News

Spain has been named the Country in Focus for the upcoming European Film Market at the 75th Berlinale. The EFM will run Feb. 13-19.

According to market organizers, Spain’s “many filmmakers make Spain a dynamic and strong European film location with international appeal, as well as a long-standing and successful tradition of numerous films in the festival program as well as at the EFM and in the Berlinale’s industry initiatives.”

EFM’s choice to shine a light on Spain is the latest in a string of recognitions for the Southern European country, which featured as the Country of Honor at the 2023 Marche du Film, Locarno’s Open Doors focus territory this past summer and will be the Country of Honor at Mipcom 2024 later this month.

“Spanish filmmaking has enriched the Berlinale program for decades,” Festival Director Tricia Tuttle said in a release. “Many hundreds of Spanish productions, created by outstanding and acclaimed talents,...

Film at Lincoln Center (Flc) has announced that internationally acclaimed Spanish film director, screenwriter, and author Pedro Almodóvar is the recipient of the 50th Chaplin Award. He will be honored during a gala evening at Lincoln Center on April 28, 2025.

The announcement was made this evening by Flc President Lesli Klainberg prior to the 62nd New York Film Festival Centerpiece premiere of Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door,” which won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival and opens at Flc on December 20.

Per this evening’s official announcement, “Internationally recognized for his spirited and bold storytelling with a distinctive and colorful visual style, Pedro Almodóvar is one of Spain’s most celebrated filmmakers. His work is characterized by a blend of humor and melodrama and his ability to create resonant, emotional stories often centered around the lives of strong and fearless women. He has...

Pedro Almodóvar reflected on his long career and the political nature of his films at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Siff) where he is in town to receive the festival’s honorary Donostia Award.

Almodóvar attended a packed press conference today (September 26) with cast including Tilda Swinton from his first English-language feature: The Room Next Door, which earlier this month won the Golden Lion at Venice.

Almodóvar arrived in San Sebastian yesterday (September 25), the day of his 75th birthday.

“The last 24 hours have been an emotional whirlwind, even more so than I expected,” said the director. “I have been on the verge of tears,...

Oscar-winning Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar has made a name for himself with a series of brightly colored, delightfully kinky and unabashedly melodramatic titles, mixing comedy, drama, sex and violence to great success. He shows no signs of slowing down, with his latest outing in 2019 being the Oscar-nominated “Pain and Glory.” Let’s take a look back at all 22 of his films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1949 in Spain, Almodovar came to prominence during La Movida Madrilena, a cultural renaissance that blossomed at the end of Francoist Spain. Staring with his filmmaking debut “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom” (1980), the openly gay director showed an affinity for oddballs and outsiders, populating his films with transvestites, transexuals and homosexuals, all of whom had previously been relegated to the closet. He also showed a talent for working with women, and throughout his 40 year career has placed actresses such as Penelope Cruz,...

These days, queer movies come in all shapes and styles, from handsomely mounted biopics (“Milk”) to kid-friendly rom-coms. That’s a good thing; you want queer art to enjoy variety and novelty, and appeal to all audiences in the LGBTQ community. But sometimes, you want something very specific from a queer film; you want it to be sexy as hell.

When queer movies started bubbling into the mainstream in the early ’90s via movies like “Philadelphia,” they tended to be slightly sanitized, lacking much in the way of physical depictions of intimacy. That’s changed as the years have gone on. Thanks to films like “Brokeback Mountain,” there’s now a ton of modern examples of queer films that aren’t shy about their leads getting it on. But there’s a longer history of sexy queer cinema that goes back well before the ’90s, even if many of those...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for September, including the exclusive streaming premieres for Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children; and Lola Quivoron’s Rodeo; and Rotting in the Sun by Sebastián Silva, whose work is highlighted in a series that also includes The Maid, Life Kills Me, and Nasty Baby.

Additional selections include a mini-retro of last year’s TIFF (Pacifiction and the newest film by Sophy Romvari among them), 10 by Pedro Almodóvar, and David Lynch’s rare 1988 short The Cowboy and the Frenchman, starring Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nance.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

September 1

Volver, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Matador, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Dark Habits, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Law of Desire, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

High Heels, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Kika, directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Live Flesh,...

