Feminists everywhere can rejoice that Hanna's Saoirse Ronan proves that girl power is more about kicking ass than shaking it (hear that Zak). Fernando Santos gives Tootsie a run for her/his money in To Die Like a Man. Venice/TIFF/NYFF Meek's Cutoff turns Manifest Destiny on its collective head in Kelly Reichardt's third film starring Michelle Williams.
Canada's most avant-garde film festival have released their entire slate for their 38th edition. Apart from Lee Daniel's pegged for Oscar - Precious, Lone Scherfig's An Education, Lars von Trier's Antichrist and Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces (Los abrasos rotos), this year's edition is filled to the gills with obscure titles and names that even a hardcore connoisseur of world cinema such as myself is unfamiliar with.
I'd focus on Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Kent Jones wrote an essay in this month's Film Comment about this German film and comparable on-screen relationships citing Cassavetes and Bergman examples), Zhao Dayong's three hour documentary film (Ghost Town) about how China's Cultural Revolution didn't benefit everyone and (see pic) Samuel Maoz's circa 1982 film (Lebanon) which will screen at Venice, TIFF and at the Lincoln Center - not bad for a first time filmmaker!
So the inflatable doll magically coming to life tale was perhaps too “out there” for a main comp acceptance, but Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll came on over to Un Certain Regard section along with expect works from Romanian filmmakers Cristian Mungiu (Tales From The Golden Age) and Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective), France's Denis Dercourt (Demain Des L'aube), Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Nymph) and Cannes regular (The Host, Tokyo!) Bong Joon-Ho and his latest film, Mother.