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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSMegalopolis.The 2025 Oscar nominations were announced late last week following multiple delays due to the Los Angeles fires. Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (all films 2024) received the most nominations (thirteen) followed closely by Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist and Jon Chu’s Wicked (ten each). The New Yorker’s Richard Brody unpacks the assumptions underlying the Academy’s choices and posits an alternate list of nominees for five categories.London’s Prince Charles Cinema, a mainstay in the West End since the early 1960s, is facing a serious threat of closure after their landlords have demanded “a rent increase significantly above market rates” in their new lease. Zedwell Lsq Ltd and their ultimate parent company Criterion Capital have...

Film-maker known for provocative works Les Valseuses and Tenue de Soirée died at home in Paris on Monday

Bertrand Blier, the French film director with a long history of provocative offerings including Les Valseuses (Going Places), Tenue de Soirée (Evening Dress) and Trop Belle Pour Toi (Too Beautiful for You), has died aged 85. His son, Leonard, told Afp that the film-maker “died peacefully at home Monday night in Paris, surrounded by his wife and children”.

Blier achieved his greatest successes in the 70s and 80s with a series of outrage-baiting films, many featuring Gérard Depardieu, which concentrated on exposing wounded male machismo. In 2011 he told the Guardian: “I’ve always enjoyed shocking the bourgeois. I know I make buddy movies, but what intrigues me again and again is how male friendships are relatively unproblematic, and yet when men approach what they passionately desire, then their problems begin.”...

Provocative French filmmaker Bertrand Blier, who scored hits with transgressive comedies featuring Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert such as “Going Places” and “Get Out Your Handkerchiefs,” has died. He was 85.

Blier died on Monday night at his home in Paris surrounded by his wife and children, his son Leonard Blier told French news agency Afp.

“It is with great sadness that I learn of the death of Bertrand Blier. He was a genius of dialogue, in the tradition of Prévert and Audiard,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said on X.

Born in 1939 in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, Blier was the son of actor Bernard Blier and grew up was steeped in film and theatre. He made his directing debut with cinema-verité documentary “Hitler—Never Heard of Him” in 1963 which earned critical kudos.

“Going Places,” which came out in 1974 and involved two brutal young men who drift about France in...

Bertrand Blier, the irreverent French film director behind Oscar-winning romantic comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, has died aged 85.

Blier left his mark on 1970s and 1980s French cinema with films known for their dark humour and cynicism.

He helped to launch the international career of now controversial actor Gerard Depardieu, who starred in the director’s 1974 comedy drama Going Places (Les Valseuses) with Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere, about two aimless thugs on a crime and sex spree across the country.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs),about a ménage-à-trois, won the best foreign-language film Oscar for France in 1979 and...

Bertrand Blier, the irreverent French film director behind Oscar-winning romantic comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, has died aged 85.

Blier left his mark on 1970s and 1980s French cinema with his films known for their dark humour and cynicism. His helped to launch the international career of now controversial actor Gerard Depardieu who starred in the director’s 1974 comedy drama Going Places (Les Valseuses) with Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere about two aimless thugs on a crime and sex spree across the country.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs) about a ménage-à-trois won the best foreign-language Oscar for France in 1979 and...

The 62nd edition of the New York Film Festival will kick off with RaMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys,” an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Nickel Boys.”

Film at Lincoln Center made the announcement early Monday and notably didn’t specify a premiere designation for the film, perhaps an indication that “Nickel Boys” will have its world premiere at another festival such as the Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, or Venice Film Festival.

“What an absolute honor for ‘Nickel Boys’ to open the 62nd New York Film Festival… a daydream really, for the crew, the cast, and team who’ve committed so wholeheartedly to its vision,” Ross said in a statement. The filmmaker’s debut documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” was previously screened at the 2018 edition of New Directors/New Films at New York City’s Lincoln Center. Ross called his debut feature...

The event runs June 30-July 8.

Die Hard director John McTiernan and leading French actress and writer Josiane Balasko are among those taking part in this year’s Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (Nifff), which runs June 30-July 8.

The full programme for the 22nd edition of the Swiss event, again under the artistic direction of Pierre-Yves Walder, includes 124 films from 5 continents and 44 countries. There are eight world premieres, among them Irish director Ian Hunt-Duffy’s horror thriller Double Blind starring The Walking Dead’s Pollyanna McIntosh, alongside Millie Brady and Kate Ashfield, and Quarxx’s new horror Pandemonium, both screening in the festival’s Ultra Section.

