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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David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook took top honors at the Toronto International Film Festival, winning the Blackberry People's Choice Award Sunday. Unlike most of its top tier festival brethren, TIFF does not have a formal jury competition. Also taking an audience prize was Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths, which won the prize in the Midnight Madness category. The audience winner for Best Documentary went to Artifact by Bartholomew Cubbins.
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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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Ben Affleck's come a long way since his 1998 Oscar co-win for Good Will Hunting, arguably the first time Hollywood stood up and took notice of the multi-hyphenate as more than just an actor; according to Variety, he's now being sought after to direct WB's Justice League, DC's answer to Marvel's billion-dollar rival franchise starter The Avengers. But even after the successes of modest-scale thrillers Gone Baby Gone and The Town, and with his buzzed-about forthcoming picture Argo poised for awards season, is the writer/producer/actor/director the right filmmaker to helm the superhero studio tentpole?
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Also in Thursday morning's round-up of news briefs, following news of today's Venice Film Festival lineup comes word Ben Affleck's Argo is heading to another European film event. British independent films score their best numbers in years; and a Weinstein Company veteran returns to head their publicity department.
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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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One of North America's biggest annual film events released details of its lineup Tuesday morning including 17 Galas and 45 "Special Presentations" that will screen in the 37th Toronto International Film Festival in September. Festival CEO and Director Piers Handling as well as TIFF Artistic Director Cameron Bailey announced the lineup this morning in Toronto at a live event about this year's festival, which includes 38 world premieres. As revealed earlier, Looper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis will open the festival.
Debuts from directors worldwide including Andrew Adamson, Ben Affleck, David Ayer, Maiken Baird, Noah Baumbach, J.A. Bayona, Stuart Blumberg, Josh Boone, Laurent Cantet, Sergio Castellitto, Stephen Chbosky, Lu Chuan, Derek Cianfrance, Costa-Gavras, Liz Garbus, Dustin Hoffman, Rian Johnson, Neil Jordan, Baltasar Kormákur, Shola Lynch, Deepa Mehta, Roger Michell, Ruba Nadda, Mike Newell, François Ozon, Sally Potter, Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, Eran Riklis, David O. Russell, Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski, Margarethe von Trotta, Joss Whedon and Yaron Zilberman are in the lineup.
TIFF takes place September 6 - 16. Today's lineup follows. More details from the festival will be announced the coming weeks...
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The previously untitled, Ben Affleck/Rachel McAdams-starring project due later this year has also received an R rating for "some sexuality and nudity." Ugh. This calls for a petition! Meanwhile the film still awaits an official release date; stay tuned here for details as events warrant. [CARA via Film Stage]
Ben Affleck, director, makes his most ambitious movie yet in this fall's Argo, the crazy true (and until recently, secret) story of how the CIA attempted to rescue six American diplomats during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis by disguising them as a film crew working on a science fiction movie. The first trailer for Argo ranks up there with the best we've seen all year, setting up the stranger-than-fiction premise with juicy moments from veteran thesps (John Goodman! Alan Arkin!) and up-and-comers (ladies and gentlemen, Scoot McNairy) alike as Affleck serves up a bizarre slice of history.
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Dazed and Confused often gets lumped in with pot comedies and is celebrated on 4/20, but Richard Linklater’s first studio film transcends mere pot comedy and is still one of the most realistic teen movies ever made. It arrived at a time (1993) when teen movies were out of vogue, and it dared to take a trip down memory lane to a time remembered more with cringes than smiles. It’s arguably the most anti-nostalgia period movie ever, as acknowledged by Linklater himself. Digging in to the Criterion Collection extras (a Blu-ray Criterion release came out in October), here are some bits of evidence of that, tied to some of the movie’s most memorable lines.
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Look, everyone and their mother is going to be playing Hurley's numbers from LOST today for the chance to win $640 million in tonight's Mega Millions draw. (You know: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.) Your friendly Movieline editors aren't necessarily endorsing the insane gamble that is the national lottery, but if you're going to throw your hat and your dollars into the ring with the rest of America by going on a last-minute ticket buying frenzy (get 'em by 7:45 pm tonight, California!), here are the winning numbers that nabbed the jackpot for Nic Cage and Bridget Fonda, Bow Wow, and a handful of other lucky folks on the big screen.
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"It’s got Ben Affleck as a big, dumb mook, and, well, he’s pretty good at it. And it’s got Jennifer Lopez playing her most interesting character since Out of Sight [...] But those two are the reason that Gigli arrived with such built-in hostility from moviegoers and critics, because this was the film where the duo met and fell into the PDA-heavy romance that become such a constant, unceasing annoyance in the months that followed. It was a classic example of buyer’s remorse — through tabloids and entertainment 'news' programs, we couldn’t get enough Bennifer coverage, and then, in the blink of an eye, we’d had enough, we were done with them, and we didn’t want to see anything that had anything to do with them." Yeah! Sheesh. Actually, no, but still. [Flavorwire]
John Goodman is reportedly negotiating to join Ben Affleck's Argo, the period political drama about a real-life covert operation to rescue six U.S. diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The kicker, and where Goodman comes in, is in the unusual circumstances of said rescue, in which the Canadian government enlisted Hollywood make-up and effects experts John Chambers and Bob Sidell to help the Americans escape in disguise as crew members of a fake science fiction film.
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