how one constructs a “historical fiction” about events and lives that have been profoundly shaped by what the St Lucian poet Derek Walcott called, “the absence of ruins”? Lives without monuments, without the ‘official’ signature of recognition and interest.

This film is my attempt to suggest what some of those “ruins” might look like, a desire to look into that dark mirror of one’s own past in search of images, ideas, writers and music with which to construct such a monument.”

John Akomfrah

Distributed by New Wave Films

Wuthering Heights reviewed

2012-01-11T12:25:00.004Z

Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights extracted not only the essence of the raw power of the doomed love tale of the two youngsters, Catherine and Heatcliff, from Emily Brontë's novel, and the desolate beauty of the landscape, but, most of all, the sense of entrapment pervading the whole story by the violence of nature and social conventions, and brilliantly translated them to this succinct but heart wrenching film. What defines it is the intense emotional impact it has on the audience (in this case, the audience being myself), not the easy tear jerking sentimentality that we see so often in the screen, specially in the so-called “feel good” movies, but a kind of cry coming out of the heart, that not only buries deep under the skin, but stays there afterwards. A kind of emotional pain that is even stronger because at its core I found the dryness of my eyes. I am writing this review a couple of weeks after I saw the film, yet it still goes round and round on my head, I cannot get it out of my heart, of my mind...

To achieve this Andrea Arnold, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Olivia Hetreed, wrenched the guts of Catherine Earnshaw and Heatcliff (just Heatcliff) doomed tale out of the core of Emily Brontë's story and threw them onto our faces, the violent beauty of the hills of the Yorkshire Dales powerfully conveyed through the lens of the cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, and the eyes of Andrea Arnold, in a series of vignettes and close ups that chills the bones in winter, and makes the heart smile in summer, a landscape being like a chisel moulding the characters and their lives. Surely, the purists will moan at the disappearance of some of the characteristics of the book, such as the narrator, and the post Catherine life at Wuthering Heights; the ending of the film just hinting at what is still to come. Yet, it is the distilling of the story to its core elements is what gives Arnold's interpretation of the story its raw power.

I initially felt that her choice of a 4:3 format as opposed to the more usual 16:9 was somewhat disconcerting, surely, that luscious landscape deserved the wider format. Yet, after a while, I realized that by doing so, Arnold was able to brilliantly yet subliminally convey the sense of entrapment that limited not only Cathy's and Heatcliff's options, but those of everybody else; the close ups of nature indicating a wild life which has been moulded by this landscape as strongly as the humans lives are.

The transformation of a free spirit Cathy the child (Shannon Beer conveying the nuances of her impudent innocence of the “ways of the world”) into Miss Catherine Earnshaw the young lady (Kaya Scodelario's performance strikes right into Cathy's schizophrenic position between her mind and her heart) after her stay at the Linton's home is as brutally clear in the film as it is in the book, signalling the power of the constraints posed by social conventions which led to the despair of her relationship with Heatcliff (James Howson admirable portray of the steely and cruel determination of Heatcliff, so appallingly treated by Catherine's brother, to reclaim her) , the presumably orphan “gipsy” boy (Solomon Glave) picked up from the streets of Liverpool by Cathy's father.

Andrea Arnold's decision to distil the tragic love story of the two youngsters who leap at each other from across class and race boundaries to its bare bones paid off, as I felt its humanity grabbing and holding my heart, a timeless story. A classic version of the classic tale.

Wuthering Heights is distributed by Artificial Eye.

For more information on the film please click HERE.

Mother and Child, Despair, Goon and The Iron Lady this week on British cinemas

2012-01-05T12:18:00.002Z

Still suffering from the traumatic Christmas and New Year period, this week we are still seen a reduced release schedule, the most notable being Rodrigo García's Mother and Child, and a Park Circus re-release of Rainer Maria Fassbinder's classic Despair.

We also see a putrid attempt to beatify Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady, with Meryl Streep giving us an all smiles of this beastly Prime Minister.

Entertainment One, for being such a big outfit as they claim to be, are pretty dismal in their publicity. I had to go to IMDb to get information on Goon.

Enjoy the week films, and Best Wishes for you all for 2012.

Friday 6th of January 2012

Mother And Child

Director: Rodrigo Garcia

Cast: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Samuel L Jackson, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits

Annette Bening is Karen, a bitter, unhappy spinster coping with the death of her mother and the lifelong feelings of loss and regret over the child she gave up for adoption when she was 14. Naomi Watts is Elizabeth, the grown up daughter she’s never met, now an ambitious lawyer who has trouble making emotional connections and Kerry Washington is Lucy, an infertile wife who turns to adoption as the key to the maternity she passionately craves. Rodrigo Garcia skilfully interweaves the rich and complex stories of these three women into a single narrative that runs deep with emotion.

Distributor: Verve Pictures Venue: Key cities

Despair (15)

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Cast: Dirk Borgarde, Andrea Ferreol, Klaus Lowitsch

The chocolate business has been good to Russian exile Hermann. He owns a comfortable apartment in Berlin, drives a convertible, and is married to the accommodating and beautiful Lydia. But Hermann has the increasing feeling of alienation and removal from his body, a feeling heightened and made all the more addictive by the sexual act. When he meets a tramp called Felix Weber on one of his business trips, he develops an unbelievable idea - Hermann is convinced that Felix is his very image to the last detail. The appearance of his double serves him as an inspiration: what if he just disappeared, opting out of his old life and starting a new existence under a different name? Thus Hermann initiates a perfect, a delightful crime - his rebirth, his trip towards the light.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's English language adaptation is set in the 1930s against a background of the rising power of the Nazis. Adapted by Tom Stoppard from a novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

Featuring international stars Dirk Bogarde (Death in Venice) and Andréa Ferréol (La Grande Bouffe) and adapted by British dramatist Tom Stoppard from a novel by Vladimir Nabokov; Despair is a psychedelic drama set in the 1930s against the background of the rising power of the Nazis. This masterpiece by Germany's most renowned director Rainer Werner Fassbinder originally premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival (1978) and was honored with three German Film Awards. We now present a fully HD restored version and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes bonus material of Fassbinder's greatest international film.

New restoration 2011. Premiered at Cannes Classics.