Masculinity as a subject isn’t always framed kindly in narratives documenting the early exploration and discovery of the queer self. After all, its aspirational qualities for closeted boys are too often complicated by the threats associated with not having it. Yet the failed attempt at masculine performance can sometimes recast our desire to be different kind of men into an appetite for looking at them instead, and in his essay collection The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men, culture writer and critic Manuel Betancourt explores the development of his queer male gaze through candid and wide-ranging reflections on the pop-cultural influences that formed his early education in how to want and how to be.

Betancourt begins with a meditation on his early fascination with the male form specifically as represented in the Disney films of his childhood, as his reluctance to...

Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Eleonore Weber also on jury.

Spanish actress Rossy de Palma will head the Camera d’Or jury for the 75th Cannes Film Festival.

Alongside de Palma on the seven-person jury are Natasza Chroscicki, CEO of Arri France; cinematographer Jean-Claude Larrieu; filmmaker Eleonore Weber; journalist and film critic Olivier Pelisson; actor Samuel Le Bihan; and actor, writer and director Lucien Jean-Baptiste.

The jury will award the Camera d’Or for best first feature film from the official selection and parallel sections at the festival’s closing ceremony on Saturday, May 28.

de Palma is known for her regular collaborations with Pedro Almodovar,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)

Watch an exclusive clip for the film, which is also now in theaters.

“What should I do now that I have lost my faith?” is the question that animates About Endlessness; this being the new film by Roy Andersson, it is delivered in a doctor’s waiting room, over and over again, in a creaky voice, by a dumpy man in late middle age who continues his plaint even after the doctor and his receptionist gruntingly force him outside into the hallway, from whence they can hear him scratching at the door like a zombie. About Endlessness is Roy Andersson’s fourth film of this...

Another week, another step toward the world as we knew it before Covid-19, thanks to nationwide vaccination efforts and the gradual reopening of theaters. A week after New York cinemas cautiously reopened, Los Angeles plans to do the same, and distributors are serving up movies they’d kept on the sidelines to serve the venues that have suffered so greatly this past year — although after last week’s deluge, this one brings a pretty meager menu of new releases.

Perhaps most tantalizing is Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Human Voice,” starring Tilda Swinton. Sony Pictures Classics is releasing the 30-minute short film, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival (one of 2020’s few in-person events), in just a handful of theaters, along with a fresh restoration of the Spanish master’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” That means audiences can come just for a short, social-distanced experience (ducking...

This review of “The Human Voice” was first published after its premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 24, 2020.

Cinema history will doubtlessly note “The Human Voice” as notable for being the English-language debut of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar — and for its status as a pandemic-driven production — but it’s absolute Almodóvar through and through, from its production design and aesthetic shout-outs to its deep understanding of longing and heartbreak, viewed through the eyes (and the voice) of a hypnotic female lead.

There’s perhaps no actress on Earth more suited to shepherd the director’s first go-round in English than Tilda Swinton, and she’s an ideal creative partner. Her work finds that balance between understated empathy and grand theatricality that marks so many of the great performances in Almodóvar’s work, and as a physical being, she’s practically an architectural presence, much like one of his earlier muses,...

Now in its 35th year, the Teddy Awards are among the Berlinale’s most affectionately regarded institutions. Presented annually to standout LGBTQ-themed titles across the festival’s entire lineup, they have a looser, hipper, more inclusive reputation than other Berlin prizes: fittingly, they’re annually presented not at an exclusive black-tie affair, but a publicly accessible ceremony followed by an almighty dance-’til-dawn party.

Yet the Teddys’ prestige survives their informality. Surveying their list of past winners, it’s notable how many defining queer works have been recognized along the way: from Pedro Almodóvar’s “Law of Desire” to Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman,” from Derek Jarman’s “The Last of England” to John Cameron Mitchell’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” from Sebastian Lelio’s eventual Oscar-winner “A Fantastic Woman” to last year’s vibrantly intersectional “No Hard Feelings.”

As for which new film is going to join their ranks this year,...

Hi readers. I know I got lost in the weeds a bit in November. It's that damn International Feature Oscar race. It really brings out my Ocd qualities with those Oscar history overviews so I skimped on other stuff. Anyway, here are some of key posts of November in case you missed any. There's one day left but it's the holiday weekend so we're doing the wrap up early ;)

Highlights from the Month That Was

• Ethan Hawke at 50 -an appreciation. The definitive Gen X actor?

• Home for the Holidays -deserves to be a better remembered!

• "Gay Best Friend" -a delightful new series kicked off with My Best Friend's Wedding and Under the Tuscan Sun

• Netflix has too many Oscar contenders - considering the possibilities

• Nicole Kidman in The Undoing -giving us eyeball acting!

