Announcing... The 18th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival

Cinema Saint Louis has officially unveiled the line-up for the 18th annual Saint Louis International Film Festival today. I've known about all this for a while, as I did some assisting this year, but now that everything's set in stone (at least, as much as it can be) I can discuss some of the highlights this year. The four best films we're screening: Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool, Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums] and Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax. All four will make their local debuts at the festival, which begins 12 November 2009, opening with Lone Scherfig's An Education, with Peter Sarsgaard, who hails from the Saint Louis area, in attendance. Sadly, I was so focused on the features this year I haven't had a chance to see any of the documentaries yet.

Bujalski will be in attendance at the Beeswax screening on 13 November at Webster University. Lee Daniels is coming with Precious (I tried to get Mariah, but y'know, she's busy) on 14 November. Director Kirk Jones will also be present for Everybody's Fine, a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno tutti bene with Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. Jason Reitman is coming with Up in the Air, followed by a Q&A, on 14 November at the Tivoli Theatre. Other appearances include Kevin Willmott with his The Only Good Indian; author Daniel Woodrell for the Director's Cut of Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil; Connie Stevens for Saving Grace B. Jones as well as co-stars Penelope Ann Miller, Rylee Fansler, Evie Louise Thompson and Tricia Leigh Fisher; Faruk Sabanovoc, co-writer and art director of Snow [Snijeg]; David Lowery with his excellent feature debut St. Nick; Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, with The Young Victoria which she co-produced with Martin Scorsese; AJ Schnack with his Convention; Joel Hodgson and the original crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000; Joe Berlinger with his latest film Crude; and Ry Russo-Young, writer/director of You Wont Miss Me, another film that comes highly recommended.

Stewart Copeland's Jennifer, which I discussed twice before, will screen as part of the Documentary Short collection "Individuals." Another friend of mine Mike Steinberg, director of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, will premiere two documentaries: Old Dog, New Trick and The Pride of St. Louis (co-directed by Thomas Crone). The screenings, on 20 November, will be followed by a concert from the subjects of the docs, local musicians Steve Scorfina and the band Mama's Pride (one of my father's favorites, actually).

Closing on Sunday, 22 November, you have your pick between Agnès Varda's The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d'Agnès], Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria.

A few other films screening this year that I quite admire: Nancy Kissam's Drool; two films from Christian Petzold, Yella and Jerichow; Lucía Puenzo's XXY; and Noah Buschel's The Missing Person. And a couple I have yet to see: Jia Zhang-ke's 24 City; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys [Üç maymun]; Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public; and Hans-Christian Schmid's Storm [Sturm]. Check out the full schedule and descriptions (many of which were written by yours truly) at Cinema Saint Louis' website. I'll have more updates closer to the fest itself.

Here! Films returns to the DVD market

Missing from the DVD market since March of this year, Here! Films, with the first Oscar under their belt and a newly restructured roster, will begin releasing DVDs in January of 2010 though a partnership with E1 Distribution (formally Koch). Their first release, naturally, will be Yojiro Takita's Departures, which won the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year, hitting shelves on 12 January. The heavily maligned teen comedy Tru Loved (you may remember what Roger Ebert had to say about this one) will be released on the same date. Two more titles, Paul Morrison's Little Ashes with Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dalí and Shamim Sarif's lesbian romantic comedy I Can't Think Straight (which is truly dreadful, by the way), will street on 26 January. With two more Foreign Language Oscar possibilities (Asghar Farhadi's About Elly from Iran and Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother [J'ai tué ma mère] from Canada), Lucía Puenzo's latest El niño pez and James Bolton's surprisingly good adaptation of Jim Grimsley's adaptation of Dream Boy on their upcoming roster, Here! Films looks to have a successful year in 2010.

Silent Light Coming to DVD; You, the Living and Taxidermia Coming to the Theatre

Through Vivendi Visual, Palisades Tartan will release their first two DVDs in the US in September. Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light [Stellet licht] will finally be out on 9 Sept, along with Anders Morgenthaler's animated actioner Princess on 29 Sept. Vivendi also announced Aaron Woodley's Tennessee, starring none other than Mariah Carey, on 1 September. Additionally, Kino will be releasing Emily Hubley's The Toe Tactic and Sean Baker and Tsou Shih-Ching's Take Out on 1 September. Magnet will have Ringo Lam, Johnny To and Tsui Hark's Triangle on 15 September. And, my pick for best title of the year so far goes to Life Is Hot in Cracktown, which Anchor Bay will release on 25 August. It also is ranking on the list of strangest casts of the year (Lara Flynn Boyle, Illeana Douglas, RZA, Brandon Routh, Kerry Washington, Mark Webber and Vondie Curtis-Hall); let me know if the film is as good as it sounds.

