Robert Zemeckis' Flight starring Denzel Washington will screen as the Centerpiece of the Austin Film Festival & Conference. The 2012 event, taking place October 18 - 25 revealed some details of its upcoming event Tuesday including 10 films that will join this year's lineup. AFF annually hosts over 180 film screenings and events, while the Conference welcomes over 100 speakers in its panels and roundtables. Among the films screened during the festival are numerous world and US premieres in a wide range of genres, from comedy to documentary, horror to drama. Also on tap for this year, X-Files creator Chris Carter will receive the event's Outstanding Television Writer Award at AFF's annual Awards Luncheon on Saturday, October 22nd.
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Actress Nicole Kidman and retiring Film Society of Lincoln Center Program Director Richard Peña will receive gala tributes at the upcoming 50th New York Film Festival. Kidman stars in Cannes world premiere The Paperboy, which has also joined the NYFF lineup. Kidman's tribute will take place Wednesday October 3rd, while the gala in Peña's honor will take place Wednesday, October 10th.
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The genre/action/foreign film spectacular that is Fantastic Fest is my favorite festival of the year, and not just because you might catch a Hobbit-on-Hobbit boxing match or impromptu celebrity karaoke or see the lady next to you faint from shock inside the theater in the span of a few glorious days at the annual Austin, TX event. Take a look at the latest wave of programming for next month's Fantastic Fest (September 20-27), including screenings of Rian Johnson's Looper, the horror omnibus The ABCs of Death, Jean-Claude Van Damme (in 3-D!) in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, and more gloriously insane-sounding films from around the globe. Tree boobs, anyone?
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The World Premiere of Ang Lee's Life Of Pi will open the New York Film Festival September 28th. The screening launching the 50th anniversary of the annually anticipated film event will be a return for the Oscar-winning director, who screened Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as the festival's closing night event 12 years ago. Robert Altman, Pedro Almodóvar and Francois Truffaut are the only other directors to have had more than one film chosen to bow the festival. Lee's The Ice Storm opened the 1997 edition of NYFF.
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French film The Girl From Nowhere took top honors at the 65th Locarno Film Festival over the weekend, winning the Swiss festival's to Golden Leopard (Pardo d'oro) prize, while Ying Liang won Best Director for When Night Falls. American director Bob Byington's Somebody Up There Likes Me won the second prize at the event.
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The world premiere of Robert Zemeckis's Flight will close the 50th anniversary edition of the New York Film Festival, organizers said Thursday. The action-packed thriller stars Oscar-winner Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker, a veteran airline pilot who crash lands his plane following a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly everyone on board.
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The Venice Film Festival released details about its 69th edition Thursday morning, with 17 films debuting in competition, competing for its top Golden Lion award. Among the new features headed to the Italian city are Brian De Palma's Passion with Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace and Paul Anderson. Harmony Korine's latest, Spring Breakers with James Franco, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens joined the lineup along with Terrence Malick's To the Wonder, starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Javier Bardem and Olga Kurylenko. As previously announced, the festival, which runs August 29 - September 8 will open with the world premiere of Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
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Ira Sachs' Keep The Lights On won the the Grand Jury Award for Best U.S. Dramatic Feature as well as the prize for Screenwriting, capping the 30th Outfest, the Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival. Starring Thure Lindhardt and Zachary Booth, the film centers on doc filmmaker Erik Rothman who meets Paul Lucy a handsome but closeted lawyer in the publishing field. What begins as a highly charged first encounter soon becomes something much more, and a relationship quickly develops. As the two men start building a home and life together, each continues to privately battle their own compulsions and addictions.
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The world premiere of international political thriller The Reluctant Fundamentalist will launch the Venice Film Festival August 29th. The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name about a young Pakistani man chancing corporate success on Wall Street, but becomes embroiled in a conflict between his American Dream, a hostage crisis, and the enduring call of his family's homeland. The feature will screen out of competition stars Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Martin Donovan, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi, Haluk Bilginer and Meesha Shafi.
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Gen Art, the yearly New York film festival that attracts a good-looking get in-the-know crowd to its packaged week of nightly premieres followed by a party at different NYC hot-spots has unveiled details on its 17th edition taking place August 8 - 14. Missed Connections starring Jon Abrahams and Mickey Sumner will open the festival, while the world premiere of The Kitchen starring Laura Prepon and Dreama Walker will close out the fest. Details follow on Gen Art's seven feature premieres:
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The Locarno Film Festival is one of the world's oldest. The Swiss lake-side summer event regularly attract thousands including U.S. filmmakers during its ten-day run. The fest has raised its profile in recent years and this year the event will feature 19 films screening as international or world premieres competing for the event's top "Pardo d'oro" grand prize. U.S. entries include Jack and Diane, Compliance, Museum Hours, Somebody Up There Likes Me and Museum Hours. The festival will open with the world premiere of Nick Love's The Sweeney August 1st
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I'm getting to this a wee bit late, but hey: The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has announced plans for the inaugural Internet Cat Video Film Festival, which is... exactly what it sounds like. LOL?
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The promise of seeing Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, and their manscaped compatriots bare (almost) it all in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike has quickened the collective pulse of the film’s target audience in the weeks leading up to Friday’s release. But while ladies and many gents will get a titillating thrill from the scantily-clad dance numbers and cheesy-fantasy bumps ‘n’ grinds (and there are so, so many), what elevates the film beyond its “Showgirls-with-men” concept is the depth and naturalness in the story of 30-year-old star performer Mike (Tatum) and his pursuit of the American dream as one of the “Cock-rocking Kings of Tampa.”
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Some were skeptical that Woody Allen would make an appearance at the opening night of the LA Film Festival, even with his latest Euro-whimsy To Rome With Love premiering in the kick-off slot Thursday night. But show up Woody did, with five of his starlets in tow — including Alison Pill, Greta Gerwig, and a dazzling Penelope Cruz — to debut his 43rd feature film with a few charmingly self-deprecating zingers.
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The Los Angeles Film Festival opens Thursday night with Woody Allen's To Rome with Love and the event even scored the presence of the director himself — at least, according to reports. But after the spectacle of opening night carries into the main core of the festival's selection, new and established filmmakers from around the world will be screening their latest in the festival's various sections. Movieline asked filmmakers in the LA Film Festival's Narrative and Documentary competitions to share some thoughts on their work. Also take a look at their trailers and be in the know…
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