Distributor: Park Circus Venue: Key cities

Goon (15)

Director: Michael Dowsee

Cast: Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber, Jay Baruchel, Eugene Levy, Alison Pill

Labeled an outcast by his brainy family, a bouncer overcomes long odds to lead a team of under performing misfits to semi-pro hockey glory, beating the crap out of everything that stands in his way. - IMDb

Distributor: Entertainment One UK Venue: Saturation

The Iron Lady (12A)

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman

Margaret Thatcher, for some, including myself, the worst British Prime Minister of all times, is given the Mamma Mia treatment by Phyllida Lloyd and Meryl Streep in a putrid attempt to beatify her.

Of course, it is distributed by Fox, one of Rupert Murdoch's companies, that great supporter of her government.

Distributor: Fox/Pathe | Venue: Saturation

Trailers and images © The Distributors and Producers

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Artists, The Lady and other UK releases

2011-12-29T13:32:00.001Z

We enter the New Year with few new releases, as expected.

However, two of these are noteworthy: the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo received the Hollywood treatment: Is the acclaimed Rooney Mara as good as Noomi Rapace, with her enigmatic portrayal of Lisbeth Salander? The second one being an homage to silent cinema, The Artist. I strongly believe that to watch a silent film is not like watching a foreign film with subtitles: even if we do not understand the dialogue in the native language, we do get the emotional nuanced modulated by the actors on their lines, which is a totally different experience we get from a silent movie, where the characters' nuances are painted with visual means, with the help of music, when available. I do not agree with the throwaway comment by one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4 (so typical of them!) on this respect.

On a London special performance only, Woody Allen's classic Hanna and her Sisters gets a re-release.

Monday 26th of December 2011

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (18)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard, Robin Wright

Stieg Larsson's dark story of right wing groups embedded in the political and security Swedish establishment, mixed with dissident Russian spies turned criminals, gets the Hollywwod treatment.

Distributor: Sony Pictures | Venue: Saturation

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (12A)

Director: Brad Bird

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton

Blamed for the terrorist bombing of the Kremlin, IMF operative Ethan Hunt is disavowed along with the rest of the agency when the President initiates “Ghost Protocol.” Left without any resources or backup, Ethan must find a way to clear his agency’s name and prevent another attack. To complicate matters further, Ethan is forced to embark on this mission with a team of fellow IMF fugitives whose personal motives he does not fully know.

Distributor: Paramount | Venue: Saturation

Friday 30th of December 2011

The Artist (PG)

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Cast: Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Missi Pyle

Hollywood 1927. George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie superstar. The advent of the talkies will sound the death knell for his career and see him fall into oblivion. For young extra Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), it seems the sky’s the limit major movie stardom awaits. THE ARTIST tells the story of their interlinked destinies.

Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors | Venue: Saturation

The Lady

Director: Luc Besson

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, David Thewlis

THE LADY, directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), is the extraordinary story of Aung San Suu Kyi (Michelle Yeoh) and her husband, Michael Aris (David Thewlis) . It is also the epic story of the peaceful quest of the woman who is at the core of Burma’s democratic movement. Despite distance, long separations, and a dangerously hostile regime, their love endures until the very end. A story of devotion and human understanding set against a backdrop of political turmoil that continues today. THE LADY was written over a period of three years by Rebecca Frayn. Interviews with key figures in Aung San Suu Kyi’s entourage enabled her to reconstruct for the first time the true story of Burma’s national heroine.

Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors | Venue: Saturation

Hannah and Her Sisters (R/I) (15)

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest

The classic existential story of two sisters, New York socialites, and their affairs.

Distributor: Park Circus | Venue: Special: BFI London only

Zelig (R/I) (PG)

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow
Documentary about a man who look and act like whoever he's around, and meets various famous people. - IMDb

Distributor: Park Circus | Venue: Special: BFI London only

Trailers and images © The Distributors and Producers

UK Releases: Don 2.

2011-12-22T19:02:00.001Z

Friday 23rd of December 2011

Don 2 (3D) (D)

Director: Farhan Akhtar

Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani, Om Puri, Lara Dutta and Kunal Kapoor

Having conquered the Asian underworld, Don (Khan) now has his sights set on European domination. In his way are the bosses of the existing European underworld and all law enforcement agencies. The action shifts from Kuala Lumpur to Berlin as Don must avoid assassination or arrest, whichever comes first, in order for his plan to succeed.

Distributor: Reliance Entertainment | Venue: UK wide

Images and trailer © Reliance Entertainment and the producers.

UK Releases: Wreckers, Dreams of a Life, Meet Me in St Louis, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and other films

2011-12-15T12:32:00.002Z

British drama Wreckers, by lauded new talent D R Hood, is on selected cinemas from today. A married couple move back to his childhood village to start a family but a surprise visit from the husband's brother (Evans) ignites sibling rivalry and exposes the lies embedded in the couple's relationship.

Carol Morley explores the life of a woman whose body laid unnoticed for 3 years in her flat in London in Dreams of a Life, also to be shown in selected cinemas.

As usual at this time of the year, most of the releases are family orientated films, including a re-release of Vincente Minnelli's Meet me in St Louis, with Judy Garland.

Swedish brilliant actress Noomi Rapace has her debut in an English speaking film in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

Friday 16th of December 2011

Wreckers (15) (D)

Director: D R Hood

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Shaun Evans

A married couple (Cumberbatch, Foy) move back to his childhood village to start a family but a surprise visit from the husband's brother (Evans) ignites sibling rivalry and exposes the lies embedded in the couple's relationship.
WRECKERS is an evocative, beautifully shot drama that examines the fragile relationship between truth, intimacy and betrayal.

WRECKERS is the beguiling debut film from D R Hood and features stand out performances from some of the best British acting talent working today including Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Atonement and BBC’s Sherlock Holmes), Claire Foy (Vivaldi, The Season of the Witch and the BBC's Little Dorrit) and Shaun Evans (Being Julia, Boy A).

D.R. HOOD Director & Screenwriter

Hood directed multi-award winning short films The Other Man with Anna Maxwell Martin (Edinburgh short film award 2006) and Journey Man with Ruth Madoc, which showed in festivals worldwide after its London FF premiere, won many awards and had UK cinema release.
She was a selected writer on Warp Films' Re-Animate scheme 2010. Her twisted rom-com Over and Under, was recently a finalist for the I-Features scheme.

