2012 was a strong year for film, delivering numerous high quality event movies and also a ton of very excellent serious fare as well. But perhaps it's the overall high quality that made us take note of the moments in which we were wrenched out of our suspended disbelief, or maybe it's just that the gods of moviedom knew something had to be done to prevent people from taking themselves too seriously. Either way, the year was blessed with some rather amazeballs moments of unintentional awkwardness that really forced us to step back and gasp, "Did that really happen?!" [SPOILERS!] more »
If you haven’t yet heard of Matthias Schoenaerts, a.k.a. the Belgian Brando, you’re going to start running out of excuses. The son of actor Julien Schoenaerts, Matthias is already a sex-symbol in his native Belgium. He made his on-screen debut alongside his father in the Oscar-nominated Daens and broke Flemish box-office records in Erik Van Looy’s Loft. But he really burst forth onto the world cinema stage last year with his gripping turn as the lead in Michael Roskam’s Academy Award nominated cow-hormone crime-epic Bullhead. Injecting testosterone into his thigh with all the flair of a young Robert De Niro, Schoenaerts tempered his young thug’s animalistic rage with an innate vulnerability that’s earned him comparisons to Ryan Gosling and Tom Hardy. more »
Director Jacques Audiard's nifty 2009 prison epic A Prophet took a classic arc — the rise of a young man through a criminal world — and found in it something bracing and transformative: an anti-hero for a diverse and changing France. His deeply enjoyable new feature Rust and Bone also feels like a fresh reworking of an older mode of filmmaking; the swooning romantic melodrama shaped by tragedy. more »
Don't use the term "killer whale" in front of Marion Cotillard. In her new Oscar contender Rust and Bone, the actress may play a whale trainer who loses her legs to one of the creatures, but at an advance screening of the picture in New York on Thursday, Cotillard told me she prefers the term "orca." Free Willy the movie is not, but that didn't stop Cotillard from bonding with her new aquatic pals.
In my red carpet interview, below, Cotillard also has something to say about Americans who don't watch French films.
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Also in Tuesday afternoon's round-up of news briefs: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Frank Darabont will receive an upcoming festival tribute. South Korea's Oscar entry Pietà heads to U.S. theaters. And a sci-fi thriller will also make its way to U.S. audiences.
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Also in Thursday morning's round-up of news briefs, the Tokyo International Film Festival releases details of its films for its 25th anniversary edition. Universal has removed the director from an upcoming Keanu Reeves epic. And Mexico names its Oscar contender for Best Foreign Language consideration.
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Rust and Bone is essential. It’s life and death. It’s like fucking at a funeral. It throws the grit of existence in your face and while you reel at our insubstantiality and balk at our crudity as human beings, it shows you that love is the only transcendent force we possess. What separates man from beast.
There is no doubt it will polarize. There is nothing commercial here apart from the pulling power of Marion Cotillard. Cinematographically it is an expressionistic essay; intellectually, a two-hour conversation with its filmmaker. And physically it is a kick in the teeth, a depiction of poverty, sex and violence which crosses most known codes of acceptability.
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The Toronto International Film Festival is off and rolling. TIFF's official opening night is Rian Johnson's Looper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt... and all kudos to them, but Toronto is sharing the opening spotlight with Walter Salles' On The Road, a "surprise" event for Dredd, Rust & Bone — starring Gordon-Levitt's The Dark Knight Rises co-star Marion Cotillard — and others.
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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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Also in Thursday afternoon's round-up of news briefs thriller Maniac is heading to North American theaters. An Icon Productions exec joins The Weinstein Company as head of acquisitions. And an Artist actress will replace Marion Cotillard in Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi's follow-up project.
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The Batman brand is in the toilet at the outset of The Dark Knight Rises, the third and most self-consciously ornate pillar of Christopher Nolan’s caped crusader resurrection trilogy. The four years since The Dark Knight have passed as eight within the city state of Gotham — one of the neater doublings in a movie inlaid with prismatic tiling — and even the mayor condemns Batman as “a murderous thug.”
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As Cannes hits the half-way mark Monday night with the world premiere of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love, momentum for the coveted top prize, the Palme d'Or, appears — for now — to be with German-born director Michael Haneke's Amour (Love). Not to say there are not some strong fellow contenders, and the whims of any jury member may run counter, near or parallel to general opinion. But here are some of Palme d'Or's other big suitors at the mid-way point.
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The 2012 Cannes Film Festival is underway (catch up with Movieline's coverage from the French Riviera here), and plenty of stars have already traipsed the Croisette. See Marion Cotillard, Sean Penn, Bill Murray, Jada Pinkett Smith, Naomi Watts, Eva Longoria, Freida Pinto, Jane Fonda, Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, and more in Movieline's gallery of red carpet looks and candid shots from Cannes.
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It's perhaps much too early to prognosticate on Palme d'Or contenders, but Jacques Audiard's
Rust and Bone has at least a decent shot at the festival's top prize if initial audience reaction following Thursday's press screening is any indicator.
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