- Los Angeles, 5 January: Final box-office figures indicate that the number of admissions to the nation's theaters declined by 5 percent in 2003, although total revenue was down only 1.1 percent ($9.2 billion against last year's $9.3 billion). Analysts observed that the drop in ticket sales was the largest in more than a decade. Today's Los Angeles Times attributed the decline primarily to the drop in admissions for independent films, which experienced a 29-percent revenue drop. Dan Marks, executive vice president of box-office trackers Nielsen EDI, told the Times that the decline was due primarily to the lack of a hit on the order of last year's My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "Nobody likes to see the number of admissions going down, but history will show you it goes up and down ... and this year we just could not find anything to replace Greek Wedding." -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 6 January: In a 35-page report, an outside investigator has found that Writers Guild of America, West President Victoria Riskin was ineligible to run for office for a second term because she had not worked sufficiently as a writer to retain active membership. The report, authored by Stanford University law professor William Gould IV, a former NLRB chairman, recommended that she resign at once and that she be replaced with the guild's vice president, Charles Holland. If she does not quit, reports indicated, she could be removed by a simple majority vote of the 16-member board. Riskin's lawyer, Larry Feldman, told today's Los Angeles Times: "Obviously, we don't accept this." -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 7 January: Writers Guild of America West President Victoria Riskin has resigned following a report by an independent investigator that concluded that she was ineligible to hold office because she had not recently earned enough income as a writer to qualify for active membership in the guild. She was immediately replace by WGA Vice President Charles Holland. In a statement, Riskin observed that the controversy over her eligibility came at a time when the guild was preparing to open contract negotiations with Hollywood film and TV producers. The current contract expires on May 2. "My election as president of the Writers Guild is a trust I hold sacred," Riskin said in her statement. "However, I know we cannot proceed into negotiations with these charges hanging over us." -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 7 January: Countering accusations that Mel Gibson's forthcoming film The Passion of the Christ depicts Jews as being responsible for the death of Christ, some Internet fan sites are indicating that the film actually reveals that Gibson himself is responsible. As reported by MSNBC.com's Jeannette Walls, Gibson's hand is seen in the movie putting the nail into Christ's palm during the crucifixion. -- IMDb
- Orlando, 9 January: A number of animators fired by Disney when it closed its Florida animation studios last year have formed their own company, Legacy Animation Studios, and announced Thursday that they plan to set up shop in Winter Garden, Florida later this month. "We believe that traditionally animated films are still a viable form of entertainment," Legacy's directing manager, Eddie Pittman, said in a statement. "Our goal is to create quality animated films with compelling stories and strong characters and to continue Walt Disney's legacy of hand drawn animation." -- IMDb
- London, 12 January: Thanks primarily to such U.S.-funded big-budget productions as the third Harry Potter film and the upcoming Brad Pitt movie Troy, the British film industry recorded a record year in 2003, tallying up $2.16 billion in spending, twice the total of 2002, according to the British Film Council. The increase came despite the continued weakening of the U.S. dollar against the British pound. The Film Council attributed the rise to government tax breaks and the country's large pool of accomplished actors, technicians and facilities. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 13 January: A screener of Something's Gotta Give sent to 69-year-old actor Carmine Caridi, an Oscar® voter, has popped up on the Internet, the Los Angeles Times reported today, citing a person familiar with an investigation of the matter by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Special markings on the copy reportedly identified it as having been sent to Caridi, who could not be reached for comment, the Times said. Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis told the newspaper: "I still have trouble believing that anybody would take the care of a 2003 screener lightly. ... It never occurred to me that anybody would ever let this happen. It's risking the whole ability of the Academy members to get their screeners next year." Later in the day, the Academy said Warner Bros. had alerted it that an Oscar® screener of The Last Samurai was also being illegally distributed on the Internet. All Academy members had been required to sign an agreement promising to prevent their videocassettes from being copied. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 15 January: Yet another screener sent to an Oscar® voter has turned up on the Internet. Miramax said Wednesday that one of the Cold Mountain videocassettes that it sent out last month had landed on a file-sharing site. In another case, DreamWorks complained that the actual VHS screener of its House of Sand and Fog had landed on the eBay auction site. The site reportedly canceled the sale after it was contacted by the studio. The tape was identified as the one sent to Ivan Kruglak, an Academy member who himself won a technical achievement award in 1998. Kruglak told today's Los Angeles Times that he had no idea how the tape landed on eBay. (The Times did not indicate whether DreamWorks was attempting to identify the person who listed the item.) Meanwhile, today's Hollywood Reporter observes that despite all the brouhaha over the Academy screeners winding up on the Internet, the fact is that pirated copies of virtually every awards contender are already readily available. (It noted that the OBUS site lists two films as "Academy screeners" that have not even been mentioned in recent reports: Focus Features' 21 Grams, and Warner Bros.' Mystic River.) -- IMDb
- New York, 16 January:
 American premier of Talaye sorkh (Crimson Gold) from Iranian director Jafar Panahi and written by Abbas Kiarostami. Here's something you don't see everyday: a heist movie from Iran. Opening with an arresting jewellery store heist sequence (shot in a single take, the static camera moving slowly in on the action as things go from bad to worse), the rest of Crimson Gold backtracks to the period just before the botched heist, outlining the events that build up to its bloody tragedy. Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin) is a Tehran pizza delivery rider sharing his aimless existence with future brother-in-law Ali (Kamyar Sheisi). After being insulted by a storeowner, who refuses to let him into his shop because he's not wealthy enough, the taciturn war veteran becomes increasingly conscious of the split in Iranian society between those with money and those without it.
Following Hussein on his pizza deliveries, director Panahi offers tantalising images of Tehran's repressive regime, from illegal apartment parties (where the army wait downstairs to ambush the departing guests, arresting them for drinking alcohol and wearing perfume) to the easy affluence of those wealthy enough to find some leeway with the authorities. Employing languid takes to capture the irony of Hussein's social immobility even as he flits around the city on his motorbike, Panahi's class-conscious storyline may be infuriatingly minimalist, but it's held together by a quietly subversive willingness to question the dead-end frustrations of life under totalitarianism. "If you want to arrest a thief, you'll have to arrest the world," claims the philosophising professional hoodlum, from whom Hussein and Ali receive an impromptu lesson in the ethics of stealing at the beginning of the film. In a city where snatch squads roam the streets making random arrests, it seems that everyone is a potential criminal. -- Jamie Russell, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 22 January: The FBI has snared the man who allegedly uploaded a number of Oscar® screeners onto the Internet. The agency said today that they had taken Russell W. Sprague, Sr. into custody on a warrant charging him with copyright infringement. The feds were alerted to Sprague's Internet operation by veteran actor Carmine Caridi, the Academy member who had originally received the screeners. He was said to be cooperating with investigators. According to the complaint, Sprague had obtained the films -- which included The Last Samurai, Mystic River, Calendar Girls, and Something's Gotta Give -- from Caridi by telling him that he was a film buff and only wished to view the films himself. Sprague later told the investigators that he gave the screeners to a third person in exchange for free use of his FedEx account. -- IMDb
- Park Cities, 25 January:
 Dramatic judges Lisa Cholodenko, Frederick Elmes, Danny Glover, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ted Hope and documentary judges Rory Kennedy, Mary Ellen Mark, Rob Moss, Robert Shepherd and Chris Smith have made their selections for this year's Sundance Film Festival. Winning the documentary Grand Jury Prize was Ondi Timoner's DiG!. The dramatic jury selected Shane Carruth's Primer for their Grand Prize. Special Jury Prizes went to Catherine Tambini and Carlos Sandoval for Farmingville in the documentary division, and to Rodney Evans for Brother to Brother and Vera Farmiga for Down to the Bone in the dramatic division. Director's Awards were won by Morgan Spurtock for Super Size Me (documentary) and Debra Granik for Down to the Bone (dramatic). Audience Awards were presented to Ross Kauffman for Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (documentary), to Jennifer Abbot and Mark Achbar for The Corporation (world cinema, documentary), to Joshua Marston for Maria Full of Grace (dramatic) and to Jean-François Pouliot for La Grande séduction (world cinema, dramatic). Ferne Pearlstein won the documentary Cinematography Award for Imelda, and Nancy Schreiber won for November in the dramatic division. The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award was presented to Larry Gross for We Don't Live Here Anymore. The festival's Visionary Award went to Mark Ordesky, executive producer at New Line Cinema of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as Sunset Grill, Pecker and State and Main.
- New York, 27 January:
 The "Page Six" column of today's New York Post reports that Joe Roth, who is producing this year's Oscars telecast, was "furious" when he learned that Leonardo DiCaprio had appeared as a presenter at Sunday's Golden Globes Awards. The newspaper said that DiCaprio had snubbed Roth's efforts to induce him to hand out an Oscar. Roth reportedly has concluded that Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, who backed the DiCaprio starrer Gangs of New York and the upcoming The Aviator, had persuaded the charismatic star to hand out a Golden Globe. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 3 February: The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is expected to expel Carmine Caridi, a member for over 22 years, when it meets in Hollywood tonight. Caridi has admitted turning over copies of his Oscar® screeners to a friend, Russell Sprague, who allegedly posted them onto the Internet. Until now, the Academy has expelled members only for selling their tickets for Oscar® shows.
