Mixed Martial Arts fighter Gina Carano is set to star in Steven Soderbergh’s action thriller Knockout. Craig Kennedy pulls the best bits from the Empire story, so I’ll skip the heavy-lifting and simply quote the quotes from Living In Cinema:

Soderbergh describes Knockout as “a combination of a Bond movie and Point Blank…more on the scale of From Russia With Love than, you know, Quantum Of Solace… Something where the characters and the story are as prominent as the action stuff.”

He also addresses working once again with screenwriter Lem Dobbs and whether there would be a replay of the sparks that flew between the contentious pair on the DVD commentary track for The Limey:

“Oh, you can fuckin’ bet the farm on that!” says Soderbergh, laughing. “He’s absolutely gonna give me a hard time. I’ve already thought about that, like, Oh boy, you know, this is going to be round two. There’s no question. This is absolutely the rematch that people have been waiting for.”

[Full irrelevant disclosure: The Limey was the second DVD I ever bought (the first was The Abyss).] On another page from Soderbergh’s Day-Timer, he’s developing a story with The Informant! screenwriter Scott Z. Burns called Virus. Alex Billington at FirstShowing quotes that pitch as “Traffic meets Outbreak.”

Bounced from its previous release date of November 13th, Brad Brevett at Rope of Silicon has the rescheduled flight plan:

• December 4, 2009 limited
• December 11, 2009 expansion
• December 25, 2009 wide

New on the radar (for me, anyway), The Messenger gets our attention on the basis of an interesting cast (Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone), and the two Golden Bears it won at the Berlin International Film Festival for Best Screenplay and the Peace Film Award. IMDb says it’s about, “an American soldier who struggles with an ethical dilemma when he becomes involved with a widow of a fallen officer.” Screen Daily says:

Ben Foster is a revelation here, carrying the film and delivering his first true adult performance after a string of youthful turns in 3:10 To Yuma, X-Men: The Last Stand and Alpha Dog. He plays Will Montgomery, a staff sergeant decorated for heroism in Iraq, who has three months left on his army contract when he is assigned to be a Casualty Notification Officer. Reluctantly paired with the colourful and salty captain Tony Stone (Harrelson), he learns the techniques and hazards of the job – encountering everything from rage to violence to vomiting in the unfortunate NOK (next of kin)…

Harrelson gives one of his best performances as the army lifer Stone, a likeable sort behind the bravado, and Morton is excellent as always as the gentle widow, although some of the dialogue Moverman gives them borders on the affected, such as Olivia telling Ben that her late husband’s shirt smelt of ‘fear and rage’.

Kathryn Bigelow is already collecting an award at the Gothams, and now the 13th Annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Awards will honor Bigelow with “Hollywood Director of the Year. She will be honored alongside Nora Ephron, “Screenwriter Award” for her work on Julie and Julia. Disney/Pixar’s “UP,” directed by Peter Docter, will get the “Hollywood Animation Award,” and Paramount Pictures’ “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar will receive the “Hollywood Visual Effects Award.”

The ceremony will take place October 26 in Beverly Hills. If this isn’t the first time a woman director and writer took this honor, it is a rarity nonetheless.

Jim Emerson on the Polanski case:

What I found most provocative and disturbing about “Wanted and Desired,” though, was its depiction of the ways in which Polanski’s perverse playboy image, his work, and his lifelong proximity to horror, also weighed into his prosecution. His mother had died at Auschwitz. His pregnant wife was slaughtered by the Manson Family. Polanski himself was regarded by many as “an evil, profligate dwarf” (Polanski’s own words, from his autobiography) — looked upon with suspicion for having escaped death in the Holocaust (what kind of bargain with the devil did he strike to survive in the Kraków Ghetto?) and openly accused of complicity in the Manson murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojtek Frykowski and Abigail Folger. Though Polanski was in London at the time of the killings, conspiracy theorists posited that he surreptitiously flew into LA for the evening, assisted in the butchering his wife and friends, then immediately returned to the UK undetected. After all, this was the man who had made “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Tenant,” “Chinatown,” “Macbeth,” “Repulsion”…

Only a few came right out and openly accused Polanski of forging an alliance with satan, but many more couldn’t help but feel he was somehow tainted by his association with death and depravity, on-screen and off. He had been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion years before he ever faced legal charges. The actual allegations of criminal conduct (and it was a crime in California, if not in France) seemed to confirm what many already felt they knew.

And he ends his piece this way:

“Forget it, Jake…”? Not likely. This is a spectacle, which requires an audience as much as the audience requires the spectacle. And American audiences resist ambiguous, unresolved endings. We demand moral clarity, even when it’s unlikely that any can ever be found. Those of a categorical philosophical bent will say that rape is rape, and that’s all there is to it. Utilitarians will say that the solution that would bring the greatest happiness to all concerned would be to drop the charges and let Polanski come and go freely to the U.S. whenever he likes. So, some are already alleging that Polanski got away with rape (at least for the last 31 years), and others claim he was unjustly persecuted because he was an outsider, a Jew, an artist, a celebrity. If some sort of reckoning is at hand, it’s going to be unsatisfactory for many, no matter how you slice it. Justice is rarely blind. And that’s not going to change, because all of the above can be true — and false — at the same time. Comforting, isn’t it?

