Noticias

"The Woman Behind Frankenstein: Her Life, Her Love, Her Monster! Mad Cave Studios brings Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream to English readers for the first time in a lush, illustrated reimagining of the life of a literary icon, told by her own creation."

A graphic biography of a feminist icon, brought to life by Alessandro Di Virgilio and Manuela Santoni, Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream will be getting a new print edition courtesy of Mad Cave Studios, and we have all the details along with an exclusive preview just for Daily Dead readers:

From the Press Release: Mad Cave Studios is proud to announce the print edition of Comixology Original,...

Click here to read the full article.

She was an impenetrable figure: shy, reclusive, suspicious of new friends and more at home in the Yorkshire moors than any village or city. She was also brilliant — a gifted poet whose foray into fiction, Wuthering Heights (the only novel she wrote before her death in 1848), spins a tale so eccentric and passionate that it’s gathered a febrile following since its publication.

Emily Brontë, the second youngest of the accomplished Brontë family, was an abstract figure. Details of her life are scant. (Most known testimony was provided by her overbearing older sister, Charlotte.) She was not a fastidious diarist and existing journal entries blur the lines between fact and fiction. In other words, Emily, a virtually unknowable person, is the perfect subject for a film.

The English-Australian actress Frances O’Connor (Mansfield Park) knows this, and that’s why her directorial debut Emily...

More of a Catherine Deneuve, Marie-France Pisier and/or Emmanuelle Béart type filmmaker, oddly these two have only worked together on one occasion. Showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, after putting the final touches on Les pieds sur terre (which we anticipate will a major film festival premiere in the fall or might opt for the Berlinale in 2023) André Téchiné will have a long awaited reunion with his The Brontë Sisters actress Isabelle Huppert. Production on La révocation is expected to begin in October-November of 2022 in Perpignan – a coastal town just north of the border with Spain and south of Montpellier.…...

You must publish that poem. You must!

Representing the writing process is notoriously difficult. Writing is an internal event that takes time and, to an outside observer, is quite boring. That is the kind of thing you’d find in a "how-to" book on screenwriting. After seeing Les soeurs Brontë (1979) (The Brontë Sisters), one might have a small pause before agreeing. Director André Téchiné (with Pascal Bonitzer and Jean Gruault) approached the task by performing scenes from the authors’ lives that find their way into the famous novels (much like Shakespeare In Love (1998)). Emily (Isabelle Adjani), Charlotte (Marie-France Pisier), and Anne (Isabelle Huppert) all wrote about brooding, quiet lives in the cold, hard north of England.

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Col*Coa is winding down, but you can still catch a few stellar films and see the award winners for free Monday, April 22, 2013.

Award Screenings at 6:00 pm: The evening will start with the rerun of two awarded films in the Renoir and Truffaut Theaters at the DGA. Films will be announced on Sunday April 21 on the Col*Coa website, on Facebook, Twitter and on the Col•Coa info line (310) 289 5346. Free admission on a First comes First Served basis. No RSVP needed.

You can stay and also see the Closing Night Films at 8:30 pm at the DGA. Reservations needed. Those are both North American Premieres of two very anticipated French films. The thriller Moebus by Eric Rochant will show for free as will the comedy Like Brothers by Hugo Gélin.

Being among the French filmmakers (and I saw way too few of the films) gave me such a surprising sense of renewal - again because of this upcoming generation. After seeing City of Lights, the short by Pascal Tessaud which preceded the classic Jacques Demy film Bay of Angels starring a platinum blond gambling-addicted Jeanne Moreau in Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo in 1963, we spoke at length about what is called "The New Vibe". City of Lights stars a deeply quiet young man from "les banlieus", the notorious "suburbs" surrounding Paris where the international mix of young (and old) proletariat population is invisible to the rest of France except when the anger erupts into riots. This first generation has the French education but not the money or jobs and it hurts. They have picked up the cameras and with no money are creating films which express their lives in many ways like the new Latin American filmmakers or the new Eastern European filmmakers. Tessaud gave me an entire education in the hour we talked and I will share this in time. For now, aside from his wonderfuly trenchant film which played like a feature, which captured the Paris this young generation recognizes as The City of Lights - dancing, the kitchen of a very upscale restaurant, the dreary streets filled with construction, there is another example of The New Vibe, started by Rachid Djaïdani (a story in himself) the film Hold Back (Rengaine) leads the pack of the 20-some-odd new films of The New Vibe. It is produced by Anne-Dominque Toussaint (Les Films des Tournelles) whose films are too numerous to name but include my favorite The Hedgehog which I wrote about at Col*Coa two years ago, Col*Coa's current Cycling with Moliere, 2002's Respiro and many many others. Hold Back took 9 years to make and most of the team was unpaid. The New Vibe makes films without the aid of the French system of funding; it is more guerilla-style, not New Wave, not Dogma but New Vibe. Hold Back took Cannes by storm when it showed last year in Directors Fortnight and went on to New Directors/ New Films in New York. The classic story of a Catholic and a Muslim who want to marry but whose family objects, this rendition the Juliet has a brother who marches throughout Paris to alert her 39 other brothers that she wants to marry outside her cultural and religious traditions. "This fresh debut mixes fable, plucky social commentary - particularly about France's Arab community - and inventive comic setpieces" (Col*Coa)

