News

Today, Creative Capital announced its 2012 grant recipients. The grantees will receive up to $50,000 in direct funding and advisory services valued at more than $40,000.   New projects from Cam Archer ("Shit Year"), Jake Yuzna ("Open"), Nina Menkes ("Dissolution") Matt Porterfield ("Putty Hill"), Yance Ford (Pov), Mark Elijah Rosenberg (Rooftop Films), and archivist Rick Prelinger are all amongst this year's grantees. The complete list of film and video grant recipients are:  Cam Archer, Robert Bahar & Almudena Carracedo, Amy Belk and Matt Porterfield, Brad Butler, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, Eric Dyer, Daniel Eisenberg, Yance Ford, Brian L. Frye and Penny Lane, Sonali Gulati, Kenneth Jacobs, Nina Menkes, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Brian Pera, Rick Prelinger, Michael Robinson, Mark Elijah Rosenberg, Norbert Shieh, Stacey Steers, Deborah Stratman, Jesse Sugarmann, Christopher...

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Back in February I called Chris Ware’s poster “definitely an early contender for the best of 2011” and eight months later nothing has come close in terms of ingenuity, beauty and sheer graphic skill. It’s fitting that Uncle Boonmee was also one of the year’s best films. Read all about it here.

2. The Trip

Not the official poster for Michael Winterbottom’s foodie road trip, nor even the wonderful teaser poster which channelled Vik Muniz in a couple of dirty plates, but one of eight strikingly varied and witty alternative posters designed by Mojo, for what purpose I’m not entirely sure. All of them were terrific—you can see them here—and I’m ranking them second for the collective effort, but my favorite was this take on the great 1932 Dubonnet posters of A.M. Cassandre (whose Triplex poster...

Boundary-busting filmmaker Cam Archer — one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces and director of, most recently, Shit Year — is making his first doc, Criminal Thoughts. He talks about it and his career in an unguarded video for Kickstarter.

In the video, Archer is up-front about the exploratory nature of his project, which appeals to me. As more and more Kickstarter campaigns seem like pre-buys for existing products/projects, Cam’s appeal to us to assist him during his creative process is striking. From the page:

Criminal Thoughts, my first feature length documentary, will be an exciting, creative departure for me. in the past, my work has been almost exclusively narrative. though i still consider all of that work to be of me, the fictional element, as far as i am concerned, builds a wall, or a mask, which keeps us from getting to know one another. i’d like to remove...

Ellen Barkin Actress Ellen Barkin attends the 2011 Governors Awards in the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland in Hollywood, on Saturday, November 12. [Photo: Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S.] Best Actor Oscar nominee James Earl Jones (for The Great White Hope, 1970) was a long-distance Honorary Oscar honoree; makeup artist Dick Smith (The Cardinal, Poltergeist III), however, was present at the ceremony to receive his Honorary Oscar. Oprah Winfrey was the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Among Ellen Barkin's movies are Paul Newman's Harry & Son, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, Blake Edwards' Switch, Mike Newell's Into the West, and Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Among Barkin's recent film appearances are those in Shit Year, The Chameleon, Operation: Endgame, Twelve, and Another Happy Day.

Considered by some as a young Johnny Depp, Luke Grimes has been reportedly tapped for a key role in action sequel Taken 2 as a fresh face to the franchise. Grimes, who you might know from ABC series Brothers & Sisters or movies such as Assassination of a High School President has closed a deal [...]

Continue reading Taken 2 Adds Luke Grimes on FilmoFilia.

Related posts:Shit Year by Cam Archer, Cannes 2010 Directors’ Fortnight Us & Them Adds Two New Cast Members Rade Serbedzija Cast as Taken 2′s VIllain...

Today on indieWIRE, we had interviews "Shit Year" director Cam Archer and "Weekend" director Andrew Haigh, a major announcement was made by our parent company SnagFilms, a trailer for David Fincher's latest dropped and more. SnagFilms Launches New Site, New Platforms, New Distribution—and Its First Narrative Films SnagFilms has launched a major upgrade of its website while announcing its first collection of 400 narrative titles that will include films like ...

