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Acclaimed British actor, writer and director Samantha Morton who was awarded a Fellowship at the Ee BAFTA Awards on Sunday has called for more investment in British cinema.

The award is the highest recognition given by BAFTA to an individual for their exceptional contribution to the film, games or television industry.

Addressing a press conference after accepting her award, Morton said: “We need more investment in British cinema. I’ve been saying this for years because we can’t just be a service industry for the wonderful Americans. They are amazing and thank God they come here and make movies and put us in as well, thank you. Like in France, we need our own quotas and we need to be making those investments.” Inward investment in the U.K. film and high-end TV industry was $4.22 billion in 2023, with the bulk of it coming from the U.S.

The U.K....

British actor, writer, and director Samantha Morton will be awarded the BAFTA Fellowship at next week’s Ee BAFTA Film Awards.

Born in Nottingham in 1977, Morton garnered international attention in 1997 with her performance in Carine Adler’s Under the Skin, earning her a BIFA nomination and the Boston Film Critics Award for Best Actress. She has been nominated for an Academy Award first for Best Supporting Actress for Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999), and later for Best Actress for Jim Sheridan’s In America (2003).

Other notable film credits include work with directors such as Lynne Ramsay on Morvern Callar (2002), for which she won Best Performance, Toronto Film Critics Award and a BIFA for Best Actress; Steven Spielberg on Minority Report (2002); Michael Winterbottom on Code 46 (2003); Shekhar Kapur on The Golden Age (2007); Harmony Korine on Mister Lonely (2007); Anton Corbijn on Control, (2007), earning her a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Film Award nomination; Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche,...

Acclaimed British actor, writer and director Samantha Morton will be awarded a Fellowship at the upcoming Ee BAFTA Film Awards.

The award is the highest recognition given by BAFTA to an individual for their exceptional contribution to the film, games or television industry.

After earning plaudits in theater and television, Morton’s breakthrough film role was Carine Adler’s “Under the Skin (1997) that earned her a BIFA nomination and the Boston Film Critics Award for best actress. She has been Oscar nominated twice – for best supporting actress for Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown” (1999), and for best actress for Jim Sheridan’s “In America” (2003).

For her portrayal of child-murderer Myra Hindley in “Longford” (2006) Morton scored best actress nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and BAFTA Television Award, and won a Golden Globe. In 2009, she made her directorial debut with television film “The Unloved,” a semi-autobiographical film based in the British children’s care system,...

The central premise of writer-director Sophie Barthes' The Pod Generation is something that might only be a background detail in a different sci-fi movie: At an undetermined time in the future, people have the option of gestating babies in artificial wombs, known as "pods," rather than being pregnant and giving birth the natural way. There's potential in exploring how that option might affect society, particularly gender dynamics and the balance of power in relationships, but Barthes makes remarkably little out of it, despite centering almost the entire 110-minute movie around that single idea.

Once The Pod Generation establishes the existence of the Womb Center and the interest of career-minded main character Rachel (Emilia Clarke) in utilizing the company's services, the story doesn't progress much further or offer any surprises. Rachel works a vaguely defined job at a vaguely defined corporate monolith with a creepily ingratiating CEO (Jean-Marc Barr) who resembles Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Hulu is gearing up for a solid month of programming this October as the streamer makes way for originals, returning network favorites, and plenty of classic films. With something to satisfy everyone, Hulu’s originals slate includes the Michael Keaton-led drama Dopesick, the documentary Jacinta, the bingeable competition series Baker’s Dozen, and the delectable docuseries The Next Thing You Eat. Below, see the full lineup of what’s coming and going from Hulu this October. Here’s what’s coming to Hulu in October: October 1 Big Sky: Season 2 Premiere (ABC) Cake: Season 5 Premiere (Fxx) Grey’s Anatomy: Season 18 Premiere (ABC) Station 19: Season 5 Premiere (ABC) The Bachelorette: Complete Season 13 (ABC) A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) Air Force One (1997) Ali (2001) Blippi’s Spooky Spells Halloween (2021) Boxcar Bertha (1972) Cedar Rapids (2009) Chasing Papi (2003) Class (1983) Clifford (1994) Clockstoppers (2002) Big Sky (Credit: ABC/Michael Moriatis) Code 46 (2004) Crimson Tide (1995) Date Night (2010) Dead of Winter...

Natalie Mendoza, a star of the BBC One drama series Hotel Babylon and The Descent horror film franchise, has been cast in the lead role of Broadway’s Moulin Rouge! The Musical, filling the vacancy left when the Tony-nominated Karen Olivo resigned in April over what she perceived as industry silence regarding the workplace harassment and abuse claims levied against theater producer Scott Rudin.

(Rudin had no involvement in Moulin Rouge!)