In other news, the Academy is planning to back a "world-class," $200-million motion-picture museum in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported today. In an interview with the newspaper, the Academy's president, Frank Pierson, said: "We're not going to think small," adding that the attraction is expected to incorporate a film education center. "The time has come to make the decision to go ahead and do it before somebody else does it badly. And do it the way the Academy should do it, truly representing the film community," said Pierson. -- IMDb
- New York, 23 February: Hoping to reverse the steady ratings decline for its annual Oscar® awards telecast, ABC has enlisted a new production team for the show headed by veteran producer Joe Roth; upped the number of promotional spots for the show on its primetime sitcoms, including references to the awards in the scripts; and hired a team to coach potential winners on what to say during their acceptance speeches, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Journal said that writers of the sitcoms agreed to insert the Oscar® plugs because they felt that ABC would give their shows additional promo time once they heard about the Oscar® link. Similar references to the Oscars® have also been written into the scripts for "General Hospital," "One Life to Live" and "All My Children," the WSJ said. -- IMDb
 - New York, 25 February: Powerful, brutal and as subtle as a smack in the face, The Passion of the Christ may be the most relentless horror film since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is certainly more violent. Tracing the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus (Jim Caviezel), director Mel Gibson shows the crucifixion of the Christ, the soul-saving sacrifice of the son of God. But the message of love is almost drowned by blood. And in focusing on a gospel of gore rather than grace, Gibson allows Jesus to die without showing us how to live. The film reminds us of what Jesus went through and serves as a cinematic version of the Stations of the Cross (the pictures portraying the final stages of Christ's life, which are used to prompt meditation and prayer in some, mostly Catholic, churches). But the flashbacks to the time before Jesus' trial and execution are so brief they may bewilder some viewers. How was it that this carpenter-cum-preacher so riled the religious leaders of 1st century Jerusalem that they decided to do him in? Arguably as much because he was a revolutionary, anti-hypocrisy, anti-greed figure than because of blasphemy, which is the sole reason provided here for the Jewish establishment's hatred of him. It's a shame the film is so basic, so interested in portraying pain to the exclusion of virtually everything else. It is Jesus Christ: Splatterstar, with seemingly endless slow-motion shots of Jesus falling under the weight of his cross, or being beaten bloody and whipped raw by Roman soldiers. The simplification is especially irritating given the time spent on unnecessary additions to the biblical story, including scenes of Judas being tormented by demonic children; an androgynous Satan tempting Christ; a raven pecking out the eye of a thief dying beside him. Considering the film's claims to authenticity - which includes dialogue in two dead (well, rather frail) languages, Aramaic and Latin - the embellishments are unfortunate, adding to the impression that as beautifully shot and well-acted as it is, The Passion is a high-gloss exploitation picture, obsessed with the Death Jesus conquered, rather than the Life he gave - and gives. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
 - Los Angeles, 29 February:
 The King not only returned, he kicked some serious butt and made Oscar® history along the way. Peter Jackson's visionary The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was coronated Best Picture at the 76th Annual Academy Awards, earning the Hobbit-happy epic the last of a record-tying 11 Oscars® in a dominant showing Sunday night. The film swept every category in which it was nominated, sending it on its way to matching the all-time-wins mark also shared by Titanic (1997) and Ben-Hur (1959). "People are moving to New Zealand just to be thanked," quipped host Billy Crystal, back as emcee for the first time in four years -- his eighth overall.
The night was devoid of drama, as the winner roster stuck to the script, with no major upsets. Mystic River's Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, Monster's Charlize Theron and Cold Mountain's Renée Zellweger were the big winners in the acting categories. Highlights included Blake Edwards' entrance in an out-of-control wheelchair to receive his Honorary Award from Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell and Jack Black's musical tribute that was meant to force long-winded types off the stage. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 1 March: The decision to advance the date of the Oscar® ceremonies to February and to bring back Billy Crystal as host resulted in a 17-percent rise in the ratings Sunday night, according to Nielsen Media Research. "The 76th Annual Academy Awards," carried by ABC, drew a 29.6 rating and a 43 share between 8:30 p.m. and 12:15 a.m., versus a 25.2/37 when it aired last March 23. Moreover Barbara Walters' annual pre-Oscars celebrity interview show scored a stunning victory over CBS's usually unbeatable "60 Minutes" in the 7:00 hour, as it recorded a 9.4/14 versus "60 Minutes"' 7.7/12. With the exception of repeats from NBC's "Law & Order" franchise in the 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. hours, which drew an 8.1/11 and an 8.5/12 respectively, all shows trying to compete with the Oscars telecast were left in the dust. -- IMDb
- Tokyo, 6 March:
 Post-apocalyptic neo-noir gets a ferocious upgrade in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, a loquacious albeit visually stunning sequel to the cult 1995 animé. Set in Tokyo in 2032, Innocence has all of the trappings of its quasi-cyberpunk genre -- robots, a teeming metropolis seemingly on the verge of Blade Runner-ish collapse, and identity issues galore -- but strives to mine new territory by incorporating a wealth of philosophical quandaries that both puzzle and enlighten both the audience and the characters onscreen. Think of it as a 100-minute game of Go, with the pieces informed by sundry existential crises, and then add a dash of good old-fashioned cyborgs-run-amok in this none-too-brave new world, and you'll begin to get the picture. The storyline is nothing if not complex: The cyborg cop Batou returns from the original film, searching this time out for the killer of a sexbot (a "gynoid" in the film's lingo), who in turn has murdered its human john. Paired with his human partner Togusa, Batou, once human but now a collection of circuitry inhabited by a human soul (the "ghost in the machine" of the title), traverses a grim landscape of duplicitous cyborgs and their human creators in his search for the ever-elusive truth; he also takes time out to care for his beloved basset, Ruby, a humanizing element that renders the lumbering 'borg more soulful than many of the purportedly flesh and blood characters around him. Innocence is a deeply ambitious project, from its near constant quoting of the deepest philosophical sources -- the Bible, Descartes, Shakespeare, and more fall from Batou's lips like pearls of wisdom before swine -- to its central conceit: What does it mean to be human? Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner adaptation are the clearest precedents, but director Oshii and production designer Tanada Yohei up the ante considerably by combining traditional cel animation with some of the most gorgeous CGI backgrounds and cityscapes yet conceived. And unlike so much of the animé that makes it to the West (and discounting the wealth of terrific underground stuff that circulates on DVD and DiVX these days), Innocence is possessed of a highly literate, almost classical story, the search for the meaning of human life itself, and the unshakable belief that it encompasses much more than skin and bones. -- Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
- New York, 19 March:
 Vibrant, warm and deliriously inventive, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is romantic comedy snogging science fiction in another genuine original from Adaptation. scribe Charlie Kaufman. Playing smartly against type, Jim Carrey gives perhaps his best performance as the timid Joel, who discovers his sparky ex-girlfriend Clementine (the luminescent Kate Winslet) has undergone a medical procedure to erase him from her memory. Miffed, he decides to do the same, but changes his mind while watching his memories erased, and must race though his own brain trying to stop the process. Got that? Yes, most of Eternal Sunshine takes place inside Joel's noggin, as his relationship is replayed from messy breakup to sunshine start - while in the 'real' world the brain-frying medical team (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood's tech-heads, Kirsten Dunst's receptionist and Tom Wilkinson's dubious doctor) scratch their heads wondering why the infallible mind-wipe isn't quite working. Could it be - we shall see - that the leads are destined to be together?
Phew. This is quite a film to summarise. And yes, it's a little confusing. But once you plunge into Kaufman's time-splicing, dimension-shifting world, don't try to make it make sense - just feel it. For, while screenwriting clever-dickery can be emotionally alienating, here the ideas are infused with soul. The characters are tangy, tangible creations - funny, sad, sometimes unpleasant. They feel real. Credit for this also goes to the leads. Winslet, pulling off an immaculate American accent, is the heart of the picture, zinging with the zest for life of the adorable and infuriating Clem. Carrey powers down his comic persona for a muted, mournful turn (although he does have a terrifically funny sequence when regressing to childhood). Director Michel Gondry, a music video veteran, uses an array of flashy techniques to tell the story, without ever letting style overcome substance. Underneath the visual verve is a clear-eyed look at the painful realities of relationships, but beyond the depression and mordant cynicism is a message: love will find a way. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Madrid, 19 March:
 Drawing heavily from Laura, Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, Pedro Almodóvar's follow-up to Talk to Her, La Mala educación (Bad Education), is a sumptuous, queered-up mix of noir and melodrama. Ángel (Gael García Bernal) is an ambitious actor and writer who gets back in touch with a boyhood friend, Enrique (Fele Martínez), now a rising film director. Ángel gives him a short story based on steamy incidents that took place at their Catholic school. When Enrique is inspired to create a film from the story, fiction is stacked upon fiction to create a deadly web of desire and deceit. Leave it to Almodóvar to turn Y tu mamá también hunk Bernal into a convincing femme fatale -- he is magnetic both in and out of drag. The film itself doesn't always match him. Though always a pleasure to watch, it sometimes feels like less than the sum of its influences. Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- Las Vegas, 25 March: The MPAA is considering a "rewards program" in which moviegoers would receive a payment for turning in anyone spotted operating a camcorder in a movie theater. Speaking at a panel called "Anti-Piracy Practices Within the Exhibition Industry," Bill Shannon, head of the MPAA's anti-piracy unit, told the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas that the rewards plan is currently only in the developmental stage. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 25 March:
