All Venice articles – Page 95
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News
Theo Angelopoulos pulls Dust of Time from Venice
Just one day before theVenice Film Festival announces its line-up (Tuesday), one of the most eagerly-awaited world premieres, Theo Angelopoulos' Dust of Time has been pulled from the selection.The decision by the Greek auteur and his producers came after screenings slots could not be found that would have allowed leading ...
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News
Marco Mueller confirmed for another four years in Venice
Marco Mueller has been confirmed as the artistic director for the Venice Film Festival for four more years.The new board of directors of the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia (the Venice Biennale arts festival foundation), chaired now by Paolo Baratta, confirmed the appointment at the board's first meeting today.Marco Mueller ...
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News
Croff ousted at Venice Biennale after four years
Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli will not be renewing the mandate of David Croff, the Minister declared at a Biennale Foundation summit meeting last night.Croff has acted as President of the Venice's Biennale and worked alongside Cinema artistic director Marco Mueller for four years.The President of the Biennale is in ...
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Reviews
Glory To The Filmmaker (Kantoku Banzai)
Dir. Takeshi Kitano. Japan. 2007.Takeshi Kitano's last couple of films confirm that Japan 's maverick filmmaker is having a hard time deciding which way to go next and feels the urgent need to share it with his audience. After the jaundiced look at the film industry in general, and his ...
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Reviews
In the City of Sylvia (En la ciudad de Sylvia)
Dir. Jose Luis Guerin. Spain / France, 2007. 90 min.In the City of Sylvia is likely to be defined by some as 'a work of genius' and by others as like 'watching paint dry'. An audience in search of a plot with a beginning middle and end should look elsewhere. ...
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Reviews
The Obscure (Xiaoshuo)
Dir. Lu Yue. China 2006. 84 min.Potentiallya powerful soporific for any audience not fluent in Mandarin, Lu Yue's combination of documentary and improvised live action is almost self-defeating in its insistence to stick, for the first hour, to a purely theoretical seminar. As it is, Lu's picture could interest scholars ...
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Reviews
Mad Detective
Dir. Johnny To, Wai Ka Fai. Hong Kong 2007. 89 min.The prolific Johnny To and his occasional collaborator Wai Ka Fai here put a new twist on the standard police yarn. No longer simply good cop versus bad cop, they add a third angle, the mad cop, who uses neither ...
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Reviews
Cargo 200 (Gruz 200)
Dir: Alexey Balabanov, Russia 2007, 86minsAlexey Balabanov's eleventh feature is one of his bleakest. Set in provincial Russia in 1984 as the USSR enters its death throes, it portrays a society that is sickly, violent and cynical. The title refers to the name given to corpses of Russian soldiers being ...
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Reviews
Don't Think About It (Non Pensarci)
Dir: Gianni Zanasi Italy 2007. 108 mins.The real surprise of the 2007 Venice Days sidebar on the Lido , Don't Think About It is that rarest of things: an exportable Italian comedy that features neither Roberto Benigni nor Nanni Moretti. Directed with an admirable lightness of touch by Gianni Zanasi ...
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Reviews
The Sweet and the Bitter (Il Dolce e l'Amaro)
Dir: Andrea Porporati Italy 2007. 99 mins.The Italian Mafia film comes of age with The Sweet and the Bitter, a Sicilian Goodfellas that offers a refreshingly unheroic, sometimes darkly comic take on the grubby reality behind the rituals and myths of Cosa Nostra. Like another recent title, Stefano Incerti's L'Uomo ...
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Reviews
Exodus
Dir: Penny Woolcock UK 2007. 110 mins.As much community project as feature film, Exodus transplants the Biblical story of Moses and the children of Israel to the depressed British seaside resort of Margate, in a dystopian future where racist politicians hold sway and asylum seekers are fenced inside a refugee ...
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Reviews
Nightwatching
Dir: Peter Greenaway, Netherlands-Canada-Poland-UK. 140mins.Peter Greenaway takes The Night Watch - arguably Rembrandt's most famous painting, and certainly his most earnestly discussed and interpreted work - as the basis for a rambling, theatrical, frequently didactic study of a turning point in the Dutch painter's life. By turns both murder mystery, ...
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Reviews
Chaos (Heya fawda)
Dir: Youssef Chahine France/Egypt 2007. 122 minsVeteran Egyptian director Youssef Chahine serves up a stirring, old-fashioned melodrama with a liberal conscience in his latest film, co-directed with his younger colleague Khaled Youssef. As imbued with the sounds, colours and passions of Cairo as a novel by Naguib Mahfouz, the film ...
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Reviews
Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou)
Dir: Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, 2007. 95minsThe closing film at the Venice film festival, Blood Brothers is a dark gangster fable set in 1930s Shanghai - and a stylish but hollow debut for John Woo protege Alexi Tan. For all the film's lush cinematography, spot-on period detail and all-star Asian ...
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Reviews
12 (Razgnevannyh Muzhchin)
Dir: Nikita Mikhalkov Russia 2007. 158 mins.Russian maestro Nikita Mikhalkov proves that Sidney Lumet's classic jury drama 12 Angry Men can work in another time and another place in this tasty adaptation, which is tough and passionate enough to survive the occasional lapse into Slavic sentimentality. It's hard to believe ...
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Reviews
Useless (Wu Yong)
Dir. Jia Zhang-Ke. China , 2007. 84mins.Perennial Venice favourite Jia Zhang-Ke is back with a documentary whose title could invite all manner of cheap shots. But it also happens to be the name of a new, and highly successful, Chinese fashion brand. The second part in a trilogy dedicated to ...
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News
Lust, Caution is surprise winner of Venice's Golden Lion
Ang Lee won the Golden Lion - again - at the 64th Venice International Film Festival yesterday for Lust, Caution, a surprise win for the Taiwanese auteur over the critical favourite Le Graine Et Le Mulet directed by Abdellatif Kechiche from France.Lee won his first Golden Lion two years ago ...
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News
Redacted goes worldwide with HDNet
HDNet Films sealed most territorial deals on Brian De Palma's Iraq war drama Redacted ahead of its Venice world premiere.The film, which screens here on Monday and goes on to play the New York Film Festival, sold to TFM in France, New Select in Japan, AE/Eagle Pictures in Italy, On ...
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News
Memento strikes Venice deals for Under The Bombs
Since receiving an emotional standing ovation in Venice, Philippe Aractingi's Under The Bombs has sealed two distribution deals just as Toronto gets underway.Memento Films, which is handling world rights to the film, has sold it to the UK's Channel 4 and Italy's Fandango. Memento's Tanja Meissner says she is also ...
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News
Pyramide takes on salse for Zanasi's Don't Think About It
Pyramide International has acquired world rights, excluding Italy, for Venice Days title Don't Think About It (Non pensarci) - a generational comedy by Italian directorGianni Zanasi.Pyramide confirmed that sales have been completed in Venice with Hopscotch for Australia, Audiovisual for Greece, and Xenix for Switzerland. A Benelux deal has also ...