Quentin Tarantino will start shooting his next film, the World War II action tale “Inglorious Bastards,” in October, with hopes of having it ready in time for the Cannes Film Festival next May.

The long-gestating project revolves around a “Dirty Dozen”-like group of soldiers behind enemy lines. No cast is yet in place, though Brad Pitt’s name has surfaced.

Tarantino acquired the title and remake rights to Enzo Castellari’s 1978 film of the same name, but his screenplay is said to be an original.

The project is set up at the closely held Weinstein Co., which is looking to co-finance it with a major studio in exchange for foreign rights.

Weinstein Co. principals Bob and Harvey Weinstein have a long history with Tarantino, stretching from 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” through the filmmaker’s most recent effort, the commercially disappointing “Grindhouse” films in 2007.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Written and directed by: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi
Release date: October 2007

Persepolis is the story of an Iranian girl who lived through the overthrow of the Shah’s rule and the subsequent fundamentalist dictatorship of the Ayatollah Khomeini. It’s a faithful rendering of an autobiographical underground French graphic-novel by Marjane Satrapi. Oh yes….and it’s in black and white 2-D animation. Now doesn’t that sound exotic? Believe me. It’s not. And therein lies the secret to this movie’s success. Five minutes into the movie and you will begin to laugh and cry with Marjane, her parents, her grandma…

The movie opens in 1978. Protest rallies demanding the ouster of the Shah throng the streets. There are communists and nationalists, quite a few of them students, facing the bullets of the cops. Little Marjane swept in the fervor, ties a bandana around her head and goes marching around her living room. And with her gang of friends targets the bespectacled son of a man reputed to be in the secret police. The Shah goes. The euphoria of freedom sweeps across the country. Marjane’s uncle Anouche is released from prison. As he narrates the stories of his adventures as a communist, Marjane’s eyes turn wide with wonder. She can see him trekking across snow-clad mountains and swimming across turbulent rivers. And we see the freedom imparted by the medium of animation.

The Ayatollah Khomeini wins in the elections with “99.9%” of the votes. And soon, the people find themselves living in a nightmare worse than the one they had just escaped from. Religion and revolution, the twin pied pipers which have led men to the massacre in millions during centuries past come together in Iran. Unspeakable crimes are committed. The communists disappear into the dark of the night. Anouche is among them. After her last visit with Anouche in the prison, Marjane terminates her personal conversations with God.

The tyranny permeates the daily lives of the Iranians. The Shah was a despot but he was a secular despot. Now, women are pushed behind the veil. Taking off your headscarf on the road iturns into an act of defiance. And the slightest sign of ‘indecency’ could earn them the epithet of a whore from the moral police and probably a few generous lashings. All to save their souls…

In the midst of all this, Marjane somehow grows up to be a normal, rebellious teenager. She gives mouth to her teachers in school. She thinks ABBA and the Bee Gees are lame and sneaks off to the black market to buy the latest Iron Maiden album. On the back of her burkha, she stencils “Punk is not ded”. And when caught, manages to talk her way out smoothly.

Soon, Iraq attacks Iran. Further miseries are piled on. And Marjane is packed off to Austria by her parents. She tries hard to blend in. Head-banging as hard as the next guy at death metal concerts. Smoking pot. She falls in love. Or least thinks she has. And has her heart broken.

She keeps making mistakes. Each time she gathers herself up and moves on. Sometimes it just takes more time and suffering. But her life goes on.

This movie tries to cover a lot of ground. It doesn’t succeed entirely. Especially the last fifteen minutes prior to the climax appear to drag. But I won’t call it an ambitious movie which falters because it spread itself too thin. Because it’s merely her life. Marjane is narrating the story of her ordinary life, lived under extraordinary circumstances. And her struggle for the right to that ‘ordinary’ life.

The 62nd annual Edinburgh International Film Festival came to a close this weekend, after screening over 130 films over the course of 12 days, throughout the cobblestoned medieval cluster of the Scottish capital. Founded in 1947 in conjunction with the Edinburgh Festival to help revive the city’s post-war economy, this marked the first year the film festival ran at a different time. The festival had tremendous help in smoothing the transition from its dedicated patrons, Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton, who were present throughout the EIFF’s duration at many screenings, dinners and events. Connery hosted the awards ceremony on Sunday night, presenting the Michael Powell award, named for Britain’s leading golden-era director, to the best in British cinema.

“I think Edinburgh attracts a certain type of person, as a city,” says EIFF artistic director Hannah McGill. “We have a challenging music and arts scene, a little rebellious against the mainstream…. We’re not th e metropolis. It feels more like an event than the London Film Festival, because the British film people all live there, in SoHo. Here, they’re away from home, and they can get more relaxed, and excited, and drunk.”

