Hitman Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is confronted with his future self — in the form of a time-traveling Bruce Willis — in Rian Johnson's Looper, the writer-director's third feature and one of the freshest original science fiction tales in years. Before debuting the September 28 release at Fantastic Fest over the weekend, Johnson spoke with Movieline about the pre-Brick short script that gestated into Looper, the film's dark streak and the 1970 soul ballad that serves as "the heart of the movie."
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It's hard to say who really won, or if nobody won, or if everyone won last night when filmmaker Joe Swanberg (LOL, Hannah Takes The Stairs) and Badass Digest critic Devin Faraci took their creative differences to the boxing ring at the Fantastic Debates, an annual Fantastic Fest highlight that combines traditional debate with actual fisticuffs. Technically, their topic of debate was "Mumblecore is catshit and is giving a bad name to independent films," though given Swanberg's position as the micro-indie movement's poster child, the fight got personal as soon as it began.
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Sweeping into Austin to present Fantastic Fest’s opening night film Frankenweenie in his signature tinted glasses, director Tim Burton extolled the virtues of one of his most favored art forms: Stop-motion animation. “It’s such a beautiful, rarified medium,” said Burton, who returns to many of his roots — stop motion, black and white film, monster movies, macabre kids tales, and his own 1984 short film of the same name, about a boy who brings his beloved dog back from the grave — in the feature-length October release.
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Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, San Sebastian, Hong Kong, New York, Telluride - and Pyongyang? The end of Summer brought on the annual big tentpole festivals in Venice and Toronto as well as industry and celeb-heavy Telluride, ushering in the annual awards race and many of this year's fall releases. But don't expect North Korea's international film festival, which opens Thursday to factor too deeply into Oscar. In fact, Americans are apparently banned. Held every two years, the Pyongyang International Film Festival is a chance for residents of the so-called Hermit Kingdom to view foreign films on the big screen.
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The Hamptons International Film Festival released its 2012 slate with a lineup of festival circuit notables as well as World, U.S. and East Coast premieres. HIFF released its Opening Films, including Love, Marilyn, Silver Linings Playbook, Argo and Not Fade Away recently. Today's list includes the festival's Spotlight Films section including Tim Burton's latest, Frankenweenie and Cannes Palme d'Or winner Amour. And The Girl with Toby Jones, Sienna Miller and Imelda Staunton will have its worldwide debut at the upcoming event.
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Liz Garbus' documentary Love, Marilyn will have its U.S. premiere at the 20th edition of the Hamptons International Film Festival in the tony Long Island, NY town of East Hampton, while David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook will open HIFF in neighboring Southampton the following day. Both films debuted recently at the Toronto International Film Festival, with Playbook picking up the Audience Prize over the weekend. Fellow TIFF title Argo by Ben Affleck will screen as the five-day festival's Centerpiece, while Paramount Vantage's Not Fade Away will close out the event.
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The World Premiere of The Collection will take place at the upcoming genre-lead Fantastic Fest, taking place in Austin, TX September 20 - 27. Starring Josh Stewart (The Dark Knight Rises), Emma Fitzpatrick (The Social Network) and Christopher McDonald (Requiem for a Dream, which LD Entertainment will open in theaters in late November. Fantastic Fest announced 26 new titles for its upcoming event.
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Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was set to receive the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter's inside source, until a decision to allow only two major awards per film forced jury members to re-assign the top honor to another contender. When the awards were doled out earlier today by Venice jury president Michael Mann, the best picture prize went to Kim Ki-Duk's ultraviolent mother-son flick Pieta while Best Director went to Anderson. (Full list of winners follows.)
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The premise sounds like an Ingmar Bergman film,. starring Liv Ullmann. On Oct. 1, the surviving member of the venerated on- and off-screen couple is slated to be in Manhattan on Oct. 1 to watch herself onscreen: at the U.S. premiere of writer and director Dheeraj Akolkar's Liv and Ingmar at the 50th anniversary of the New York Film Festival. more »
Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival is still days away, but festival-goers in Venice will catch the world debut Wednesday and already the film is making some initial waves with "raunchy" and "raucous" being just two operative words to describe the feature about a quartet of sexy college girls whose plan to rob a fast food joint to fund their spring break getaway goes awry. And that is just the beginning. The film stars Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens and Heather Morris.
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The lineup for the 56th BFI London Film Festival was unveiled Wednesday with 225 fiction and documentary features set for the event, including 14 World, 15 International and 34 European Premieres. The lineup also includes a gala for the world premiere of Crossfire Hurricane, a documentary celebrating 50 years of The Rolling Stones, who are expected to attend the event. As announced earlier, the European Premiere of Tim Burton's 3-D animation Frankenweenie will open LFF on October 10th. The festival will close withMike Newell's Great Expectations with Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes.
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The Master, the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, has captured the zeitgeist of Venice Film Festival talk in the first half of the festival, but perhaps more quietly, director Haifaa Al Mansour is making celluloid history with her film Wadjda. Al Mansour is Saudi Arabia's first female director, in a country that forbids movie theaters. The film follows the story of a determined 10 year-old girl living in the country's capital, Riyadh.
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Bill Murray, Photo copyright Pamela Gentile
Ben Affleck's look at a hidden story from the Iranian hostage crisis, Bill Murray as FDR, Marion Cotillard playing a woman whose life is dramatically altered in an instant, as well as a pair of acclaimed foreign language films are just a few of the most buzzed about movies coming out of this year's Telluride Film Festival. Over the course of just four days here in this Colorado mountain town, attendees got a head start peek at some of the best movies of the year. Films and performance that will have moviegoers talking this fall.
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The Telluride Film Festival offers a bright spotlight, showcasing a small selection of films over Labor Day weekend just as summer movies give way to a more serious season of cinema. Later this year, moviegoers will be talking about Bill Murray as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Marion Cotillard as a woman who loses her legs to a killer whale and even a small town story starring Zac Efron as an aspiring NASCAR racer and Dennis Quaid as his father, an Iowa farmer. Those three films - Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson, Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone and Ramin Bahrani's At Any Price - lead a roster of acclaimed and anticipated new movies that will screen at this weekend's tony Telluride Film Festival.
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Indian-born filmmaker Mira Nair said that 9/11 formed part of the inspiration for her latest film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which kicked off the Venice Film Festival Wednesday evening. Just days before the attacks, Nair won the festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, for her much praised Monsoon Wedding and she left the fabled Italian city for the Toronto International Film Festival to promote the film when the attacks happened. Like other New York residents, she was stranded in the Canadian city following the tragic event, taking her a week to get back to NYC and her husband and son. When she did make it back, she felt an "otherness" in the post-9/11 period, a theme she explores in her latest feature.
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