With the world premiere of the star-studded action thriller "The International" by ace German director Tom Tykwer (of "Lola Runs" fame), the 59th Berlin International Film Festival opens this evening, Febsuary 5, in the presence of the director and the actors Clive Owen, Ulrich Thomsen and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Festival Director Dieter Kosslick will ring the curtain up in conjunction with Jury President, Scottish actress Tilda Swinton. The event will be telecast liv...
With the world premiere of the star-studded action thriller "The International" by ace German director Tom Tykwer (of "Lola Runs" fame), the 59th Berlin International Film Festival opens this evening, Febsuary 5, in the presence of the director and the actors Clive Owen, Ulrich Thomsen and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Festival Director Dieter Kosslick will ring the curtain up in conjunction with Jury President, Scottish actress Tilda Swinton. The event will be telecast live hosted by popular TV present...
The 4Oth Hungarian Film Revue (Magyar Filmszemle) will open as usual at the Congress Center Hall in Budapest on Tuesday evening, January 27, 2OO9. What is a bit unusual is that the festival organizers have reserved the hall for the entire five days of the run and have generally given the festival a bit of a facelift and a slight geographic moveover. The Congress Center with its extensive guest facilities has usually served as an opening night venue only. This year, however, says Elisabeth T...
The 4Oth Hungarian Film Revue (Magyar Filmszemle) will open as usual at the Congress Center Hall in Budapest on Tuesday evening, January 27, 2OO9. What is a bit unusual is that the festival organizers have reserved the hall for the entire five days of the run and have generally given the festival a bit of a facelift and a slight geographic moveover. The Congress Center with its extensive guest facilities has usually served as an opening night venue only. This year, however, says Elisabeth Tót...
More than 50 Hollywood stars have been set as presenters at "The 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards" which took place Sunday, January 11, 2009 at The Beverly Hilton with a live telecast on NBC. NOTE: The Golden Globes are awarded by the Los Angeles Foreign Press Association, which is composed chiefly of a handful of Hollywood-struck geriatric non-entities less known for their profundity in the assessment of films than for their fear of being caught on the wrong band wagon. Steven Spielberg has rece...
The closing film of the Titanic Festival in Budpest, "In Bruges", was another eye-opener. Directed by Martin McDonagh and set almost entirely in the beautiful Belgian canal city of Bruges, this is one where it's hard to tell whether it's a violent comedy, or a spoof on violence, or a comical violence film about two hard-boiled Irish hit men on the lam in Belgium. Our hero, handsome Irish charmer Colin Farrell, sporting a heavy growth of five-o'clock shadow throughout and constantly lamenting th...
Alex Deleon offers his choice of ten best and worst films of the past year. Well, it's that time again when many film reviewers and critics compile their lists of Best (and Worst) of the flicks they were exposed to in the preceding year. Given that one can no more tell people which films they "should" like and which they shouldn't, anymore than you can expect everybody to agree with you on the taste of tripe soup or boiled tongue-- or even honey, for that matter -- it should be obvious to any pe...
Going in there was every reason to expect Woody Allen's latest, "Vicki Cristina Barcelona", to be a winner -- top-notch international name cast including last years Oscar laureate for best supporting actor, Spaniard Javier Bardem, a gaggle of sexy women involved with him including dazzling blonde bombshell Scarlett Johansson, and the beautiful city of Barcelona for a backdrop. Sad to say it was highly disappointing at neary every turn and was basically a high gloss low concept loser. The pict...
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The "Titanic" international film festival, Budapest's new "tough guy on the block" and the only real rival to the annual Hungarian Film Week for the attention of the large film buff community here, closed shop on April 13 with the screening of a spellbinding new Irish thriller "In Bruges", and a closing gala party that lasted far into the night.Now into its third year as a legitimate prize awarding international film festival, the "Titanic" festival in Budapest, while still modest in size, appea...
Two War Films, "Cold Tears", 2004, and "Night Bus", 2007. The war between Sadam Hussein's Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran lasted nearly a decade, from 1980 to 1988, and was treated as a kind of side-show in the western press, but it was the main event in that part of the world and has provided fodder for countless Iranian films ever since. Two of these were presented in the current survey. Dated 2004 and 2007 these films show that nearly 20 years down the line this war is still far from a ...
The Iranian Film Week in Budapest opening film, "Kheili Dour, Kheili Nazdik", (Very far, very near), 2OO5, directed by Sayyed Reza Mir-Karimi, was one of the best of the lot and also the longest with a running time of 12O minutes. A middle-aged neurosurgeon (played by the charismatic actor Masoud Rayegany) comes back to Teheran on the eve of the Persian New Year after a long stay in the west to spend the holidays with his teenage son, an avid student of astronomy. You can see that he feels a l...