Distributor: Artificial Eye | Venue: Key cities

Dreams Of A Life (12A) (D)

Director: Carol Morley

Cast: Zawe Ashton

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003.

Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life– not even a photograph.

Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Distributor: Dogwoof | Venue: Key cities

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (12A) (D)

Director: Guy Ritchie

Cast: Robert Downey Jnr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Stephen Fry, Kelly Reilly, Geraldine James

Sherlock Holmes has always been the smartest man in the room…until now.

There is a new criminal mastermind at large—Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris)—and not only is he Holmes’ intellectual equal, but his capacity for evil, coupled with acomplete lack of conscience, may give him an advantage over the renowned detective.

Around the globe, headlines break the news: a scandal takes down an Indian cotton tycoon; a Chinese opium trader dies of an apparent overdose; bombings in Strasbourg and Vienna; the death of an American steel magnate… No one sees the connective thread between these seemingly random events—no one, that is, except the great Sherlock Holmes, who has discerned a deliberate web of death and destruction. At its center sits a singularly sinister spider: Moriarty.

Holmes’ investigation into Moriarty’s plot becomes more dangerous as it leads him and Watson out of London to France, Germany and finally Switzerland. But the cunning Moriarty is always one step ahead, and moving perilously close to completing his ominous plan. If he succeeds, it will not only bring him immense wealth and power but alter the course of history.

In her first English-speaking role, Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, who gained international attention in the Swedish film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” plays a mysterious Gypsy named Sim, who becomes allied with Holmes and Watson in their quest to stop Moriarty. Jared Harris (TV’s “Mad Men,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) joins the cast as the notorious Professor Moriarty. Stephen Fry (“Alice in Wonderland,” “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) plays Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s decidedly eccentric older brother.

Distributor: Warner Bros. | Venue: Saturation

Meet Me In St Louis (R/I) (U) (D)

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Cast: Judy Garland, Margaret O

Directed by Vincente Minnelli | Starring: Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien | USA 1944 | 113 mins | Cert U

Meet Me in St. Louis tells the story of a family in suburban, mid-western St Louis in 1903. The city, and the well-to-do Smith family, is on the verge of hosting (and celebrating) the arrival of the spectacular 1904 World's Fair. However, the head of the family is beckoned to New York due to a job promotion – an uprooting move that threatens to change the lives of the family members forever. Directed by Vincente Minnelli during WWII, Meet Me in St. Louis is a delightful, classic, nostalgic, poignant, and romanticised musical film – and one of the greatest musicals ever made.

For screenings please click HERE.

Distributor: bfi Distribution | Venue: Key cities

Magic To Win (PG) (D)

Director: Wilson Yip

Cast: Jacy Wu

Adapted from the Chinese ‘Happy Ghost’ series, this is the story of a girl who abuses the magical superpowers that she has inherited – for the convenience of her everyday life, and success in the sporting arena – but comes to learn the true power found in loyalty to friends and family.

Distributor: Metrodome | Venue: Special: London only

Alvin And The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (U) (D)

Director: Mike Mitchell

Cast: Alyssa Milano, Anna Faris, Christina Applegate, Justin Long

On vacation aboard a luxury cruise ship, Alvin, Simon, Theodore and the Chipettes are up to their usual antics, turning the ship into their personal playground, until they become ‘chipwrecked’ on a desert island. As Dave Seville frantically searches for his AWOL charges, the ‘Munks and Chipettes do what they do best – sing, dance and wreak havoc. But they’re in for the biggest surprises and lessons of their lives when they embark on an island adventure with their new friend – a castaway who’s more than a match for Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Distributor: 20th Century Fox | Venue: Key cities

Scorsese's HUGO reviewed

2011-12-14T16:33:00.004Z

The much lauded Hugo arrived to British cinemas only after a couple of weeks, or so, after its release in the USA. Is all that praise deserved? Well, yes, or at least most of it is, in my opinion.

Hugo, based on a children story by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the screenplay having been written by John Logan, a departure in Martin Scorsese's oeuvre, admirably captures the illusion of the grain of life in an enclosed environment such as a busy Parisian train station just after the Great War. As such, it is an old fashioned children story, like those we told to our children when putting them to bed, as once upon a time we had the time and energy to do so (if this was ever true I do not know, but it is nice to hold to the idea that it was), told using cutting edge 3D cinematic technology. Has Scorsese advanced the range of this technology for artistic use in contemporary cinema? The jury is out on this one, although I have my doubts. I do think that Hugo could well had been shot in a conventional 2D format without any detrimental effect on the quality of the story telling. Perhaps, it could had worked even better, as I felt that on occasions the technology got on the way of the story itself, almost as if Scorsese, like a kid playing with a new set of coloured pens, got so enthralled with 3D for its own sake that he overlooked the story.

The film follows the story of a boy, the above mentioned Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, whom we saw in The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas), who lives in the railway station after been taken in by his uncle after the death of his father in a fire at the museum where he worked. The uncle, a drunkard, also disappeared one day, and Hugo keeps with the task of keeping all the clocks of the station running on time, that was his uncle's job, as he fears he will be taken to an orphanage if he is discovered by the awful station master (a rather magnificent portrayal by Sacha Baron Cohen), a war veteran with a penchant for grabbing street urchins.

The key of the film, and I am playing with words here, is a key he needs to unlock the mechanism of an automaton in his possession, as he believes that it will write a message from his father, who left it to him after his death. The search for this key sets Hugo in a sharp collision with Georges Méliès (a rather cartoonish portrayal by Ben Kingsley, a bit of a rehash of his performance in Gandhi), an old gentleman who owns a toy booth in the station. After his father's sketchbook falls in the hands of Méliès, who suspects that Hugo has been nicking bits and bits from his stall, he manages to enlist the help of Méliès' granddaughter, young Isabelle (a fabulous and sensitive performance by Chloë Grace Moretz), to recover the book, as he needs it to bring the automaton back to life. Isabelle is also an orphan, being brought up by Grandpa George and his wife after her parents died in an accident, jumps in aid of Hugo, as she is screaming for adventure and danger, as most children at that age living a sheltered life do.

