Friday, April 26, 2013

2013 Tribeca Film Festival: Award Winners


The 12th Annual Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), announced the award winners of its competition categories yesterday (April 25, 2013) at an awards ceremony held at the Conrad New York Hotel in Downtown Manhattan.

Here are the winners for the World Narrative Competition Categories awarded by jury members, Bryce Dallas-Howard, Blythe Danner, Paul Haggis, Kenneth Lonergan, and Jessica Winter:
The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature
  • Rocket directed by Kim Mordaunt
    Australia
Special Jury Mention (Best Narrative Feature)
  • Stand Clear of the Closing Doors directed by Sam Fleischner
    USA
Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film
  • Sitthiphon Disamoe as Ahlo
    in The Rocket, directed by Kim Mordaunt
    Australia
Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film
  • Veerle Baetens as Elise Vandevelde
    in The Broken Circle Breakdown, directed by Felix van Groeningen
    Netherlands, Belgium
Best Cinematography in a Narrative Feature Film
  • Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen
    in Before Snowfall, directed by Hisham Zaman
    Germany, Norway
Best Screenplay for a Narrative Feature Film
  • Carl Joos and Felix van Groeningen
    for The Broken Circle Breakdown, directed by Felix van Groeningen
    Netherlands, Belgium
Best New Narrative Director
  • Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais for Whitewash
    Canada
Special Jury Mention (Best New Narrative Director)
  • Emir Baigazin for Harmony Lessons
    Kazakhstan, Germany, France

See the full list of winners including documentary and short film categories at the official TFF website.

Once again, films that premiered at the Berlinale in February (The Rocket and The Broken Circle Breakdown) had a strong showing at the Tribeca Film Fest. Last year's winner Rebelle ended up in contention for the Foreign Film Oscar, I think we can expect these two films to end up being submitted to the race.

Some comments from the jury:

The Rocket is a spectacular achievement that is powerful and delightful in equal measures. Artfully structured and gorgeously shot, it chronicles the struggles of a displaced family while steering well clear of either sentimentality or despair. Complex in its tone and characterizations, the film takes an unflinching – and edifying – look at the suffering caused both by a legacy of war and the new status quo of economic globalization. And yet, while never losing sight of those grim realities, it also offers us a transcendent tale of hope and perseverance in a world that few Westerners ever have the chance to see.”

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a true original, starting with the eclectic ingredients in its dynamic screenplay: a romance of opposites, a battle between spiritual faith and secular humanism, triggered by unthinkable tragedy, a Flemish bluegrass band. With dialogue that spans the sweetly flirtatious and the operatically confrontational -- and with dollops of humor and a pure, deep love of music – the film leaps nimbly back and forth in time to conjure vivid characters who face down literal life-or-death issues. They win both our rapt interest and our greatest empathy; they make us both think and feel.” 

Which of the winners do you look forward to seeing the most?

Thursday, April 25, 2013

The Grandmaster (2013)

The Grandmaster • Yi dai zong shi • 一代宗師 (2013)
The Grandmaster • Yi dai zong shi • 一代宗師 (2013)
Genre: Action • Biography • Drama
Director: Wong Kar Wai
Starring: Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Cung Le, Hye-kyo Song, Chen Chang
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese
Duration: 130 min.
Rating: 7.7
Summary:
A chronicle of the life of Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man.

Friday, April 19, 2013

2013 Cannes Film Festival: Un Certain Regard


Yesterday we posted a preview of the films in the Main Competition at the 66th Cannes Film Festival. Now we will take a look at the 15 18 films selected to the Un Certain Regard section of the festival.

This section always features a wide range of different styles and perspectives not seen in the main competition, and it also provides an opportunity for new or unknown directors to break through. Five of the fifteen are first films eligible for the Camera d'Or award; won last year by American director Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, is the Un Certain Regard jury president. Last year, his film The Hunt was presented in competition to great acclaim, winning the Best Actor award for Mads Mikkelsen, as well as the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.

It had been previously announced that Sofia Coppola's latest film, The Bling Ring starring Emma Watson, will be the section's opening film.

Read on for an overview of the rest of the films screening in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:

Thursday, April 18, 2013

2013 Cannes Film Festival: Official Selection

Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward from A New Kind Of Love (1963)
The Official Selection of the 66th Cannes Film Festival was announced Thursday, 15 April 2013 during a press conference held by festival president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Frémaux, in Paris at the UGC Normandie cinema.

This year's exciting lineup boasts three previous Palme d'Or winners, four American films, three Asian films, and the first Dutch film in competition in 38 years.

French actress, Audrey Tautou, star of last year's closing film (the late Claude Miller's final picture, Thérèse Desqueyroux) will host the opening and closing ceremonies of the 66th Festival de Cannes. She takes over from actress, Bérénice Béjo, who hosted the Festival’s opening and closing ceremonies in 2012.

American filmmaker Steven Spielberg is the President of the Jury. The remaining members of the jury will be announced at a later date. He is joined by Australian actress Nicole Kidman, French actor Daniel Auteuil, Indian actress Vidya Balan, Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz, Japanese director Naomi Kawase, Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, and Scottish director Lynne Ramsay.

Read on for a full overview of the lineup of films in the running for the 2013 Palme d'Or:

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

32nd (2013) Hong Kong Film Awards: Winners


The 32nd annual Hong Kong Film Awards were presented on Saturday April 13th at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

Police thriller Cold War was the big winner, grabbing nine trophies including best film, best actor for Tony Leung Ka Fai, best director and screenplay for the duo of Longman Leung and Sunny Luk, and best newcomer for Alex Tsui.

Read on for the full list of winners.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Larks on a String (1969)

Larks on a String •
Larks on a String • Skřivánci na niti (1969)
Czech New Wave
Genre: ComedyDrama
Director: Jiří Menzel
Starring:  Rudolf Hrušínský, Václav Neckář, Jitka Zelenohorská, Vladimír Ptáček, Naďa Urbánková, Vlastimil Brodský
Language: Czech
Duration: 94 min.
Rating: 8.6
Summary:
In 1950s Czechoslovakia, a group of workers comprised of political dissidents and former bourgeois are 'voluntarily employed' in a scrapyard for the purposes of re-education.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Case for a Rookie Hangman (1969)

Case for a Rookie Hangman • Případ pro začínajícího kata (1969)
Case for a Rookie Hangman • Případ pro začínajícího kata (1969)
Czech New Wave
Genre: Drama • Comedy
Director: Pavel Juráček
Starring: Lubomír Kostelka
Language: Czech
Duration: 102 min.
Rating: 7.7
Summary:
A surrealistic satire loosely based on the third book of Gulliver's Travels.