• Joan Crawford -Criterion's curated collection

• Cher in 1987 -how she ruled the world that year

• Gene Tierney -...

by Nathaniel R

Before we move on to the final push for 2020 and a special trivia-filled overview of where the Supporting Actress Smackdown has been over the years (we know how y'all love stats), here's one last push for the 1987 Discussion with the rising busy actor Ato Essandoh, former Tfe member and now author Manuel Betancourt (seriously buy his book "Judy at Carnegie Hall" - it's a perfect stocking stuffer gift!), and the critics Kathia Woods and Naveen Kumar. Listen in at the bottom of the post on on iTunes

Index (1 hour and 15 minutes)

00:01 Meeting the Panel

04:30 Throw Momma from the Train

19:00 The zeitgeist impact of Fatal Attraction in 1987 and Glenn Close's brilliance

37:15 Disability drama Gaby and the Old Hollywood actresses of Whales of August

53:30 Moonstruck has aged beautifully. And why Olympia Dukakis won

1:06:00 Final 1987 Recommendations from our panel and Role-Switcheroos

Other...

Each month before the Smackdown, Nick Taylor considers alternates to Oscar's ballot...

I bet Pedro Almodóvar's filmography would be a fun one to watch in order. His visual ideas and narrative fascinations recur throughout his films, yet his deployment and examination of them take on different textures at different points. Murder, art, cinema, romantic passion, heartbreaking yet inextricably devoted family ties, queerness, as filtered through the generic keys of farce, melodrama, and thriller, it’s all there from his earliest works to last year’s tremendously moving Pain and Glory, each film recognizably guided by the same hand. There’s great fun to be had in watching different stylists and performers interpret Almodóvar’s very tricky vision, and no collaboration largely specific to the earliest stages of his career is quite as gratifying as Carmen Maura’s heroic work with him throughout the ‘80s.

Granted, I’ve only seen...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa)

This is exactly what director Jan Komasa and writer Mateusz Pacewicz do with their lead character Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) in Corpus Christi. Based in part on real events, this twenty-year-old is about to be released from his detention center on parole. He’ll go to a reclusive town to work at a sawmill and maybe even build a decent life if he stays clean, but the potential he holds removed from the mark of “ex-con” is rendered moot. Despite finding God during his imprisonment and showing a desire to pursue the vocation, Polish law forbid former criminals from wearing the cloth. The one thing that...

The human voice is Tilda Swinton‘s, but the directorial voice is all Pedro Almodóvar in the Spanish legend’s half-hour, English-language “The Human Voice.” Freely adapting – read: ruthlessly modernizing and thoroughly Almodovarizing – the play by Jean Cocteau, despite its brevity, his new film is deceptively roomy, allowing us to pace through the superbly upholstered rooms of the director’s recurrent obsessions with giddy, fluid freedom.

Continue reading ‘The Human Voice’ Is A Concentrated Half-Hour Dose Of Everything You Love About Almodóvar [Venice Review] at The Playlist.

And like that, the Venice Film Festival, and maybe auteur cinema itself, is back. Recovering from a global pandemic that has altered life as we know it, and will have enormous repercussions for the arts, watching The Human Voice felt like more than just catching a morning festival screening. The hush and anticipation across the cavernous Sala Darsena was palpable. Even clad in masks, looking like an audience of on-duty surgeons, for 30 minutes we were reminded of the potency of real cinema, and the continued vitality of Pedro Almodóvar.

Short work by great directors is customary at major festivals, but most often it underwhelms. Not here. Perhaps it’s because this is a project with special resonance for Almodóvar. The Human Voice, Jean Cocteau’s one-act, one-character monodrama has echoed across the Spanish great’s career. It’s directly referenced in Law of Desire and informs the plot of Women...

“These are the rules of the game, the law of desire,” Tilda Swinton sighs, playing an unnamed woman — who, let it be said, looks and speaks and dresses an awful lot like Tilda Swinton — whose lover has left her, and can only be bothered to say goodbye over the phone. We don’t hear his side of the conversation, as she vents hers, crisp and enunciated even in despair, into discreetly tucked airpods; it looks for all the world as if she’s talking to herself, and perhaps she even is. It’s not as if anyone talks like this anyway, articulating violent heartbreak through film references as neatly coordinated as her Technicolor apartment decor. We’re in the world of Pedro Almodóvar, where raw human feeling and dizzily heightened artifice are complementary modes of expression, not contradictory ones: “The Human Voice,” his palate-cleansing vodka shot of a short film,...