Following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival Film, Noah Baumbach’s feature take of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise will also open the 60th New York Film Festival, making its North American premiere at Alice Tully Hall on September 30.

In the Netflix movie, Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, an ostentatious “Hitler Studies” professor and father-of-four whose comfortable suburban college town life and marriage to the secretive Babette (Greta Gerwig) are upended after a horrifying nearby accident creates an airborne toxic event of frightening and unknowable proportions. DeLillo’s novel is known for being a pop-philosophical nightmare on unbounded consumerism, ecological catastrophe, and the American obsession with death.

“In 1985 my father and I drove from Brooklyn to see Kurosawa’s Ran open the 23rd NYFF, the same year that he brought home the hardback of Don DeLillo’s White Noise,” said Baumbach. “Opening the 60th NYFF with White...

Convoi exceptionnel

The soon-to-be 80-year-old Bertrand Blier breaks a ten-year hiatus from directing with Convoi exceptionnel (Wide Load), a comedy which reunites him with Gerard Depardieu, who headlined some of the director’s most memorable early works, such as the exceptional Going Places in 1974, 1978’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, 1979’s Buffet Froid, 1986’s Menage, 1989’s Too Beautiful for You, and 2005’s How Much Do You Love Me? Depardieu is joined by his old co-star Christian Clavier in the project, produced by Olivier Delbosc of Curiosa Films, Clavier’s company Ouille Productions, Belgium’s Versus Productions, with co-production from Orange Studio.…...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has set the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed The Favourite as the Opening Night selection for the 56th New York Film Festival. Deadline revealed last week that the film will make its world premiere at Venice, so this will be its New York premiere. That indicates it likely gets a showing at Telluride before the Nyff gala at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, September 28, 2018. Fox Searchlight Pictures releases it November 23. This becomes the second pic announced by Nyff, which recently set Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma to be the centerpiece selection. That film also will have its world premiere in Venice.

In The Favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) and her servant Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) engage in a sexually charged fight to the death for the body and soul of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) at the height of the War of the Spanish Succession.

Said...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces Ava DuVernay’s documentary The 13th as the Opening Night selection of the 54th New York Film Festival (September 30 – October 16), making its world premiere at Alice Tully Hall. The 13th is the first-ever nonfiction work to open the festival, and will debut on Netflix and open in a limited theatrical run on October 7.

Chronicling the history of racial inequality in the United States, The 13th examines how our country has produced the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with the majority of those imprisoned being African-American. The title of DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing film refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution—“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States . . . ” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass incarceration and...

If the languid summer tentpole season has you down, fear not, as the promising fall slate is around the corner and today brings the first news of what we’ll see at the 2016 New York Film Festival. For the first time ever, a non-fiction film will open The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s festival: Ava DuVernay‘s The 13th. Her timely follow-up to Selma chronicles the history of racial inequality in the United States and will arrive on Netflix and in limited theaters shortly after its premiere at Nyff, on October 7.

“It is a true honor for me and my collaborators to premiere The 13th as the opening night selection of the New York Film Festival,” Ava DuVernay says. “This film was made as an answer to my own questions about how and why we have become the most incarcerated nation in the world, how and why we regard...

Willem Dafoe and Gael Garcia Bernal also among those called up for jury service at the 67th Cannes Film Festival.

The Cannes Film Festival has named the jury for its 67th edition, comprising eight world cinema names from China, Korea, Denmark, Iran, the Us, France and Mexico.

Jane Campion, the New Zealand filmmaker who won the Palme d’or for The Piano, was previously announced as the president of the jury, which will include five women and four men.

Cannes 2014: films

Those selected include Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director, screenwriter and producer who won Best Direction at Cannes in 2011 with Drive. His most recent film, Only God Forgives, played in Competition at Cannes last year.

Also chosen is Sofia Coppola, the Us director and screenwriter whose debut The Virgin Suicides was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 1999. Coppola, who won a screenwriting Oscar for Lost in Translation, made it into...

Certainly one of the most intriguing small-screen projects currently in the works is NBC’s miniseries adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby. The project was greenlit late last year, and NBC has been busying itself in recent weeks with recruiting actors for the four-hour series.

The network previously announced that it had chosen Avatar actress Zoe Saldana to take on the title role of an expectant newlywed who begins to fear that her husband and new neighbors may have sinister intentions for her and her unborn child. Last month, Suits‘ Patrick J. Adams and Harry Potter‘s Jason Isaacs were both added to the show, as Rosemary’s husband Guy Woodhouse and creepy coven leader Roman Castevet, respectively. Now, two additional actresses have been cast.