 After two of its presidents were forced to resign under a cloud of controversy in less than three months, the Writers Guild of America announced Wednesday that it plans to hold a new election for president on Sept. 20, a year ahead of its scheduled vote. The decision staved off an investigation by the Labor Department, which had received complaints about the conduct of the last election, which resulted in the reelection of Victoria Riskin as president. The Labor Department was reportedly examining a complaint alleging that Riskin had persuaded producer Barry Kemp to offer her a writing job simply so that she could qualify as a candidate. Following Riskin's resignation, her successor, Charles Holland, became embroiled in controversy after questions were raised about the veracity of his claims that he had served in an elite military intelligence unit and had attended college on a sports scholarship. After he was forced to quit last week, he was replaced by Daniel Petrie Jr., a former WGA president, who said in a statement yesterday: "We completely agree that holding a new election for president is the best way to validate the voting rights of all guild members." -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 31 March: Apparently satisfied with the results of its decision to present the Oscar® ceremonies in February this year rather than in March as in the past, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that the 77th awards ceremony will be held on Feb. 27, 2005. The announcement was undoubtedly welcomed by ABC which will benefit from the fact that the popular broadcast -- it ranks second only to the Super Bowl in attracting an audience each year -- will once again air during the February sweeps. The Academy said that nominating ballots will go out on Dec. 27, 2004 and the nominations will be announced on Jan. 25, 2005. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 7 April: Sony Films has sold the landmark Culver Studios, which still warehouses the statue of Charles Foster Kane used in Citizen Kane, and the voodoo props used in King Kong, to a private investment group for $125 million. The Culver City plant, built by Thomas Ince in 1919, has changed hands numerous times and, when owned by producer David O. Selznick, served as the site for the filming of Gone With the Wind in the late 1930s and, when owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, served as the site for the filming of dozens of TV shows in the 1960s. The partnership buying the studios calls itself Studio City Los Angeles and includes Lehman Brothers, Pacific Coast Capital Partners, and Pacifica Ventures. Sony Films, which is headquartered in the onetime MGM site down the street from Culver Studios, will remain a major tenant. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 13 April: Russell Sprague, the man accused of receiving Oscar® screeners from Motion Picture Academy member Carmine Caridi and posting them on the Internet, pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of copyright infringement. Earlier, he had admitted making illegal copies of about 200 films. He is due to be sentenced on July 28 and could receive up to three years in prison. Meanwhile, MPAA chief Jack Valenti told representatives of several film and community organizations that of 52 movies sent out for awards voting last year, 16 of them ended up being pirated. -- IMDb
 - Buenos Aires, 15 April: Los Muertos (The Dead) opens in the capital. With its languid shots, deliberate pacing and near-total absence of dialogue, this mesmerizing Argentinian film makes a virtue of slowness. Like director Lisandro Alonso's superb 2001 debut La Libertad, The Dead is a patiently rendered portrait of one man within a pastoral setting. Argentino Vargas plays a killer who is released from jail and makes his way downriver to an unknown destination. Despite its startling beauty, the natural world is also presented as a place full of lurking menace. Then again, you don't have to tell that to the goat that gets slaughtered onscreen. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- Los Angeles, 15 April: Tipped off by an audience member and a projectionist, police have arrested two men under California's new law barring use of a camcorder in a movie theater. The Associated Press reported yesterday that one of the men, Min Jae Joun, was nabbed on 10 April after someone spotted the red light from his camcorder during a screening of The Passion of the Christ. The other man, Ruben Centeno Moreno, was spotted by a projectionist scanning the audience with night-vision goggles. The arrests were the first to be carried out under a recently enacted California law making the use of a camcorder in a movie theater a misdemeanor. -- IMDb
- Amsterdam, 19 April:
 A print of Beyond the Rocks, a 1922 silent film starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, and thought to have been extinct, has turned up in Haarlem, the Netherlands, the Amsterdam Film Museum disclosed Saturday. In a statement, the museum said that the film, which was directed by Sam Wood (A Night at the Opera, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), Our Town, Pride of the Yankees), is currently being restored, will be screened during the second Filmmuseum Biennial in April of next year, and will be presented with a new score. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 22 April: After all of the so-called "ancillary" revenue was tallied up, the major movie studios were able to boast Wednesday that they had set a new record in total revenue last year of $41.9 billion, Daily Variety reported today. The figure compares with the previous record of $36.5 billion set in 2002. The huge leap in financial gain was attributed primarily to sales of DVDs. The studios also credited a significant rise in sales to broadcast television stations and a surge in ticket sales overseas. -- IMDb
 - Buenos Aires, 6 May: In La Niña santa (The Holy Girl), Argentine director Lucrecia Martel's follow-up to her festival fave La Ciénaga (2001), a 16-year-old girl develops a fixation on a middle-aged doctor. Yet the teen's intention is more religious than carnal -- Amalia (Mercedes Morán) is out to save the soul of Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso), though neither party is clear what such an act of salvation might entail. A coolly disciplined filmmaker, Martel keeps much of the action below the surface -- perhaps too far below the surface. Yet the subtle performances and Martel's precise visual sense make La Niña santa an unnerving story of two people in crisis. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- New York, 19 May:
 Shrek 2 opens nationally today. With its relentless movie references and borrowed jokes, Shrek 2 is going to seem so 2004 by about 2009. But that probably won't trouble DreamWorks a bit -- they've pretty much got the next couple of months sewn up at the box office. To its credit, this animated sequel works very hard to keep the franchise fresh, drawing on a different plot and introducing a new set of characters. At the end of the last movie, Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz), two plump green ogres, had brought justice to their kingdom, fallen in love and gotten married. Now, only one daunting task remains: Shrek must meet his new in-laws, two humans who never accepted Fiona's ogrely demeanour and who are scheming with a fairy godmother (Jennifer Saunders) to change their daughter back into human form so she can move on to a second marriage with Prince Charming (Rupert Everett). The previous film was dominated by the relationship between Shrek and Donkey (Eddie Murphy); wisely, the ebullient (but often grating) Donkey is pushed to the background, to provide more space for the new characters. Of these, a Zorro-like Puss-in-Boots (Antonio Banderas), gets most of the best lines, though Julie Andrews and John Cleese -- as Fiona's parents -- appear as an appropriately starchy contrast to the slovenly Shrek. (Their accents are genuine, too, unlike Myers' Scottish burr, which sounds more forced than in the first film.) The pacing is speedy and the jokes come thick and fast; the screenwriters set up and pull off gags with exacting precision. (And if one doesn't quite come off, there's another lined up right behind it.) This is perfect summer fare: light, sweet and silly stuff. -- Catharine Tunnacliffe, eye WEEKLY
- Los Angeles, 14 May:
 An epic in the truest sense of the word, Troy is inspired by Homer's tragic poem "The Iliad" - a mythic rendering of an ancient war fought between Greeks and Trojans. Director Wolfgang Petersen retells the tale with swagger and grit, while a buff and burnished Brad Pitt leads the assault as the warrior hero Achilles. No doubt this is pure Hollywood sensation, but it's also poignant storytelling, acutely sensitive to the themes of human frailty at the heart of its source. Pubescent lust is the trigger for war, with playboy Prince of Troy Paris (Orlando Bloom) stealing away the beautiful Helen (Diane Kruger) from Spartan King Menelaus (Brendon Gleeson). His actions inadvertently provide Menelaus' brother, and King of Kings, Agamemnon (a deliciously canny Brian Cox) with a convenient excuse to invade Troy, thus securing his hold over the Aegean Sea. To ensure victory he calls upon Greece's premier fighting machine, Achilles - portrayed with fitting celestial vanity by megastar Pitt. Reluctant to spill the blood of thousands for what he sees as a quarrel between two men, Achilles is finally swayed into battle by the promise of immortality. Laying in wait for him is Paris' older and much wiser brother, Hector (a scene-stealing role for the magnetic Eric Bana). Where Achilles is puffed with arrogance, Hector is essentially decent - defining qualities that will ultimately prove the chinks in their respective armour.
Keeping the Olympian gods out of the frame, screenwriter David Benioff opts for ground-level realism, preserving the mythology through the deeply held superstitions of his characters. Petersen shoots the battle scenes in accordingly down-and-dirty style, most memorably the showdown between Hector and Achilles - the resounding clang of sword striking shield amplifying heart-stopping tension. The steely gaze of Peter O'Toole, as Trojan King Priam, is used to similarly penetrating effect during a last appeal to Achilles' conscience. A pivotal moment of "The Iliad," it's also a standout scene here, with O'Toole heading the pack of sterling performances. Note too, a quietly confident Sean Bean as Odysseus. It's only when the walls of Troy are breached that the film becomes a little unsteady, largely because its key conflict has already been resolved. Even so, Troy remains a hugely entertaining film, sprinkled with moments of brilliance. Surely the gods will look upon it and smile.-- Stella Papamichael, BBC Films
 - Paris, 19 May: The old master Jean-Luc Godard is as cranky as ever in his latest feature, though Notre musique is considerably less abrasive than his Spielberg-baiting Éloge de l'amour (2001). Indeed, it's one of his richest and most thoughtful works since 1990's Nouvelle Vague. It is divided into three parts. "Hell" is a dense montage of war and human suffering, some of it authentic and the rest recreated by Hollywood in the name of entertainment. The bulk of the film is "Purgatory," represented here by a literary conference in Sarajevo attended by various gloomy academics, a few ghosts, some angry aboriginals and a cigar-chomping JLG. As for "Paradise," it turns out to be an idyllic riverside enclave protected by gun-toting US marines, which suggests the director believes America may be good for something after all. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- Cannes, 23 May:
 Once again Michael Moore's political views have landed him on center stage. Fahrenheit 9/11, the filmmaker's scathing indictment of the Bush administration's policies before and after September 11, captured Cannes' top honor Saturday -- the coveted Palme d'Or. Jury president Quentin Tarantino was quick to defend the jury's selection of the film, claiming the choice had nothing to do with Moore's left-leaning politics; rather, that the film was simply the best picture screened at the festival. "When I was on stage with Michael Moore, I knew all this politics crap would be brought up," Tarantino said Sunday. "I just whispered in his ear and said, 'I just want you to know it was not because of the politics that you won this award. You won it because we thought it was the best film that we saw.'"  For his part, the usually outspoken Moore was initially shocked nearly speechless by his victory. "What have you done?" the director asked of the jury. "I am completely overwhelmed by this." The film has yet to find a U.S. distributor after Disney banned Miramax from distributing it due to its controversial content. Moore said he was confident that the prestige of the Palme d'Or would help him get his œuvre to American movie screens. "I have a sneaking suspicion that you've ensured that the American people will see this film," Moore said in his acceptance speech. Moore's victory marks the first time a documentary has been awarded the top prize in almost 50 years. [Jacques-Yves Cousteau's The Silent World (1956) was the last doc to snare the Palme d'Or.]
