In Contention

Tag: Little White Lies

  • LONDON: ‘Cold Weather,’ ‘Carlos,’ ‘Little White Lies’

    Okay, so my weekend plans to catch up on my LFF review backlog didn’t entirely pan out — though the schedulers have, at least, kindly slowed the snowball effect by screening a number of films today that I had already seen. Strange as it sounds, given that it’s been on the festival track for five months now, Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” (reviewed in Cannes) finally premiered in its home country this evening, while Julian Schnabel’s “Miral” continued to dismay critics at this morning’s press screening — as I treated myself to a smug lie-in.

    The weekend, however, was one of multiple festival treats for me, including my first dip into this year’s particularly enticing Treasures From the Archives sidebar, featuring a broad array of immaculately restored classics and curios.

    Joshua Logan’s “Picnic,” a widely forgotten Best Picture nominee from 1955, was an unexpected candidate for this treatment, but the gleaming new print of this creaky but affecting slice of small-town Americana repaid the archivists’ gamble — the film’s ambitious narrative-hopscotch structure remains fresh, the scattergun ensemble acting less so, but the real purpose of the outing was seeing master DP James Wong Howe’s luscious color lensing primped, polished and projected on London’s classiest cinema screen.

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  • ‘Never Let Me Go,’ ‘Rabbit Hole’ among Toronto premieres

    Toronto International Film Festival organisers unveiled a typically cluttered lineup of galas and premieres for this year’s edition — including, as usual, a number of films pencilled in as 2010 awards contenders.

    Of the 50 titles announced thus far, half will be world premieres: those include such highly anticipated works as Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Rabbit Hole,” Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction” and Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock.” The remaining half have either appeared at previous festivals — with a hefty contingent from Cannes, including Mike Leigh’s “Another Year,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Woody Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” — or look set to make their debut at Venice the week before.

    With Venice due to reveal its own lineup tomorrow, the fact that such still-unseen titles as Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” Francois Ozon’s “Potiche,” Julian Schnabel’s “Miral,” John Madden’s “The Debt” and Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” are all marked only as North American premieres would appear to confirm that they are all Lido-bound. (I’m surprised, however, that Guillaume Canet’s “Little White Lies” will be making its first appearance at Toronto rather than at a European festival.)

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  • Aronofsky’s ‘Black Swan’ to open Venice

    [FURTHER UPDATE: Focus has confirmed that “The American” will not, in fact, be appearing at Venice.]

    [UPDATE: “Black Swan” has indeed been confirmed as the Venice opener, and will play in Competition. More soon.]

    I’ve been saying for some time that this year’s Venice Film Festival looks to be a very good vintage, capitalizing on the number of highly anticipated auteur works that weren’t quite ready in time for Cannes. Even with Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” still a major question mark — some are even suggesting it won’t surface this year — there’s plenty to get quivery about besides, as is clear from this tasty Variety piece.

    Nick Vivarelli’s article reiterates the titles — including Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere” and Julian Schnabel’s “Miral” — that have long been all-but-guaranteed to show up at Venice, but adds some tantalizing new ones. Chief among them is Darren Aronofsky’s ballet psycho-thriller “Black Swan,” which will premiere as the festival’s opening film on September 1.

    The press release breaking the news, and more Venice possibilities, after the cut.

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