"I imagine those who had written off Cam Archer as yet another Gus Van Sant acolyte after seeing his debut, Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006), will be in for a shock when confronted with his latest film, Shit Year (2011), a mature work with a distinct, idiosyncratic approach to difficult questions." Travis Jeppesen for Artforum: "The film is ostensibly about Colleen West (Ellen Barkin), a middle-aged actress retiring from the industry and settling into a life of intensive self-isolation in a forest cabin. This deceptively simple premise serves as a convincing departure point for a prolonged meditation on solitude."

Archer "appears to have watched John Cassavetes's Opening Night, about a middle-aged actress, and rather more than a few avant-garde films as well," suggests Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Shot in handsome, often vividly contrasting black and white, [Shit Year] weighs in as an attempt at poetic expressionism, a bid to...

Ellen Barkin puts on a bold, candid performance in Cam Archer's "Shit Year," but the enigmatic movie is composed of too many fragments to sustain her efforts. An experimental account of fictional actress Colleen West, this obsessively non-linear character snapshot never settles down and consequently loses focus. The sum of its parts is both imaginative and emotionally remote. [Editor's Note: This review was originally published during indieWIRE's coverage of the ...

This post was originally published when Shit Year premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. The film opens today at the IFC Center.

It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now spends her days avoiding her neighbors and flashing back to a brief affair she had with a younger actor (Luke Grimes) on the set of her last film. In an eerily composed performance, Barkin projects the steely emotional control of a woman determined not to descend into...

Cinemad has released the U.S. trailer for Santa Cruz filmmaker Cam Archer's sophomore feature "Shit Year," and it's a sight to behold. The film features Ellen Barkin as Colleen West, a Hollywood actress whose retirement leaves her flustered and in the arms of Luke Grimes, a young actor she falls for. The trailer - which calls the film "a cam archer time mess revenge joke film love lapse of you" ...

Microdistributor Cinemad Presents will release Cam Archer's "Shit Year," starring Ellen Barkin, in the U.S. this fall. In the black-and-white experimental film, Barkin plays a retiring actress slowly losing her grip on reality. It was an entry in the 2010 Cannes Film Festival's Director's Fortnight. "Ellen Barkin puts on a bold, candid performance in Cam Archer’s “Shit Year,” but the enigmatic movie is composed of too many fragments to sustain ...

Micro-distributor Cinemad Presents have added what I imagine is their first Cannes title to their humble slate. Cam Archer's 2010 Cannes preemed Shit Year (Directors' Fortnight) will be brought to market next month with a booking at the IFC in NYC with other venues/cities to follow. Here's coverage of what the world premiere screening looked like back in May of '10.  Gist: Colleen West (Ellen Barkin), a once renowned actress, comes unhinged as she confronts retirement and life at the twilight of her career. Haunted, she plummets into a hallucinatory affair with Harvey (Luke Grimes), a much younger actor who she met doing a small play. Worth Noting: This is Cinemad's second time working with Archer - before getting into the distribution business, the decade old blog previously showcased his short film, above below in the short film compilation called, Cinemad: 2009 Short Film Almanac. Do We Care?: I...

The IFC Center, one of New York's finest independent film theaters, has announced its August-September lineup, which launches this weekend with the opening of Raul Ruiz's much-discussed "Mysteries of Lisbon" and includes ten Us theatrical premieres as well as IFC's regular slate of midnight repertory films and weekend classics. Highlights include Göran Olsson's documentary "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975," Cam Archer's "Shit Year," Cameron Crowe's rockumentary "Pearl Jam Twenty" and ...

Independent producers Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy delivered a keynote address at the Producers Lunch at the Sundance Film Festival Sunday afternoon. Their recent credits include Cam Archer's "Shit Year" and Aaron Katz's "Cold Weather." Their production company, Parts and Labor, is based in New York City. indieWIRE is publishing their full speech below, courtesy of the producers and the Sundance Institute. Sundance Producers Lunch 1/23/11 Jay Van Hoy: ...