With the casting of Mendoza, announced today by producers Carmen Pavlovic and Bill Damaschke, the full Moulin Rouge! cast is in place for the resumption of performances on Friday, September 24, at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The musical originally opened on July 25, 2019, but performances were suspended in March 2020 when Broadway went dark due to the Covid pandemic shutdown.

Mendoza joins a principal cast that also includes Aaron Tveit, Danny Burstein, Sahr Ngaujah, Tam Mutu, Ricky Rojas and Robyn Hurder.

The...

Time and time again during this year’s pandemic, movie studios have had to make the best of a bad situation. HBO Max’s list of new releases for December 2020 comes along with the most extreme example yet.

WarnerMedia undoubtedly had big plans for Wonder Woman 1984 when it scheduled it for a holiday release last year. After moving it to the summer, however, the conglomerate had to delay its theatrical release time and time again. Now HBO Max is the lucky winner of the saga, as it gets to premiere the long-awaited sequel on its servers on Dec. 25.

While Wonder Woman 1984 is definitely the headline this month, there are some other intriguing streaming options for HBO Max in December. The month plays host to a whole host of high-powered documentaries like Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults (Dec. 3), Alabama Snake (Dec. 9), and the Tiger Woods documentary Tiger (Dec.

Just like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Disney Plus, HBO Max is adding a ton of great new titles to give you some festive treats this holiday season. The Warner streaming service’s December haul isn’t necessarily full of Christmas content – there’s a lot of that already available – but there are definitely a ton of must-see films and TV shows on the lineup, so let’s take a look at the highlights.

December 1st brings a glut of newly licensed titles, including everything from horror prequel Annabelle: Creation to the original Westworld movie. In terms of franchises, you’ll be able to find a bunch of The Crown films, some Final Destinations and the whole Free Willy trilogy on the site next month. And if you’re looking to chow down on some of the best movies around, you won’t be disappointed. Just a few of the acclaimed...

“Falling” will be the opening film of the 28th edition of the EnergaCamerimage Intl. Film Festival, which focuses on the art of cinematography. The film’s director Viggo Mortensen and cinematographer Marcel Zyskind will attend the opening, which takes place on Nov. 14 in Toruń, Poland.

The film, which will compete for Camerimage’s Golden Frog, centers on John, who lives with his partner, Eric, and their daughter, Mónica, in California, far from the traditional rural life he left behind years ago. John’s father, Willis, a headstrong man from a bygone era, lives alone on the isolated farm where John grew up. Willis’s mind is declining, so John brings him West, hoping that he and his sister, Sarah, can help their father find a home closer to them. Their best intentions ultimately run up against Willis’s angry refusal to change his way of life in any way.

The film stars Mortensen,...

Like the protagonist of his latest film, The Wedding Guest, Michael Winterbottom is a wanderer–cinematically, that is. There are few filmmakers in modern cinema who hop between genres quite like the British helmer. Consider just a few entries from his gobsmackingly lengthy filmography: a Thomas Hardy adaptation (Jude); a war film set in 1990s Sarajevo (Welcome to Sarajevo); a second Hardy adaptation shot in snowy Canada (The Claim); a future-set love story (Code 46); a sexually-explicit anthology centered around songs from the likes of Primal Scream and Franz Ferdinand (9 Songs); a documentary based on the work of Naomi Klein and another featuring Russell Brand (The Shock Doctrine and The Emperor’s New Clothes); and a tremendously violent and unsettling Jim Thompson adaptation (The Killer Inside Me).

That list does not even include his greatest works–24 Hour Party People, A Mighty Heart, The Trip, and its follow-ups. The Wedding Guest is,...

With a new Blade Runner film on the way later this year, it seems an appropriate time to revisit a certain overlooked 2003 film that is as close to a prequel to Ridley Scott's seminal clone-noir as there ever was. Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 made only tiny ripples on the festival circuit before it faded into obscurity, mere minutes upon commercial release. It's chilly central romance, and slippery, edge-of-tomorrow social concerns, failed to ignite the passion of either the genre crowd or the art-house set. There are, however, a small number of us who straddle that space in between, and continue to sing the film's myriad praises. These include exemplary future-building out of existing locations and architecture around the world, intimate (yet curiously mannered) dialogue,...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

"It's morphin' time!" Funko has released a new line of Pop! vinyl figures and Pocket Pop! Keychains based on the upcoming Power Rangers movie! Also in today's Highlights: second season details for the On Story radio program, Drifter acquisition details, and Comet TV's January programming.

Funko's Power Rangers Collectibles Release Details / Images: From Funko: "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

To celebrate the upcoming release of their all-new major motion picture, in theaters March 24th, 2017, the Power Rangers are getting fired up with Funko-fied fury!