Hold Back (Rengaine) (Isa: Pathe) goes beyond the funny but "establishmant" film Intouchable which played here last year. It is the exact opposite of such films as Sister or even Aliyah (Isa: Rezo) which played here this year and also in Directors Fortnight last year. Aliyah is about a young French Jewish man who must make his last drug sale in order to escape his brother's destructive behavior. He escapes by immigrating to Israel. These films are made by filmmakers within the French establishment and describe a proletariat existence which exists in their bourgeois minds. They lack a certain "verite" which can only be captured by one who knows viscerally what such marginal existence is.

At the opposite end of the contemporary spectrum of films today, a real establishment film is You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet by Alain Renais (you have to be a Renais fan to love it who was so avant-garde in his day). Those old New Wave films one could see here stand out in beautiful contrast to today's New Vibe: Renais' Stavisky or the 1963 film The Fire Within (Le feu follet) by Louis Malle again starring the beautiful Jeanne Moreau. I missed them both to my regret. When I miss a film I always tell myself I can see it when it's released or on DVD or Mubi, but rarely do I get to see it. Instead I can only read about it as here written up by Beth Hanna on Indiewire blog ToH. The Fire Within was part of Wes Anderson's choices, one of the various showcases of Col*Coa. Says Hanna: "Anderson's taste is impeccable: He has selected Louis Malle's 1963 lyrical depression drama The Fire Within." It was made after the classic Elevator to the Gallows (1958) which Miles Davis scored and which also starred the young Jeanne Moreau. She also could be seen her in Col*Coa in the classic 1963 Jacques Demy-directed Bay of Angels.

Col*Coa really offered something for everyone this year. Another of my favorite film genres, the Jewish film, was represented by Aliyah and The Dandelions (Du Vent dans mes mollets) (Isa: Gaumont), Stavisky, and It Happened in St. Tropez (Isa: Pathe), a classic French comedy -- though a bit dark and yet still comedic, about romance, love and marriage switching between generations in a neurotic, comfortably wealthy Jewish family. The Dandelions was, according to my friend Debra Levine, a writer on culture including film and dance, (see her blog artsmeme), "darling, so touching, so well made, so creative ... i really liked it. Went into that rabbit hole of little girls together ... Barbie doll play. Crazy creative play. As looney as kids can be."

Ian Birnie's favorite film was Becoming Traviata. Greg Katchel's favorite originally was Rendez-vous à Kiruna by Anna Novion, but when I saw him later in the festival his favorite was Cycling with Moliere (Alceste a bicyclette) (Isa: Pathe), again produced by Anne-Dominque Toussaint and directed by Philippe Le Guay who directed one of my favorites, The Women on the 6th Floor. Greg also liked Three Worlds though it was a bit "schematic" in depicting the clash of different cultures which were also shown in Hold Back.

Of the few films I was able to see, the most interesting was Augustine by Alice Winokur. It is the French response to David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method and the British film Hysteria. All three were about the turn of the century concern of psychologists or doctors with female hysteria. This one concerned Jean-Martin Charcot and the neurologist's belief that hysteria was a neurological disease and he used hypnosis to get at its roots, whild in A Dangerous Method it was seen by Freud and Jung as a mental disorder and in Hysteria by Tanya Wexler (Tiff 2011) in which Dr. Mortimer Granville devises the invention of the first vibrator in the name of medical science.

Take a look at Indiewire's own article here for more on Los Angeles's greatest French attraction, the second largest French film festival in the world.

Several American distributors will present their films at Col•Coa before their U.S. release: Kino Lorber – You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, co-written and directed by Alain Resnais (Focus on a Filmmaker); Mpi Media – Thérèse, the last film of director/co-writer Claude Miller starring Audrey Tautou; Cohen Media Group – In the House, written and directed by François Ozon and The Attack, co-written and directed by Ziad Doueiri; Distrib Films for two documentaries: Becoming Traviata and The Invisibles; Film Movement for two thrillers: Aliyah and Three Worlds; The Weinstein Company - Populaire.