In between the drinking, festival participants are invited to watch films, of course, with a particular emphasis on British film–the festival’s main competition is limited exclusively to cinema from the United Kingdom. “Edinburgh has always been concentrated on showcasing UK cinema in the state that it’s presently in,” says EIFF managing director Ginnie Atkinson. “We are the most important promoters, showcasers, and reflection of what’s going on in the British film industry… if we have a weak British program for any reason one year, it causes a spirited debate as to why that is.”

“The Michael Powell award is the single most important prize for an independent British filmmaker,” says Atkinson. “The winners are interesting, because they’re often new filmmakers with very individual voices”. Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Photo by Charlie Olsky.This year’s winner, “Somers Town”, Shane Meadow’s likeable, undisciplined sketch of the friendship between a transient Midlands youth and a Polish immigrant in a seedy neighborhood in London- was hardly made by a newcomer. Meadows has been showing the spirited side of working-class British youth in films like “TwentyFourSeven” and “This is England” for over a decade. “Somers Town” isn’t his best film- it plays a bit too much like sketchy improv- but the goofy performances by the lead teenagers and the lovely black-and-white photography of London help overcome the script’s weaknesses.

James Marsh’s astonishing documentary “Man on Wire”, about daredevil Philip Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers, won the Standard Life Audience Award, and Robert Carlyle won “Best Performance” for his turn as a disturbed man with wasted promise in Kenny Glenaan’s “Summer”.

Unrecognized by the jury, Duane Hopkins’ debut feature “Better Things”, a look at the lives of aimless junkies in a depressed British town, was the best narrative in competition. Bearing more than a slight resemblance to Lance Hammer’s Sundance standout “Ballast” (partially owing to a shared cinematographer), the film is heartbreaking when it allows moments of pure love and yearning to break through the bleak exteriors.

It’s a testament to EIFF’s esoteric nature that “Somers Town” and “Man on Wire” could run in the same competition against Olly Blackburn’s suspenseful “Donkey Punch”, an exploitation film-par-excellence about a group of young adults whose boat trip goes horribly wrong when one of them commits the titular sex act. In case you’re wondering, mom, a ‘donkey punch’ is when a man engages in anal sex with a woman, and then punches her in the back of the head right before he climaxes, so that her muscular contractions heighten his sensation. No, mom, nobody ever actually does it, except maybe in the situation portrayed in the movie; the particular strength of “Donkey Punch”, in fact, is that every insane, blood-soaked turn it takes is weirdly plausible.

The jury prize for documentary went to Werner Herzog’s lovely, doomed ramble on Antarctica, “Encounters at the End of the World”, but my own favorite was Gideon Koppel’s “Sleep Furiously”, a pastoral Welsh elegy that recalls Nicholas Philibert’s “To Be and to Have” in its quiet portrait of a perfect little country town that is slowly dying off. The film lets the viewers be hypnotized by each snippet of country life before providing small, precious surprises- most notably in the loveable form of the filmmaker’s mother, an animal lover who tearfully describes the death of her pet owl.

There were several world premieres in competition, including Christine Molloy’s mesmerizingly creepy “Helen”, the story of an outcast who agrees to help police recreate the disappearance of a popular local girl, only to assume certain aspects of her life. It’s a deliberately paced study in mood, menacing and touching in equal parts. All of the luminaries of Scottish cinema were in attendance at the premiere of Charles Martin Smith’s “Stone of Destiny”, which recounts the real-life efforts of a plucky band of Scottish rebels who plotted to steal back the ancient title object from Westminster Abby, where it has been used for hundreds of years during coronations to represent English dominance over Scotland. It’s a broad-stroked Hollywood-style affair, wherein each character has precisely one personality trait (The Drinker, The Nerd, The Woman), but the crowd got into the adventure; the Scottish are nothing if not proud of their heritage, and it is, eventually, a winning little story.

“We’re known for finding new talent,” says Atkinson. “New British talent is a big deal not just in Britain, but in North America…. We’re a small country, but our language travels well, particularly to America. Directors who succeed here often have the option of working there.”

To that end, EIFF points to its talent development program Trailblazers, a showcase of new UK talent co-founded with government-sponsored UK media group Skillset. The program features showcases, networking and training sessions for film professionals across the board (actors, cinematographers, directors, etc.); earlier in the year, the program took 14 participants to the Tribeca Film Festival.

Says Skillset’s Dan Simmons, “We’ve been trying to position the Edinburgh Film Festival as the primary European film festival for discovering new talent, a focal point for the industry to identify emerging filmmakers.” He continues to say, “People like Samantha Morton, Daniel Craig- they got their first big breaks at this festival, so you have a history of breakouts. The Trailblazers program was about creating formal channels for that to happen.”