Apart from Moore's victory, Cannes was dominated by its Asian entrants. The runner-up Grand Prix prize was awarded to Korean director Chan-Wook Park, for his film, Oldboy. The movie tells the story of a man imprisoned in a shoddy jail for 15 years and his quest for revenge. Asians also captured both acting awards. Maggie Cheung won Best Actress for her role in French director Olivier Assayas' Clean, the story of a drug-addicted rocker trying to clean up her act. And twelve-year-old Yûya Yagira was honored with the Best Actor award for his role in Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows), the tale of four children trying to survive after being abandoned by their mother. -- Sarah Hall, E! Online
- Paris, 26 May:
 Attention aspiring arthouse filmmakers: forget wasteful, formal education and get thee to a screening of 10 on Ten, the directorial master class presented by Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami. Arguably the most celebrated living non-Western filmmaker, Kiarostami has devised his latest project -- which intersperses clips from his 2002 film Ten with footage of the director tooling around Tehran in a car -- as a primer on how to make movies as honestly as possible. He acknowledges the success of the Hollywood model, but argues passionately and articulately for the sort of reflective, meditative approach that privileges observation and nuance over literal and stylistic pyrotechnics. -- Adam Nayman, eye WEEKLY
 - New York, 28 May: Brilliant special effects are blighted by bland characters in The Day After Tomorrow, a join-the-dots disaster movie from Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. The gist is this: a new ice age is coming and only weather whiz Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) has twigged it. But soon enough, everyone knows: Los Angeles is blown away by a superstorm, New York troubled by a tidal wave, and even the government is forced to admit that, well, it is getting a bit chilly. The carnage makes for great eye candy. It's just a shame there's no one to care about. Quaid goes through the motions, saddled with the stereotype of Obsessed Professional, while Jake Gyllenhaal does what he can as his teenage child, stuck in the ice-packed Big Apple. But neither actor looks very convinced, perhaps aware of how absurd their story is (the world is freezing to death and Quaid decides to go for a stroll after his son). This wouldn't matter so much if the script wasn't so po-faced and the supporting characters so forgettable. Virtually no one has a personality. There are a couple of good gags (two librarians argue over the merits of Nietzsche when deciding which books to burn to stay alive), but there are none of the gritty subplots which powered the likes of The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure (both bloated pictures, to be sure, but enlivened by camp and wit). Of course all of these gripes are so much blah-de-blah if you really love disaster movies. Because in terms of spectacle, Tomorrow delivers. When tornadoes rip through the City of Angels and the Statue of Liberty becomes an ice queen, the effects are as convincing as computers have yet got. There are enough jaw-to-floor moments to merit a goggle. Just not enough soul to be worth a rewatch. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- London, 31 May:
 Premiere of the third film in the "Harry Potter" series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Funny, thrilling and, yes, somewhat enchanting, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban is widely regarded as the best book of JK Rowling's phenomenally successful series. It is certainly the best film. Leaner and meaner than its workmanlike predecessors, it sees the boy wizard (a maturing Daniel Radcliffe) return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he's sought by the freshly-escaped and famously evil Sirius Black (Gary Oldman). With the help of Professor Lupin (the excellent David Thewlis), Potter must unravel the mystery around Sirius, control his own teenage temper, and deal with the deadly Dementors... Looking like The Lord Of The Rings' Black Riders suffering all-over Athlete's Foot, these ghastly creatures are the soul-sucking guardians of Azkaban, who are hunting Sirius and have an unhealthy interest in our hero, too. That the powers-that-be employ such indiscriminately vicious creatures as their law-enforcers doesn't make much sense, but neither does the taut, exciting conclusion of this magical caper. And, really, it doesn't matter. Once new director Alfonso Cuarón (who replaced Chris Columbus) picks up the pace after an uneven opening hour, asking too many questions just doesn't feel in-keeping with the spirit of things. Instead, you're encouraged to sit back and buy into a fantastical world.
The sets are spectacular and the effects largely seamless - impressive even in an age where it feels as if we've seen it all before. The Hippogryff - part-horse, part-eagle - is a charming creation, while inventions such as a magical map (which shows everyone's location within Hogwarts) will grab young imaginations. The Prisoner of Azkaban is still not strong enough to win over every Potter-sceptic - it's a little overlong, and never emotionally engrossing - but they will at least find it bearable. Oldman and Thewlis are both exceptional actors and there's enjoyment enough in watching them give life and meaning to even the most mawkish lines. Potter fans, meanwhile, will find it (sorry about this) spellbinding. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 17 June: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has hit on a plan that would allow the studios to send screeners to all of its 6,000 members without concern that they could be copied and uploaded onto the Internet: send each of them a special DVD player containing a built-in "key" that can unlock a digital code incorporated into the screeners, which cannot be played on conventional DVD players. Moreover, the machines will record the date and time that the disc was played and identify the machine. Nevertheless, Daily Variety reported today that providing each Academy member with such a machine could cost $2.4 million in addition to the costs of encrypting and distributing the screeners. The trade paper observed that it was not clear how the studios could divvy up such costs without appearing to violate antitrust rules. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 23 June:
 The American Film Institute has named "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz the best movie song of all time. During a televised awards presentation Tuesday night, the organization selected "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca as No. 2 and the title song from Singin' in the Rain as No. 3. Most of the tunes on the top-100 list shared one thing in common: they were included in hit films. Conspicuously absent were songs from films that fared poorly at the box office, including Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair (1945 and 1962), which included the oft-recorded "It Might As Well Be Spring," which some musicologists believe represents lyricist Hammerstein's best work. ("I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm....") -- IMDb
Use this link to visit the AFI web site and view the list of the top 100 songs.
Or, use this link to visit theoscarsite's list of all songs nominated for Best Song.
- Bangkok, 24 June:
 Beautiful and baffling, Sud pralad (Tropical Malady) -- which goes into limited release today -- was the most critically divisive film at this year's Cannes, where it won the jury prize. As with the other movies of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, its experimental approach to narrative will alienate many viewers, but hey, it's their loss. In the first part, a soldier named Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) enjoys a sweet romance with country boy Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). Then the film enters more mythic territory as a man searches a dark jungle for a shaman disguised as a tiger. All this has the feel of a magic ritual, which makes for something utterly unique. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
 - Los Angeles, 25 June: Michael Moore's festival favorite, Fahrenheit 9/11, opens here and in New York today. A two-hour examination of the Bush administration - from the 2000 election, the handling of 9/11, the bombing of Afghanistan, and invasion of Iraq - it's a bloated, biased, and brilliant piece of political filmmaking. It's also the film the powers-that-be didn't want you to see - an incendiary, raging epic that will do more to scupper George Bush's re-election hopes than anything the Democrats could dream up. No even-handed debate, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a poleaxe polemic that sees Moore pulling no punches in his shamelessly simple, partisan aim: to expose the Bush administration that led America into a war. Bullish and unstoppable, the comedian-turned-activist "oaf savant" ploughs through (by now possibly) familiar territory, condensing the tangled web of the Bush family's business links - to the Taliban, the Bin Laden family, and corporations like Haliburton - into bite-sized chunks.
The comedy is devastatingly effective: the Iraq invasion replayed as "Bonanza"; Bush stumbling over his lines; Moore following a pair of Marine Corps recruiters. Yet where Moore's blatantly populist film succeeds is in its raw, horrific power. Limiting the grandstanding stunts he used in Bowling for Columbine to just a few choice segments (like hiring an ice cream van to circle Washington reading the Patriot Act to America's congressmen), Moore lets his compilation of archival footage do the majority of the talking. Gruelling images of injured Iraqi children (their wounds shown in graphic close-ups never seen on the television news), civilian napalm victims whose skin has been completely melted, and the sheer despair of bereaved mothers (both American and Iraqi) will reduce you to tears more than once. President Bush will no doubt weep too when he sees it - though, one suspects, for very different reasons. -- Jamie Russell, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 28 June: Fahrenheit 9/11 torched all comers this weekend. Michael Moore's assault on President Bush was even hotter than anticipated, earning a searing $23.9 million to become the first documentary in Hollywood history to top the box-office charts, according to studio tallies released Monday. The final figure was up 9 percent from initial estimates Sunday. In just three days, from Friday to Sunday, Fahrenheit 9/11 also eclipsed Moore's Bowling for Columbine as the highest grossing documentary of all time. Since opening in limited release Wednesday, Fahrenheit 9/11 has grossed $24.1 million.
By now the film's backstory is legend. Fahrenheit 9/11 was dumped by Disney for political reasons. The right-wing Website MoveAmericaForward.org launched a letter-writing campaign trying to keep the film out of theaters. Another conservative group, Citizens United, filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, asking it to investigate whether the movie's TV ads featuring a bumbling Bush violate federal laws. Then the MPAA refused to lower the film's rating from an R, effectively limiting the number of people who could see it. But Moore and producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein weren't deterred. After the film won the Palm d'Or at Cannes, the Weinsteins bought the rights from Disney and collaborated with Lions Gate Films and IFC Entertainment to bring the film to what turns out to be the eager masses.