Deadline is reporting that Carole Bouquet will take on the role of Margaux Castevet, “a sophisticated and beautiful Parisian socialite who befriends young Rosemary,” when she...

With NBC's reimagined "Rosemary's Baby" being set in Paris, it only makes sense they'd hire a few French actors, and first to be named is the César-winning former Bond girl Carole Bouquet. UK-born Christina Cole has also signed on to the project.

Per Deadline, Bouquet (pictured right and below left) has been cast as Margaux Castevet, a sophisticated and beautiful Parisian socialite who befriends young Rosemary, and Cole (pictured below right) will play Julie, Rosemary’s spirited girlfriend.

Bouquet, who won a Best Actress César (the French Oscar) for Trop belle pour toi (1989) is probably best known here in the States as Bond girl Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only (1981). Coincidentally, Cole appeared in Casino Royale (2006) as well as the upcoming Jupiter Ascending.

The four-hour "Rosemary's Baby" miniseries, an adaptation of the 1967 best-selling suspense novel by Ira Levin, is being directed by Agnieska Holland (In Darkness, "Treme"). It stars...

For American audiences, French beauty Carole Bouquet might still be best known as "Bond girl" Melina Havelock in the Roger Moore film "For Your Eyes Only." But over the course of her 35-year acting and modeling career, beginning as a teenager in Luis Bunuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire," Bouquet has established herself as one of France's most respected leading ladies. She's appeared in more than 50 films and earned two César Award nominations, winning one for her role in "Too Beautiful for You" opposite Gérard Depardieu (with whom she was romantically linked for over a decade).In her latest film, "Unforgivable," Bouquet plays Judith, an enigmatic former model-turned-real estate agent who moves to Venice and marries her client, a successful novelist (André Dussolier). When her new husband finds that happiness hinders his writing, however, he hires a young man to investigate her and sets in motion a multi-layered drama that.

This thin, sentimental French romantic comedy kicks off with the sudden death of Audrey Tautou's handsome husband and the fruitless efforts of her married boss to woo her. But after three years she suddenly falls for a diffident, awkward, homely Swede (François Damiens) working under her leadership. This surprises everyone in the office as he's the kind of person who doesn't cause a blip on his colleagues' radar. It's a variation on Bertrand Blier's provocative Trop belle pour toi where Gérard Depardieu, a wealthy guy with a beautiful wife, falls for a jolie laide secretary (Josiane Balasko). The movie depends on the viewer believing Tautou is irresistible, and it's so slight that a breath of fresh air would blow it away.

RomanceWorld cinemaPhilip French

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This French tale of a prickly concierge and the 11-year-old girl who helps draw her out of her shell is an odd but intriguing watch

There's a lo-tech neatness to the central conceit of this sturdily made film, adapted from a bestselling French novel: two vastly different and barely-interacting worlds are encased in the same apartment block building. Upstairs are the deluxe flats inhabited by the privileged haut-bourgeoisie; downstairs is the nest of the grumpy, baleful concierge, the "hedgehog" of the title. Josiane Balasko – still probably best known in the UK as the frumpy secretary in Trop Belle Pour Toi – plays Renée the concierge with a fierce anti-glamour, all but invisible to her charges; her latent intellectualism, however, is unlocked by new arrival Kakuro Ozu, a wealthy Japanese widower, who senses the cultural sensitivity lurking beneath the hostile facade. The third major character is 11-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic), a...

French controversialist Bertrand Blier is back with an interesting, intriguing film about cancer, writes Andrew Pulver

Bertrand Blier has been picking at France's metaphorical scabs since the mid-70s, but hasn't had any serious impact since Trop Belle Pour Toi, back at the dawn of the 1990s. This film might presage something of an Indian summer. It's about a raffish middle-aged novelist called Charles (Jean Dujardin) who answers the door one day to an awkward man in a suit; the latter blandly announces he is his "cancer". So commences a relationship more akin to a haunting, or a hallucination. As a device, it's perhaps a little stagey, but there's something pleasantly medieval about a personification of death – and, in any case, Blier's penchant for deep-black humour allows him to get some funny, nasty jabs in at Charles's self-pitying, petit-bourgeois existence.

Rating: 3/5

World cinemaComedyDramaAndrew Pulver

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