Veteran director Terrence Davies, a longtime critic of the UK film industry, gave hearty thanks to the EIFF after the UK Premiere of his poetic tribute to Liverpool, “Of Time and the City”. Though only marginally well known outside of Britain, the director was one of Edinburgh’s stars, and he was thrilled to receive the enthusiasm of the audience.

“I was delighted when I got into Cannes,” he said, “and even more delighted when we received such a good response… But it was Edinburgh that first accepted my film. They’ve always been the most supportive of my work, because my work is simply just so British, so completely British, and I don’t know if it translates elsewhere. I can’t imagine why anybody else wants to see it, but I know it has a home here.”

Source IndieWire

Starring: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama

Directed By: Quentin Tarantino

It is time to face celluloid’s greatest enemy Bill. This is one of the most addictive films i have seen in ages. The dialog is so crisp and the visuals so tantalizing and a beautiful pregnant bride for everything else. It is a film that is just oozing with enough of gnashing teeth that it will split couple of them while you watch it. Kill Bill is a film that is taken from the immensely popular Lady Snowblood. Quentin had grown to love this movie for many years and wanted to make a four hour film on this revenge saga. Another movie reference that he had taken was the controversial Trauffant movie The Bride Wore Black. This is very characteristic of Quentin’s script they tend to be lifted from movies that he has enjoyed watching. He sort of remixes them to suit his weird pallet.

The film was divided into two parts making it a sumptuous meal for all you Kung Fu fans out there. The film is cleverly divided into chapters of vengeance something that easily relatable. Its more like a fantasy played out by the Bride. Everything was taken from her at her wedding. The story slowly peels out each and every one of the plot ideas till the seeds drip in blood. The chapters are used to show how she goes about killing each of her victims in a Clint Eastwood sort of way.

The rage in these moments are shown with such grace with talented and athletic Uma Thurman. This is surely her career making role once again at the able helmer Quentin. Some of the vengeance acts are very cerebral i mean literally. The gore quotient in this movie is also to pay homage to many of the Mangas written on these Kung Fu films. It draws inspiration from several refernces even Superman as well.

The kung Fu turns on it head to look like a graphic novel. The addictive nature of the film is the whole set pieces. There has been a lot of time spend to get each of the action shots right. Then there is also Bill of course a man who filled with a sense of jealousy that is about to tear this Brides life apart. There are instances where she almost dies but ultimately she is a survivor.

The introductions have been talked about for a long time. Each character has a unique intro a tune an unusual trait of villany written for them. But one back story stands out. The whole sequence in a Japanese anime. The shots in this break the common mold of anime itself. It is unlike anything that has been written for screen. The gore in these shots satiates the whole premise of the film. The assasins in this film are not in it for the kill but they act like blood thirsty animals. They can’t tie there hands back without killing anyone. Each of them ruthless in their own way.

But the division of the film into the two parts at the right interval is very essential. Quentin has also an acute understanding of the non linear format that makes him a treat to watch. The surprise you get by the end gives you enough drive to ravish the second part. This is truly a masterwork from the director. Hopefully we will get to see some sequel or prequel to this accidental franchise.

It’s not exactly clear when the trend started, but French filmmakers are currently making the best old-style Hollywood thrillers. The caffeinated pace, requisite chase scenes, intricate plots are all there. But Gallic filmmakers bring something more to the party: distinctive camera work along with a social critique and complex characters who resonate with the over-thirteen crowd. Claude Lelouche’s recent thriller “Roman de Gare” plumbed the darker corners of the fame game and a writer’s ego. Now comes “Tell No One” from actor-turned-director Guillaume Canet, a major hit in France and winner of two Cesars. Adapted from the novel by Harlan Coben - six million copies sold, translated in twenty-seven languages - “Tell No One” essentially hangs an action thriller and police procedural on a story of romantic obsession.

For his second directing gig Canet recruited an A-list of French acting talent. Claude Chabrol regular Francois Cluzet plays Alexandre Beck, a pediatrician haunted by the brutal murder of his wife Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) eight years ago at their idyllic lakeside retreat. Only his friendship with his gay sister’s partner (Kristin Scott-Thomas) keeps him tethered to the world beyond his grief. On the anniversary of Margot’s death, Alex receives an email containing language known only to his wife, which leads to a webcam showing her looking toward him from a crowd, apparently alive.