Although the distributors failed to reach the 1,000-theater mark they were aiming for, Fahrenheit 9/11 played to sold-out houses at just 868 sites, earning a blockbuster $27,558 per-screen average. Costing only $6 million to produce and less than $10 million to market, the pay-off is obvious for this provocative documentary critically praised for its wit, heart and chutzpah. If estimates hold, Fahrenheit 9/11 has already beaten Moore's anti-gun screed Bowling for Columbine, which has taken in $21.5 million since opening in October 2002. That movie only debuted at eight sites and, despite winning an Oscar®, never played at more than 248 locations. Tupac: Resurrection had the previous best opening for a documentary, with $4.6 million in 801 theaters last November. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 28 June: Breaking with a tradition of silence when it comes to revealing the names of its members, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today released the names of those it had invited to become members in 2004. Academy President Frank Pierson told Daily Variety that the Academy felt that by releasing the names, it could help dispel the notion that the organization is made up mostly of veteran and retired entertainment artists and executives who were out of touch with today's audiences. "That's a very mistaken impression," he told the trade paper. "Most members are active [in the industry] and continue to be active for years and years." Variety observed that the list "is filled with young people" and recent Oscar® nominees. It includes Sean Penn, this year's best actor winner (for Mystic River), who once remarked that Oscar® members wouldn't "even know how to find their butt with their hands. So, what does their opinion mean? It don't mean anything." -- IMDb
- Brussels, 30 June:
 Release of Zivot je cudo (Life is a Miracle). What's miraculous about Emir Kusturica's cinema is his immense savoir-faire; what's disastrous are his doubtful ideological intentions. Constructed in three distinct parts, Zivot je cudo tells a love story with the turmoil of the Balkans in 1992 in the background. Kusturica sets his storyline in the confusing time which precedes ethnic purification. He combines the fantasy of a complex universe, characterized by saturation, with the poetry of his syntax and the safety of his sense of the narration. For all this, the celebration of life, to which he invites the spectators, hostages brought by force to this deafening brass band of feelings, has a nauseating ideological stench. Explicitly pro-Serb, yet the filmmaker does not take a stand. And there's the rub. Since Underground (1995), an extremely unhealthy film, the position of the filmmaker is known. In Zivot je cudo, he does not give to see the confrontations, tending towards a universal demonstration of the nonsense of war. The fact remains that many indices in the film attest to an obvious resentment. Kusturica uses metaphors, like the cruel bears which devour an unfortunate man. There are still these small sentences disseminated in the film, which come out of the TV set, where it is question of the Serbian people, to him also victims in the story, of abuses of power. Kusturica leaves us in this uneasy indecision towards his latest film. -- Sandrine Marques, Plume-Noire
 - Los Angeles, 30 June: Superior in nearly every aspect to its overstuffed 2002 predecessor, Spider-Man 2 is also loose enough to accommodate more of director Sam Raimi's dark sense of humour. Actually, Spider-Man 2 can be downright perverse -- at times, it's as if Raimi has smuggled a black comedy about sexual impotence into a comic-book blockbuster. Wracked over troubles with money and Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker has become so neurotic, he can barely function. His performance anxiety manifests in his periodic inability to shoot sticky spunk out of his wrists. Forced to take the elevator after being grounded by one such humiliation, he makes small talk with a stranger who compliments him on his Spidey suit. "Gets a little itchy," our hero confesses. "Rides up the crotch a little bit, too." Poor Peter has more than wardrobe malfunctions to worry about, what with buddy Harry Osborn (James Franco) eager to avenge the death of his dad at Spider-Man's hand, Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) about to lose her house and Mary Jane tired of waiting for Peter to reveal his true feelings for her. It's enough to make him think about giving up the suit -- great power might bring great responsibility, but does he really want either? Meanwhile, a new villain menaces Manhattan when an accident turns brilliant scientist Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) into the multi-limbed Doc Ock.
For the most part, Raimi and the cast handle the shifts from comedy to psychodrama to action with skill and confidence. Whereas the first film in the franchise often felt hurried and overambitious, Spider-Man 2 has a much easier time establishing a groove. The only major flaws are an overabundance of scenes in which Peter is pained and pensive (surely some Viagra would've speeded up his recovery) and the fact that battles between computer-generated adversaries aren't nearly as interesting to watch as the bustling New York streetscapes or Dunst's dewy-eyed gaze. But perhaps the irritating limitations of digital technology are an appropriate complement to the story of a hero discovering his own limits as a man. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- Los Angeles, 1 July:
 Jack Valenti officially announced his retirement as president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America today, saying in a statement that he will turn over his posts to a successor "at a designated time." The MPAA said that he will be succeeded by Dan Glickman, a former Kansas congressman who served as secretary of agriculture under Bill Clinton. "It's been a long run and a great adventure," Valenti said in his statement, adding wistfully, "I do love the movie industry. I wake each morning eager to be at work. But all things have an ending." Valenti was appointed to his current positions in May, 1966. Oddly, the announcement seemed to surprise Glickman, who, when contacted by Reuters, responded, "I have nothing to announce," then added: "I have not signed any agreements." -- IMDb
 - Los Angeles, 1 July: Legendary actor Marlon Brando, a two-time Oscar winner and a seven-time nominee, died today in Los Angeles at the age of 80, the Associated Press reported, citing the actor's lawyer. The cause of death was not disclosed, although it was reported last year that he suffered from congestive heart failure. Brando received his first Oscar in 1954 for his performance in On the Waterfront, and his second 18 years later for The Godfather; he also received Oscar nominations for A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, Julius Caesar, Sayonara, Last Tango in Paris, and A Dry White Season. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 2 July:
 In 1995's Before Sunrise, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American traveling in Europe, had one night of sex and conversation in Vienna with Celine (Julie Delpy), the French beauty he met on a train. To some, the film was meandering and talky. To others, the film was bliss, a rebel experiment by the two actors and writer-director Richard Linklater to create life as it happens -- screw the Hollywood gloss. Before Sunset picks up nine years later. Jesse, now a best-selling author, is giving a reading at a bookstore in Paris. Celine, now an environmental activist, walks in. The conversation continues for ninety minutes, in real time, before Jesse must catch a plane home to his wife and son. Linklater follows the lovers -- who had promised to reunite in Vienna in six months and never did -- from cafe to park to boat to Celine's apartment. Those who hungered to see more of these two than the glimpse Linklater provided in his animated 2001 film Waking Life will be mesmerized. There is something uniquely unforgettable in the way Linklater, Hawke and Delpy (equal collaborators on the script) find nuance, art and eroticism in words, spoken and unspoken. The actors shine. Hawke is funny and touching as Jesse describes the harsh truths of his seeming success. Delpy likewise shows the toll of diminished expectations on the still-luminous Celine. But in each other's presence, the two rediscover a frisky youthfulness. Delpy scores a tour de force as Celine re-creates a Nina Simone concert that leaves Jesse entranced. You will be, too. Before Sunset casts a spell only a fool would want to break. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- Los Angeles, 5 July: After its first weekend of national release, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has set a record at the box office. Moore's anti-war, anti-Bush docu has grossed $61,118,488 since it opened on LA and NYC on 25 June.
- Los Angeles, 7 July: The biggest victor in the box-office bonanza being generated by Fahrenheit 9/11 will likely be a charity to be selected by the Walt Disney Co., the Wall Street Journal observed today. After Disney refused to allow Miramax to distribute the film and Michael Moore accused Disney of censorship, discussions between Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, in the words of the Journal, "took on the stern parent-naughty child tone that has characterized many moments between the parties over the years." Disney, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter, decided to "punish" the Weinsteins by limiting the extent to which the could benefit from the movie by insisting that 60 percent of the net profit go to charity. A Disney spokeswoman said that the charity has not yet been selected. -- IMDb
- Hong Kong, 15 July:
 Release of Shi mian mai fu (House of Flying Daggers). Astonishing action set pieces serve as punctuation marks for a piquant romantic melodrama in Yimou Zhang's second effort in the wuxia genre. In ninth-century China, two dashing military agents (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau) hope to capture the new leader of a resistance group by pursuing the previous leader's blind daughter (Ziyi Zhang). Though the action is nominally more naturalistic than Hero, two lengthy sequences -- one in a bamboo forest à la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the other involving a robe with some very long sleeves -- are just as dazzling as anything in its predecessor. Who could've guessed that the director of Raise the Red Lantern would become the stylistic heir to King Hu? -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
 - Los Angeles, 15 July: Premiere of Paul Greengrass' follow-up to Doug Liman's 2002 hit, The Bourne Identity. In The Bourne Supremacy, Matt Damon returns as Jason Bourne. This time he's framed for a botched up CIA operation and is forced to take up his former life as a trained assassin to survive. But it's his unwillingness to pull the trigger, against all better judgment and some fairly justified vengeance-lust, that really hooks in the audience. That's because Greengrass, whose previous Derry massacre docudrama Bloody Sunday was distinguished as much by its outraged humanism as its stylistic virtuosity, has worked very hard to impose a similar sense of mournful fatalism here. In this decidedly un-Bondian world, bullets generally hit their target, human lives have worth and death is something to be mourned, rather than celebrated with glib one-liners. None of which renders The Bourne Supremacy a downer: like its predecessor, this is a muscular and well-acted piece of work, intricately plotted without ever becoming confusing, and featuring the best stick-shifting car chase this side of The French Connection. -- Full review, eye WEEKLY
- New York, 16 July:
 I, Robot, Alex Proyas' well-designed and surprisingly intelligent adaptation of Isaac Asimov's classic series of robot tales, preys on a common fear about the future: that humankind will one day be conquered by machines that look like the Blue Man Group. This may also explain the hostility that Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) expresses towards the robots that evidently make the Chicago of 2035 even more orderly than the Chicago of right now. Spooner is summoned to the gleaming headquarters of US Robotics to investigate the apparent suicide of Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), the chief architect of the technology that has transformed society. About to introduce a new generation of robots to the marketplace, US Robotics head Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood) is eager to hush up the case. But Spooner suspects that a robot was involved in Lanning's death, something supposedly impossible because of the built-in directives that prevent them from harming humans. Spooner and primly foxy scientist Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan) follow the trail of clues left by Lanning.