Zack, Kimberly, Billy, Trini, and Jason are coming soon to Pop! Vinyl and Pocket Pop! Keychains!

You can also collect the villainous Rita Repulsa, available exclusively at Hot Topic!

This winter, it's morphin' time!

Available now!

Pop! Keychains: Power Rangers

Available now!"

Images via Funko:

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On Story Radio Show Second Season Details: Press Release: "Austin, Texas - January 4, 2017 - Austin Film Festival (Aff), also known as "The Writers Festival,...

That’s right. Hulu.

I’m here to tell you that there’s a cinematic streaming goldmine available on Hulu that includes recent hits, older classics, domestic releases, and foreign imports. It’s even home to hundreds of Criterion titles. Sure there’s plenty of filler and seemingly thousands of titles that can’t possibly be real, but I’m here to recommend some good movies to watch this month on Hulu.

Pick of the Month — Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013)

South Korean cinema features no shortage of brilliant and brutal action thrillers, but while everyone knows about the likes of I Saw the Devil and Memories of Murder there are more than a few gems that have slipped through the cracks. Jang Joon-hwan’s long overdue follow-up to Save the Green Planet is a fast-moving, creatively violent mix of dark deeds and beautifully choreographed fights and stunts. There’s a wicked sense of humor running through it...

It's that time again. If you missed it in theaters or merely want to revisit here are some newish options from the past couple of weeks or just now.

New to DVD & BluRay

• The Choice - In which Broadway's favorite bloody bloody musical star, Benjamin Walker, tries his hand at the Sparksverse and even an annoying catchphrase "bother me"

• Jane Got a Gun - Does all the trouble that production had (director walk out / cast changes / delays) show up on screen? With Natalie Portman

• Joy - Decide for yourself if JLaw deserved a fourth Oscar nomination for this drama about a female entrepeneur

• Krampus - This horror flick got surprisingly good reviews. With Toni Collette & Adam Scott

• A Royal Night Out -If Diary of a Teenage Girl had you intrigued about Bel Powley check out her other introduction. Co-starring ubiquitous Sarah Gadon

• Son of Saul - This drama about a...

Welcome back to This Week In Discs where we check out tomorrow’s new releases today! No Way Out Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) distinguishes himself as a Navy officer after a heroic act and is rewarded with a high profile posting at the Pentagon under the Secretary of Defense, David Brice (Gene Hackman). He settles into the job well enough, but trouble erupts when a woman he’s seeing is revealed to be Brice’s mistress and then ends up dead. Farrell’s tasked with finding the killer even though all of the evidence seems to point in his direction. It’s been a long time coming, but thanks to Shout! Factory we can finally cross Roger Donaldson’s brilliant and immensely exciting thriller off the list of films we’ve yet to get on Blu-ray. This is a great day, and this is a great movie. Everyone is at the top of their game here including...

I never thought it would happen, but I have finally, personally, hit the wall with indie time travel flicks. Jacob Gentry's Synchronicity is not lacking in smarts or clockwork precision, but abjectly fails to convince in its core ideas of love and fate. Love may be a sticky and difficult thing, but the film seems to only communicate lust and desire, while empathy fails to make the journey. There is one worm hole too many. This leaves some impressive homages to Blade Runner's dreamy Vangelis score and neo-noir chiaroscuro, as well as Code 46's delight in contemporary-future architecture, simply hanging in empty space.Slightly strung out scientist Jim Beale (Chad McKnight, often evoking Jared Leto) is on the verge of inventing time travel with the help of his two calmer, wise-cracking lab technicians,...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Ben Wheatley takes on J.G. Ballard, and it’s a frustrating experience: visually striking but far too literal while aiming for the allegorical. I’m “biast” (pro): love Tom Hiddleston

I’m “biast” (con): more cold than hot on Ben Wheatley

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

Director Ben Wheatley and frequent collaborator screenwriter Amy Jump take on J.G. Ballard’s satirical novel of urban living and cultural hypocrisy, and the result is a frustrating experience: visually striking but thematically muddled and far too literal while aiming for the allegorical.

Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston: Crimson Peak, Muppets Most Wanted) has just moved into his new apartment in a residential high-rise building that manages to be both sparkling and oppressive, all concrete and glass, sunlight and dark corners, spacious and airy yet cold and brutal. This spirit rules the community as well,...

I never thought it would happen, but I have finally, personally, hit the wall with indie time travel flicks. Jacob Gentry's Synchronicity is not lacking in smarts or clockwork precision, but abjectly fails to convince in its core ideas of love and fate. Love may be a sticky and difficult thing, but the film seems to only communicate lust and desire, while empathy fails to make the journey. There is one worm hole too many. This leaves some impressive homages to Blade Runner's dreamy Vangelis score and neo-noir chiaroscuro, as well as Code 46's delight in contemporary-future architecture, simply hanging in empty space.Slightly strung out scientist Jim Beale (Chad McKnight, often evoking Jared Leto) is on the verge of inventing time travel with the help of his two calmer, wise-cracking lab technicians,...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Series 8's winning streak continues with a Frank Cottrell Boyce-penned episode that has a great deal to say...