Alex’s desperate quest to locate Margot is thwarted when the police dig up a couple of bodies near the lake where Margot was murdered, along with evidence that implicates Alex. Top cop Francois Berleand reopens the case, with Alex as principal suspect, and the games begin. Aided by a droll lowlife himself in trouble with the law, Alex must outwit and outrace a host of pursuers, including the real perps, to discover the truth about Margot’s disappearance. Along with a spectacular chase scene across the Paris Beltway, we get a cross section of French society: Nathalie Baye as a crusty lawyer, Andre Dussollier as a retiree sitting on a terrible secret or three, Jean Rochefort as a wealthy horsebreeder with a nefarious agenda, and Canet himself as a monied slimeball at the fulcrum of the plot.

On a steamy June day indieWIRE sat down with Guillaume Canet, just in from L.A., jet-lagged, and slimmer than anyone has a right to be. Canet speaks a serviceable English that sometimes needs French backup and put me in mind of certain actors whose faces, through some mysterious alchemy, find their fullest appeal in front of a camera.

indieWIRE: How did you discover the novel by Harlan Coben?

Guillaume Canet: I was writing my 2nd script [”Mon Idole” was the first] when someone in the production office where I was working thought I should read Coben’s book. As I read, I could picture the film in my mind’s eye. What I liked was the love story as the engine of the thriller — which goes against the usual thriller. And the characters were very powerful and deep. Then in 2005 I heard the movie was going to be made in the States. I ran into Michael Apted in L.A. and said, You’re going to do a movie about a book that I love. He said, I won’t be doing it after all. I pretended to go to the bathroom and called my producer and told him: We have to go after the rights.

What were the challenges of adapting an American story to a French milieu?

The main challenge was to adapt the novel for the screen. There were things that were easily resolved in the book that wouldn’t work on film. Like a character who says, “I heard that … etc. ” In a movie, that’s impossible. The problem was the book was so well written, the moment you take something out, the rest falls apart. I changed the ending - but Harlan Coben loved what we came up with.

I saw “Tell No One” partly as a story about how an intimate partner can have a totally secret life. Well, Margot is a mysterious figure. Marie-Josee Croze is good at that - she has a sad, dreamy quality. Women have their secrets. People live alongside partners and don’t know they have a double life. Like in Germany: this guy had a daughter in the basement and was making childrens [sic] with her. I can’t believe the wife never knew that.

I was intrigued by how “Tell No One” mixes several genres.

That’s what I like in films - and what I like in my life, too. If you’re just watching the traditional thriller, you have no surprise. But it’s interesting to watch a film that takes you by the hand and reveals different genres inside it and evokes all kinds of emotions.

It also feels like you inverted the codes of the thriller genre. Instead of tacking a love story onto a thriller, it’s the love story that takes precedence here.

That was vital for me from the very beginning. As a result, I didn’t shoot it like a thriller. I wanted it to be sunny, for the action to take place in summer, with beautiful light. I didn’t want sinister characters and music, where it’s raining the whole time. I wanted a real contrast between what Alex is going through and what is happening around him. I found it more interesting that the world around him should be at odds with his dark emotions.

That action set-piece where the cops are chasing Alex across the Paris Beltway is thrilling.

It was quite complicated. We have five hours to shoot - we were supposed to have three days. But that gave urgency to the scene. I was running everywhere with my camera, shooting all the time. Telling Francois, run there, go there. He had to do all the stunts. All the cars were drivers working with us.

You had to close down the Beltway?

Yes, for five hours.

The Parisians must have loved that.

They were furious. For months after, people in the street were insulting me because they missed their planes to go on vacation. And it was the only way to go to Charles de Gaulle airport. It was on the radio that they should avoid the Beltway because Canet was shooting there.

Could you describe how you shot the Beltway scene?

It was the only scene that was storyboarded. Because it was so nerve-wracking and quite dangerous, especially when Francois crosses between the cars. I wanted one wide shot at the beginning to show the Beltway. And after that I wanted to be only with Alex, using a hand held camera. I didn’t want to do an action scene. I wanted to do a romantic scene. That’s why the music is not the music of an action scene. It sounds romantic, with a guitar and a cello. Yes, Alex was chased by the police, but he was running for love, because he had this meeting with his wife, and it was the only way to know if she was alive or not … The second wide shot was at the end, with all the cars and the accident.

How did you stage that spectacular accident?

It’s a choreography that the stunt men had to rehearse. A stunt guy stood there and we just threw all the cars together and the truck goes bang bang bang. That was really scary, because with the lack of time we could do only one take.

This is only your second film. What gave you the confidence you could take on this complex story?

I was excited about having those actors telling that story. I think when you’re passionate you forget all the doubt and anxiety and just go for it.

