Preview: The Book Thief (2013)

Director Brian Percival | Cast Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson 

Release Date November 15, 2013 (USA) 

Preview: Her (2013)

 

Director Spike Jonze | Cast Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson | Release Date December 18, 2013 (USA, limited)

Teaser Posters > X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

 

Designed by Gravillis Inc.

 

Designed by BLT Communications, LLC

Designed by BLT Communications, LLC

Designed by Gravillis Inc.

5 Quotes from Woody Allen

- 1 -

"My two teenage girls think of me as ancient, but I'm up before them and wake them to go to school."

- 2 -

"Without fear, you'd never survive."

- 3 -

"I haven't had a frankfurter in, I would say, 45 years. I don't eat enjoyable foods. I eat for my health."

- 4 -

"Marshall McLuhan predicted books would become art objects at some point. He was right."

- 5 -

"If you're born with a gift, to behave like it's an achievement is not right."

_______

Quotes from "What I've Learned" (Esquire, September 2013), photograph by Mark Mann

Preview: Dear Mr. Watterson (2013)

 

Documentary | Director Joel Allen Schroede | Featuring Berkeley Breathed, Seth Green and Stephan Pastis | USA | 89 minutes

 

Posters: Before Midnight (2013)

Henry Cavill with Amy Adams in Interview, 06.2013

_____

Photographer: Mikael Jansson / Stylist: Ludivine Poiblanc

The Wind Rises (2013)

Animation | Director Hayao Miyazaki | Release Date July 2013

Krispy Kreme's Salted Caramel Doughnut

Krispy Kreme's Mickey Mouse doughnuts are bad as sin. In an effort to erase their past transgressions (their horrible Valentine's Day doughnuts included), they give us the Salted Caramel doughnut. Sometimes, doughnuts end up tasting as good as they look. This is one of them. 

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's (2013)

Documentary | Director Matthew Miele | Featuring Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Isaac Mizrahi

New from Vintage

The Red House by Mark Haddon

trade paper back | 272 pages 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander

trade paper back | 240 pages 

Penguin Classics: Kingsley Amis Series

Take A Girl Like You

ePub eBook | 288 pages | ISBN 9780141961859 

That Uncertain Feeling 

ePub eBook | 288 pages | ISBN 9780141961866

The Riverside Villas Murder

ePub eBook | 224 pages | ISBN 9780141961750  

Preview: The Kings of Summer (2013)

_______
The Kings of Summer hits theaters in the US on May 31st.

Julianne Moore in The New York TImes Style Magazine

________

Photographs by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, spring 2013

Teaser Poster: Trance (2013)

Alexander Skarsgard in Man of the World

BMW i3

The i3 is BMW's first commercial zero-emission vehicle. It runs on electricity and comes with an optional speed limit feature. With the Eco Pro+ mode enabled, your max speed is limited to 56 mph. While it hinders your 2 Fast 2 Furious aspirations, it prolongs the vehicle's electric charge, equating to more driving pleasure. It's for a good cause so stop pouting.

The i3 will hit the market in November. 

James Franco in Attitude

The Color of Pomegranates (1968)

Music videos in the 1990s are notable for their excess. Budget could reach five million dollars (a staggering great amount for a four-, five-minute clip). Some were helmed by filmmakers like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Mark Romanek. The latter directed Madonna's lush "Bedtime Story." 

In visualizing a world where fantasy and reality meld, Romanek referenced elements from Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates (1968). The result is a complex, abstruse video notable for its dream-like quality and vision. 

Whereas four minutes of phantasmagoric sequences with Madonna is dazzling, 73 minutes of them in succession is a stretch. There's a voice-over at the start of Pomegranates describing what you, the viewer, is about to see: a seemingly never-ending chain of images laced with symbolism and fantasy. It's a warning, "a cautionary advice" of what you're getting yourself into. I didn't take it seriously. It was only after the end credits started rolling that I realized that Parajanov wasn't kidding.

Matthew Goode in L'Officiel Hommes Italia

“When it comes to acting, it is very limiting to be English. It was ‘Bring on the posh!’ All the parts I was being offered involved my accent or someone with money and a title.”

After playing celluloid eye candies in Brideshead Revisited (2008) and A Single Man (2009), Matthew Goode revisits handsome-ville in Park Chan-wook's thrill-fest, Stoker. He plays Charles, a man with questionable motives. Despite his dodgy reputation, the Stoker women  (played by Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman) can't help themselves but be drawn in.

There's no escaping the posh curse. L'Officiel Hommes Italia features Goode in its spring/summer 2013 issue sporting sleek designer suits and patent leather shoes.

Book Haul: 02.25-03.01

People ask me where my money goes every pay day. I tell them, "Books!"  

A local mall went on sale recently. I ended up buying almost a dozen. Most of them were for friends. For myself, I got Anthony Horowitz's prize-winning Groosham Grange (1988), a book for young readers about "the seventh son of a seventh son." I've read the first few pages and I'm charmed. Whimsy's cool, but British whimsy is in another level.

 

My next stop at a bargain shop was a gold mine. That's more than what my back, my shopping bag and my resources could handle. Horowitz was in good company. I got Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, Heidi W. Durrow's The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, D. H. Lawrence's Four Short Novels, Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons, Chaim Potok's I Am the Clay and Mario Vargas Llosa's The Cubs and Other Stories. 