In The Forest Of The Night brings to an end a run of four Doctor Who series 8 episodes from writers who'd never penned an adventure for the show before before. On the basis of all four stories they came up with, every one of them should be warmly welcomed back in the future.

This latest comes from Frank Cottrell Boyce, whose extensive and hugely impressive writing career to date has taken him from Coronation Street and the wonderful, wonderful Millions, through to Welcome To Sarajevo and Code 46. And it would be fair to say that by the time he sat down to write In The Forest Of The Night, he had plenty of things he wanted to say. To his credit, he's squeezed a great many of them into a 45 minute Doctor Who adventure.

Almost entirely ignores the amazing aspect of this true story that makes it worth telling, and even the very good performances point us in another direction than the intended one. I’m “biast” (pro): like the cast; enjoy stories about WWII

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

The Railway Man starts out like a sweet little romance, when Colin Firth meets Nicole Kidman, somewhere near Edinburgh in 1980, on a train he’s only on because his encyclopedic knowledge of train schedules is allowing him to compensate for an unexpected delay in his travel plans. “I’m not a trainspotter,” he assures her — and us — not that most prototypical of British nerds; “I’m a railway enthusiast.” Later, he is able to contrive a second meeting with her because of his, yes, trainspotting superpower.

Dissatisfaction: Burger Launches the Next Ya Dystopia to Unwieldy Lengths

Director Neil Burger joins genre courting/sci-fi alum Andrew Niccol’s dip into the abscessed pool of the Ya cash cow with Divergent, an adaptation of the first in a series of novels by Veronica Roth. A little of this, a little of that, and you’ve got a veritable mash up recent adolescent themed portraits of the future grim in the vein of (the already derivative) Hunger Games trilogy, and even Ender’s Game. Things don’t get better, only increasingly worse, an adage fitting for not only post apocalyptic Western dystopias but the rigidly formulaic and repetitive narratives that are now distended and stretched to epic proportion. Rising star Shailene Woodley gets outfitted with her own treatment of Chosen One Syndrome and delivers a serviceable performance that’s hampered by a ceaselessly workmanlike set-up that obviously thinks its...

Odd List Ryan Lambie Simon Brew 9 Jan 2014 - 06:25

We head back a decade to look at a few films that deserve more attention. Here’s our list of 25 underappreciated movies of 2004...

Think back to 2004, and you might dredge up hazy memories of the computer-generated fairytale sequel Shrek 2, Alfonso’s Harry Potter installment, The Prisoner Of Azkaban, or maybe Mel Gibson’s phenomenally successful Passion Of The Christ.

It’s rather less likely that you’ll remember some of the films on this list. You’re probably aware of the drill by now: we’ve gone back into our distant, beer-addled memories to find 25 of the less commonly-lauded movies from the year 2004.

Some of them did reasonably well at the time, but appear to have been forgotten since (especially the one eclipsed by its own internet meme), while others were coolly received by the public or critics (and sometimes...

It’s more than a disappointment -- it’s a puzzlement. How did Michael Winterbottom, who’s made so many intriguing movies that veer well away from the cautious (Everyday, Code 46), make a film so tediously conservative as The Look of Love? Winterbottom’s ability to reject accepted social narratives is so much a part of why I love his work that I never could have imagined that he would make a movie about porn (and real-estate) mogul Paul Raymond -- at one point the richest man in Britain -- that so readily embraced status-quo assumptions about sexuality and conformity, or lack thereof. Raymond “himself” -- in the highly amusing form of Steve Coogan (Ruby Sparks, The Other Guys), who is all sorts of wonderful here, as he always is -- invites us into his “world of erotica”... and Winterbottom doesn’t appear to see anything at all ironic...

Cinema's newfound interest in London's modern architectural landmarks demonstrates the UK capital's status as a global city

For most of its history, Hollywood has been all over the skyscraper like a colossal gorilla with a fistful of starlet: helicopter shots gliding over teetering architecture are part of the long-established blueprint for high-octane cinema. In the UK, we've been slower to build tall, and as befits our world-famous self-deprecation we're slower to cinematically brag about skyscrapers once they're up: the likes of One Canada Square and 30 St Mary Axe normally appear hazily in the background of the drab streets and precincts where our films feel more comfortable unfolding.

That's about to change. Three new films focus on the elevated London skyline of the past 15 years; the capital is about to have its pop-culture coronation as a blinged-up 21st-century global metropolis. The Shard has its first feature-film closeup in Eran Creevy's...