Independent producers Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy delivered a keynote address at the Producers Lunch at the Sundance Film Festival Sunday afternoon. Their recent credits include Cam Archer's "Shit Year" and Aaron Katz's "Cold Weather." Their production company, Parts and Labor, is based in New York City. indieWIRE is publishing their full speech below, courtesy of the producers and the Sundance Institute. Sundance Producers Lunch 1/23/11 Jay Van Hoy: ...

Independent producers Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy delivered a keynote address at the Producers Lunch at the Sundance Film Festival Sunday afternoon. Their recent credits include Cam Archer's "Shit Year" and Aaron Katz's "Cold Weather." They are currently in Park City with their film "Here" by Braden King. Their production company, Parts and Labor, is based in New York City. indieWIRE is publishing their full speech below, courtesy of ...

Originally printed in our Fall 2010 issue, we asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space. Jay Van Hoy & Lars Knudsen’s latest film, Braden King’s Here, premieres at Sundance on Friday.

For Parts and Labor’s Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen, independent film success is all about work. Very hard work.

Midway through our conversation about their recent producing successes, Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen realized that they hadn’t had a day off in 18 months. “You did seven-day weeks for a year-and-a-half?” I asked. “Well, there was one weekend during SXSW…” Jay replied.

For Van Hoy and Knudsen, whose Parts and Labor is one of New York City’s most active and auteurcentric production companies, getting films made is simply about doing the work. (And no, a weekend of downtime...

Tom Hooper's The King's Speech is expected to be an awards-favorite this year and easily grab one of the ten Best Picture nomination slots at this year’s Oscars. The film has already won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film centers on King George VI (played by Colin Firth) working with a speech therapist (played by Geoffrey Rush) to overcome his stammer and speak effectively to his country during wartime.

This past weekend, the film picked up the audience award at the 18th Annual Hamptons International Film Festival. Other winners at the festival included Jill Andresevic’s documentary Love, Etc., Aaron Schock’s Circo, and Alice Nellis’ Mamas & Papas. Hit the jump for the full list of winners. The King’s Speech is due out on November 26th.

Here’s the press release and full list of winners:

The King’S Speech,...

East Hampton, NY (October 10th, 2010) – The Hamptons International Film Festival announced tonight their audience, jury and special prizes at their awards ceremony. Tom Hooper’s The King’S Speech and Jill Andresevic’s Love Etc. take the audience awards honored tonight among the film industries finest. Mamas And Papas, directed by Alice Nellis, was selected by the jury as the winner of The Golden Starfish Narrative Feature Award. The Documentary Golden Starfish went to Aaron Schock’s Circo. Mamas And Papas also took home the Zicherman Screenplay Award. Another winner in the Narrative category, Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats took the Kodak Award for Best Cinematography. The festival’s Brizzolara Family Conflict and Resolution Award was presented to Lisa Gossel’s My So Called Enemy. Special awards went to The House Of Suh, directed by Iris Shim, which was the winner of the Investigation Discovery Award for Excellence in Journalism, and No Tomorrow,...

Kudos to the AFI Fest for setting up an important sidebar that will expose the best that the next generation of filmmakers have to offer. Bumping up their crop of exciting new auteur cinema, sections labeled "Young Americans" and "New Auteurs" (Cannes heavy) are showcases you'll want to keep an eye on - I can vouch on a good chunk of titles already selected. Among the half dozen included names in "Young Americans" section we find a pair of filmmakers in Alistair Banks Griffin and David Robert Mitchell who were included in our own American New Wave 25 feature this summer. Two Gates Of Sleep, one of my top discoveries of the year from this year's Cannes will finally receive its North American premiere. Filling out the section, we also have the North American premiere for the Locarno preemed Kitao Sakurai's Aardvark (Sakurai was the cinematographer on You Wont Miss...

Quickly establishing itself as one of the premiere events for genre cinema in Canada is the edgy Temps 0 program at Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinema and this year is no exception. Though the official press conference isn't until tomorrow morning we've got an early look at the lineup and it's a good one. Voila!