In conjunction with the Iranian embassy the Örökmogó Filmmuseum, which is the outlet for the Hungarian Film Archive and presents a selection of international films all year round, is presenting a ten film survey here of recent Iranian film productions in what amounts to a mini Iranian film festival. The survey includes two slightly older films from the years 1992 and 1999, but the remainder are all films made after the turn of the millenium, primarily those released since 2004. Ever since t...
Tuesday, day number five of the festival is just about the midpoint, and as in the middle of a long distance race, the pace seems to have abated to cruising speed, conserving energy for the final race to the wire, waiting for Meryl Streep to pull into town, and the closing Concha awards. On Monday actor John Malkovitch appeared at a one-man press conference wearing the coat of many colors he has been sporting around town. John was the sole representative for the Coen Brothers film "Burn ...
A special showing out of competition on Thursday, Day Seven of the fest at the gloriously renovated Teatro Victoria Eugenia was Jonathan Demme's new film "Rachel Getting Married", starring beauteous limpid-eyed dark haired Ann Hathaway in an uncharacteristically less-than-glamorous role as a recovering dope addict, and a host of unknowns supporting her act. Mister Demme, director of such megahits as "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia" is also president of th...
Wednesday was Basque Cinema Day and one of the important films which surfaced was a Spanish language film directed by a Basque director and set in the Basque country in and around San Sebastian-Donostia. The name of the picture is "La Casa de mi Padre" (My father´s house) and the subject matter is the tension between families and members of the same family in this part of the world due to ETA terrorism. The picture is beautifully shot in rich color and features some of Spain´s ...
Wednesday was Basque Cinema Day and one of the important films which surfaced was a Spanish language film directed by a Basque director and set in the Basque country in and around San Sebastian-Donostia. The name of the picture is "La Casa de mi Padre" (My father´s house) and the subject matter is the tension between families and members of the same family in this part of the world due to ETA terrorism. The picture is beautifully shot in rich color and features some of Spain´s top actors, th...
Tuesday, day number five of the festival is just about the midpoint, and as in the middle of a long distance race, the pace seems to have abated to cruising speed, conserving energy for the final race to the wire, waiting for Meryl Streep to pull into town, and the closing Concha awards. On Monday actor John Malkovitch appeared at a one-man press conference wearing the coat of many colors he has been sporting around town. John was the sole representative for the Coen Brothers film "Burn After R...
Besides the usual emphasis on Latino and Made-in-Spain films, new directors, and the Open Space (Zabaltegi) catch-all international sections, one of the eye openers of the 56th edition of this tasty Basqueland festival is a forty-three (43!) film overview of so-called "Japanese Film Noir". Film Noir purists who love to split hairs over the definition of the term, and over which films qualify for inclusion in the category and which ones do not, may be taken aback by some of the entries in this s...
If you're tired of those same old raggedy Red Carpets every year the 56th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival which opens on September 18 has anounced a major change in decor --the Red Carpet this year will be FUCHSIA... and not just one rug for the stars to cavort on on on their way to the galas, but two! A carpet 9O metres long (about one American football field) will lead up the main beachfront thoroughfare to the surrealistic Kursaal complex, otherwise known as 'The Cube', where ...
If you're tired of those same old raggedy Red Carpets every year the 56th edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival which opens on September 18 has anounced a major change in decor --the Red Carpet this year will be FUCHSIA... and not just one rug for the stars to cavort on on on their way to the galas, but two! A carpet 9O metres long (about one American football field) will lead up the main beachfront thoroughfare to the surrealistic Kursaal complex, otherwise known as 'The Cube', where the f...
Anyone wondering if there is film festival life in the Czech Republic after Karlovy wouldn't have long to wait. Barely two weeks after the closing of the KV International Film festival on July 12 where Czech films did very well in terms of prizes and recognition, another gathering of the Czech film tribes is taking place in the remote southern town of Uherske Hradiste (in the Moravian region near Brno). While this festival is known here as "The Summer Film School", don't let the name fool you -...
A star studded jury confronted with a slate of second rate films in the international competition section (par for the course at Karlovy Vary because more important festivals gobble up the better films) had to sweat it out for five hours before arriving at their decisions on the main awards. The Grand jury composed of such luminaries as British actress Brenda Blethyn, Dutch star Johanna Ter Steege (The Vanishing), ace Hungarian-American camerman Vilmos Zsigmond, and presided over by Czech-Americ...
Following the morning press screening in the Big Hall both American actresses and director Chadwick held court at another heavily crowded press conference because, although she´s not really a big star yet, Scarlett Jo, for her looks alone, is already a major media magnet. Scarlett, with her bright yellow hair, heart-shaped face, perfect nose, almond eyes, full sensuous lips, and porcelain complexion, looked incredibly radiant as usual, clad in a modest flowery print dress, as she responded to u...