The Palm Springs International Film Festival is honoring Antonio Banderas with its International Star Award for his work in “Pain and Glory.”

The festival will present Banderas with the award on Jan. 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The festival runs Jan. 2-13.

Banderas stars in “Pain and Glory” as film director who has seen better days. He won the best actor award in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered.

“Throughout his career Antonio Banderas has garnered international acclaim and world recognition from his memorable performances,” said festival chairman Harold Matzner. “In his latest film ‘Pain and Glory,’ Antonio Banderas gives another deeply moving performance as aging film director Salvador Mallo going through a creative crisis as he reflects on the choices he’s made throughout his life.”

Past recipients of the International Star Award include Javier Bardem, Nicole Kidman, Helen Mirren, Gary Oldman and Saoirse Ronan.

Review by Peter Belsito

I really loved this film.

A great viewing experience both for those of us schooled over the years in Director Almodovar’s visionary work and to others seeing his mastery for the first time.

What struck me most and seems strangely unmentioned is that this is a gay themed biopic of a great man who is gay.

From childhood up to his later years of a successful life the film Pain and Glory follows his progression. He is in a life crisis now in the present.

I found it fascinating and beautifully unique.

Creator (Director/ Writer) Almodovar seems throughout to be making personal his own life observations. What does a great man — gay, successful and endlessly creative do now? When he is older but still active.

Antonio Banderas, no longer young, is really sublime and sensitive here. And his character’s life is very troubled.

​Every...

Hollywood, CA – The Hollywood Film Awards announced today that highly-acclaimed artists Antonio Banderas, Renée Zellweger, Al Pacino and Laura Dern will be honored at the 23rd Annual “Hollywood Film Awards. Banderas will receive the “Hollywood Actor Award” for his poignant turn in Pedro Almodóvar’s 21st film, “Pain and Glory” and Zellweger will receive the “Hollywood Actress Award” for her powerful portrayal of the iconic Judy Garland in Rupert Goold’s “Judy.” Pacino will receive the “Hollywood Supporting Actor Award” for his brilliant depiction of the infamous Jimmy Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s mob masterpiece “The Irishman,” and Dern will receive the “Hollywood Supporting Actress Award” for her commanding performance as a hard-hitting divorce attorney in Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story.” Actor and comedian Rob Riggle will host the ceremony, which will take place on Sunday, November 3, 2019 at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA. About The Honorees Since his introduction to American cinema,...

Pedro Almodovar celebrates his 70th birthday on September 25, 2019. The Oscar-winning Spanish auteur has made a name for himself with a series of brightly colored, delightfully kinky and unabashedly melodramatic titles, mixing comedy, drama, sex and violence to great success. He shows no signs of slowing down, with his latest outing in 2019 being the critically acclaimed “Pain and Glory.” But where does it fall with the rest of his filmography? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at all 21 of his films, ranked worst to best.

SEEPenelope Cruz movies: 15 greatest films ranked worst to best

Born in 1949 in Spain, Almodovar came to prominence during La Movida Madrilena, a cultural renaissance that blossomed at the end of Francoist Spain. Staring with his filmmaking debut “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom” (1980), the openly gay director showed an affinity for oddballs and outsiders, populating his films with transvestites,...

The 32st entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin. Mubi's retrospective, The Art of Transgression: The Cinema of Almodóvar, is showing August 18 – October 19, 2019 in the United Kingdom.Color is rarely naturalistic or subdued in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. It announces itself, moves the given elements around and plays with them. Set design, costume, and lighting are tightly intermeshed in his style. The overall visual design of an Almodóvar film does not aim to be subtle or invisible, but it is definitely aims to be total—to take hold of every parameter of mise en scène and performance, every significant object and move in the plot. Our second audiovisual essay in this three-part series looks at Law of Desire (1987) and Almodóvar’s breakthrough film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988).

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Courtesy of PhotofestAntonio Banderas is one of those screen presences who just seems to know. Preternaturally wised-up, his large liquid eyes are his gift, ever watchful and secretive. It’s like he was born knowing; he’s never not been on the make or aware of his own charms. In his decades-long collaboration with Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, he has been an infatuated stalker, a vengeance-driven plastic surgeon, and an escaped convict. His characters are often driven in equal measure by obsessive love and violent impulse; even as a young man, he rarely portrayed an innocent. With his inky, slicked hair, olive skin, and nobly handsome profile, the young Banderas sometimes looked like a sketch of a 1930s gigolo; you could easily imagine him as a homicidal pool boy or sexually fluid manipulator in a film noir. His good looks were not just fulsome...