The Last Circus (Alex de la Iglesia)

La Casa Muda (The Silent House) (Gustavo Hernandez) North-American Premiere

Chatroom (Hideo Nakata) North-American Premiere

Colorful (Keiichi Hara) North American Premiere

Confessions (Tetsuya Nakashima)

David Wants to Fly (David Sieveking)

Doman Seman (Go Shibata) Canadian Premiere

Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé) Director will be present

Headless Family (Kote Aramboy) International Premiere

Hisss (Jennifer Chambers Lynch) Canadian Premiere

The Intruder  (Thanadol Nualsuth, Thammanoon Sakulboonthanom) North American Premiere

Kaboom (Gregg Araki)

Mad Dog Morgan (Philippe Mora) In 35mm with director present

Monsters (Gareth Edwards)

Outrage (Takeshi Kitano)

Raavanan (Tamil Version) (Mani Ratnam...

Five films will compete for one of the North American film festival circuit's most generous awards, the Golden Starfish narrative feature prize, worth $125,000 in cash and in-kind services, at the 18th Hamptons International Film Festival. Xavier Dolan's "Heartbeats", Hilda Hidalgo's "Of Love and Other Demons," Alice Nellis' "Mamas and Papas," Nikolaj Steen's "Old Boys" and Cam Archer's "Shit Year" will vie for the award. The festival takes place from October ...

M. Blash's Lying made it to Cannes, but it failed to make much of a splash anywhere else. Benefitting from a name cast in thesps Chloe Sevigny and Jena Malone, it took me a couple of tries to work through the denseness of the quasi-drama. Bobby Bukowski's muted colors and the applied improvisational technique were perhaps the film's most difficult hurdle to overcome. Blash is back with what I imagine is a more applied screenplay and instead of upstate New York, he has set up his next project in Van Sant country - Portland, Ore.. According to Variety, Sevigny and Malone are once again joining Blash and the new add-on comes in the shape of Shit Year's Luke Grimes and Devon Gearhart (the kid in Haneke's Funny Games U.S. also has a part). Filming began this week. Titled The Wait, it appears the project is part of...

Luke Grimes ("Shit Year," "Brothers and Sisters") has been set as the male lead in the indie thriller "The Wait" reports Variety

Chloe Sevigny and Jena Malone star as two sisters who decide to keep their deceased mother in the house after receiving a call that she will come back to life. Grimes plays a philosophical and enigmatic man who becomes smitten with Malone's character.

M. Blash, who previously worked with the two female leads on "Lying", has penned the script and is directing. Neil Kopp and Ryan Crisman are producing and shooting kicks off this week in Portland, Oregon.

Luke Grimes ("Shit Year") will be the male lead opposite Chloe Sevigny as well as Jena Malone in "The Wait." M. Blash-directed and written film is being produced by Neil Kopp and Ryan Crisman. Principal photography starts this week in Portland, Oregon. Story tells of two sisters who decide to keep their deceased mother in the house after they get a call saying that she will come back to life. Grimes plays philosophical and enigmatic man who becomes smitten with Malone's character. Sevigny and Malone also starred together in Blash's 2006 drama called "Lying." That film included Maya Goldsmith, Halley Wegryn Gross and Leelee Sobieski.

With both our “25 New Faces” feature and the Ifp’s Narrative Lab coming up, I’ve been kind of backlogged here on the blog. But, I just posted a couple of things: first, Livia Bloom’s recap of Cannes in our Festival Coverage section, and then my interview with Shit Year director Cam Archer, conducted in Cannes after the premiere of his film in the Director’s Fortnight section. And, in a separate post, Bloom wonders why there were not any female directors in Competition in Cannes this year. You can check them out at the links.

It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now spends her days avoiding her neighbors and flashing back to a brief affair she had with a younger actor (Luke Grimes) on the set of her last film. In an eerily composed performance, Barkin projects the steely emotional control of a woman determined not to descend into the...

While prepping for an American Pavilion Q & A with Cam Archer and David Robert Mitchell, writer-directors of two micro-budget indies, one film put me to sleep while the other didn't. I fought to stay alert during Archer's sophomore feature Shit Year (Director's Fortnight), a non-linear black-and-white 16 mm meditation on a retired actress (Ellen Barkin) who goes loony when stripped of her anchoring identity. "I made 35 movies in 30 years," she says. "Being someone else can be very addictive. It's funny how familiar being a stranger can be." She later wails, "I am surrounded by a world of nothing. How can something become nothing?" The movie is incantatory, narcoleptic, as Archer uses long, static shots. Many folks walked out at my screening. On the ...

