American actress and Oscar-winner Meryl Streep will be awarded an Honorary Golden Bear at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. Meryl Streep has appeared in over 40 films and is looked upon as one of the world’s most talented and popular actresses. She has received countless awards and nominations as an artist, including an unprecedented 16 nominations for the Oscar (two of these coveted prizes which she won) and 18 Golden Globe nominations and seven wins. “We are delighted to be able...
Monday, January 8-----The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC), one of the most prestigious film critics organizations in North America, has chosen the Spanish-language film PAN’S LABYRINTH as the Best Picture of the Year. The choice of a non-English language film harkens back to the heyday of foreign films in the 1960s and 1970s, when the films of Truffaut, Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa were given the Society’s highest accolade. In fact, all top three vote-getters in the Best Picture c...
Saturday/Sunday, November 25/26----Robert Altman, one of the most influential film directors of his generation, passed away earlier this week at Cedars of Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Rumors about Altman's declining health have been circulating since his announcement at last year's Academy Awards that he had received a heart transplant in the last few years. What the public and even close associates didn't know was that the iconic director had been diagnosed with cancer over a year ago, but ...
Film is my life... That sums up how I feel about the movies.I don't care much for the big budget blockbuster American films and don't see many of them. I live for the small films with small budgets where you still see people and hear stories about people. They also have no car chases and big explosions which I don't see as art.I discovered the Durban International Film Festival in 2005 by accident when I read on the Internet that they will be premiering Paradise Now and the two main actors and d...
Filmfestivals correspondant Claus Mueller sat down with Dieter Kosslick head of the Berlin festival for an open discussion on the festival changes. Claus Mueller What is the most important change compared to last year?Dieter Kosslick The most important change of course is that we finished out five year plan, including the change of the market, that is the move to the Martin Gropius Bau. That was a big move, and there is another little change, that we give the awards at the end of the festival on...
It's always a bit of a let-down when a big one like this wraps and you look through the catalogue noting oodles of films you were dying to see but just didn't have time to get to. Ouch! Among the most coveted 'near misses' (since it would have been possible to see them, but at the expense of missing other simultaneously scheduled events) I can list with sweet regret (and this is only a small sampling), the following: "The Notorious Betty Page" (with a fetishistically luscious Gretchen Mol); "Ab...
The crush to get a gander at HOFFMAN AS CAPOTE was so great yesterday that an extra press screening had to be improvised a half hour after the initially scheduled one in the Cinemaxx multi-screen theatre complex. Presumably, the half hour decollage allows reels of the film to be switched from one hall to the other without missing a beat. Unfortunately, the press conference time remained unchanged, so that those condemned to the later viewing (like myself), found the conference already well unde...
On the eve of Valentine's day -- the day traditionally dedicated to pure and innocent love -- a new German film dedicated to the unadulterated portrayal of violent, sadistic, psychotic, serial rape, and to the proposition that such rapists are incurably deranged, sent shock waves through an audience composed of around 1,000 press reps in the grand festival hall, and evoked a bedlam of boos and catcalls. The title of the film (in competition this year) is "Die Freie Wille" (Free Will) and the dir...
The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference & Festival is happy to announce a preliminary list of premieres in the 2006 edition, scheduled for March 10-18 in Austin, Texas. This includes the North American Premiere of 'A Prairie Home Companion,' directed by Robert Altman from a screenplay by Garrison Keillor, as the festival's Opening Night Film."I can't think of a more perfect Opening Night Film than 'A Prairie Home Companion,'" says SXSW Film Festival Producer Matt Dentler. "Not only ...