Starring: Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei

Directed By: Todd Field

This is one of the tallest tales I have ever seen on the silver screen. The film takes hold of itself from just a single incident and pulls the incident through the minds of the characters and also into the mechanics of the script. It is directed by the successor of Stanley Kubrick he even starred in his last film Eyes Wide Shut-Todd Field. Each character in this film will be left ingrained in your mind by the end of this film. The film comprises of a family comprising of parents, a son and a lover. The story is a tale of simple revenge and mistrust. But the way the director works on your mind while reaching that moment is devastating. At times it feels like theatre with scenes playing themselves out in a more constructed throwing pain out at us in various forms. It then slowly frustrates the characters questioning each of them of what they should do now. Is there any point of living for some of them? Or can they find a purpose they can fulfill without thinking of the loss that has come to them.

It is at this point that we seem to be suddenly choked in the chaos and pathos each character seems to show at various junctures in this film. Todd doesn’t even give us much in the form of comic relief. He just keeps slashing out at us with enough pain to bury our heads in the sand. Such a study of pain and suffering makes us wonder where all this coming from is it innate in all of us. Many of us have closed ourselves to such pain so that we can lead normal and happy lives. The characters have forgotten what happy is totally. They begin to inflict pain on each other without any consideration. Will all this they are feeling ever come to an end. Every performance in this is carefully nuanced, rehearsed and attended to with utmost care and understanding. But my personal favorites were Sissy Spacek who plays the mother and Tom Wilkinson they are both ethereal.

By the end of this film at least for those of you who sat through it you have invested valuable time in giving human suffering a chance. It is more liberating than you think once you break through the chains of happiness. Take my word for it.

Starring: Choi Min-sik, Yu Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong

Directed By: Park Chan-wook

The action is almost electrifying nothing like you would have ever seen in your life maybe. But that’s not all it comes with an equally poignant story that will tug at your veins and might even make you want to stop watching this powerful film. The film contains a lot of mature content and thematic themes but if I mention some of it I might give away a lot of the plot twists. The only thing I found gross was the raw squid eating scene it was just plain disgusting. In the initial reels of this film it seems to be extremely confusing. We are posed with so many questions on why things are happening to this very innocent man. He is held captured and left in one place to rot but is not sure who has put him there and why. This is what provides the crux of the movie. Soon enough he is left out of his custom made prison build with walls he breaks. He turns into something exciting yet ultra cool. He is now on the hunt on why he was kept there.

But the premise of the story is more like a twisted version of the Bourne series. He could pass of as the anti Bourne. But the identity crisis he is faced with also begins to affect his memory. The culprit who put him in the prison wants him remember something specific. But the methods he employs to make him get that train of thought is at times disgusting and questionable. But it is the action in the film leading to that thought that makes this film worth the ride. You see knives pelted at the hero and he pulls it out and kills some of his enemies with it. He looses couple of his teeth and then inflicts enough damage for them to forget him. But the violence is brutal and at times terrifying leaving some of you out of breathe. But to talk to you beyond the violence would make me have to reveal a lot about the story.

I guess even couple of years down the line people will still be guessing where this plot curve ends. It takes a lot of interesting fights and some animalistic behavior on the part of the main actor to actually reach that point. But the transformation that the main protagonist undergoes is astonishing. But finally when the end comes you are posed with a little mystic feeling that comes from some thought provoking final minutes. Just trust me on this don’t miss the ending of this film.

Starring: Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti, Mark Webber, John Goodman, Julie Hagerty, Franka Potente, James Van Der Beek

Directed By: Todd Solondz

After watching Happiness last night the next Todd film is Storytelling. For those of you think that he makes movies just for shock value I think you are thoroughly mistaken. Storytelling is divided into two parts Fiction and Non Fiction for obvious reasons. The first film is a powerful film on a writing class where a black teacher sleeps around with his students. The film takes the point of a woman played by Selma Blair who sleeps around with a cerebral palsy boyfriend. They are both part of the same writing course taken by the Pulitzer Prize winning black writer.

The film gets into a very provocative study unlike any of Todd’s early work. He almost lets loose a wave of anger and racism that is still prevalent in many parts of America. There is also a lot of anger exhibited by the character played by Selma. She provides the necessary impetus and impact to create a revolutionary idea for the first part of the film called Fiction. She is put through a lot before she can actually come to terms with herself and to the potentiality of writing itself. It ends with a clever line “a beginning, middle and an ending”

The next part is called Non Fiction and derives from much of the exploitation that goes into this genre of cinema. The film is a more of a commentary on what happens when is cinema is put in the wrong hands. If cinema is made people who themselves have felt the restrains of the society there can be a lot of mockery which is not the order of the day. It talks about a documentary film maker who never wanted his film to be exploitation but it turns into something else. He goes to Fairview high school and shoots a documentary on a family who are the typical dysfunctional type. The new American cliché soon to die soon guess. There have been so many movies on this so director goes about in a more direct way. He uses more of a documentary approach to bring about aspects of the family that are very natural and sadly funny. But after you begin to question why the hell are you laughing at something so real and affecting. By the end of the movie I m pretty sure might think twice before seeing some of those quirky TV shows having several dysfunctional families. But storytelling has still very beautiful and compelling stories to tell. Stories that sure to make you think but might turn out to be a fun affair for some.

