Search results for: Sion Sono

In a unique blend of art and structure, famed New York architect Peter Himmelstein has collaborated a second time with L.A. based Occupant films for Peep World, a voyeuristic look into a day in the life of a darkly comedic family tormented by fact, fiction, and mortality. The pic, penned by Himmelstein, was one of the “Luck 13” chosen for the 2004 Sundance Institute’s Filmmakers and Screenwriters Lab.

What do you get when you combine a critically acclaimed writer/director with one of the hottest properties to cross the Pacific in recent memory? A film that is set to 'Bloom' like the lilies of the leads native land. Adrien Brody and Rinko Kikuch (Babel), in her first role since getting a nod from the Academy as Best Supporting Actress for her role as “Chieko”, are tapped to lead in The Brother's Bloom an edgy crime drama set for a 2008 release.

Imagine premiering your film for the first time in front of audiences (that happen to include buyers) and having the door blocked off after the screening. This is what seems to have happened in the case of writers-directors David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush. Magnolia Pictures bought the North American, Aussie and U.K. rights to the film for close to 2 million.

Edward Norton (The Illusionist, Fight Club, Death to Smoochy) stars as Walter Fane, an English bacteriologist who moves himself and his adulterous wife Kitty (Naomi Watts -- 21 Grams) to a remote region of 1920’s China racked by a Cholera outbreak in The Painted Veil, directed by John Curran (We Don’t Live Here Anymore). The script is adapted from the novel by W. Somerset Maugham by screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) and Norton, who have been collaborating for over six years to perfect the script and also get the project off the ground. The finished project is well worth their time – filmed on location in China in cooperation with the China film Bureau, The Painted Veil is part love story, part adventure film, and epic both visually and dramatically.

You would think that her intrinsic understanding for the character she plays and consequently, commanding screen performance that she delivered meant that Alejandro González Iñárritu only had her in mind for the role of Amelia, but unlike her costar Gael Garcia Bernal (with whom she has been paired with on a second occasion) the Madre of Mexico’s New film wave still needed to do prove that the role was a right fit for her. Talking to her (via phone and helpful interpreter) I got a sense that while the accolades at this time of the year are pleasant, that this was the sort of rare lifetime role that as the saying goes “comes once in a blue moon”.