Though the credits state that Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman's script was merely "suggested by" Asimov's original, I, Robot shares the philosophical predilections of the source. Questions about artificial intelligence and the emergence of sentient machines mark this as a genuine piece of science fiction as opposed to another pumped-up event picture with flashy gadgets and too much CGI. Proyas' intention to make a coolly elegant future-noir along the lines of his marvellous Dark City may sometimes be disrupted by the Will Smith "hell, no!" factor, yet the star mostly keeps the bluster to a minimum. And while Steven Spielberg may have brought more detail and texture to this sort of urban-tech environment in Minority Report, Proyas adds an expressionistic flair that underscores the fact that I, Robot works best as an old-fashioned murder mystery. That said, the action sequences are sufficiently compelling. This may not count as a historic technological breakthrough, but for the first time in our age of digital animation, a robot fighting another robot actually seems exciting. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
 - Los Angeles, 16 July: Remember the name Catalina Sandino Moreno. The heartfelt and harrowing performance she gives in Maria Full of Grace should put her in line for a heap of year-end awards. Moreno plays Maria Alvarez, a seventeen-year-old Colombian girl who can't alleviate her family's poverty with the pittance she earns slaving in a flower factory. Maria sees an out with an offer to become a mule -- she can join other Colombian girls who smuggle drugs into the United States. Debuting director Joshua Marston, who also wrote the taut screenplay, shows Maria being taught to swallow drugs wrapped in packets -- she sips soup to make them go down without gagging. If the drugs in her belly should seep out during Maria's turbulent jet flight to New York, she could be poisoned or arrested or both. Marston builds incredible tension. But it's the human drama etched on Moreno's young, weary face that gives Maria its potent punch. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- Los Angeles, 16 July: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new rules yesterday that include one which bars studios from "casting a negative or derogatory light" on other nominees for Oscars® in their ad and marketing campaigns. The rule reportedly resulted from a controversial ad placed by DreamWorks in Daily Variety last year, in which it cited several film critics who said that while Shohreh Aghdashloo deserved to win the supporting actress Oscar® for her performance in House of Sand and Fog, Renée Zellweger would likely win it for Cold Mountain (she did). "That ad sort of crystallized the issue for us," academy executive administrator Ric Robertson told today's Variety. "It got us to thinking we needed to craft some language to address that kind of situation." -- IMDb
 - Los Angeles, 22 July: Film composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose score for the 1976 movie The Omen won him an Oscar®, died of cancer yesterday in Beverly Hills at the age of 75. Goldsmith was also nominated for Oscars® for Mulan, L.A. Confidential, Hoosiers, Poltergeist, Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Chinatown, Patton, and Planet of the Apes. In the early days of television, he wrote the music for such TV shows as "The Twilight Zone," "Perry Mason," "Gunsmoke" and "Dr. Kildare." -- IMDb
- Buenos Aires, 29 July:
 After successful showings at the Sundance and Cannes festivals, Walter Salles' Diarios de motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) opens here today. This is an intoxicating movie, chronicling the young Ché Guevara's travels around South America in the early 50s. It's a visually stunning road movie where the most important journey takes place within its hero's head - Guevara going from disaffected medical student to rebel with a cause. The charismatic Gael García Bernal stars as Ernesto "Ché" Guevara, a 23-year-old embarking on an 8,000km trip from Argentina to Venezuela with biochemist friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna). Their mode of transport is a dilapidated Norton 500 motorbike that's seen better decades. The two men's subsequent journey will open their eyes to social injustice, beautiful women, human kindness, more beautiful women, and the true meaning of the term saddle sore. The film is understandably episodic in nature, using Guevara's journals and touching letters home to reflect his political awakening. But you don't need to know about - or share - Guevara's revolutionary views to connect with the movie. At its core this is a story about two friends on the adventure of a lifetime, enjoying the ups and downs of the open road. Director Walter Salles (Central Station, 1998) delivers a mesmerising portrait of 50s South America, both geographically and sociologically. He also produces the most jittery camerawork since The Blair Witch Project to capture the bone-shaking roads and the harsh realities of the duo's travels. Guevara's trip brought him "closer to this strange human race." The Motorcycle Diaries may not quite manage that, but it provides a tender and memorable insight into one of the 20th century's most iconic figures. -- Adrian Hennigan, BBC Films
- Melbourne, 5 August: Supporters of Australian films and television programs have banded together to put a roadblock in the way of a free trade agreement between the United States and Australia. Although the agreement was signed by U.S. and Australian heads of state on 3 August, Australian cultural groups, many of whom have banded together under the banner Free to Be Australian, are seeking to block ratification by the Australian parliament. In a call-to-arms posted on its website, the group declared: "The impact [of the trade agreement] on Australia's cultural industries will be critical and irreversible. It places restrictions on future governments to control the future of the Australian voice on Australian screens. Our stories won't be heard. Our accent won't be heard. And our country won't be seen." -- IMDb
 - Los Angeles, 10 August: The owner of the Silent Movie Theater in Hollywood canceled a planned screening of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation after the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP and a group called the National Alliance for Positive Action vowed to picket the theater. Although owner Charlie Lustman had planned to show the film with a disclaimer stating that he does not endorse the racist content of the film but wants to honor its place in cinema history, the two groups had charged that the film would continue to poison race relations. Lustman said that he had also received threatening phone calls and was concerned about the safety of patrons and 92-year-old Bob Mitchell, the onetime leader of the famed Mitchell Boys Choir, who was to provide organ music to accompany the film. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 12 August: Screenwriter Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon, Cool Hand Luke) has been elected to a fourth consecutive one-year term as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Academy bylaws bar him from seeking the position for a fifth term. -- IMDb
- London, 16 August:
 Lawrence of Arabia (1962) has been named the best British film of all time in a newspaper poll of Britain's leading filmmakers. The David Lean-directed film, starring Peter O'Toole in the title role, was the clear choice of some 230 actors, technicians, writers and directors who participated in the poll conducted by the London Sunday Telegraph. Three other Lean films were included in the top 10, including the romantic film Brief Encounter (1945), which placed second on the list; Great Expectations (1946), which was fourth, and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which tied for seventh. Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) placed third. Other films on the list included The Ladykillers (1955), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Kes (1969), The 39 Steps (1935), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Commenting on the results of the poll, the Sunday Telegraph observed that they "seem to confirm the view that the heyday of British cinema is over." Only two films released in recent years, Four Weddings and Trainspotting (1996), made the top-20 list. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 18 August: Oscar®-winning cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp, whose credits include The Towering Inferno, Islands in the Stream, Patton, and The Amityville Horror, has been selected to receive the American Society of Cinematographers' lifetime achievement award. It will be presented at the group's annual awards luncheon on Feb. 20. In a statement, ASC President Richard Crudo said that Koenekamp had been part of "a new wave of cinematographers who entered the industry and enriched the art of visual storytelling during the 1960s and 1970s." In fact, he also represented a continuum of the old wave; his father, Hans F. Koenekamp, shot Keystone Kop and Charlie Chaplin shorts for Mack Sennett beginning in 1913 and was one of the movie industry's leading special effects artists from the 1930s to the '50s. He received the ASC Presidents Award in 1991 at the age of 100 (a year before his death). -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 20 August:
 After making the rounds of the film festivals since Sundance in January, Zach Braff's Garden State opens nationally today. 'Generation X' makes way for 'Generation Y, Why, Why!?' in this whip-smart, angst-ridden comedy. As well as making an assured directorial debut, Braff from TV's "Scrubs" wrote and stars in this tale of a jobbing Hollywood actor rudely awakened from a lithium haze to attend his mother's funeral in New Jersey. While it may sound like a depressing anti-drugs video, in Braff's hands it's a witty, wacky, and wonderful trip through the minefield of being twenty-something. Childhood trauma lurks somewhere in Andrew 'Large' Largeman's (Braff) past, only he's too numbed by antidepressants to deal with it. When his father (Ian Holm) calls to say that his mother has died, he finally resolves to go cold turkey and confront his pain. Of course arriving home is like a slap in the face but a chance encounter with compulsive liar Sam (Natalie Portman) turns out to be a bigger high than anything he could get on prescription.
What might have been a labour in picking bellybutton fluff is instead wickedly funny, owing mainly to Braff's tendency for self-deprecating humour - like waking up after a party with 'BALLS' scrawled on his forehead, or his encounter with a masturbating dog. He also negotiates the balance of hilarity and heartbreak with impressive poise, as in a scene where a mourner belts out a howling rendition of Lionel Ritchie's "Three Times A Lady" at Mrs Largeman's funeral. But as silly as it gets, Large's plight always rings true. Braff makes an appealing everyman and conveys inertia without merging into the background. Portman offers a spirited counterpoint although Sam's relentless kookiness signals the one contrivance in an otherwise keenly observed script (her peculiar antics can feel like a substitution for genuine character). Even so, Garden State remains one of the funniest comedies to come around for ages. A flowering achievement. -- Stella Papamichael, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 23 August: Eight-time Emmy Award-winning director Daniel Petrie Sr., whose TV career dates back to the Golden Age of TV drama, when he directed episodes of "Studio One," and who directed episodes of such classic series as "The Defenders," "East Side/West Side," "Ironside," "Marcus Welby M.D." and specials like "Eleanor and Franklin," "The Dollmaker," "Kissinger and Nixon," and "Inherit the Wind," has died of cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 83. His movies included A Raisin the Sun, Fort Apache the Bronx, Lifeguard, and Cocoon: The Return. He was the father of Writers Guild of America President Daniel Petrie Jr. -- IMDb
- Toronto, 24 August:
 The Toronto Film Festival has landed the world premiere of Beyond the Sea, the film biography of singer Bobby Darin, produced, directed by, and starring Kevin Spacey, the Toronto Star reported today. The festival reportedly plans to present the film on Sept. 11, with Spacey on hand for the premiere. In reporting on the festival acquisition, the Star observed that the screening of the movie is expected to answer the question of whether, at age 45, Spacey is too old to play Darin, who was 37 when he died and was in his 20s when many of the events depicted in the movie occurred. The Festival, Sept. 9-18, unveiled an impressive list of 328 titles to be screened in its 29th year, including several world, North American, or Canadian premieres, including Spike Lee's Sucker Free City, Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education, Walter Salles' Diarios de motocicleta and Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty. Among the festival's "Special Presentations" will be a "work in progress" screening of Laurence Dunmore's The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp and John Malkovich, and John Waters' A Dirty Shame, starring Tracey Ullman. Moreover, the festival has received acceptance notes to invitations extended to (among others): Sean Penn (who rarely appears at film festivals), Charlize Theron, Orlando Bloom, Kevin Bacon, Sandra Bullock, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Dillon, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Nick Nolte, Hilary Swank, Sigourney Weaver, and Martin Short (who will appear as celebrity talk-show host Jiminy Glick). -- IMDb
 - Paris, 25 August: Exils is a terrific journey of self-discovery, a return to roots and a venture into the soul. A dark horse for the Palme d'Or, this magnificent film is highlighted by a sensuous lead performance from Lubna Azabal and is propelled by a rousing, percussive musical score that propels us into emotional landscapes and terrain not covered by the surface story. Like the best of "two for the road" movies, Zano (Romain Duris) and Naima (Azabal) encounter mishaps, adventures, love and inspiration on their journey. In this embarkation, they travel from France to the land of their parents, Algeria. It's a sober trek, an effort to embrace their past and learn more about themselves through their heritage. Serious intentions aside, it's also a lark-ish adventure, a teenage-travel lark: The two love, fight, misbehave and survive on their travels through France and the inviting environs of Spain. Writer-director Tony Gatlif has fueled this picaresque entertainment with an embracing array of light moments and unexpected jeopardy. There are surprises, and some of these come as the characters travel into regions of their own being that their safe French world has not opened up to them. -- Full review.