Antonio Banderas gives the performance of his career as a fictional stand-in for the Spanish director in a drama that blurs the line between art and life

In Pedro Almodóvar’s previous film Julieta, a middle-aged woman returns to her old apartment block in Madrid to write about – and thereby confront – the ghosts of her life. There’s a similar sense of revisiting in Pain and Glory, in which Antonio Banderas plays a becalmed film-maker, struggling to move forward, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Described as the third part of an “unplanned trilogy” which began with Law of Desire (1987) and continued through Bad Education (2004), it’s another deeply personal work from Almodóvar that mixes autobiography with fiction to powerful effect. As the title suggests, the result is a tragicomic swirl of heartbreak and joy, slipping dexterously between riotous laughter and piercing sadness. At its heart is Banderas giving the...

The Spanish auteur’s finest film in years, Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory” is also his most personal, a colorful vivisection of the director’s life and work, his regrets and achievements. No doubt playing a version of the Academy Award-winning director himself, Antonio Banderas stars as Salvador Mallo, a film director in creative crisis who begins experimenting with drugs in the lead-up to a local career retrospective of his work. Banderas won the 2019 Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal, which is the Spanish actor’s most sensitive performance in many years. With the Cannes prize under his belt, Banderas has a strong shot at his first Oscar nomination ever, especially since this is one of Almodóvar’s more accessible efforts.

“Pain and Glory” features several breakouts in the cast, including Asier Etxeandia as Alberto, Salvador’s former onscreen muse who’s now a high-functioning heroin addict.

by Nathaniel R

Pedro Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas on the set of "Law of Desire"

I didn't intend to point you to yet another "best Lgbtq films" list since we've been to that well twice with an overview of online lists and then my own personal list for Pride month. Nevertheless you'll surely want to check out this article at Paste Magazine called "50+ Queer Writers, 50+ Queer Films". Our friend Kyle Turner polled dozens of critics who identify as Lgbtq asking them to share a short thought about a cinematic favourite. We were only allowed one film, so I went with Law of Desire. We were also encouraged to think broadly about what "queer" meant so a lot of the choices you'll read are atypical rather than full on G-a-y. Head to the Paste link above to read the whole exciting thing but after the jump I'm sharing three excerpts I particularly loved,...

Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodovar will be honored by the Venice Film Festival with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

The Spanish director, 69, is having a good year after his “Pain and Glory” was recently one of the standout movies in competition in Cannes, where it was praised by Variety’s Peter Debruge as “a remarkable mature meta-fiction, exploring the emotional scars that underlie his own physical frailty.” Lead actor and frequent Almodovar collaborator Antonio Banderas won the award for best actor in Cannes for his depiction of an aging director loosely based on Almodovar himself.

“I am very excited and honored by the gift of this Golden Lion,” Almodovar said in a statement.

Almodovar is the second person set to be feted during Venice’s upcoming edition. Oscar-winning actress Julie Andrews’ Golden Lion was announced in March. The two honorees follow the pattern of Venice awarding career prizes to an actor and a director.

Pedro Almodóvar will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

The decision was agreed by the board of the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, which confirmed the proposal made by the festival director Alberto Barbera.

Accepting the award, Spanish filmmaking icon Almodóvar declared, “I am very excited and honoured with the gift of this Golden Lion. I have very good memories of the Venice Film Festival. My international debut took place there in 1983 with Dark Habits. It was the first time one of my films travelled out of Spain, it was my international baptism and a wonderful experience, as it was my return with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 1988. This Lion is going to become my pet, along with the two cats I live with. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for giving me...

Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodóvar at the Pain And Glory Cannes press conference Photo: Richard Mowe

A frequent visitor to the Cannes Film Festival Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar who turns 70 in September has yet to win the Palme d’Or despite being included in the Competition no less than six times.

Judging by the rave reviews and rapturous response he may well be in with a chance this time around. Even if he doesn’t, the reception for Pain And Glory, screened last night, will be recompense enough, judging by his comments when he met the media today (18 May).