You see, that’s exactly the thing about the Cannes Film Festival – you can even see a movie with title like this – Shit Year and have a freedom to write “shit” all over the report. Just joking.

Shit Year

But I still like this Cam Archer’s new project, with lovely Ellen Barkin in the leading role. Actually, everything about Shit Year looked perfect from the first moment, especially this picture with Ellen’s double-sad-clown-with-cigarette face. I mean, is there better way to describe something titled Shit Year? Guess not.

So, here’s the synopsis part: “Renowned actress Collen West abandons her successful career for a secluded life in the hills. But the quiet and peace of mind she longed for is disrupted by the noisy construction of neighboring housing developments. Before long, Colleen discovers that she really can’t stand herself now that she has given up the only...

"Premiering at the Directors' Fortnight, Shit Year, Cam Archer's second feature (after 2006's mildly experimental gay coming-of-age tale Wild Tigers I Have Known), is more satisfying to say than to watch," writes Melissa Anderson for Artforum. "Ellen Barkin stars as Colleen West, a just-retired actress still recovering from her breakup with Harvey (Luke Grimes), a perfectly sculpted ephebe who costarred with her in a play. Archer's film, mistaking willful incomprehensibility for artfulness, unfolds as a series of disjointed, dead-end vignettes (some involving Colleen's experiments with 'simulations' to bring Harvey back, others including craft projects with apples supervised by an irritatingly buoyant neighbor) that Barkin, ever game, can enliven only so much."...

By Roger Friedman

hollywoodnews.com: Ellen Barkin either lost a bet or she’s being blackmailed. Either way, her presence in “Shit Year” at the Cannes Directors Fortnight is puzzling.

Cam Archer’s movie isn’t really even a movie. It’s a self indulgent raft ride into outer space, in which improvisation and meaningless yabbering take the place of movie making. I actually started to think during the interminable hour spent in the theater that “Cam Archer” might be a pseudonym for “Yoko Ono.” Looking at a fly would have been more fun.

To read more go to showbiz411.com...

Ellen Barkin puts on a bold, candid performance in Cam Archer's "Shit Year," but the enigmatic movie is composed of too many fragments to sustain her efforts. An experimental account of fictional actress Colleen West, this obsessively non-linear character snapshot never settles down and consequently loses focus. The sum of its parts is both imaginative and emotionally remote. Shot on grainy 16mm, the black-and-white story drifts around through several disconnected parts, ...

We've been talking about this one for so long, glad to have finally seen Cam Archer's sophomore pic and the verdict? Think Jim Jarmusch's early days and Anton Corbijn videos from the late 80's but with a tone that is slightly surreal, slightly candid in the notion of retirement and slightly distilled - the shades of B&W have a dreamy, docu-like quality and makes this a purely art-house theatres. - We've been talking about this one for so long, glad to have finally seen Cam Archer's sophomore pic and the verdict? Think Jim Jarmusch's early days and Anton Corbijn videos from the late 80's but with a tone that is slightly surreal, slightly candid in the notion of retirement and slightly distilled - the shades of B&W have a dreamy, docu-like quality and makes this a purely art-house theatres. Nice to see Melora...

We've been talking about this one for so long, glad to have finally seen Cam Archer's sophomore pic and the verdict? Think Jim Jarmusch's early days and Anton Corbijn videos from the late 80's but with a tone that is slightly surreal, slightly candid in the notion of retirement and slightly distilled - the shades of B&W have a dreamy, docu-like quality and makes this a purely art-house theatres. Nice to see Melora Waters - I had lost track of her since PTA's Magnolia. On hand for the world premiere night were stars Ellen Barkin, Luke Grimes and producing pair Parts and Labor's Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy. Shit Year was part of the Director's Fortnight - Cannes FIlm Festival 2010 - here is some footage from the film's premiere.    ...