Hugo the film is also an ode to cinema itself, to the beginnings of cinema (Scorsese is also being known for funding the restoration of old and forgotten films, as my DVD copy of Wojciech Has' marvellous and intriguing The Saragossa Manuscript in my videoteque testifies), as we all find, including Isabelle, that Grandpa George is one of the forgotten pioneers of early cinema, having developed his career shortly after the Lumière brothers showed to the public the first movie performance, directing, producing and acting in hundreds of films, a career cut short by the war. Unable to restart it, he bought the toy booth for a living, and to raise Isabelle.

Hugo is also one of those rare films which appeals to the young and the old, as it does work on several levels. I suspect that subsequent viewings will bring additional riches to the fore both on the story itself, its background, and the performances.

The performances of the kids is exceptional, Asa Butterfield conveys the intensity of the desire of a child to unlock not only the automation but also his own life, his own destiny, whilst Chloë Moretz' nuanced performance of Isabelle (I understand that she managed to fool Martin Scorsese in believing she is actually English during the audition) living in Paris, a girl eager for adventure, yet who is also a loving and sensitive grand daughter, gets at the heart of her role with an extraordinary breadth and depth of characterization.

Special mentions have to go to all those who constructed the sets and worked in the CGI effects, which created a picture of a Parisian railway station which is both credible and yet still firmly belonging to the realm of story telling). I have to say that I am not still convinced by the 3D technology which, in spite of Scorsese's efforts to tame it, felt too often as no more than gimmick, distracting me from the humanity of the story itself.

However, in spite of my persisting reservations about the technology itself, Hugo has gone into my long list for the 10 best films I have watched in 2011, being not only old fashioned story telling at its best, but also an ode to cinema itself, admirably realized and with an enthralling performances by Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz.

To see the making of Hugo, please click HERE.

Text revised on 15 December 2011.

UK Releases: Mysteries of Lisbon, The Well Digger's Daughter, and other films

2011-12-08T13:02:00.001Z

The long awaited Raúl Ruiz' Mysteries Of Lisbon is here at last, although in a few cinemas only, as it seem to happen more and more these days with non Hollywood films, a sign of the increasing cultural isolation of Britain from the rest of the world apart from the USA.

Then we have Daniel Auteuil's The Well Digger's Daughter, which looks to be more or less on Jean de Florette territory (he acted in it), SciFi film Another Earth, plus the latest Puss on Boots and the usual Christmas period offerings.

Thursday 8th of December 2011

New Year's Eve (12A) (D)

Director: Garry Marshall

Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Biel, Zac Efron, Lea Michelle, Hilary Swank, Sarah Jessica Parker

"New Year's Eve" celebrates love, hope, forgiveness, second chances and fresh starts, in the intertwining stories told amidst the pulse and promise of New York City on the most dazzling night of the year.

Distributor: Warner Bros. | Venue: Saturation

Friday 9th of December 2011

Mysteries Of Lisbon (PG)

Director: Raul Ruiz

Starring: Adriano Luz, Meria Joao Bastos, Ricardo Pereira, Clotilde Hesme, Afonso Pimentel, Lea Seydoux

Mysteries of Lisbon plunges us into a veritable whirlwind of adventures and escapades, coincidences and revelations, sentiments and violent passions, vengeance, love affairs, all wrapped in a rhapsodic voyage that takes us from Portugal to France, Italy, and as far as Brazil. In this Lisbon of intrigue and hidden identities, we encounter a series of characters all somewhat linked to the destiny of Pedro da Silva, orphan in a boarding school. Father Dinis, a descendent of the aristocratic libertines, later becomes a hero who defends justice, a countess maddened by her jealousy and set on her vengeance, a prosperous businessman who had mysteriously made his fortune as a bloodthirsty pirate; these and many more all cross in a story set in the 19th century and all searching for the true identity of our main character.

This epic retelling of the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco has been widely hailed as the summation of Ruiz' career.

For cinema screenings please click HERE

Raúl Ruiz

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/aug/19/raul-ruiz-obituary

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/obituaries/raul-ruiz.php

Distributor: New Wave Films | Venue: Key Cities

The Well Digger's Daughter (PG)

Director: Daniel Auteuil

Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Kad Merad, Sabine Azema, Nicholas Duvauchelle, Astrid Berges-Frisbey

As she cuts across the fields to take her father his lunch Patricia meets Jacques. She is eighteen, he is twenty-six. She is pretty, with the fine manners of a young lady: he is a fighter pilot and a handsome young man. A full moon will do the rest on their second meeting. There won't be a third meeting: Jacques is sent to the front.
Patricia ends up pregnant. The boy's rich parents talk about blackmail. Patricia and her father, the well-digger, will alone have the joy of welcoming her child. A joy that the Mazels will soon envy and seek to share when Jacques goes missing in action.

Distributor: Pathe | Venue: Special: Cine Lumiere & selected cinemas

Another Earth (12A) (D)

Director: Mike Cahill

Cast: Brit Marling, William Mapother, Jordan Baker

In ANOTHER EARTH, Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling), a bright young woman accepted into MIT’s Astrophysics Program, aspires to explore the cosmos. A brilliant composer, John Burroughs (William Mapother), has just reached the pinnacle of his profession and is about to have a second child.
On the eve of the discovery of a duplicate earth, tragedy strikes and the lives of these strangers become irrevocably intertwined.

Distributor: 20th Century Fox | Venue: Key cities

Puss In Boots (3D) (U) (D)

Director: Chris Miller

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek

If you ever wondered what Puss was up to before Shrek met him this gleeful tale fills in his hilarious backstory. Antonio Banderasvoices our feline hero once more, as he teams up with the tough Kitty Softpaws and resourceful Humpty Dumpty to defeat a deadly threat facing their town.
And the franchise continues :(

Distributor: Paramount/DreamWorks Animation | Venue: Saturation

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (18) (D)

Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson

Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris

After an attack of the munchies and a brush with Guantanamo Bay in past films reformed stoners Harold and Kumar return older but not necessarily wiser in this festive tale.

Now settled down domestically they nd themselves in desperate need of a replacement Christmas tree during the hectic holiday season.