Antonio Banderas at the Pain And Glory Cannes press conference Photo: Richard Mowe

With a nod to the inclement Riviera weather, he said “I have never seen such happy rain in my life. Obviously I can never forget last night, the experience we had is something unheard of and we are very happy.

Art imitates life in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory,” which screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday evening. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the iconic Spanish director reimagines life — his life — as a fantasia borne out of the cinematic vocabulary he’s created over the last four decades.

“Pain and Glory” suggests that Almodóvar’s films were based on the preoccupations that developed when he was a child, but then refracts the life that formed his art through the style of that art. If there’s a house-of-mirrors aspect to this, the trickiness is one of the least important aspects of this lovely, gentle reverie, which has already opened to largely positive reception in Spain.

Antonio Banderas plays a film director named Salvador Mallo, who happens to dress like Almodóvar and live in a house that looks just like Almodóvar’s house.

It’s a process that happens to nearly all punks eventually. Except for the spiky crest of hair, which still suggests the defiant look of a strutting dooryard rooster, there’s little about Pedro Almodóvar’s appearance today that reflects the bad-boy director’s anti-establishment roots. In “Pain and Glory,” it is frequent collaborator Antonio Banderas who rocks that coif, which instantly signals to audiences that the tormented filmmaker he plays was inspired, at least in part, by the man who launched his career with “Labyrinth of Passion” and “Law of Desire” more than three decades earlier.

Both the character and his creator have mellowed in that time, during which Spanish society has relaxed its stance toward the counterculture to whom he gave voice. (The film opened in Spain two months before its premiere in competition at Cannes. Sony Pictures Classics will release it on Oct. 4 in the U.S.

Outlandish coincidences abound in Pedro Almodóvar’s films, from unlikely chance encounters to mistaken identities. But in his latest picture, “Pain and Glory,” it’s surely no coincidence that a poster for Fellini’s “8½” graces the wall of somebody’s apartment, or that the central character, Salvador Mallo, is an aging gay Spanish director with spiky gray hair whose name contains all the letters in “Almodóvar.”

Those are just a few of the signs that this new movie from the maker of “All About My Mother” is, in many ways, all about himself. Mallo, played by frequent collaborator Antonio Banderas, is an alter ego for Almodóvar, 69, and an echo of Fellini’s Guido Anselmi: a director edging into the twilight of life, plagued by physical and psychological frailty, visited by childhood memories, haunted by loss. There’s sex. There’s love. And, this being an Almodóvar film, there’s Mom.

In 1997, the Chicago Underground Film Festival held its fourth annual edition on August 13-17 at the Theatre Building at 1225 W. Belmont Avenue. One way the festival promoted itself that year was it published a four-page pull-out section in the Chicago-based political magazine Lumpen, vol. 6 no. 4.

These pages included the entire festival schedule, which the Underground Film Journal has re-created below. In addition, scans of the original Lumpen pages appear at the bottom of this article. This program schedule did not include director names for the most part, but the Journal has included names that we could find through research.

In the Theatre Building, Cuff screened on two screens simultaneously. One theater screened films shot exclusively on film; while the other theater screened films shot exclusively on video. In addition, a Closing Night event of director John Waters‘ live performance piece “Shock Value” took place in the film theater and was simulcast into the video theater.

8 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 10th)...

1918 Today is the centennial of Salome, one of Theda Bara's key pictures. Sadly, the film is lost as are so many silents of historic significance and almost all of Theda's films. She was nicknamed 'The Vamp' setting an archetype that would stay with the cinema forever basically. Theda was in her 40s by the time sound killed off the silents; she never even attemped a talkie.

1933 Hedy Lamarr marries her first husband (of six!) when she is just 19 years old. If you haven't yet watched Bombshell the Hedy Lamarr story on Netflix I urge you to do so. She's fascinating. Currently both Diane Kruger and Gal Gadot are planning to play her in different biographical projects for film and television. 

1950 Sunset Boulevard, only one of the all time greatest films, has its world premiere at Radio City Musical Hall...

Brought to you by the editors of People en Español.

Rossy de Palma, who’s been the muse of designer Jean Paul Gaultier and acclaimed film director Pedro Almodóvar, has assumed many roles in her decades-long career: actress, director, musician, and fashion model. Now, in collaboration with Mac Cosmetics, she’s adding another job to her resume–beauty entrepreneur–with the launch of a limited edition capsule collection.