- Melbourne, 26 August:
 Peter Sellers receives a fittingly amusing and hollow biopic in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Geoffrey Rush stars as the infamous British comic, who brought laughter to millions with radio's "The Goon Show" and the Pink Panther movies, but proved spoilt, brattish and hateful in his private life: beating his wives and forever throwing tantrums. This BBC/HBO Films co-production leaves out many of his excesses and yet he still appears unpleasant, with Rush adding humanity while never quite making us care. The Shine star excels in the movies-within-the-movies moments, whether dressed as bolshy shop stewart Fred Kite in I'm All Right Jack, or hitting upon the inspiration for the klutz Inspector Clouseau (from the look of this hilarious, plane-set scene, the makers of Steve Martin's remake of The Pink Panther should have cast the Aussie to star). The problem comes in playing a performer who, for all his genius comic timing, was rarely emotionally involving; a man who once said, "There used to be a me behind the mask but I had it surgically removed." Just how do you illuminate and explore a life of someone often said to have had no personality? Director Stephen Hopkins does, ultimately, appear to accept that there is no explaining the person; certainly not in film - where you can only cram in so many of the life-changing incidences that make up a man. Sellers' childhood, for instance, is ignored here, as are his early days as a stand-up, with the screenwriters spanning from the Goons until near his death, from a heart attack, aged 54. What is effectively dealt with is his unhealthily close relationship to his mother, his monstrous selfishness and chameleonic ability - with Rush chatting to the camera, at points, dressed as other key characters in Sellers' life (his first wife, his mum). This proves involving, unsettling, and emotionally alienating; it's hard to care about anyone here. But if we are supposed to enter the psyche of Sellers, maybe that's the point. Hopkins' supporting cast includes Charlize Theron as Britt Ekland, Emily Watson as Anne Sellers, John Lithgow as Blake Edwards, and Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick, with Miriam Margolyes, Peter Vaughan, Sonia Aquino and Stephen Fry. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Budapest, 26 August: Budapest-born producer Andrew Vajna, whose films include the Rambo movies, Total Recall, Evita, and Terminator 3 is teaming with Hungarian mall developer Sandor Demjan to build the world's biggest movie studio in Etyek, Hungary, about 20 miles from Budapest, the Wall Street Journal reported today. According to the newspaper, the $181-million project will feature six sound stages, including one that would be the world's largest, and a tank for filming on (and under) water. A dozen villas will also be constructed to house film stars working at the studios. Separately, Vajna told the newspaper that he is currently working on Terminator 4, which will be made without Arnold Schwarzenegger. Asked how that could be accomplished, he replied, "We will surprise the world." -- IMDb
- Paris, 1 September:
 Clean, which opens in the capital today, is one of those movies that's admittedly very well made, but ultimately fails to engage the audience throughout. This is partly the fault of an overlong running time that's packed with needless subplots, but what it really comes down to is the fact that the central character just isn't all that intriguing. Maggie Cheung stars as Emily, a Yoko Ono/Courtney Love type who's dating a popular and talented musician named Lee. Emily's life is thrown into disarray when Lee dies of an overdose, and she's consequently sent to jail for heroin possession. Six months later, Emily emerges from prison determined to get clean and start her life over so that she may be able to take care of her son -- who is currently being looked after by Lee's father (played by Nick Nolte). Director Olivier Assayas imbues Clean with the sort of jittery style that seems to be de rigeur with films of this type, though it is undeniably effective. Assayas, who also wrote the film's screenplay, does a nice job of getting under Emily's skin, while Cheung becomes this woman to such a degree that an Oscar nomination seems inevitable. Nolte delivers an unexpectedly subtle performance, ensuring that -- at the very least -- the acting keeps us somewhat interested. But Assayas' wandering eye leads to a number of superfluous sequences, something that's particularly true of Emily's attempts to contact famed musician Tricky (the inclusion of this utterly pointless subplot is absolutely baffling). Yet despite its problems, Clean remains worthwhile thanks primarily to the performances and Assayas' appropriately gritty style. -- David Nusair, reelfilm.com
- Paris, 1 September:
 Release of François Ozon's 5 x 2. Wisely abandoning the Lynchian pretensions of last year's Swimming Pool, Ozon here turns out his most restrained and effective film yet. Marion (Valérie Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) are an average Parisian couple. Starting with their sterile divorce proceedings, Ozon moves backwards through time, revisiting five key moments in their relationship and the secrets they conceal. It's simply and economically done, with Ozon's flair for composition resulting in some stunning shots and both lead actors providing performances that are at once common and infinitlely nuanced.-- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- Los Angeles, 2 September: Time Warner is offering $4.5 billion in cash for MGM, the Los Angeles Times reported today, citing unnamed sources. However, the newspaper observed, the cash offer may not satisfy MGM's controlling shareholder, Kirk Kerkorian, who reportedly is demanding a minimum of $5 billion to part with the studio. Kerkorian has previously turned down a somewhat larger -- but more complicated -- offer from Sony. Earlier yesterday, MGM put out a press release saying, "Recent press reports regarding a possible transaction valuing MGM at a price as high as $5 billion are inaccurate." -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 8 September: Final box-office figures for the 2004 summer season (May 7-Sept. 6) released yesterday were in line with earlier forecasts, despite a plunge in ticket sales over the Labor Day weekend. Overall, movie theaters grossed a record $3.96 billion, 2 percent above the 2003 figure, according to box-office trackers Exhibitor Relations. The increase was attributed entirely to higher ticket prices; actual attendance dropped 1.5 percent from last summer. The box office leader was DreamWorks, taking that position for the first time due largely to its computer-animated hit Shrek 2. -- IMDb
- Los Angeles, 8 September: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library announced Tuesday that it had acquired Katharine Hepburn's collection of personal photographs, scrapbooks, scripts, press books and private and professional correspondence. In an interview with today's Los Angeles Times, library director Linda Mehr observed that the collection is enormous. "We have never gotten a collection where they saved as much that documents careers like this," she said. "For an individual performer, it is quite rare. She was probably aware of her life's legacy and how important it was." Hepburn's correspondence alone, Mehr observed, comprises "thousands of items from major figures in the entertainment and literary world." -- IMDb
 - Rome, 10 September: The plot of Le Chiavi di casa (The House Keys) screams Very Special Episode, but don't let that keep you from catching this emotionally complex and brilliantly acted film. A developmentally challenged Italian teenager goes to Berlin with the father he's never met (the film's sole contrivance -- wouldn't his guardians come along?) for medical tests. At the hospital, the father befriends an older woman (Charlotte Rampling) who's more familiar with the anguish of raising a severely challenged child. Director Gianni Amelio focuses on small, perfectly observed moments between these characters as they get to know each other. That's it -- no manipulations, no message. Just a moving story, honestly told. -- Kim Linekin, eye WEEKLY
- Los Angeles, 10 September: Frank Thomas, whom animation historian John Canemaker described in today's Los Angeles Times as "one of the greatest animators of all time," died yesterday in Flintridge, CA at the age of 92. He was one of Disney's famed "Nine Old Men," and worked on Disney's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as well as a host of other Disney features until he retired after working on The Rescuers in 1977. -- IMDb
- Toronto, 12 September:
 San zimske noci (Midwinter Night's Dream) -- shown today at the Toronto Film Festival -- tells the simple story of an ex-convict who comes home after 10 years, only to find two squatters in the form of a woman and her autistic daughter. Though Lazar (Lazar Ristovski) initially plans to kick out Jasna (Jasna Zalica) and Jovana (Jovana Mitic), he changes his mind after seeing the squalid conditions of the shelter they are to move into. This is the sort of movie one can imagine Hollywood remaking down the road with George Clooney and Julia Roberts, though there's no doubt that the various rough edges in Filip David and Goran Paskaljevic's screenplay would be excised. Director Paskaljevic imbues the film with the feel of a documentary, eschewing fancy camerawork in favor of a more naturalistic style. This is echoed in the performances, which are suitably subtle; Mitic is so effective it's hard not to wonder if she's actually autistic. And though the film does go on for a little longer than necessary, there's no denying the power of these three characters and their newly formed makeshift family. -- David Nusair, reelfilm.com
- Los Angeles, 13 September: Time Warner withdrew as a suitor for MGM today after Sony sweetened its bid for the studio to nearly $5 billion over the weekend. In a statement, Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons said: "As we pledged to our shareholders, we approach every potential acquisition with strict financial discipline. Unfortunately, Time Warner could not reach agreement with MGM at a price that would have represented a prudent use of our growing financial capacity." The company had reportedly offered between $4 billion and $4.5 billion for the studio. Both MGM and Sony declined to comment on the Time Warner decision. -- IMDb
- Venice, 13 September: Thanking the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival for rejecting his film, British director Mike Leigh accepted the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award for his film, Vera Drake. The film also earned its star, Imelda Staunton, the festival's best actress award. It was the first time since 1992 that a film rejected by Cannes received top honors in Venice. (The 1992 film was Chinese director Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju.) Under festival rules, a film screened in competition may not have been previously screened at any other festival. The movie, produced for just $8.5 million, is due to play the New York Film Festival on Oct. 8 and open the London Film Festival on Oct. 20. Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar took the Jury Grand Prize for his Mar adentro, starring Javier Bardem, who received the festival's best actor award. Both films are due to be released by Fine Line in the U.S. in the fall. Meanwhile, Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace won the Grand Prix for Independent Film at the Deauville Festival of American Film in France yesterday. -- IMDb
 - Hollywood, 14 September: CGI comes of age in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a visually ravishing science-fiction spectacular set in a wholly synthetic digitised universe. Seamlessly integrating actors filmed on blue-screen with more than 2000 effects shots, director Kerry Conran constructs a stunning retro-reality where anything goes; and frequently does. Alas, the finest technology money can buy can't disguise basic flaws in plotting and structure, and flatly written, blandly heroic protagonists. At first glance this shouldn't pose a problem: after all, the Saturday morning serials, monster pictures and WWII adventures Conran references were hardly renowned for their depth of characterisation or finely tuned narratives. But having constructed such a flamboyantly artificial environment just a few steps removed from a computer game, Sky Captain desperately needs a human element to anchor its stylised flights of fancy.