Distributor: Warner Bros | Venue: Key cities

Barely Legal (18) (D)

Director: Jose Montesinos

Starring: Jeneta St. Clair, Lisa Younger

Cheryl, Lexi and Sue are 17-year-old best friends, who all share the same birthday. With their 18th celebrations fast approaching, the girls resolve to lose their virginity on the same night. As the young women embark on this sexual odyssey of misadventure, they discover that love and sex rarely walk hand in hand and that it could be tricky to find a perfect bedfellow for the special night.

Distributor: Metrodome Distribution | Special: London only

"VILLAIN" REVIEWED

2011-12-05T18:29:00.000Z

We cannot be murderers and victims at the same time.

Villain, based on the Japanese best selling novel of the same name by Shuichi Yoshida, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film, casts an eye on the loneliness of existence in an ordered society, where everyone and everything has a place, where there is a place for everyone and every thing, the loneliness of dating sites, an escape for young people whose existence oscillates from monotonous life at work to monotonous life at home, every day becoming undistinguishable from the previous one, or from the one which is to come tomorrow.

Where their whole existence is encompassed by the high road of just another town in the middle of nowhere, primary school, secondary school, work, home, as Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu, whose powerful and nuanced performance won her the Best Actress Award at the 2010 Montreal International Film Festival), one of the protagonists muses to Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), whom she has met through a dating site, in a love hotel, its décor being as ubiquitous as those chain stores mushrooming in town after town, city after city, country after country, the ghost of Yoshino (Hikari Mitsushima, who seems to be getting out of her usual roles of a girl who cannot decide anything in her life, although she still plays, quite convincingly, the role of a victim here) lurking on Yuichi's head.

Dating websites become not only their way to get some excitement in their lives, as Yoshino tells a girlfriend when she was asked if she had slept with a man she just had met through the site: “That's why I met him”, but also gives them the possibility to find someone with whom to share their futures, or, find their deaths, as it is the case in Villain. For Yuichi, the man is question, his beloved powerful sports car is also what gives him the chance to escape from the dreary fishing village where he lives, and from his job as a demolition worker in his uncle's company; the haunting cinematography portraying those roads at night, the beams of the car lights drilling through the layers of realities which soon join the darkness surrounding him, the beams of that car mirroring in the beam of that lighthouse from his childhood, shining beyond the horizon, where he returns when he is in the run from the police, after having killed a young woman on a solitary dark road under those same beams. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the film, shot mostly in crowded interiors, in the car, close ups, where the wide exhilarating landscape is always seen through the framing of the car screen, or the mullions of windows, is suddenly smashed, and opened up, on that scene on the lighthouse, where the horizon suddenly fills not only the cinema screen, but also their eyes as they watch, mesmerized, the sun set – for once, the visual cliché being also broken.

Yet, that car, and those dating websites, are paradoxically no longer liberating, but have become part of that suffocating entrapment of their lives, from which they desperately try to escape, as we see a shot of Mitsuyo back to her monotonous job in a clothes store at the end of the film, just as we saw her at the beginning, or the roadside shrine to Yoshino, where her zest for life ended: The ultimate entrapment of all? Or, the ultimate liberation? It is for you to decide, and to ruminate on the truly shocking end of Villain.

Lee Sang-il and Shuichi Yoshida have used the format of a crime thriller, and a road movie, to explore this enclosed world, where there is a place for everyone and everything, succinctly portrayed in a scene in which the police drags from a minuscule capsule hotel a young man on the run, as he felt he would be blamed for Yoshino's murder, his room being not much larger than a bed, the headroom making impossible to stand up; or on Mitsuyo's conversation with the taxi driver as she also went to Yoshino's shrine to leave flowers: “If he killed someone, then he must be a bad man”. The powerful and gripping character study, we really delve under their skins, and the haunting cinematography, have sliced open the underbelly of this world, and exposed to our eyes the frustrations and despair lurking under apparently ordered and well mannered lives in an apparently trouble free society.

Villain opens with a bunch of young women having a night out, the giggles and banter soon being replaced with the darkness of the night as one of them, Yoshino, goes to meet with her date for the evening, Yuichi, yet she ends up getting into another car. This is the last we see of her. A couple of days later Yuichi, a very introvert character, drives into Nagasaki to meet Mitsuyo, whom he has also met through the online dating service. Their desire for human companionship soon overtake their initial reluctance, and the pair fell in love. However, they are soon on the run from the police, as he is suspected of murdering Yoshino.

The DVD contains an excellent and enlightening feature on the making of the film, plus a clip on a conversation between the director, Lee Sang-il, and his star, Satoshi Tsumabuki, theatrical trailer, and the usual set up controls.

DVD UK release Date: December 5th, 2011

DVD Specifications: 5.1 Surround Sound, Anamorphic Widescreen with Removable English Subtitles

DVD Bonus Features: 1 Hour Long 'Making Of', Interview with Satoshi Tsumabuki and Lee Sang-Il, Theatrical Trailer

DVD released by

Villain can be bought from your local store, or from Amazon HERE.

Original Title: Akunin

Country: Japan

Year of Production: 2010

Rating: 15

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 140 mins

Original Language: Japanese

Villain

Dir: Lee Sang-il

Writer: Shuichi Yoshida, Lee Sang-il

Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Eri Fukatsu, Masaki Okada, Hikari Mitsushima, Kirin Kiki

BASED ON THE AWARD WINNING NOVEL BY SHUICHI YOSHIDA

TRANSLATED IN ENGLISH AND OUT IN PAPERBACK ON AUGUST 18TH, 2011 FROM RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING

Yuichi (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is a construction worker who has lived his entire life in a dreary fishing village. With no girlfriend or friends, he spends his days working and looking after his grandparents, with no enjoyment in life other than his car. Meanwhile, Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) also lives a monotonous life pacing between the men’s clothing store where she works and the apartment where she lives with her sister. When the two lonely souls meet using an online dating site, they immediately fall in love with each other. But there’s a secret Yuichi had been keeping from Mitsuyo: Yuichi is the one suspected of killing the woman whose body was found at Mitsue Pass only a few days before...