Surprisingly, I haven't heard of really any post-Cannes acquisitions, aside from Oscilloscope's pick-up of Michel Gondry's The Thorn in the Heart [L'épine dans le coeur]. However, it looks as if Roy Andersson's You, the Living [Du levande] and György Pálfi's Taxidermia, both previously stuck in release limbo after Tartan USA died, will finally see a theatrical release this year from Palisades Tartan, who picked up most of their library, and Regent Releasing, respectively.

Music Box Films have two German films lined up for later this year, the old-people-fucking flick Cloud 9 [Wolke 9] from director Andreas Dresdon (Summer in Berlin) and music video director Philipp Stölzl's North Face [Nordwand] with Benno Fürmann and Johanna Wokalek.

In addition to Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], Strand also has a number of films lined up for later this year: Pascal-Alex Vincent's Give Me Your Hand [Donne-moi la main]; Pablo Trapero's Lion's Den [Leonera]; Noah Buschel's The Missing Person, with Michael Shannon and Amy Ryan; Jay DiPietro's Peter and Vandy, with Jess Weixler, Jason Ritter and Tracie Thoms; and Karin Albou's The Wedding Song [Le chant des mariées].

Regent Releasing picked up Lucía Puenzo's follow-up to her wonderful XXY, The Fish Child [El niño pez], which also stars Inés Efron, a few months ago. Regent will also release Eran Merav's Zion & His Brother, with Ronit Elkabetz, in the near future. That's all for now.

Gettin' Gay with Kids (and Breillat and Van Sant) at Berlin

Another wave of titles have been announced for Berlin's Panorama section, including, most excitingly, a new film from Catherine Breillat entitled Barbe bleu. I was under the impression that Breillat's new film was to be a remake of her own Parfait amour! with Naomi Campbell; I really hope this project hasn't fallen through. In addition to Barbe bleu, her film Tapage nocturne [Nocturnal Uproar], starring Joe Dallesandro from 1979, will also be screening. Gus Van Sant will be there to show Milk, as well as the doc The Times of Harvey Milk. A pair of films about Quentin Crisp will also be screening in the Panorama this year: the documentary Resident Alien and The Naked Civil Servant, which stars John Hurt as Crisp. The other two films of note that were announced are the new film from Lucía Puenzo, El niño pez, which reunites her with XXY star Inés Efron, who is slowly becoming my favorite young actress and Michael Winterbottom's documentary The Shock Doctrine. Full report over at IndieWire.

2008 Progress Report, Part 3

In looking back at the past six months, I'm more than a little surprised at how many films not only managed to succeed in their respective endeavors, but actually ended up affecting me deeply. Of course, there may be some extraneous circumstances at work, but overall, I'm pretty assure in ranking these films on the higher tier of contemporary cinema. Let's just hope that the rest of the year is as rich. I also included two special mentions for astounding films that didn't see a theatrical release stateside, but thankfully hit DVDs uncensored.

La crème

Billy the Kid – dir. Jennifer Venditti – USA – Elephant Eye Films

Boarding Gate – dir. Olivier Assayas – France/Luxembourg – Magnet Releasing – with Asia Argento, Michael Madsen, Carl Ng, Kelly Lin, Joana Preiss, Kim Gordon, Alex Descas

Duchess of Langeais, The [Ne touchez pas la hache] – dir. Jacques Rivette – France – IFC Films – with Guillaume Depardieu, Jeanne Balibar, Bulle Ogier, Michel Piccoli

Edge of Heaven, The [Auf der anderen Seite] – dir. Fatih Akin – Germany/Turkey/Italy – Strand Releasing – with Baki Davrak, Hanna Schygulla, Nurgül Yesilçay, Tuncel Kurtiz, Patrycia Ziolkowska

Flight of the Red Balloon, The [Le voyage du ballon rouge] – dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien – IFC Films – with Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu, Fang Song, Hippolyte Girardot

In Bruges – dir. Martin McDonagh – UK – Focus Features – with Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Jérémie Renier

Irina Palm – dir. Sam Garbarski – UK/Belgium/Luxembourg/Germany/France – Strand Releasing – with Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic, Kevin Bishop, Siobhan Hewlett, Jenny Agutter

Last Mistress, The [Une vieille maîtresse] – dir. Catherine Breillat – France/Italy – IFC Films – with Asia Argento, Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute, Yolande Moreau, Anne Parillaud, Amira Casar