If I had to pick just twelve (my actual screening schedule is north of 40) then I'd go with the dozen titles below. - If I had to pick just twelve (my actual screening schedule is north of 40) then I'd go with the dozen titles below.  All Good Children directed by Alicia Duffy (Director's Fortnight)On the basis of her short film and the clip I saw for this one, this feature debut may just bring us the next Lynne Ramsay, Andrea Arnold.Biutiful directed by Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu (Main Comp)First screenplay sans Guillermo Arriaga, I'm expecting this to be the fresh start and move away from mapped out narratives and multiple character collision course - big question: is this an English or Spanish spoken film? Carlos directed by Olivier Assayas (Out of Competition) Of the list you find on this page, this is the...

If I had to pick just twelve (my actual screening schedule is north of 40) then I'd go with the dozen titles below. All Good Children directed by Alicia Duffy (Director's Fortnight)On the basis of her short film and the clip I saw for this one, this feature debut may just bring us the next Lynne Ramsay, Andrea Arnold.Biutiful directed by Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu (Main Comp)First screenplay sans Guillermo Arriaga, I'm expecting this to be the fresh start and move away from mapped out narratives and multiple character collision course - big question: is this an English or Spanish spoken film? Carlos directed by Olivier Assayas (Out of Competition) Of the list you find on this page, this is the film in Cannes that I won't be watching - 5 hour 33 minutes should have been broken down by the festival. Will seek it out post festival.Inside Job directed...

The German sales co. known for providing the fest circuit and art-house plexes with subtitled stuff from around the globe will set fire to the Director's Fortnight section this year. If I'm counting right, the Match Factory supply the section with a trio of titles (five total in the fest) including the much discussed on this site Cam Archer's sophomore feature, and they nabbed a Main Comp spot for one of the most celebrated directors of the decade in Apichatpong Weerasethakul latest – a sort of “ghost” story. - The German sales co. known for providing the fest circuit and art-house plexes with subtitled stuff from around the globe will set fire to the Director's Fortnight section this year. If I'm counting right, The Match Factory supply the fest with a five titles including The Light Thief (see pic above), The City Below, the including the much discussed...

The German sales co. known for providing the fest circuit and art-house plexes with subtitled stuff from around the globe will set fire to the Director's Fortnight section this year. If I'm counting right, The Match Factory supply the fest with a five titles including The Light Thief (see pic above), The City Below, the including the much discussed on this site Cam Archer's sophomore feature, and they nabbed a Main Comp spot for one of the most celebrated directors of the decade in Apichatpong Weerasethakul latest – a sort of “ghost” story. Everything Will Be Fine (Alting Bliver Godt Igen) by Christoffer Boe - Completed Shit Year by Cam Archer - Completed The City Below (Unter Dir Die Stadt) by Christoph HOCHHÄUSLER - Completed The Light Thief by Aktan Arym Kubat - Completed Uncle Boonmee Who Nn Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chaat) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul -...

As his Robin Hood opens the Cannes film festival, Ridley Scott talks about showdowns with Russell Crowe, his favourite men in tights – and why Churchill was a geezer

It's election day in Britain when we meet. "Have you voted yet?" I ask Ridley Scott, as we settle down to talk in a Beverly Hills hotel suite. "I'm going to miss it, I guess," he says. "God, I hope they know what they're doing – because we don't really know who they are, these new boys, do we? You used to have to have fought in a war to be President of the United States or Prime Minister of England."

Scott, a director whose name has become synonymous with quality action movies whose heroes do battle in hostile, unfamiliar worlds, pauses for a second, as if the thought has given him the inspiration for a movie. He hits on an idea and...

The artistic directors of both Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine de realisateurs) and Critics' Week (La Semaine de la critique) have stated they did not want to pick from Sundance titles. "We try to show films that don't pass through Sundance first", Critics Week’s Artistic Director Jean-Christophe Berjon said, “although U.S. indie entries are well represented this year." "I wanted to change things up and not take any Sundance films unless they were exceptional," said Frederic Boyer said in an interview. Considering how many Sundance titles went to the Berlinale, and that Cannes is 6 months later, singling out Sundance is somewhat odd. We in Us already know that Sundance has a certain sort of American film, and that other films are continually being made that might be just as good but not to the taste of Sundance programmers or simply not timed for the Sundance slot. That the two Cannes...

red carpet lineup. random celebs who've been out and about this week...