As Yuichi and his new lover try to elude the police, the events that led up to the murder and its aftermath are revealed. We learn the stories of the victim, the murderer, and their families - stories of loneliness, love hotels, violence and desperation, exposing the inner lives of men and woman who are not everything they appear to be.

Who is the true “villain” here?

UK Releases: Hugo, Las Acacias, The Last Watlz, Margaret, Surviving Life, and others

2011-12-01T12:47:00.001Z

Friday 2nd of December 2011

This week we have two Martin Scorcese's releases: Hugo, and his 1976 documentary The Last Waltz. While I have not seen Hugo yet, I understand that Scorcese was like a kid with a new set of colouring pencils, discovering a new creative venue. The Last Waltz is, perhaps, one of the great music documentaries of all times, a film I remember with warmth and nostalgia after all these years. We also have an Argentinian road movie, Las Acacias, which looks like to be one of those fine productions characteristic of their cinema. Other releases are also a French romantic comedy, Romantic Anonymous, and Nano Moretti's We Have a Pope. Surviving Life, a Czech animation and Margaret are also worth mentioning.

Hugo 3D (U) (D)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kinglsey, Jude Law, Ray Winstone

ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message all come together...in Hugo.

For more information please click HERE

Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors | Venue: Saturation

Las Acacias (12A) (D)

Director: Pablo Giorgelli
Cast: German De Silva, Hebe Duarte, Nayra Calle Mamani

With pitch-perfect performances from character actor German de Silva and newcomer Hebe Duarte, LAS ACACIAS tells the story of a long distance lorry driver (German de Silva) who agrees to drive a woman (Hebe Duarte) and her 5 month old child en route from Paraguay to Buenos Aires. A subtle and tender road movie exploring loneliness and the pain of loss, LAS ACACIAS grows into a searingly poignant tale about a passing encounter between two strangers and the unlikely bond that grows between them.

Winner of several awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including the prestigious Camera D’Or, Pablo Giorgelli’s critically acclaimed road movie LAS ACACIAS was a festival favourite, and Giorgelli singled out as ‘one to watch’.

Distributor: Verve Pictures | Venue: Key cities

The Last Waltz (R/I) (U) (D)

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robbie Robertson, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison

One of the greatest music documentaries, a film which I still remember with warmth and, yes, nostalgia.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1976, The Band gave its farewell concert at Winterland in San Francisco. On hand to help say goodbye to this influential rock group were some of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 1960s and '70s. This film is not only a vibrant documentary of that historic evening, but also a commentary on the rock world at the time. Most of the picture is concert footage of The Band and their guest performers, highlighted by interviews with members of the group, who eloquently articulate their personal involvement in the history of rock and roll.

Distributor: Park Circus | Venue: Key cities

Romantics Anonymous (12A) (D)

Director: Jean-Pierre Ameris
Cast: Isabelle Carre, Benoit Poelvoorde

With his beloved chocolate business turning sour, socially awkward boss Jean-René (Poelvoorde, COCO BEFORE CHANEL) decides to enlist an extra pair of hands.

Enter Angélique (Carré, THE REFUGE), a chronically shy young woman who shares Jean- René's passion for all things sugar and sweet.

She is the answer to his prayers, in ways he didn’t realise. Because while he is looking for a sales rep to keep his sinking ship afloat, she is in fact a gifted, albeit covert, chocolatière extraordinaire whose treats are legendary around town.

And as the pair become more and more acquainted it is not long before chocolate is not the only sensual element in the air. Now their respective lack of self-confidence is the only thing left standing in the way of the happiness they so crave.

Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment | Venue: Key Cities

We Have A Pope (PG) (D)

Director: Nanni Moretti
Cast: Michel Piccoli, Jerzy Stuhr, Renato Scarpa, Franco Graziosi, Camillo Milli, Nanni Moretti

The newly elected Pope suffers a panic attack just as he is due to appear on St Peter's balcony to greet the faithful, who have been patiently awaiting the conclave's decision. His advisors, unable to convince him he is the right man for the job, seek help from a renowned psychoanalyst (and atheist). But his fear of the responsibility suddenly thrust upon him is one that he must face on his own.

Distributor: Soda Pictures | Venue: Key Cities

Camp Hell (D)

Director: George Van Buskirk
Cast: Dana Delany, Andrew McCarthy, Bruce Davison, Jesse Eisenberg

At the end of every summer the students of a Christian community from the suburbs of New Jersey attend Camp Hope. They travel deep into the woods far from any distractions the world provides.

Here, a charismatic priest teaches the students the ways of the Lord, the perils of the flesh and the horror of the devil.

But unknowingly he has brought something with him, something evil. What was supposed to be a safe place, a spiritual retreat has now turned into a nightmare that not even faith can end…

Pitch up at CAMP HELL and you might never leave…

Distributor: Metrodome | Venue: Key Cities

Ghett'a Life (15) (D)

Ghett'a Life from Rosana Coutinho on Vimeo.

Director: Chris Browne
Cast: Karen Robinson, Carl Davis

Derrick, a ghetto teenager, dreams of being Jamaica’s next world boxing champion, but it’s election year and politics and tribal violence divide the country. His father, a loyal party supporter, forbids him from going to the boxing gym situated in a rival part of town. Derrick defiantly follows his heart but is confronted by the local "don" who threatens his family. Derrick refuses to give up and the ignorance of divisiveness soon give way to the triumph of unity.

Distributor: Jinga Films/Miracle | Venue: Key Cities

Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (15)
Prezít svuj zivot (teorie a praxe)

Director: Jan Svankmajer

We have not often the chance to see both famous psycho analysts Freud and Jung attending a real psycho analysis session, where they can observe what became of the science they invented. This film offers that rare opportunity, even to the extent that we see these two learned experts fighting over the approach taken.

In fact, Freud and Jung are just pictures hanging on the wall. Not limited by their form they cover their ears, or applaud what is being said by the resident psychiatrist. Some of the time they even strike or kick each other, resulting in broken glass and ultimately both falling on the floor.

Things like this, and many other "impossible" things, can be turned into reality when integrating live figures with an animated decor. The director makes his appearance at the start of the film, to explain this uncommon setting as being inevitable, not being able to raise enough cash for a "real" film. Given what we know about this director, we easily pick this up as a joke, because of his established fame in delivering animated pictures.