One never knows what to expect from director Michael Winterbottom, which is why it’s always so exciting to hear he has a new film. Will it be science fiction, like the marvelous Code 46? Will it be historical drama, like the magnificent The Claim? Will it be a documentary, like the brutal Road to Guantanamo? Will it transcend genres, like the hilarious The Trip or the mind-rattling A Cock and Bull Story? Will it be the rare crushing disappointment, like The Killer Inside Me? Anticipation goes to a whole new delicious level when it comes to Winterbottom’s work, and I didn’t need to know anything about Everyday to know that I could not miss it at the London Film Festival last autumn. (It didn’t hurt, though, to learn that John Simm and Shirley Henderson were starring in it.) So I had no idea what I was...

Title: The Look of Love Director: Michael Winterbottom Starring: Steve Coogan, Anna Friel, Imogen Poots, Tamsin Egerton Michael Winterbottom is a filmmaker known for making movies that look and feel authentic. On his resume are The Killer Inside Me, A Mighty Heart, and Code 46, as well as many others. Funnyman Steve Coogan is one of his most frequent collaborators, and the two have once again teamed for a biographical film about Paul Raymond, who can best be described as the British Hugh Hefner, eternally committed to pushing the envelope with his Men Only magazine and other sexual and experimental exploits. It may well be Coogan’s most dramatic role yet, [ Read More ]

The post The Look of Love Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

The ultra prolific British helmer Michael Winterbottom has now made twenty films since his debut, “Butterfly Kiss,” in 1995. His eclectic creative appetites and peripatetic energy has seen the restless director take on a disparate array of projects from moody sci-fi ("Code 46"), pulpy noir ("The Killer Inside Me"), a post-modern music-scene saga ("24 Hour Party People") a western ("The Claim") and many, many more genres including documentaries as well. So for his latest trick, it’s perhaps no surprise that Winterbottom has taken on another interesting experiment -- this time a sprawling family drama set over five Christmases in rural Scotland. Commissioned by the BBC’s Channel 4 and shot in two week periods over five years, "Everyday" employs four real-life siblings (Shaun, Katrina, Stephanie, and Robert Kirk) to play the sons of Karen (Shirley Henderson) and Ian (John Simm), her Mia husband, and chronicles...

Michael Winterbottom is a predictably unpredictable filmmaker – always zigging when you think he's going to zag, and taking on material that is uniform only in the sense that it's always very different and very challenging. Everything from his hardcore sex romp "9 Songs" to his sci-fi-ish "Code 46" to a bunch of movies that don't have numbers in the title (like his terrific Southern noir "The Killer Inside Me" and his ridiculously funny "The Trip"), Winterbottom constantly surprises and even if they aren't all classics (like his revisionist literary take "Trishna" from earlier this year), they're all interesting. And with the release of the teaser for his new film "Everyday," set to premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, his trend for eclecticism seems to have continued unabated. Originally titled "Seven Days" (and later "Then Here and There"),...

Based on the classic Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the D’Ubervilles, acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom has re-imagined this tragic story as Trishna and setting it in modern day India.

Synopsis: Trishna lives with her family in a village in Rajasthan, India’s largest state. As the eldest daughter, she works in a nearby resort to help pay the bills. Jay is the wealthy son of a property developer. When he takes up managing a resort at his father’s request, he meets Trishna at a dance and their fates cross. Jay finds every opportunity to win Trishna’s affection and she accepts his efforts with shy curiosity. But when the two move to Mumbai and become a couple, Jay’s deep family bond threatens the young lovers’ bliss. Trishna is a powerful look at the tension between ancient privilege and modern equality, between codes of urban and rural life...

For more than twenty years, Michael Winterbottom has kept up a restless pace, directing almost a movie a year. So he can’t be faulted for being lazy or blocked. And there’s always thoughtfulness, a sense of purpose at the core of everything he’s attempted. But, perhaps as a symptom of his assembly-line approach to his filmmaking, Winterbottom’s track record is, by and large, pretty mixed. For every In this World and A Mighty Heart, he’s churned out half-baked product like Code 46, 9 Songs and his latest, Trishna Winterbottom’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles....

This is the truth.

The truth love has taught me.

My love, you showed me how the world really is.

(from one of Amit Trivedi’s very fine original songs from Trishna)

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film, Trishna, is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Winterbottom, of course, is no stranger to Hardy’s stories, having previously adapted both Jude the Obscure (Jude) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (The Claim). Whereas Jude was a fairly faithful retelling of the book, at least as far as the setting was concerned, The Claim played with the setting, moving it to California during the 19th century gold rush. And such is the case with Trishna, too. Winterbottom retains the essential theme, that of a young woman whose life is controlled by social constraints and the vagaries of fate, but he takes the brilliant step of moving it...