With The Dark Knight set to hit the Los Angeles press junket circuit this weekend, reporters, bloggers and webmasters are just a few days away from finally getting a full look at Heath Ledger as the Joker. Those participating in the TV interview portion of the event will watch the film Thursday, June 26th (U.S.-Canada reporters) and Friday, June 27th (international folks), while print and online journalists attending the Sunday press conferences must wait until Saturday, June 28th.

What this means of course is that within a few days, the Ledger-deserves-an-Oscar-nomination buzz will burst onto the World Wide Web, along with a discussion of his chances of actually winning the statuette. Helping the Ledger cause is the fact that Johnny Depp can get nominated for a character such as Captain Jack Sparrow, as he was for 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. On the other hand, even though Jack Nicholson set the Joker standard in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, he was not nominated.

One possible scenario is that Ledger fails to get nominated for the Best Supporting Actor category but receives some sort of posthumous Honorary Award. If so, this would align the Australian actor with fellow onscreen bad guy Edward G. Robinson who, after being selected for similar 1973 recognition, died on January 26th, 2004 just two months ahead of the ceremony.

In the end, one of the most influential proponents of Ledger’s awards worthiness may turn out to be two-time Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winner Sir Michael Caine. From a posting on his official website shared soon after Caine completed work on The Dark Knight to no doubt more of the same post-junket (he is not scheduled to participate in this weekend’s event), the elder actor statesman of the film has been generous with superlative praise.

Then there is “Staff Writer,” the author of what as far as I can tell is the first published review of The Dark Knight. Raving this past weekend on “Europe’s largest gay news website,” UK’s Pink News, SW calls Ledger’s performance as the Joker “the best of his career” and one that allows him to “dominate the film” and “heighten the sense of a great actor lost.”

So there you have it, an anonymous author – no doubt keeping his or her byline as such to avoid the wrath of Warner Bros. for reviewing a July 18th release on June 21st - cutting the red ribbon on the Ledger fanfare though stopping short of dropping the “O” word. But have no fear; soon enough, others will be blaring out that message above Beverly Hills as radiantly as the Mayor of Gotham City has been known to beckon the Caped Crusader.

Source Film Stew

Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law

Directed By: Steven Spielberg

It will take very little to immerse yourself in this world where the humans and robots have learned to co exist. It is the beginning of the new age where man is about to give Robots their dreams and hope. But in order to start this process they let a child to have a chance to dream. It begins as a simple experiment on a robot named David. But he might be our answers of playing God. A theme many film makers have tried to explore at several stages of their lives. But just imagine a film that lived in the mind of the Late Kubrick directed by the infectious Steven Spielberg. You probably getting one of the closest human accounts of a robot.

The film like the work of earlier Kubrick movies takes its time to grow on the audience. It just builds up to an ending of extroadinary human nature. But will David be mans final answer to many of the questions posed by him. Will he ever be able to create life? Will any other race be able to do that before us? These are age old questions but answered with such dexterity in this beautiful film. It is probably one of the greatest science fiction movies of our time.

The film begins with a boy Martin who lost his life and his parents not being able to reconcile with his loss. The father creates a robot after his death who begins to have emotions. But the fathers ulitmate goal is to make him dream. But dreams are far away from this boys mind. It has taken several of his kind to reach here. But a complex program has been fitted into his head to make him think otherwise. But this whole idea of dreaming is done in a very Disney sort of fashion indirectly poking fun at them. David begins to run astray to find out an ice princess that will change him into a human. But to help him go about this adventure he has a friend played by the immensely talented Jude Law. He brings a twitching brightness to the whole franchise. He approaches the role of a womanizer in an untimely animalistic fashion. He is only driven to only one goal of making his women happy. He encounters David and feels something unusual about his whole thinking process and is somewhat drawn to him. It makes him think and follow this kid robot.

There are images of robot carnage everywhere around the film. But it is the end of the film that gives us so many revelation that genuinely tear jerking. It almost makes you feel why Spielberg was so fascinated by this project and wanted to find an end that is more touching than words can describe it. It leaves us with alot more breath on our noses and a chance of watching something distinctively creative.

