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."