A new generation of western directors are bringing their outsider perspective to India. But can films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel avoid the cliches of poverty and spiritualism, chaos and capitalism?

Making films in India is hard not because of the heat, or the bureaucracy, or the traffic. Not even, says Liz Mermin, the director of Bollywood underworld exposé Shot in Bombay, because its superstar subject Sanjay Dutt grew nervous about the project. "The hardest thing for a film-maker is that you fly there, look around, take out your camera – and everything is a cliche. Poverty, chaos, cows, flowers: I was going around desperately looking for a shot I hadn't seen before."

That difficulty – to say nothing of the challenge of depicting India in more than just western terms – led Louis Malle to name the first section of his six-hour Phantom India (1969) "The Impossible Camera". Yet, even though...

Hubert Sauper's Darwin's Nightmare Head-on, Javier Bardem, Imelda Staunton: European Film Awards 2004 European Film Academy Documentary – Prix Arte Aileen: Life And Death Of A Serial Killer by Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill / UK * Darwin's Nightmare by Hubert Sauper / Austria / France / Belgium Die SPIELWÜTIGEN (Addicted to Acting) by Andres Veiel / Germany La Pelota Vasca, La Piel Contra La Piedra (Basque Ball, Skin Against Stone) by Julio Medem / Spain Le Monde Selon Bush (The World According to Bush) by William Karel / France Mahssomim (Checkpoint) by Yoav Shamir / Israel The Last Victory by John Appel / The Netherlands Touch The Sound by Thomas Riedelsheimer / Germany / UK / Finland European Film Academy Short Film – Prix Uip * Prix Uip Ghent: J'attendrai le suivant… by Philippe Orreindy / France Prix Uip Valladolid: Les Baisers des Autres by Carine Tardieu / France Prix Uip Angers: Poveste La Scara "C" by Cristian Nemescu / Romania Prix Uip Berlin: Un Cartus De Kent Si Un Pachet De Cafea...

We all have varying tastes that appeal to us at certain times in our lives or heck, at certain hours of the day but most of us have a genre we love so much, we could watch endless hours of it. For me, that has to be the low-key scifi dramas, films like Gattaca, Code 46, Never Let Me Go (review), Transfer (review) and to an extent, both Blade Runner and Children of Men though these two are much bigger in scope and budget. I'm thrilled to have another possible entry into the list of "cerebral scifi."

Alejandro Molina makes the jump from film editor to director with By Day and by Night ( De dia y de noche), a quiet drama set in a future where overpopulation has forced the state to take an innovative approach to population control. In the case here, they have implanted the population with an...

Three years ago Sundance played host to Mia Trachinger’s weird, beguiling take on the low-fi, sci-fi dystopia genre, Reversion. Odd, playful, melancholy and ultimately riveting, it bounced around the fest circuit for the past couple of years without finding a home with specialty distributors, perhaps a sign of just how ahead of its time it was. A couple of years later Sundance began its Next section, a category for films just like Reversion; adventurous, low budget mindbenders, genre deconstructions and idiosyncratic visions that SXSW would normally be the target destination for. Trachinger, whose Bunny was a success of the festival circuit in 2000, shot Reversion in low end, pre-slr HD, but with ideas and concepts that more than make up for its homemade fell. Like Alphaville or Code 46, the film visits a future that resembles the present, with ordinary spaces (in this case, East Hollywood) dominated by bizarre social pathologies,...

While this story hardly qualifies, it feels like it's been forever since we've had some good solid stuff on Prometheus, Ridley Scott's big sci-fi flick that may or may not be connected to his classic Alien movies. There's been some hard casting news in the last few days that occurred while I was out of town, with the additions of Benedict Wong(Code 46) as a character named Ravel, and Emun Elliot(...

It must be frustrating being Steve Coogan. As the winner of numerous British Comedy and BAFTA awards (not to mention the 1992 Perrier Award, the 1997 Silver Rose of Montreux and a South Bank Show Award for his live show “The Man Who Thinks He’s It”) he’s also been listed amongst the 50 funniest acts working in British comedy as well as featuring in the Top 20 greatest comedy acts of all time as voted for by fellow comedians.

He’s forged himself a moderately successful Hollywood career and starred in a number of successful films from the likes of Sofia Coppola, Ben Stiller, Jim Jarmusch, Adam McKay and Frank Oz and starred alongside such names as Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson and Kirsten Dunst. And to top it all off he’s even founded his own production company, Baby Cow Productions, which itself has given birth to such...