Hitting stores October 5th, the 22-piece makeup line reflects de Palma’s colorfully unapologetic aesthetic. The brand’s logo bears her signature and an illustration of her iconic profile over Technicolor packaging.

Brace yourselves. This list of the Top 100 Greatest Gay Movies is probably going to generate some howls of protest thanks to a rather major upset in the rankings. Frankly, one that surprised the hell out of us here at AfterElton.

But before we get to that, an introduction. A few weeks ago we asked AfterElton readers to submit up to ten of their favorite films by write-in vote. We conducted a similar poll several years ago, but a lot has happened culturally since then, and a number of worthy movies of gay interest have been released. We wanted to see how your list of favorites had changed.

We also wanted to expand our list to 100 from the top 50 we had done previously. We figured there were finally enough quality gay films to justify the expansion. And we wanted to break out gay documentaries onto their own list (You'll find the...

On Monday night, AFI Fest Guest Artistic Director Pedro Almodovar presented his 1987 film “La Ley del Deseo” (“Law of Desire”), a dreamy, melodramatic noir about lust, jealousy and violence, starring Antonio Banderas, Carmen Maura and Eusebio Poncela. The presentation at Grauman’s Chinese Theater began with a series of clips from the past 25 years of films from El Deseo, the film company operated by Almodovar and his brother Agustin that has produced all of their films to date. During an entertaining Q and A with festival director Jacqueline Lyanga, Almodovar talked about the themes of his work, his influences, his working partnership with his brother and his longstanding relationships with actors. He also promised (and failed to deliver) on word that Antonio Banderas would "dance a tango almost naked for you."...

On Monday night, AFI Fest Guest Artistic Director Pedro Almodovar presented his 1987 film “La Ley del Deseo” (“Law of Desire”), a dreamy, melodramatic noir about lust, jealousy and violence, starring Antonio Banderas, Carmen Maura and Eusebio Poncela. The presentation at Grauman’s Chinese Theater began with a series of clips from the past 25 years of films from El Deseo, the film company operated by Almodovar and his brother Agustin that has produced all of their films to date. During an entertaining Q and A with festival director Jacqueline Lyanga, Almodovar talked about the themes of his work, his influences, his working partnership with his brother and his longstanding relationships with actors. He also promised (and failed to deliver) on word that Antonio Banderas would "dance a tango almost naked for you."...

AFI Fest 2011 Guest Artistic Director Pedro Almodóvar has selected the following classic thrillers to be presented at the festival: Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle rouge, Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley, and Robert Siodmak's The Killers. Why this particular quartet? "Because in some way, albeit tangentially, they have a relationship with my present." Eyes Without a Face, in which a doctor uses the skin of young women to help restore the face of his disfigured daughter, certainly has some elements in common with Almodóvar's latest, The Skin I Live In. Pierre Brasseur and Alida Valli shine in this creepily poetic classic. The crime thriller Le Cercle rouge stars Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Gian Maria Volonté, and veteran Bourvil. Starring Tyrone Power as a carnival shyster, Nightmare Alley is less an outright thriller than a dark melodrama; it was also a box-office disappointment at...

So there's this meme going around that Paolo tagged me with. So why not? The idea is that you list 15 directors, mainly off of the top of your head, that contributed to the way you experience and think about the movies. This is not a list of my all time favorites though half of the list would probably overlap. This is the list I come up with when I think briefly on the formative masterminds and/or the ones that have or had some sort of claim on my soul if you will. Three of them I could definitely live without at this point but I'm trying to be honest about the exercize.

Wise with Wood ~ West Side Story So here goes in no particular order... 

Robert Wise (1914-2005)

When I was a kid West Side Story and The Sound of Music were the most Epically ! Epic !!! movies to me.

Happy 50th birthday to Everyone's Favorite Spaniard™* Antonio Banderas.

He was already celebrating the big day yesterday in the port of Marbella with Melanie Griffith, the Mrs. Banderas. okay okay it was her birthday yesterday but we're not really fans [cough to put it mildly]. What is it with celebrities born a day apart getting married? Madonna & Sean did that, too!

Antonio has been fading from the limelight this past decade which is kind of a shame because he would have made a much better "Guido Contini" than Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine (2009) so why didn't he get the chance to help make it work onscreen (and make no mistake, he would have helped. You need a certain type in that role. Ddl is many great things but is a charming cad really one of them?) But if you've been missing him, fear not. A mini-'Tonio revival is coming with the Broadway revival of Zorba the Greek...