Cast: Franka Potente (Sissi), Benno Furmann (Bodo)
Directed by: Tom Tyker
Langauge: German
Release date: April 2001

The role of fate and chance in everyday lives has been a favorite muse for directors during the past decade or so. Director Tom Tyker chooses not to utilize the multiple, interconnecting storylines which is a seeming staple for any exploration of the genre. (He is the creator of the kinetic art-house hit Run, Lola, Run and the curiously fascinating Perfume: The story of a murderer) Why? Because he just wants to tell a love story.

Two lonely souls, who happen to collide violently and bounce off initially in their pre-ordained directions. Only to hurtle into each other again and again and again. The coincidences might have seemed contrived or pretentious in another movie. But Franka Potente’s luminous performance pulled me in. And then Twyker’s refusal to let in any kind of cliché or semblance of predictability kept me riveted for the length of the fascinating journey.

Sissi is a nurse in a psychiatric asylum. She is devoted to her patients and has developed an intimate association with them. Her life revolves around taking care of them. She is painfully shy. Also there is something of a child’s simplicity and conviction in her. She doesn’t operate by the usual norms of common sense or morality. Bodo playing the warrior to Sissi’s princess is a violent man, haunted by a tragedy from his past. He spends his life trapped in that moment, passively floating along the currents.

The movie kick starts with a horrible accident. Sissi is run over by a truck, trapped beneath it, struggling to breathe. Bodo takes refuge below the same truck, trying to escape his pursuers. He performs an impromptu tracheotomy and saves her life. And disappears, leaving behind a button from his coat in Sissi’s hand. Twyker imparts this entire bloody sequence with a strange hypnotic beauty. Once Sissi recovers, she finds that her life can’t be the same again. More accurately, she believes that she can’t let it be that way. She sets out to find Bodo. But Bodo is not yet ready to let anyone step into the void inside of him. And Sissi is not prepared to let go.

Soon they encounter each other during a bank robbery. As with most foolproof heist plans, this one too goes wrong. From here on, Sissi’s path gets inextricably intertwined with Bodo’s. Was it destiny or was it the logical consequence of the choices they made at crucial junctures? Probably both. Now, they are on the run from the law. For Sissi it is a quest for the new life she believes lies ahead. And she pulls Bodo along.

The gorgeous cinematography and symbology turns this unconventional romance into a contemporary redemptive fable, wrapped within layers of surrealism. Go ahead and indulge yourself in this dazzling reverie.

A film that has a mind of its own seldom comes our way. It is so absurd like the title I gave it yet very touching. The real Charlie almost exists in each of the characters surveying the grounds of each of them and taking them through journeys that his mind wishes to go.

Does the movie really need an ending or are there several unwritten ending at various places in this movie?

It takes ones tired senses to understand the depths of the images he flourishes on the screen. The mind of a human being is very non-linearly framed it scrapes at various junctures telling us some signs of undeniable exquisite beauty. This is how hard Chauffman has made it to review this truly remarkable film. Chauffman captures all the signs we see only in dreams and makes them into flakes of snow and throw it at all of us. This film makes the writer in each of us to explore our minds.

There are characters we will never be able to forget Clementine for instances takes us through several emotional journeys we fall in love with her instantly. All of will never forget Jim whose restrained emotions are things of modern acting techniques. The combination he creates with the writer makes to do with some of the most beautiful moments in this film. Jim Carrey only uses his face for some physical relief almost as if he is stuck in the character so much that his face needs to breathe. There are small hints of what is about to come but we are still dogged with the question whether they will ever come together.

After seeing the movie I wanted to write a book with a lot of spaces and very little letters to describe my own life. Just pausing in for some devastating dots but alas it might just work for a self read. When the characters begin to loose their minds they turn into lyrical souls programmed only by the fertile mind of Charlie with blots of incidents. Spike also tries to bring a certain competition with the writer but almost fails yet brings in his own customary music video images taking cinema to a place only very few want to go. There will never again a movie where a messy love story almost takes our breath away with the dreams these two people share or the moments they want to forget but we will never.

The arrival of “Full Grown Men” in limited release this week marks a belated emergence for a film not unlike the delayed maturity of the film’s downtrodden protagonist. Directed by David Munro, “Full Grown Men” (the winner of this year’s indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems audience award, sponsored by Sundance Channel and presented by The New York Times and Emerging Pictures) tracks the psychological progress of Alby (Matt McGrath), a thirty-year-old stargazer woefully nostalgic for his salad days. Abandoning his wife before the opening credits, Alby finds his old childhood pal Elias (Judah Friedlander of “30 Rock”) and together they take a road trip that allows both to work through their various neuroses.

Brightly contemplative with wholly believable character arcs, “Full Grown Men” displays a rare form of accessibility in its comedic construction. The character have credible motivations, allowing the story to address a real issue without condescending to it. Munro spoke with indieWIRE about the long two years he spent trying to get the film into theaters, and why he thinks it deserves to be there.

iW: What expectations did you have as far as getting your film noticed on the festival circuit?