What it has instead is Jude Law, shamelessly channelling Errol Flynn as the daredevil pilot trying to rescue New York from the huge robots that are plundering its resources. The scenes of metal behemoths stomping Manhattan underfoot and bird-like bombers swooping through its concrete canyons comprise the movie's most accomplished and exciting set-pieces. However, once Law and his reporter girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow leave the metropolis for icy Nepal, an airborne airstrip and a Lost World-style island, the story soon goes off the rails. Law and a Stella McCartney-garbed Paltrow, struggle gamely to fabricate a bickering screwball relationship, but any attempt to flesh out their archetypal roles is stumped by Conran's ceaseless quest for louder, flashier pyrotechnics. Giovanni Ribisi and an eye-patched Angelina Jolie fare better in supporting parts; popping up now and then to offer crucial exposition before retiring gracefully to the wings. Theirs is probably the best policy in a movie where lavish comicbook fantasy crushes all before it like one of Conran's iron giants. -- Neil Smith, BBC Films
 - London, 14 September: Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent classic Battleship Potemkin was screened in London's Trafalgar Square last night with a new score composed by the British band, the Pet Shop Boys, performed by the band and the Dresdener Sinfoniker orchestra. Although band member Neil Tennant recently wrote on his website that while he was attracted to the assignment of writing a 73-minute piece of music, he was even more excited about the "unsullied purity about the whole thing, as we don't get paid and the audience doesn't pay to see it. It feels refreshingly idealistic at a time when Madonna's concert tickets can cost as much as £150 [$270] each." However, the BBC's reviewer on today called the new soundtrack "ho-hum and noodly." -- IMDb
- London, 16 September:
 Baby Face, a film starring Barbara Stanwyck and a 26-year-old John Wayne that was banned in 1933 and thought to be "lost," will be screened at the London Film Festival next month after being discovered in the Library of Congress's Motion Picture Archive, the London Times reported today. In the film, Stanwyck plays a ruthless woman who uses sex to achieve power, becoming the head of a top banking corporation. The Times reported that the Warner Bros. film was withdrawn following protests by theater owners and local censorship boards. -- IMDb
 - New York, 17 September: Taiwanese writer-director Ming-liang Tsai's bitter-sweet Bu san (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) isn't easy to categorise: an exercise in cinematic minimalism, it's a ghost story, a deadpan comedy, and a lament for an earlier era of film-going. The setting is the run-down Fu-Ho cinema in Taipei, where, on the very last night of business the 60s martial arts picture Dragon Inn is being screened. Only a handful of spectators have turned up, and most of them seem more interested in smoking, eating, and cruising than in the film itself. Shooting in his typically lengthy static takes, Ming-liang makes the Fu-Ho theatre arguably the most important character in the film. This building is a cavernous affair and it's clearly seen far better days - buckets are now used to collect the rain leaking through the roof. There only appear to be two members of staff: a lame female cashier (Shiang-chyi Chen), who hobbles up and down the grimy corridors diligently carrying out her duties, occassionally gazing raptly at the big screen, and an elusive projectiontist (Ming-liang regular Kang-Sheng Lee), who seems to make a point of avoiding any contact with his devoted colleague. Leavened with a number of droll sight gags, notably one involving the comings-and-goings in a gents toilet, this film is very much in keeping with Ming-liang's previous rain-soaked explorations of urban solitude and emotional disconnection such as The River and What Time Is It There. He's an austere director who keeps dialogue and music to a minimum, and it's some 45 minutes here before any words are exchanged - "Do you know this place is haunted?", a young gay Japanese man (Kiyorobu Mitamura) is told. Certainly there is something phantom-like about the way people seem to materialise in the dark of the auditorioum and ghost past one another in the adjoining rooms and passages. And the mood of longing and loss is encapsulated in the the 60s song 'Can't Let Go', which plays over the film's final wistful scene. -- Tom Dawson, BBC Films
 - Melbourne, 20 September: In the battle of the fishies, Nemo wins fins-down. Where Finding Nemo swam into theatres complete with heart, soul, brains and a funny bone, Shark Tale is tossed like chum in after it, offering nothing of nutritional value except a couple of loopy lobster jokes. Kids may eat it up, but then again, kids will eat dirt. To be fair, Shark Tale was already in production before Finding Nemo was released, so strictly speaking it's not a rip-off. If anything, it's closer in spirit to Shrek 2, which makes sense, since they both came out of the snark factory known as Dreamworks. As with Shrek 2, the world of Shark Tale is populated with groan-worthy pop-culture puns (Kelpy Kreme donuts, The Gup clothing store) and cringe-worthy pop songs. Even the color scheme has been dumbed down, with garish hues that seem inspired more by a Maybelline eyeshadow kit than anything in the natural world.
And then there's the baldly uninspired story. Will Smith voices a hip-hoppy fish named Oscar who longs for fame and fortune. Jack Black adopts a grating whine as Lenny, a shark whose Mafia-esque dad (Robert De Niro) longs for him to grow a set of balls. When Lenny's brother is accidentally killed, Oscar accidentally gets credit for it, then he and Lenny learn that fame isn't all it's cracked up to be, yadda yadda. Consider the hollowness of these multiple storylines against the simple poignancy of a dad searching for his lost son. The big draw for adults will be all the Godfather in-jokes in the shark world (now we know what the cast of "The Sopranos" was doing during their hiatus), but these grow tiresome after a while. Renée Zellweger and Angelina Jolie add little in the conventional girlfriend parts. But whoever wrote the lobster puppet show was clearly smoking something creative. -- Kim Linekin, eye WEEKLY
- Paris, 22 September:
 It really ain't over till the fat lady sings in Comme une image (Look At Me), a wonderfully witty and observant comedy-drama from writer-director Agnés Jaoui (previously responsible for the equally smart The Taste Of Others). A film about power - in particular, the way people choose to misuse it within relationships - family tensions, and the monstrous egos at large in the arts world, this is as French as Camembert and Sacha Distel, only considerably less cheesy. Lolita (Marilou Berry) is a young student singer with self esteem issues: she obsesses about being overweight; questions whether she's good enough to make it professionally as a chanteuse; and endures a far from harmonious relationship with her father, Étienne (Jaoui's real-life husband, Jean-Pierre Bacri). He's a hugely successful novelist who's arrogant, conceited and boasts appalling manners (even by a Frenchman's standards). Worse, his 'I care' window is permanently closed with regards to his daughter. Things are further complicated by the fact that his waif-like partner, Karine (Virginie Desarnauts), is half his age and looks more like Lolita's glamorous sister (in fact, the film cleverly introduces the women to give this impression). Sylvia (Jaoui herself) and her self-loathing - well, he is a writer - husband Pierre (Laurent Grévill) get to know the family business when she starts tutoring Lolita's choral group, and his latest novel gets championed by Étienne. Comme une image is one of those character-driven movies where the plot is largely incidental to the numerous emotional truths. Refreshingly, the characters aren't likeable a lot of the time; crucially, however, they are completely believable and recognisable. Accompanied by a heavenly soundtrack for lovers of choral music (yes, you sir), this is one of the most sophisticated movies of the year. -- Adrian Hennigan, BBC Films
- London, 23 September: Moviegoers participating in a poll conducted by the BBC publication Radio Times have voted the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption the best movie never to have won a major Oscar®. The film had been nominated in seven categories including best picture and best actor (Morgan Freeman) but was shut out in the final tally. The film received more than a third of the votes in the Radio Times online poll. Its closest rival was the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, which drew 12 percent, followed by E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Great Escape, and The Wizard of Oz. Shawshank director Frank Darabont told Britain's PA News that he was truly "blown away" by the vote. "Making this most meaningful is the fact that it's voted for by those whose opinions count most -- the audience," he added. -- IMDb
- Rome, 24 September:
 Stuck in the same room in the same Swiss hotel for the past 24 years, Titta Di Girolama (Toni Sevillo) is a self-confessed "man without imagination". Smoking endless cigarettes alone in the bar, his face appears to have unlearned the expression of emotion; he is told he has no messages even before he reaches the concierge's desk. But despite centering on this living statue, Le Conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love), written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, plays like a fascinating psychological mystery that keeps hidden until the final quarter even what genre of film it is. The truth behind Di Girolama's "unmentionable secret" rewards an audience's patience with a wholly original take on a classic staple. -- Howard Swains, Times Online
 - Hong Kong, 29 September: While some critics grumbled about its tricky structure and incessant use of a Nat King Cole Christmas carol as a musical motif, Kar Wai Wong's 2046 may be as audacious and alluring as Chungking Express was a decade ago. A quasi-sequel to In the Mood for Love, it stars Tony Leung Chiu Wai as a writer living in a seedy Hong Kong hotel in the 1960s. His dalliances with three women inspire him to write science-fiction tales, which are brilliantly visualized in sequences that variously recall 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella and The Cremaster Cycle. Ziyi Zhang contributes a passionate performance as a party girl whose love is callously rejected by the writer. Even though the movie could've used a little more of her madly beating heart, the fact that 2046 was shut out of the awards at Cannes was very disappointing. -- Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
- Manchester, 30 September: French filmmaker Sylvain Chomet, who produced
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