Search results for: Ivan Sen

Today's announcement for the 2011 Venice Film Festival lineup basically crosses off plenty of sure bets we had been anticipating and makes us circle a bunch of titles we thought had a chance for a 2011 showing but now become hot items for the 2012 campaign. Films such as Juan Diego Solanas' Upside Down, Rodrigo Cortés' Red Lights, Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Headshot, Brillante Mendoza's Prey look more and more like Cannes 2012 items, while acquisition titles such as Antonio Campos' Simon Killer and Nick Cassavetes' Yellow wouldn't be out of place for a Sundance showing.

It'll be perfectly timed for miserable weather season of this upcoming winter, Nietzsche fans will be able to take the plunge into Bela Tarr's bleak treatment, and worth mentioning that this is historically a hypothetical one, into the celeb philosopher's ultimate demise. After weather-related production problems pushed the film past a 2010 Cannes due date, The Turin Horse, the winner of the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear in Berlin has found a home with The Cinema Guild folks.

Both by design and by accident, The Misfits is a remarkably prescient farewell to an era. Huston’s intent was to chronicle the death rattles of the American cowboy tradition; the demise of rugged individualism in a modern world that rewarded conformity and commerce. The adventurous riders of the western plains were being corralled by the material pressures of consumerism; their free spirits permanently altered by the crushing need to draw steady paychecks in a new, commodity based, reality.

A Sundance favorite, a follow-up to a budget-less art house hit, and an anticipated Israeli film are a few of the highlights from the announced lineup for the 2011 Critic's Week (aka Semaine de la Critique), the oldest sidebar in Cannes. The selection only admits films which are either debut or sophomore efforts, so we'll be going in knowing scant details on what to expect, and likely coming out with some new major voices to follow.

"Masset-Depass, helming his sophomore feature, uses a brisk version of cinema verite to quickly establish Tania and Ivan’s backstory and their banal, work-a-day world of the present. These opening scenes have the look and feel of Dardenne Brothers products of the early 2000s, as Masset-Depass’s handheld cameras capture the cold, biting grime of industrious Liège with clanging immediacy."