Winterbottom has shown a determination to carry on making interesting films regardless of whether they fill multiplexes or not

Say this for Michael Winterbottom: he's a grafter. Eighteen films in 16 years and a new TV series, The Trip, just started on BBC2. For a British director, such numbers reflect something bigger than productivity – they demonstrate a determination to carry on in an industry marked by low (and falling) budgets. You might expect this to produce timid, samey films, but not in Winterbottom's case. His work skips across genres and styles: sci-fi (Code 46), western (The Claim), literary adaptation (A Cock and Bull Story), war (Welcome to Sarajevo). "It would be hard to imagine a Michael Winterbottom comedy," observed one Guardian journalist, but that was before the release of 24 Hour Party People, the film history of Factory Records in which God turns up to ask label boss Tony Wilson why...

Every year the European Federation of Fantastic Film Festivals gives a pair of awards - the Golden Melies - to the best European Fantastic Films of the year with one prize going to a feature and the other to a short. And it has just been announced that this year's prizes are going to Rodrigo Cortes' Buried and Chema Garcia Ibarra's The Attack of the Robots From Nebulon Five. Here's the official announcement:

Buried wins the 2010 Méliès d'Or Award - Best European Fantastic Film

The 2010 Méliès d'Or Award - for Best European fantastic film went to Buried a Spanish thriller starring Ryan Reynolds. The award was handed out at the Méliès d'Or award ceremony during the 43rd Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Spain on the evening of October 14th 2010, with director Rodrigo Cortés in attendance.

Buried:

Paul Conroy is not ready to die. But when he wakes up...

Young Rebecca finds the love of her life at a very tender age of twelve with Tommy. They spend an endlessly cloudy and rainy summer on a spartan beach where they share their souls and first kiss. They watch a snail crawl over a porcelain surface, the merging of sterile and virgin and organic and slimey.  Being bound to move away to Tokyo after the summer, thousands of miles and 12 years of time do not stop Rebecca (now played by Eva Green at her most beautiful and detached) and Tommy (Matt Smith) from picking up right where they left off. An almost feral bond of love, these two are in another world completely when they are together, one where words are barely necessary such is their mutual connection. She has made a career programming sonar equipment, a job that can be done over the internet at the remote beach, and...

One of the cool things about Michael Winterbottom is that you simply never know what you're going to get each time out. As the director of films like Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland, 24 Hour Party People, Code 46, Tristram Shandy, The Killer Inside Me, and a bunch of others, the filmmaker seems firmly intent on being one of those "eclectic" directors, one who'll leap from comedy to tragedy sci-fi to avant-garde weirdness with an admirable enthusiasm. (It's the kind of thing that makes us admire directors like Howard Hawks, Robert Wise, and Danny Boyle: they try a slightly new genre each time out.)

It's Winterbottom's devotion to being different that makes his latest, the low-key two-character comedy The Trip, no real surprise at all. That the movie is so strangely endearing and consistently funny is a satisfying discovery, but, again, not much of a surprise.

Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Theatrical Reviews,...

Because Leonardo DiCaprio is now making it a habit of playing damaged characters with all the answers and none of them (simultaneously) it is difficult not to look at Inception without it bringing to mind Shutter Island (and a touch of Revolutionary Road.)  There is even twin scenes of a rattled and ill DiCaprio leaning into a sink and splashing water on his face to either steel his nerves or wake from the nightmare.  Whereas Scorsese moulded his film on the noirish Val Lewton films from the 1940s with Gothic sets, character driven and macabre imagery, Christopher Nolan is building off the new millennium blockbuster of the Wachowskis, Michael Mann and Michael Bay.  While he certainly adds a lot more brains to the proceedings, the film is all steel and glass and clean geometric lines.   Nolan as a screenwriter is not above the classical mythology name-dropping (Ellen Page's dream...

Walden Media is a bit short of things to do since the Narnia franchise ground to a halt, so it's been looking for new books to adapt, and seems to have found something fairly stellar in gaining the rights to Frank Cottrell Boyce's novel Cosmic.

Following a young boy who reaps the rewards of an early growth spurt by posing as his friend's astronaut dad to take his place in space - only to find himself in the middle of a troubled mission where he must save the day.

The novelist, whose children's book was published back in 2008, will pen the script himself, having played scribe for Michael Winterbottom countless times (Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story, Code 46 and 24 Hour Party People) and having written the young windfall movie Millions for Danny Boyle.

So are you looking forward to the kids in space movie? And can Walden...

Walden Media has snapped up the rights to Frank Cottrell Boyce’s 2008 kid novel Cosmic, and has hired him to adapt the script.Boyce, a regular Michael Winterbottom collaborator who wrote Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story, Code 46 and 24 Hour Party People for the director, is also responsible for the slightly more age-appropriate Millions, which he penned for Danny Boyle.Cosmic, which landed on the shortlist for the Carnegie Award, follows the adventures of a young man who can pass for an adult thanks to an early growth spurt. He poses as his best mate’s father to nab a seat on an experimental spaceship and has to grow up quickly when the trip encounters problems and he has to save the rest of the crew."In short, the story is Apollo 13 meets Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, so it makes sense that Cosmic's out-of-this world adventure...