Thanks to George at cinemarewind for the tally-ho.

This video is making the rounds — what’s funny about it, of course, is that Matt Damon isn’t the type to go nuts on anyone.  And it’s Entourage-esque anyway.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF2WaXeluPk[/youtube]

Hat tip, JJ.

Speaking of Entourage, it has gotten off to a better start recently, after sputtering a bit at the beginning.

O Hai… I can has woofburger wiffout so much cheez pleez?

Trio of new New Moon posters after the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Those are a few of the names on the Petition for Roman Polanski, spotlighting the precise reason this incident is important to the international film community:

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

The petition ends with this appeal:

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.

Full text of the petition, after the cut, along with the names of dozens of other filmmakers who have signed it.

Final word (as if) goes to the victim, Samantha Geimer, herself:

“I know there is a price to pay for running. But who wouldn’t think about running when facing a 50-year sentence from a judge who was clearly more interested in his own reputation than a fair judgment or even the well-being of the victim?

“My attitude surprises many people. That’s because they didn’t go through it all; they don’t know everything that I know. People don’t understand that the judge went back on his word. They don’t know how unfairly we were all treated by the press. Talk about feeling violated! The media made that year a living hell, and I’ve been trying to put it behind me ever since.” LA Times

Read the rest of this entry »

I was sorry to see this all dredged back up again. This site fell into the same trap back when Polanski’s The Pianist was up for Oscars.  Many of those hellbent on punishing Polanski did not want to see him win any awards.  They were here then and, it appears, they are here now.  I now would like to put the whole thing to rest.  This because of a particularly ugly email I received, which you can read after the cut.

Let’s just agree to disagree. But I have to ask one more question of you who believe Polanski “raped a child” – if he is given a sentence and serves it, what then?   Do you really believe that his punishment will absolve him of guilt?  Or do you believe that someone who did something like this can never be reformed or forgiven, despite the kind of suffering they endured in their life?  Will you still say his films are worthless and he, as a human being is worthless?

Read the rest of this entry »

Review: That Evening Sun (2009)
by Jennifer Boulden

If we all, as Thoreau wrote, live lives of quiet desperation, there are times in any life when the desperation comes to a head and ceases any pretense of quietude.

The events in the small film That Evening Sun transpire at just such a time on a rural Tennessee farm gone to seed. Melodrama does not necessarily translate into a good film, but thanks to the solid ensemble of actors working at their peak in That Evening Sun, not only are the drama and tension heightened throughout, so is the fun of watching this riveting story climb to its transcendent climax.

First-time feature writer/director Scott Teems adapted William Gay’s classic Southern gothic short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down.” The story follows widowed farmer Abner Meecham (Hal Holbrook), who escapes his nursing home with the intent of living out his remaining days more authentically on his old homestead, only to discover his son has rented his home to a local ne’er-do-well’s family, the Choats. Played with slow-burning menace yet uncanny empathy by Ray McKinnon, the skeevy Lonzo Choat wastes no time in telling the landowner he is not welcome on the farm and has no legal right to be there. The Choats have never had any land, and have been given a chance to buy the farm outright. When Abner refuses to leave, the two men find themselves in an untenable détente.

From this simple land conflict between generations and classes, Teems fleshes out the spare short story. The result is a lean screenplay that never falters in bringing the two charismatic leads into increasingly heated conflict. Combining humor and hubris, That Evening Sun is a case study in economic storytelling, almost classic Greek in its sensibilities. There is nary a moment that does not inform, enhance and propel the sense of character and setting that makes this taut film so powerful.

Read the rest of this entry »

Debra Winger, Jury member for the Zurich Film Fest had this to say:

The American thesp criticized Swiss authorities for their “philistine collusion” in arresting the helmer at Zurich Airport on Saturday on behalf of U.S. justice authorities, just before the festival was to honor him for lifetime achievement.

“This fledgling festival has been unfairly exploited and whenever this happens the whole art world suffers,” Winger said in a statement to journalists on Monday, standing together with the other four international jury members in announcing they had decided to continue at the festival that is honoring Polanski.

“We hope today this latest (arrest) order will be dropped. It is based on a three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities. We stand by him and await his release and his next masterpiece.”

Winger added: “We came to Zurich to honor Roman Polanski as a great artist but under these sad and arcane circumstances we can only think of him today as a human being uncertain of the year ahead. His life has always informed his art and it always will.”

Protesters outside the festival’s main theater on Sunday, where he was honored despite being in jail, held up banners demanding his release and criticizing Swiss authorities for arresting him.

Source 1 2

Pretty Penny on the cover of Vanity Fair, via JustJared:

Yahoo News photo

We don’t often do this sort of thing here, but our friend and reader from the Philippines wrote and asked for help and aid.  This is from a Google page set up to aid rescue efforts and gather donations and help – here you can find out how to help with money, etc.:

On September 26, 2009, Typhoon Ondoy brought a month’s worth of rainfall to Metro Manila and nearby areas in just a few hours, causing severe flooding which resulted in the loss of many lives and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. This site compiles relevant information about the disaster, including a volunteer-maintained map of persons needing rescue and a list of relief organizations accepting donations, so that more help can be provided where it is needed.