Below you can see the international sales agents for the current features showing.

11.6 / 11.6 (Isa: Wild Bunch)

Directed by: Philippe Godeau

Written by: Philippe Godeau, Agnès De Sacy

A Few Hours Of Spring / Quelques heures de printemps (Isa: Rezo)

Directed by: Stéphane Brizé ♀

Written by: Stéphane Brizé, Florence Vignon

Cast: Vincent Lindon, Hélène Vincent, Emmanuelle Seigner, Olivier Perrier

Aliyah/Alyah ✡ (Isa: Rezo, U.S.: Film Movement

Directed by: Élie Wajeman

Written by: Élie Wajeman, Gaëlle Macé

Armed Hands / Mains armées (Isa: Films Distribution)

Directed by: Pierre Jolivet

Written by: Pierre Jolivet, Simon Michaël

Augustine / Augustine (Isa: Kinology, U.S.: Music Box)

Directed by: Alice Winocour ♀

Written by: Alice Winocour

Aya Of Yop City / Aya de Yopougon (Isa: TF1)

Directed by: Clément Oubrerie, Marguerite Abouet ♀

Written by: Marguerite Abouet

Bay Of Angels / La Baie des anges (U.S.: Criterion)

Directed by: Jacques Demy

Written by: Jacques Demy

Becoming Traviata /Traviata et nous (Isa: Films Boutique, U.S. Distrib Films and Cinema Guild)

Directed by: Philippe Béziat

Written by: Philippe Béziat

Cycling With MOLIÈRE / Alceste à bicyclette (Isa: Pathe)

Directed by: Philippe Le Guay

Written by: Philippe Le Guay, based on an original idea by Fabrice Luchini and Philippe Le Guay

Fly Me To The Moon / Un plan parfait (Isa: Kinology)

Directed By: Pascal Chaumeil

Written By: Laurent Zeitoun, Yoann Gromb, Philippe Mechelen

Haute Cuisine / Les Saveurs du palais (Isa: Wild Bunch, U.S.: The Weinstein Company)

Directed by: Christian Vincent

Written by: Etienne Comar & Christian Vincent, based on the life of Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch

Hidden Beauties / Mille-Feuille (Isa: Other Angle Pictures)

Directed by: Nouri Bouzid

Written by: Nouri Bouzid, Joumène Limam

Hold Back / Rengaine (Isa: Pathe)

Directed by: Rachid Djaïdani

Written by: Rachid Djaïdani

In The House / Dans la maison (Isa: Wild Bunch, U.S.: Cohen Media Group)

Directed by: François Ozon

Written by: François Ozon

It Happened In Saint-tropez / Des Gens qui s’embrassent (Isa: Pathe)

Directed by: Danièle Thompson ♀

Written by: Danièle Thompson, Christopher Thompson

Jappeloup/ Jappeloup (Isa: Pathe)

Directed by: Christian Duguay

Written by: Guillaume Canet

Le Grand Soir / Le grand soir (Isa: Funny Balloons)

Directed by: Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervern

Written by: Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervern

Little Lion / Comme un Lion (Isa: Pyramide)

Directed by: Samuel Collardey

Written by: Catherine Paillé, Nadège Trebal, Samuel Collardey

Moon Man / Jean de la lune (Isa: Le Pacte)

Directed By: Stephan Schesch

Written By: Stephan Schesch, Ralph Martin. Based on the book by: Tomi Ungerer

Populaire / Populaire (Isa: Wild Bunch, U.S.: TWC)

Directed By: Régis Roinsard

Written By: Régis Roinsard, Daniel Presley, Romain Compingt

Rendezvous In Kiruna / Rendez-vous à Kiruna (Isa: Pyramide)

Directed by: Anne Novion ♀

Written by: Olivier Massart, Anne Novion, Pierre Novion

Sons Of The Wind / Les Fils du vent (Isa: Wide)

Directed by: Bruno Le Jean

Written by: Bruno Le Jean

Stavisky / Stavisky (1974) (Isa: StudioCanal)

Directed by: Alain Resnais

Written by: Jorge Semprún

The Attack / L’Attentat

France, Belgium, Lebanon, Qatar, 2013

Directed by: Ziad Doueiri (Isa: Wild Bunch, U.S.: Cohen Media Group)

The BRONTË Sisters / Les Soeurs Brontë (Isa: Gaumont, U.S.: Cohen Media Group)