Love Songs [Les chansons d’amour] – dir. Christophe Honoré – France – IFC Films – with Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet

Noise – dir. Matthew Saville – Australia – Film Movement – with Brendan Cowell, Maia Thomas, Henry Nixon, Nicholas Bell

Otto; or Up with Dead People – dir. Bruce LaBruce – Canada/Germany – Strand Releasing – with Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Susanne Sachße

Paranoid Park – dir. Gus Van Sant – USA/France – IFC Films – with Gabe Nevins, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller, Lauren McKinney

Reprise – dir. Joachim Trier – Norway – Red Envelope Entertainment/Miramax – with Anders Danielsen Lie, Espen Klouman-Høiner, Viktoria Winge

XXY – dir. Lucía Puenzo – Argentina/France/Spain – Film Movement – with Inés Efron, Germán Palacios, Valeria Bertuccelli, Martín Piroyansky

Special DVD Mentions

Free Will, The [Der Freie Wille] – dir. Matthias Glasner – Germany – Benten Films – with Jürgen Vogel, Sabine Timoteo, André Hennicke, Manfred Zapatka

Inside [À l’intérieur] – dir. Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury – France – Dimension – with Béatrice Dalle, Allyson Paradis, Nicolas Duvauchellerianne Faithfull, ermany/France - Strand es, llon rouge] - dir.ist. them into three convenient categories. onal festivals

Bitch, bitch, moan, moan

I think it's only now hit me the fact that the Academy Awards snubbed the two biggest sure-bets of the foreign film category: 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days from Romania and Persepolis from France. I can let it slide that The Orphanage from Spain didn't make the cut (I've talked to a few that hated it as much as Joshua... ha!), but those two?? I was initially irked by the fact that Mike has taken an unprecedented five point lead against me in our Oscar nominations poll, but it's official: the Academy Award for best foreign film is a complete sham. And I haven't even seen either of the movies that have provoked these feelings! I think I literally gasped when Volver didn't make the final five nominees last year, as not only was it the best of the lot, but it was better than all of the nominees for Best Picture anyway (even last year's winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck expressed his befuddlement in Volver's absence when I interviewed him last year, particularly its snub over Pan's Labyrinth). And for that matter, so was Paul Verhoeven's Black Book which wasn't nominated either. As further proof of the Academy's confusion when it comes to foreign language titles, you can look no further than City of God or Y tu mamá también, two films submitted by their respective countries as official entries for the foreign category, not nominated, and then nominated a year later in other categories (as different rules apply based on a US theatrical release). "Well, we fucked up with those ones and gave some awards to movies no one will remember like Nowhere in Africa." Even the film that would otherwise be the frontrunner in the Foreign race, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, couldn't be nominated - as France chose Persepolis as their pick this year instead. Every year something shitty happens in regards to this category and every year we hope that something will change. (The only change that's occurred in the foreign rulings is the allowance of films whose language does not have to be in the official language of the country submitting it, a problem faced with Lukas Moodysson's Lilja 4-ever from Sweden and averted by Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light from Mexico and Manoel de Oliveira's Belle toujours from Portugal) Perhaps nothing will change, but if 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Persepolis get completely snubbed this year (both are eligible in all the other categories), hopefully someone will speak out.

Here are a bunch of notable films that got snubbed this year:
XXY - dir. Lucía Puenzo - Argentina
The Silly Age [La edad de la peseta] - dir. Pavel Giroud - Cuba
Persepolis - dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi - France
The Edge of Heaven [Auf der anderen Seite] - dir. Fatih Akin - Germany
Exiled - dir. Johnnie To - Hong Kong
Silent Light [Stellet licht] - dir. Carlos Reygadas - Mexico
Belle toujours - dir. Manoel de Oliveira - Portugal
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile] - dir. Cristian Mungiu - Romania
King of Fire - dir. Chatrichalerm Yukol - Thailand

Here's the ones that made it:
The Counterfeiters [Die Fälscher] - dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky - Austria
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation [O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias] - dir. Cao Hamburger - Brazil
Days of Darkness [L'âge des ténèbres] - dir. Denys Arcand - Canada
Beaufort - dir. Joseph Cedar - Israel
The Unknown [La sconosciuta] - dir. Giuseppe Tornatore - Italy
Mongol - dir. Sergei Bodrov - Kazakhstan
Katyn - dir. Andrzej Wajda - Poland
12 - dir. Nikita Mikhalkov - Russia
The Trap [Klopka] - dir. Srdan Golubovic - Serbia

Arcand (The Barbarian Invasions), Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, yuuuuck!), Wajda (honorary award) and Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun) are all previous Oscar winners.