First a disclaimer: I'm a great fan of the mercurial filmmaker Michael Winterbottom. I admire his hunger to reinvent himself by biting into a broad range of genres. High points from his oeuvre include Jude, a haunting adaptation of Thomas Hardy (who can forget Kate Winslet as poor Sue Bridehead lying naked on the bed, trying to feel sexual?); In This World, a faux documentary about Afghan refugees; Code 46, a sci fi love story; A Mighty Heart, from Mariane Pearl's memoir; and the shag-a-thon that was Nine Days. Is there anything the man won't try? Now, with The Killer Inside, Me, Winterbottom attempts a noir thriller. It's adapted from the cult novel by 50's pulp writer Jim Thompson (The Grifters), who specialized in tales of homicidal sickos. Because of the violence visited upon female characters...

While reading Vincenzo Natali's Sundance Diaries this week I came across this keeper from actress Sarah Polley, "Splice is a film that is morally indefensible."  The story follows two genetic engineers and their tribulations becoming 'new parents.' The young one is a novel genetic creation achieved by mixing a lot of diverse DNA sequences which later blossoms into something magnificent and very, very dangerous.  It does not stop there however, as the relationships between the three get both Freudian and Cronenbergian.

One of the hallmarks of science fiction literature (and to a lesser extent movies) has been the degree to which social and moral dilemmas can be process by having stories and conflicts in other times and places.  The best science fiction (some might argue this storytelling in general) acts as some sort of mirror to society and culture at large. 

A decade into the new century, most...

Joe Dante presenting "The Movie Orgy" in L.A., a rare stateside appearance of Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda for a retrospective in New York and the Fantastic Fest in Austin are just a few of the events that serve as the perfect antidote for the endless stream of summertime sequels and toy-based franchises.

More Fall Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]

[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]

[Breakout Performances]

92Y Tribeca

While the 92Y Tribeca is taking a well-deserved break in August, the cinema space comes roaring back in September, beginning with hosting the Fifth Annual NYC Shorts Festival (Sept. 10-13), followed by a late night "Labyrinth" sing-along complete with trivia and a costume contest (Sept. 25-26), and a Michael Winterbottom double bill of "Code 46" and "24 Hour Party People" (Sept. 30)...In October, the 92Y Tribeca will premiere "Zombie Girl: The Movie" (Oct. 2), the doc about 12-year-old filmmaker Emily Hagins and her quest to make a zombie movie, followed by hosting the Iron...

Mike Newell will direct "The Box of Delights," the big-screen adaptation of John Masefield's 1930s children's novel.

According to Variety, Frank Cottrel Boyce, whose credits include "Millions," "Code 46" and "The Claim," is adapting the book, which follows a boy who recieves a magic box allowing him to travel through time.

Newell's credits include "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Donnie Brasco" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

He's currently working on the post-production for his upcoming action flick "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," based on the popular video game.

Final word: By the way, here are two of Newell's films I saw and didn't like: "Mona Lisa Smile" and "Love in the Time of Cholera."...

When a new Michael Winterbottom fim comes out it is always interesting to see where exactly he is going to go with it. Certainly Winterbottom has one of the most diverse c.v.’s in the cinema with things ranging as far as Tristram Shandy to Welcome to Sarajevo to 24 Hour Party People, to Code 46. With Genova, he explores the rhythms, sites, beauty and danger of the large Italian city from three perspectives, a young girl, a teenager and a middle-aged university professor. All three of these people are in the same family, one recently stricken with the loss of the mother/wife. Naturally lit and laced with some stomach clenching intense moments, the film casually recalls Nicholas Roeg‘s Don’t Look Now filtered though aspects of intimate Winterbottom‘s own urban wanderings of A Mighty Heart, where he burrowed into strange corners of Karachi. The film us...

• Quick Links > Neil Marshall > The Descent > Lionsgate Films > Official Trailer Taking in about nine million U.S. dollars (about twice the film’s budget) in its opening weekend, and coming in fifth overall at the box office (behind four domestic summer blockbusters), The Descent now begins its second week of a nationwide North American. Starring an all-female cast, The Descent is the story of six women, who on a thrill-seeking girls-only weekend, enter and underground cave system deep in the Appalachian Mountains and are forced to battle a breed of flesh eating humanoid predators perfectly adapted to living in the pitch black subterranean environment. Directed by Neil Marshall, whose 2002 film Dog Soldiers has already achieved cult status, The Descent is the most original and scariest horror films to come along in years. It has already achieved critical and financial success overseas, thanks to an intelligent script, outstanding direction and cinematography,

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