The story gets complicated where reality starts getting mixed with dreams, but not too difficult to follow. Missing one or two clues is not the end of this particular world, where humor and satire go along hand in hand. That is especially the case when psychiatric practices are ridiculed, for instance the frivolous attempts made to explain the dreams of the main characters in this story.

IMDb User review

Distributor: Verve Pictures/ICO | Venue: Key Cities

Margaret (15)

Director/writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo

A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

The Thing (15) (D)

Director: Matthijs van Heijningen
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up.

When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.

The Thing serves as a prelude to John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film of the same name.

Distributor: Universal Pictures | Venue: Saturation

Happy Feet Two (3D) (U) (D)

Director: George Miller
Cast: Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Alexia Moore, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Sofia Vergara, Hank Azaria

The sequel to “Happy Feet,” the Academy Award®-winning animated smash hit, “Happy Feet Two” returns audiences to the magnificent landscape of Antarctica in superb 3D.

Mumble, The Master of Tap, has a problem because his tiny son, Erik, is choreo-phobic. Reluctant to dance, Erik runs away and encounters The Mighty Sven—a penguin who can fly! Mumble has no hope of competing with this charismatic new role model.

But things get worse when the world is shaken by powerful forces.

Erik learns of his father’s “guts and grit” as Mumble brings together the penguin nations and all manner of fabulous creatures—from tiny Krill to giant Elephant Seals—to put things right.

Distributor: Warner Bros. | Venue: Saturation

The Big Year (PG)

Director: David Frankel
Cast: Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson, Rosamund Pike, Anjelica Huston

In this comedy for grown-ups, Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson portray three men from different walks of life, each facing unique personal challenges. The one thing they share is an uncommon passion for…bird watching. In the biggest competition of their biggest year, they undertake an unforgettable trek through North America, fall in and out of love, engage in hilarious and bizarre adventures, and form friendships that will last a lifetime.

UK releases: The Deep Blue Sea, An African Election, Resistance, My Week with Marilyn, That Girl in Yellow Boots, and other films.

2011-11-24T12:22:00.001Z

This week we have Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea, documentary An African Election, Resistance (recently highlighter in BBC Radio 4), My Week with Marilyn (the book serialized in BBC Radio 4), That Girl in Yellow Boots, Hong Kong thriller Revenge: A Love Story, and a festive release with A Christmas Princess.

A bit of moaning here now: Why some distributors make so difficult to gather any information about their films? I am not talking only about the small guys, who are usually good, but the likes of Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Lionsgate.

Monday 21st of November 2011

A Christmas Princess (PG) (D)

Director: Michael Damien
Cast: Roger Moore, Katie McGrath

An enchanting tale that will touch your heart and leave you full of the festive spirit!

It's Christmas time and when Jules receives an unexpected invitation from a distant relative, she travels to Europe with her neice and nephew to a fairytale castle. As they try to instill the true magic of Christmas in their stuff British family, Jules discovers that what you're searching for can sometimes be found in the most unexpected place...

Featuring an all-star cast, this heart-warming and magical motion picture can be enjoyed by the whole family over and over again.

Distributor: Revolver Entertainment | Venue: Special: Genesis Mile End only

Friday 25th of November 2011

The Deep Blue Sea (12A) (D)

Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale

Hester Collyer (Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz) leads a privileged life in 1950s London as the beautiful wife of high court judge Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale). To the shock of those around her, she walks out on her marriage to move in with young ex-RAF pilot, Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), with whom she has fallen passionately in love.

Set in post-war Britain, this adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s classic play, THE DEEP BLUE SEA is a study of forbidden love, suppressed desire, and the fear of loneliness – but is at heart a deeply moving love story. Stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, what - or whom - should Hester choose?

Distributor: Artificial Eye

An African Election (PG) (D)

Director: Jarreth Merz. Kevin Merz

Swiss born director, Merz, makes his way to Accra, the capital of Ghana, the country he spent his childhood in, to trace memories of the past but more importantly to witness first hand how this once hopeful third world country has progressed.

An African Election illuminates a beacon of hope for Africa and for the value and vitality of democracy today.

The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa, serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary, which looks behind the scenes of a complex, political machinery of a third world country trying to catch up with the first world.

Merz carefully examines the presidential electoral arena giving an unparalleled in depth view of the forces at work politically, economically and socially. He follows the key players for almost three months, witnessing their challenges, their highs and lows and manages to portray the people rather than the larger than life characters.

The stakes are high and each contestant will do almost anything to win.

The film unfolds with all the tension of a political thriller, revealing the emotions, passions, and ethical decisions that both threaten—and maintain—the integrity of the democratic process.

Distributor: Dogwoof | Venue: Key Cities

Resistance (PG) (D)

Director: Amit Gupta
Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Tom Wlaschiha, Michael Sheen

In 1944 a group of women in an isolated Welsh village wake up to discover all of the their husbands have mysteriously vanished.

Distributor: Metrodome | Venue: Key Cities

My Week With Marilyn (15) (D)

Director: Simon Curtis
Cast: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judie Dench, Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond, Dougray Scott

Starring an award-winning all-star cast and based on the diaries of Colin Clark, the film captures a love affair with the world’s most famous woman, Marilyn Monroe.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN is the true story of a star-struck boy who falls in love with the biggest celebrity in the world, Marilyn Monroe. 23 year-old Colin Clark was determined to break into the film business and his first job was The Prince and The Showgirl - the film that was set to be the smash hit of the year famously uniting the biggest stars of the day, Marilyn Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier. On honeymoon in Britain with her new husband, Arthur Miller, Marilyn is excited about the project but quickly becomes desperate to run away from her Hollywood entourage, the pressures of work and the press who hound her.

For Marilyn, Colin is a welcome antidote and he offers her everything she craves when, together, they escape the film set to get closer in an idyllic Britain. Simon Curtis’ director credits include the BAFTA and Emmy-winning, ‘Cranford,’ the International Emmy-winning, ‘A Short Stay in Switzerland,’ and the Golden Globe nominated ‘Five Days.’

