Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe played a crazily estranged couple in Lars von Trier's erotic/thriller/surreal Antichrist in 2009. And now, Dafoe is set to return to Von Trier's latest, Nymphomaniac along with Gainsbourg, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Stellan Skarsgard and Uma Thurman. Others are joining the cast, while one big name has pulled out.
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Filmmaker Jenle Hallund has looked into the soul of America, and it sounds like we need a good shrink.
Hallund is the intrepid soul who has spent the last weeks watching and, in some cases, listening to the 501 submissions that have come across her desk after controversy-courting Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier invited the world to reinterpret one of six great works of art for a community film project that will be unveiled at the Copenhagen Art Festival on Oct. 12. more »
Also in Friday morning's round-up of news briefs, the Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro film festivals unveil details of their opening nighters. Thriller Errors of the Human Body heads to U.S. theaters. And Warner Bros. gives details on the Godzilla reboot.
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Leave it to Lars von Trier to find a connection between Nazi architect Albert Speer and Rat Pack singer Sammy Davis Jr. The controversy-courting Danish filmmaker has invited the public to reintrepret one or more of six great works of art for a community film project that will be unveiled at the Copenhagen Art Festival.
The project is being called Gesamt, which translates to "coming together" or "a joint piece of work," said director Jenle Hallund, who has the nerve-wracking challenge of creating a cohesive film from fragments of the submissions under some very tight time constraints. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 6, and the finished film is slated to debuty Oct.12, 2012 at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. more »
Also in Thursday morning's round-up of news briefs: Warner Bros passes the domestic $1 billion mark again. A Prometheus sequel is moving forward, Christopher Eccleston is a Marvel villain and Broadway to honor Gore Vidal.
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The epically awkward, debauched Danish sitcom Klovn, which is soon coming to the United States as the epically awkward, debauched Danish feature-length comedy Klown, currently has restored an episode online written by the epically awkward, debauched Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. What could go wrong? So much, actually. Have a look and find out.
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Swedish-born actor Stellan Skarsgard has run a wide gamut of film roles in his career. His blockbuster fare includes roles in Marvel's The Avengers and last year's Thor. He appeared in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mamma Mia as well as artier titles like A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010) and fellow Scandinavian Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011), Dogville (2003) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). One of his next projects is the controversial filmmaker's next two films, which have already titillated fans of the enigmatic Danish director. Skarsgard gave a bit of insight about the back to back projects, The Nymphomaniac and The Nymphomaniac Part 2, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, promise to live up to their titles.
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The film: "Dogville" (2003)
Why it's an Inessential Essential: It's admittedly a little strange to think of this fairly well-known film as needing endorsement of any kind. However, Lionsgate recently released a new Nicole Kidman box set, packaging the first film in Lars von Trier's acerbic but still incomplete "America Trilogy" in the same collection as more high-profile and easy-to-swallow Kidman roles like Cold Mountain, Rabbit Hole and The Others. The juxtaposition is striking, and as the clear odd film out in the four-disc set, Dogville emerges as perhaps Kidman's most inessential essential.
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Any great awards show monologue skewers the nominees and sets the tone for the festivities to come, and this weekend's awards tour didn't disappoint -- if you were watching the Film Independent Spirit Awards and not the Oscars, that is. Host Seth Rogen trumped Billy Crystal the day before the Academy Awards when he roasted Hollywood's brightest along with Spirit Award nominees (like "creepy" -- and apparently good humored -- Michael Shannon). As for Rogen's best joke? It's got to be a toss up between his Ratner snipe ("Without awards season we wouldn't know how much of a horrible bigot Brett Ratner is") and his Lars von Trier hiding-in-Argentina bit. Hit the jump to watch the magic.
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The Berlin Film Festival and European Film Market are getting underway as we speak, exposing an all-new crop of good, bad and WTF-inducing projects we'll be hearing and/or seeing about in the year or two to come. But there are also revelations to be found regarding more familiar titles. Take Lars von Trier's already notorious, sexually explicit Nymphomaniac, for example.
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She can put “Bond girl extraordinaire” on her resume and describes her character in the forthcoming Dark Shadows as a “bawdy Barbie,” but between those two roles Eva Green is a woman holding on for dear life during a global pandemic in Perfect Sense. In David Mackenzie’s romantic drama, Green plays an epidemiologist struggling to track and contain a series of mass-scale maladies. Acute emotional states like unexplained sadness cause the human race to gradually lose the ability to taste, smell, hear and see, leading to more than a few mood swings.
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Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, we already know how Albert Brooks feels about this morning's brutal Oscar-nomination snub. But how is the rest of the Academy's snubculture faring? We may never know entirely, but at least their unofficial ambassador Patton Oswalt has the fan-fiction angle covered -- and it sounds like this group has the Governors Ball beat.
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When Lars von Trier's latest masterpiece Melancholia last had any real time in the awards spotlight, Kirsten Dunst was accepting the Best Actress hardware at Cannes. News came over the weekend that their drought is over: The National Society of Film Critics voted Melancholia its Best Picture of 2011, with Dunst again earning Best Actress for her role as a depressed bride coming to grips with the end of the world. Other honorees included Terrence Malick, Brad Pitt, Albert Brooks and Jessica Chastain; read on for the full list of winners, runners-up and voting totals.
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With 2011 drawing to a close, your faithful Movieline editors are taking a look back at the year that was, starting with a catalog of the 9 biggest OMG moments in movies and moviedom. Celebrate the batshit-insane happenings, most shocking screen scenes, death-defying stunts, crazier-than-fiction episodes, and nuclear-level meltdowns of the year... and add your own favorites to the pile. Ah, memories!
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The annual Cahiers du Cinema Top 10 of 2011 list has been revealed, naming works by the likes of Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, Jerzy Skolimowsky, and Manoel de Oliveira. Also in the winners' circle? J.J. Abrams! See the full eclectic list after the jump, not to mention the crazy ties in votes that make this early Top 10 a doozy to wrap your mind around...
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