Heaven.

Javier, Kristen and Nicole in W

“The first movie I remember seeing is All That Jazz. All That Jazz is pretty strong for a 5-, 6-year-old kid, but I loved it. There were naked women, which was nice. In Spain, we understand sex better than violence.” —Javier Bardem

“Everyone asks about the nude scenes in On the Road, but I also had to dance, and dancing is harder than being naked. My character, Marylou, is so exuberant, and I had five minutes to do something that showed she was sort of like the craziest motherfucker around. In the book, it says, ‘Dean takes Marylou and they do a love dance and no one can take their eyes off them.’ It’s one sentence. And I was mad-intimidated by it. We did the dance four times to the song ‘Salt Peanuts.’ By the end, I was as red as a fire truck. I was holding onto Garrett [Hedlund] because I was going to fall over. I almost passed out every single time.” —Kristen Stewart

“The first part I played was in the Nativity play at school. I auditioned for an angel and didn’t get it. I auditioned for Mary and didn’t get it. So I made up the character of the sheep who sat next to the baby Jesus. I bleated through the whole thing and got my first laugh. And that was it—I was hooked. That became a metaphor for my whole career: Every time I’ve thought, 'Oh, I should be Mary,' I somehow go and find something offbeat and different.” —Nicole Kidman

_______
Quotes from W's February 2013 issue; photographs by Juergen Teller

Gael García Bernal in Sight & Sound

More than his movies, it's his political standpoint that has people gravitating towards his ideological orbit. "We think that democracy can change a lot of things. We've been taught that democracy is having elections. It isn't. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It's the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect."

Sight & Sound's March issue showcases rebels and visionaries (Pablo Larraín, Taviani Brothers, Pier Paolo Pasolini), with the 34-year-old progressive actor, Gael García Bernal, gracing its cover. The timing couldn't be more perfect. His new film, No (a period Chilean film directed by Larraín), has been nominated at this year's Oscars.

Pinoy Indie: 2012

Pascalina never had it easy. After visiting a dying aunt, her life takes a turn for the worst. It's not money her aunt wants to give her. It's something else.

Director Pam Miras' Pascalina is very raw. While the Digital Harinezumi camera she used for shooting complemented the movie's dark, somber tone, it left me frustrated. Watching it is like sitting through an undergrad's film thesis. 

Despite its rough visuals, Pascalina surprises when you least expect it. It gives a fresh twist to the typical aswang movie, something many people will find memorable. 

Last year's lineup is probably the best for Cinema One. As the festival's dark horse, Pascalina broke expectations and nabbed the top prize when everyone least expected it.  

•••

Here are some gems from 2012. It's been a good year for debut feature filmmakers Dwein Baltazar (Mamay Umeng), Whammy Alcazaren (Colossal) and Marie Jamora (Ang Nawawala). Alcazaren, in particular, shows great promise.

Stills from Mes de Guzman's Diablo, Teng Mangansakan's The Obscured Histories and Silent Longings of Daguluan’s Children, Dwein Baltazar's Mamay Umeng, Arnel Mardoquio's Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim and Loy Arcenas' Requieme!

Essential Quotes: 2012

"Everything is a risk. Walking out of your house in the morning is a risk."

Marc Webb (Little White Lies, 2012)

- • -

George Clooney: I grew up in Kentucky. We had drive-in theaters and I remember watching Last Tango in Paris, and it’s still amazing to me that they did Last Tango in Paris at a drive-in. In Kentucky. You can imagine.
Christopher Plummer: What an erotic state that is!
George Clooney: Look at that sheep!

Newsweek, January 23, 2012

- • -

On Colin Farrell's eyebrows: "Those eyebrows pretty much live in their own ZIP code."

Jessica Biel  ("The Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Colin Farrell," Details, November 2012)

- • -

“When you work in a different language, your emotional state changes. In Spanish, my mother language, words not only have the meaning they have, they also have a personal meaning. For me, it is more difficult to say ‘Te quiero’ than ‘I love you.’ ”

Antonio Banderas ("Best Performances," W, February 2012)

- • -

"In great art, the more you find out, the deeper the mystery is."

Guy Maddin (Little White Lies, 2012)

- • -

"If you see a thing which you call 'sad,' you find beauty immediately. In the middle of the big sadness, you could find something which is truly beautiful."

Bela Tarr ("The Last Laugh," Little White Lies, 2012)

- • -

"The weather of England is in me. I will never lose those clouds and gray skies."

Gary Oldman ("Best Performances," W, February 2012)

- • -

"There was a wonderful old cinema called the Lumiere. It was underground like a whale's stomach. You used to go down those stairs into this cave and the movie would finish and you'd climb the stairs into the light and noise of the street. That is an amazing thing to me, that feeling of pure inspiration. Now it's a fucking gym. That's modern life."

Steve McQueen (Little White Lies, 2012)

Actor of the Year: Tom Hardy

"If I am duly compared to Marlon Brando at all, well, I can only think of The Teahouse of the Shanghai Noon. That, they're comparing me to that!"


_______
Quote from "A Candid Tom Hardy at Cannes on Beards, Beer, Batman, and Brando" by Kyle Buchanan

Essential Movie Posters: 2012