With Tribeca handing out their awards last tonight and me coming back to life (things have been crazy) I thought we'd talk about some people attending New York's glitzy festival. I'm asking a comment question in red for each of them because I'm "reader discussion guide" annoying like that. Maybe I should have been a T.A.? Tribeca doesn't have the same prestige or art-driven mentality as the far older New York Film Festival (always in the fall) but it does pack theaters all over town, offer up a diverse 'something for everyone' slate and bring out the celebrities in droves. To hawk their films. Though I did see Ben Stiller and Denis Leary as audience members at the religious satire The Infidel.

from left to right

Ellen Barkin plays a sullen drug addict in The Chameleon and...

I love getting IndieWire’s Cannes Wish List. IndieWire's commentary on each film is interesting in and of itself. I find myself remarking "I didn't know that!" at every other entry. My former Tipped for Cannes Report (when FilmFinders was my company) was one of my most popular reports because film buyers and programmers could immediately hone in on their targets. So, in keeping with tradition, I pulled together the list Screen International (Si) and blogger ion (he did a lot of research for this!) published in February just after the Berlinale and am now going to compare it with Iw’s. My links for the title are to IMDbPro and for the contact either to the seller (Isa=International Sales Agent) or the producer.

After this, I will track which of these land in Cannes, which in Toronto, Venice, etc.; which get acquired by whom (to be gathered together...

Lineup for the Cannes film festival sidebar, which will this year open and close with French movies, includes 11 features from first-time directors

French movies will bookend the Directors' Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, which this year sees 22 features from as far afield as Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan. In contrast to 2009, when Francis Ford Coppola opened proceedings at the sidebar with his self-financed picture Tetro, half of this year's lineup will be from first-time directors.

Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye's documentary Benda Bilili!, about an orchestra made up entirely of disabled people, will open the sidebar, while the closing night film will be Fabienne Berthaud's Lily Sometimes, starring Diane Kruger and Ludivine Sagnier as sisters dealing with the sudden death of their mother.

Flying the flag for Britain are Alicia Duffy's feature debut All Good Children, a psychological drama about two Irish kids coping with their mother's suicide in France,...

Sorry, we're a day late on this one, been busy, but there's some great stuff coming our way, that is if you like arthouse fare.

Among other things will be a story about two violent teenage girls in France called Des filles en noir, along with Christoffer Boe's incredible looking Everyting will be fine (trailer).

There's a couple more gems we'll be reporting on shortly.

Full list after the break.

Directors' Fortnight

"All Good Children," U.K., Alicia Duffy

"Benda Bilili!," France, Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye (opening film)

"Cleveland vs. Wall Street," Switzerland-France, Jean-Stephane Bron

"Des filles en noir," France, Jean-Paul Civeyrac

"Everything Will Be Fine," Denmark-Sweden-France, Christoffer Boe

"Illegal," Belgium-Luxembourg-France, Olivier Masset-Depasse

"The Invisible Eye," Argentina-France-Spain, Diego Lerman

"Joy," Brazil, Marina Meliande, Felipe Braganca

"Le quattro volte," Italy-Germany-Switzerland, Michelangelo Frammartino

"Leap Year," Mexico, Michael Rowe

"The Light Thief," Kyrgyzstan, Aktan Arym Kubat

"Lily Sometimes," France, Fabienne Berthaud...

Earlier today Cannes unveiled the 24 films selected for its annual sidebar, Directors’ Fortnight. Opening this year with Renaud Barret & Florent de la Tullaye’s documentary Benda Bilili!, the line-up is dominated by first-time filmmakers, 11 in all. One American standout is Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known) who will be screening his latest, Shit Year, starring Ellen Barkin. Fortnight will take place May 13-23. Full list of titles below. Feature Films Alegria (Joy), directed by Marina Méliande et Felipe Braganca (Brazil) All Good Children, directed by Alicia Duffy (UK) Alting bliver godt igen (Everything Will Be Fine), directed by Christoffer Boe (Denmark-Sweden-France) Año bisiesto, directed by Michael Rowe...