After pairing on five films in the eighties with Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown among others, two decades later Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas are re-teaming on a project that was set up almost a decade ago. - After pairing on five films in the eighties with Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown among others, two decades later Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas are re-teaming on a project that was set up almost a decade ago. The project is so old that Penelope Cruz who was first attached, is no longer ripe enough to take on the role of the daughter - don't feel sorry for her she won Oscar for Volver and got paychecks for Broken Embraces. Based on the French novel “Mygale” by Thierry Jonquet and formerly known as "Tarantula", this...

After pairing on five films in the eighties with Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown among others, two decades later Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas are re-teaming on a project that was set up almost a decade ago. The project is so old that Penelope Cruz who was first attached, is no longer ripe enough to take on the role of the daughter - don't feel sorry for her she won Oscar for Volver and got paychecks for Broken Embraces. Based on the French novel “Mygale” by Thierry Jonquet and formerly known as "Tarantula", this tells the story of a man's revenge driven attack on his daughter's rapist. A plastic surgeon, he confronts him and performs a sex change operation on him. Cruz would have played the plastic surgeon's daughter. Filming will take place this year on La piel que habito and should be...

Twenty years on from their last collaboration, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (which followed Labyrinth of Passion, Matador, Law of Desire, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas are set to work together again on La Piel Que Habito (The Skin I Live In).The story of a surgeon out for revenge on the man who raped his daughter and put her in a mental institution, Almodovar describes the film as "the harshest I've ever written". It's loosely based on the thoroughly twisted French novel Mygale by Thierry Jonquet (who's also known for his books for children), which plays with ideas of captivity, revenge and sexual humiliation, tied up in a twisty-turny mystery narrative. On the surface it's more obviously David Lynch territory than something we'd expect from Almodovar, but the director seems enthused by the idea of a film that's "close to the terror genre,...

Broadway veteran Antonio Banderas is set to star in Pedro Almodovar's newest film, "La Piel que Habito, which translates to "The Skin I live In". The movie will begin production this summer in Spain. This collaboration will reunite Banderas and Almodovar, who in the past have worked together on"Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "The Law of Desire," "Tie me Up, Tie me Down" and "Matador." Banderas will star as a plastic surgeon's revenge on the man who raped his daughter.

The Spanish director is to make another film with the star of his 1990 hit Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, the movie which launched Banderas's international career

Pedro Almodóvar is set to make his first film with Antonio Banderas after a 20-year hiatus. The Spanish director and star last worked together on Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down back in 1990. They will now re-tie the knot with a revenge thriller, La Piel que habito (The Skin I Live In), which shoots later this year.

Variety reports that the movie is loosely based on Thierry Jonquet's 1995 novel Mygale and will star Banderas as a plastic surgeon on the trail of the man who raped his daughter. "It's the harshest film I've ever written," Almodovar told El Pais this week. "And Banderas's character is brutal."

Almodóvar cast the young Banderas in five of his early films, including Law of Desire, Matador...

Madrid -- Antonio Banderas will star in Pedro Almodovar's next film, marking one of the most anticipated film reunions in Spanish cinema more than 20 years after the actor starred in "Tie me Up, Tie me Down."

"La Piel que Habito" (literally translated: "The Skin I live In") will shoot this summer over 10 weeks in a studio in Spain and other unannounced locations.

"The film will be a terror film, without screams or scares," Almodovar told the Spanish daily El Pais. "It's difficult to define and although it comes close to the terror genre -- something that appeals to me that I've never done -- I won't respect any of its rules. It's the harshest film I've ever written and Banderas' character is brutal."

Almodovar had not planned to announce the project yet, but Banderas jumped the gun in an interview published in the Russian daily "Kommersant," while attending the 1st St.

Another terrific movie from Pedro Almodóvar, two very different animated releases, and one of last year's best movies that you most likely didn't see, all new on DVD this week.

If the movie-within-the-movie of Broken Embraces looks familiar, it's just because director Pedro Almodóvar is restaging scenes from his classic screwball farce Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. But Embraces is no comedy, instead dealing with the doomed love affair between a filmmaker (Lluís Homar) and his leading lady (Penélope Cruz, in the role for which she should have gotten her Oscar nod this year), who happens to be the mistress of the billionaire funding the movie they're making.

While it's not at the level of such immortal Almodóvar movies as All About My Mother or Law of Desire, Broken Embraces is nonetheless a gorgeous piece of work, loaded with great performances and homages to the auteur's favorite movies.