Directed by: André Téchiné

Written by: André Téchiné, Jean Gruault, Pascal Bonitzer

The Dandelions / Du Vent dans mes mollets ✡

Directed By: Carine Tardieu ♀

Written By: Carine Tardieu, Raphaële Moussafir, Olivier Beer

The Fire Within / Le Feu Follet (1963) (Isa: Pyramide, U.S.: Janus Films)

Directed by: Louis Malle

Written by: Louis Malle

The Invisibles / Les Invisibles (Isa: Doc & Film, U.S. Distrib Films))

Directed By: Sébastien Lifshitz

The Man Who Laughs/ L’Homme qui rit (Isa: EuropaCorps)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Améris

Written by: Jean-Pierre Améris , Guillaume Laurant

THÉRÈSE / Thérèse Desqueyroux (Isa: TF1, U.S.: Mpi)

Directed by: Claude Miller

Written by: Claude Miller, Natalie Carter

Three Worlds / Trois mondes (Isa: Pyramide, U.S.: Film Movement)

Directed by: Catherine Corsini ♀

Written by: Catherine Corsini, Benoît Graffin

To Our Loves / À nos amours (1983) (U.S. Janus)

Directed By: Maurice Pialat

Written By: Arlette Langmann, Maurice Pialat

True Friends / Amitiés sincères (Isa: Snd Groupe 6)

Directed By: Stéphan Archinard, François Prévôt-Leygonie

Written By: Stéphan Archinard, François Prévôt-Leygonie, Marie-Pierre Huster

Welcome To Argentina / Mariage à Mendoza (Isa: Kinology)

Directed By: Édouard Deluc

Written By: Anaïs Carpita, Édouard Deluc, Thomas Lilti, Philippe Rebbot

What’S In A Name / Le prénom (Isa: Pathe, U.S. Under The Milky Way)

Directed by: Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte

Written by: Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte

You Ain’T Seen Nothin’ Yet / Vous n’avez encore rien vu (Isa: StudioCanal, U.S.: Kino Lorber)

Directed By: Alain Resnais

Written By: Alain Resnais, Laurent Herbiet...

The Brontës are often dismissed as up-market Mills & Boon. But with the release of two films this autumn, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, they look set to rival even Jane Austen in the public's affections

Ours is supposed to be the age of instantaneity, where books can be downloaded in a few seconds and reputations created overnight. But the Victorians could be speedy, too, and there's no more striking example of instant celebrity than Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë posted the manuscript to Messrs Smith and Elder on 24 August 1847, two weeks after the publisher had expressed an interest in seeing her new novel while turning down her first. Within a fortnight, a deal had been struck (Charlotte was paid £100) and proofs were being worked on. In the 21st century a first novel can wait two years between acceptance and publication. Jane Eyre was out in eight weeks, on 17 October, with Thackeray...

French actor, novelist and director who starred in films by Truffaut and Buñuel

Those who followed the adventures of Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) in a series of lyrical and semi-autobiographical films directed by François Truffaut – incorporating adolescence, marriage, fatherhood and divorce – will know that Doinel's first and (perhaps) last love, Colette Tazzi, was played by the stunningly beautiful Marie-France Pisier, who has been found dead aged 66 in the swimming pool of her house near Toulon, in southern France.

Doinel and audiences first caught sight of Pisier in Antoine et Colette, Truffaut's enchanting 32-minute contribution to the omnibus film L'Amour à Vingt Ans (Love at Twenty, 1962), during a concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. She is conscious of Antoine's stares, and pulls down her skirt. We soon realise that Colette is going to break Antoine's heart.

Léaud and Pisier were born in...

From Abba to Hitchcock, Philip French picks his favourite fleeting 'blink and you'll miss them' moments

Alfred Hitchcock (Rebecca, 1940)

Hitchcock, the brilliant self-publicist who probably devised his own sobriquet "Master of Suspense", virtually invented the movie cameo en route to becoming the world's most recognisable director. His first screen appearance was in a newsroom sequence in The Lodger (1926). Initially, the signature walk-ons were spasmodic, before becoming a feature of each picture after his move to the Us, beginning with Rebecca (1940), where he is seen outside a telephone kiosk being used by George Sanders. Each reflects wittily on the movie.

Walter Huston (The Maltese Falcon, 1941)

The great character actor Walter Huston appeared in son John's directorial debut as Captain Jacoby, the merchant mariner in league with Kasper Gutman and co. He staggers into Sam Spade's office clutching a parcel containing a replica of the eponymous statuette, "the stuff that dreams are made of" [sic]. He says,...