La Mirada invisible (The Invisible Eye) - Diego Lerman. Winner of the Sundance/Nhk Int. Filmmakers Award and part of Cannes' Atelier de la Cinefondation, this is set in 1982's Buenos Aires, close to the end of the military dictatorship and focuses on the tensions between teachers and students. Picco - Philip Koch. German debut from Koch is actually based on true events, Picco is the first picture to shed light on the every-day life of youth prison inmates in Germany and shows in a gripping and merciless way that the contemporary judiciary system is by no means able to properly re-educate these lost youths... - La Mirada invisible (The Invisible Eye) - Diego Lerman Winner of the Sundance/Nhk Int. Filmmakers Award and part of Cannes' Atelier de la Cinefondation, this is set in 1982's Buenos Aires, close to the end of the military dictatorship and focuses on the tensions between teachers and students.

The lineup for the 2010 edition of Directors’ Fortnight has been announced. There are eleven first films in the lineup which will compete for the Camera d’Or prize which goes to a first film from across all the sections.

In 2010 Directors’ Fortnight, the Carrosse d’Or award will be awarded to Agnes Varda, the celebrated woman auteur-director of the french independant cinema. The Carrosse d’or (Golden Coach) Prize is a tribute to a director chosen from the international filmmaking community for the innovative qualities, courage and independent-mindedness of his or her work. Since its creation in 2002, this prize has been given to Jacques Rozier, Clint Eastwood, Nanni Moretti, Sembene Ousmane, David Cronenberg, Alain Cavalier, Jim Jarmusch and Naomie Kawasé in 2009.

Directors’ Fortnight will run from May 13 to 23 on the sidelines of the official selection at Cannes International Film festival.

Feature films

(* denotes films competing for Caméra d'Or Prize)

Alegria,...

In the list we find three items on my "Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of the Year in: Fabienne Berthaud's Pieds nus sur les limaces (see pic of Diane Kruger above), Cam Archer's Shit Year and Alistair Banks Griffin's debut film, Two Gates Of Sleep. Also included in the section is a doc-essay film from Michelangelo Frammartino that I'll be itching to see as well. Of the veteran auteurs, we have works from Christoffer Boe, Jean-Paul Civeyrac, old school High School doc filmmaker Frederik Wiseman and look for the Rolling Stones to be on hand for Stephen Kijak's Stones In Exile.. - You can say that there'll be plenty of virgins in this year's Director's Fortnight section. Quickly looking at the list of 22 feature films, Frédéric Boyer's very first edition appears to be heavy on first time works - exactly half of the section are newbies.

You’re looking at a still photo from a feature film called Shit Year (I love that title), by Cam Archer (a name I’m not at all familiar with), which will screen at next month’s Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight section.

The film stars Ellen Barkin as a woman, once a renowned actress, who has given up her passion, and comes unhinged as she confronts retirement and life at the twilight of her career. Haunted, she plummets into a hallucinatory affair with a much younger actor who she met while doing a small play.

Scrolling through the film’s credits led me to Ms Theresa Randle (left), who plays a character named Marion; although I’m not sure how meaty her role in the film is, which IONCinema (familiar with Cam Archer’s short resume of work) expects will be a “highly stylized, visually alluring piece” (which...

La Mirada invisible (The Invisible Eye) - Diego Lerman Winner of the Sundance/Nhk Int. Filmmakers Award and part of Cannes' Atelier de la Cinefondation, this is set in 1982's Buenos Aires, close to the end of the military dictatorship and focuses on the tensions between teachers and students. Picco - Philip KochGerman debut from Koch is actually based on true events, Picco is the first picture to shed light on the every-day life of youth prison inmates in Germany and shows in a gripping and merciless way that the contemporary judiciary system is by no means able to properly re-educate these lost youths... Pieds nus sur les limaces (Lily Sometimes) - Fabienne BerthaudCo-written by Berthaud and Pascal Arnold, this is based on Berthaud’s eponymous novel, and centres on Clara (Diane Kruger), who is happily married to a promising lawyer and lives in Paris. After the sudden death of their mother,...