The film is produced by Academy Award® and BAFTA winner David Parfitt (Shakespeare in Love, The Madness of King George, I Capture the Castle) and the screenplay is by Adrian Hodges (Tom and Viv, ‘The Ruby in the Smoke’ and ‘David Copperfield’). The film is produced by Trademark Films and is financed by The Weinstein Company. BBC Films and Lipsync Productions also financed the picture. It was developed in association with the UK Film Council and BBC Films.

Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors | Venue: UK wide

Revenge: A Love Story (Fuk Sau Che Chi Sei ) (18) (D)

Director: Wong Ching Po
Cast: Juno Mak, Sola Aoi, Tony Ho, Ching Siu Tung

A serial-killer targeting pregnant women is on the loose
90min Cantonese (English subtitles) Hong Kong 2010

Police are investigating a serial killer who targets pregnant women and the media have labeled him ‘The Dissector’ and running sensationalist headlines such as “Pregnant woman dissected alive, husband put to death in 100 degrees boiling water”. At the scene of yet another such murder, and led by undercover detectives Jeff and Kwok Wah (Chin Siu Ho, Tony Ho) they comb the area and find a known suspect, Chan Kit (Juno Mak), and bring him in. Chan Kit remains silent throughout the physically brutal interrogation and is released without charge. If Chan Kit is not the killer, then who is? The story unfolds step by step, jumping with flashbacks as to how Chan Kit is linked to the group of undercover policeman in the first place and the pain he has silently endured; this is a story about unconditional love.

Awards:
Best Direction, Moscow International Film Festival 2011
Best Director, Wong Ching Po, Moscow International Film Festival 2011
Best Actor, Juno Mak, Puchon International Film Festival 2011

DVD Release UK Date: 9th January 2012
Screen Ratio: 2.35:1 DVD Special Features: Producers Interview Directors Interview Making Of Trailers What is Terracotta Festival?

Distributor: Terracotta Distribution | Venue: Key Cities

Take Shelter (15) (D)

Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain

Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself. IMDb

Distributor: The Works | Venue: Key Cities

We Were Here (D)

Director: David Weissman
Cast: Cleve Jones

An edifying must-see that has received accolades at film festivals the world over, 'We Were Here' is the first film to take a deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of a definitive chapter in a city’s queer history. It explores how the inhabitants were affected by, and how they responded to, a calamitous epidemic. Though a San Francisco-based story, We Were Here extends beyond San Francisco and beyond AIDS itself. It speaks to our capacity as individuals to rise to the occasion, and to the incredible power of a community coming together with love, compassion, and determination.

In the face of adversity they stood strong and united. This is their story.

Distributor: Peccadillo Pictures | Venue: Special: ICA only

Dream House (15) (D)

Director: Jim Sheridan
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts

Soon after moving into their seemingly idyllic new home, a family learns of a brutal crime committed against former residents of the dwelling. IMDb

Distributor: Warner Bros. | Venue: UK wide

Parked

Director: Darragh Byrne
Cast: Colm Meaney, Colin Morgan

Fred lives a quiet, isolated life in his car, having lost all hope of improving his situation. That all changes when he forms an unlikely friendship with Cathal, a dope-smoking 21-year-old with a positive attitude, who becomes his ‘neighbour’. Sharing laughs, and the hard times too, Fred and Cathal find the simple, free pleasures of life.

Cathal is determined to make Fred sort his life out, and it works. Fred modifies his car, beats the welfare system and makes a friend in Jules, an attractive music teacher who lives alone nearby. But Fred struggles with his pride to tell Jules about his ‘home’, and Cathal’s life is threatened by his escalating drug habit. As they grow closer, the influence of these three outsiders on each other will change their lives.

PARKED is triumphant story of friendship, hope, and perseverance.

Distributor: Element Pictures Distribution

Moneyball (12A)

Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Robin Wright, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman

The story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players. IMDb

Distributor: Sony Pictures

50/50 (15) (D)

Director: Jonathan Levine
Cast: Seth Rogan, Anna Kendrick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Angelica Huston, Bryce Dallas Howard

Inspired by a true story, a comedy centered on a 27-year-old guy who learns of his cancer diagnosis, and his subsequent struggle to beat the disease. IMDb

Distributor: Lionsgate UK

Desi Boyz (12A) (D)

Director: Rohit Dhawan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone

The year is 2009. The world has been struck by the financial meltdown. But Nick Mathur and Jerry Patel don't feel a thing in their comfortable pad in London.

Nick feels smug with his successful investment banking job, the new bonus in his pocket and his beautiful fiance, Radhika, by his side, while Jerry is so used to scraping the bottom of the barrel and living off his best buddy Nick, that recession feels like home. But life has a way of pulling the rug from under our feet.

Nick and Jerry stop smiling the day Nick's company decides to downsize and unceremoniously fires him. And Jerry is informed by the Social Services that his nephew Veer, who's local guardian Jerry is will be placed in a foster home unless he gets a steady job.

DESI BOYZ is the story of two men who are forced to do something extremely bizarre which gives them instant gratification but the repercussions tear them apart and its aftermath which tests everything including their friendship.

Distributor: Eros International | Venue: Key cities

Sunday 27th of November 2011

That Girl In Yellow Boots (18) (D)

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Kalki Koechlin, Naseeruddin Shah, Ronit Roy, Divya Jagdal

Ruth has traveled across half the world to find her father – a man she hardly knew but can never forget. Lost and alone in the sprawling chaos of Mumbai, she survives by serving men’s desires at an unlicensed massage parlor and clinging to the hope that there is a good man at the end of her search. But, as the sprawling city threatens to engulf her, Ruth’s persistence will reveal a devastating truth, beyond anything she could possibly imagine.

In the metropolis erupting with a million screaming dreams and fears, Ruth struggles to find her independence and space even as she is sucked deeper into the labyrinthine politics of the city's underbelly. And everyone wants a piece of her.

Visionary director Anurag Kashyap (Black Sunday) wraps Ruth (Kalki Koechlin) in a dazzling world, both brutal and beautiful, where pleasure can be bought, but love is elusive.

Festivals & Awards
Venice Film Festival 2010
Toronto International Film Festival 2010
South Asian International Film Festival 2010
International Film Festival of Los Angeles, 2010
London Asian Film Festival, 2011

Distributor: Mara Pictures | Venue: Key cities

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