Our hopes dovetailed with the way market has gone for films like ours. When I went to film school in the nineties, I met all these people who were making movies and getting them sold. By the time I got a chance to direct my own movie, the landscape had changed so much in terms of sales. That became increasingly apparent as we had success but were unable to sell the film. After we premiered at Tribeca (in 2006), a lot of industry people saw the movie there and liked it. It was a hard movie to get a consensus on. The way things have gone, it’s almost like Hollywood-lite: Unless you have bankable stars or some other kind of marketing hook, it’s pretty clear that all the specialty studios have become so risk-immersed that they can’t even consider a movie like ours, even if they love it. I can’t tell you how many people said, “We’d have to put a million dollars on your movie just to create some kind of awareness for it.”

iW: So what kept you going?

We believed in the movie, so we kept making sure no stone was unturned. We had an industry screening in L.A., and we kept going out to festivals, and we kept changing our marketing approach and how we positioned the film: Different posters, eight different synopses and log lines. At some point, about a year into our festival run, we started talking about some sort of self-release, and our investors were supportive of that. They understood how things were. That was right around the time (Emerging Pictures CEO) Ira (Deutchman) contacted us and said he wanted it in his film series. We were the last film chosen for that. In so many ways, we feel like we were the last person at the dance to get picked up.

iW: You don’t have huge stars in the film, but Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris and Judah Friedlander are certainly known for their film and television work. That must have helped on some level.

Yeah, on some level. We would say, “Come on! Amy Sedaris has a huge, rabid fan base!” And they would go, “Really? How did ‘Strangers with Candy’ do at the box office?” You’re still talking about people who have more cult appeal than mainstream cross-over appeal. What constitutes a name has changed a lot, too. iW: How important was the support of the community in the film’s progress?

We definitely take a lot of pride in the fact that what ultimately helped us was critics and audiences. I would hope that we’re smarter enough to know if people didn’t like the film and we were flogging a dead horse. From festival to festival, we saw how audiences responded, and people at Q&As going, “Why don’t you have distribution?” Then we got these great reviews.

iW: You started out on the festival circuit the same year as Little Miss Sunshine, a quasi-independent film that became a major hit. Both movies are bittersweet, but yours does a better job of creating that tone.

We feel like we succeeded at that. If it had been a laugh-out-loud, or just outwardly quirky and weird, like “Napoleon Dynamite” or something, it would have helped. Greg Kinnear and Steve Carell helped a lot in the case of “Little Miss Sunshine.” When Fox Searchlight bought that movie, they really marketed it like a big movie. Those yellow posters were everywhere.

Cast: Leslie Cheung (Yuddy), Maggie Cheung (Su Li-Zhen), Carina Lau (Leung Fung-Ying/ Mimi), Andy Lau (Tide), Jacky Cheung (Zeb), Rebecca Pan (Tik-Wa Poon)
Directed by: Wong Kar Wai
Release Date: March 1991

Each shot composed like a fluid painting of motions, diffuse colors and silhouettes. Timeless themes of failed love, subterranean yearnings and memories. Wong Kar Wai had perfected his incandescent poetic sensibility in his second movie itself. Well…almost. Days of being wild is a precursor to Chungking Express and In the mood for love. As in these later works, here too we find handsome, lonely characters walking through the neon lit streets and alleys of 1960s Hong-Kong, passing through light and shadow in old apartments. In a constant all-consuming quest for fulfillment.

The movie opens with Yuddy casually strolling into the stadium refreshments counter. Su is standing behind the counter. Waif-like. With hair falling all over her face, looking vulnerable and innocently beautiful. Yuddy tells her that she would see him in her dreams that night. She doesn’t. Because she’s unable to sleep. A day later, he tells her to look at his watch for one minute and announces that he is going to remember that minute forever because of her. Su falls for him…hard. But Yuddy is an inveterate Casanova. Brought up by a former high class escort, the only thing he cares about is finding out the identity of his biological mother. Which his foster mother refuses to reveal. It’s almost as if to take his mind off his desperation he seduces women. Only to leave them leave them stranded and broken by the wayside.

Leslie Cheung invests the character of Yuddy with an irresistible melancholic nonchalance. His eyes are permanently clouded by an intense lost look. His self-destructive violent streak rounds up his charismatic persona.

Soon, he has moved on to the lively, vivacious Mimi. Unlike Su, she is well-aware of her charms and knows how to use them. But with Yuddy, after the first night itself, she’s trapped. She’s as helpless as a flightless bird. She lives in constant apprehension of losing him. And Su? She keeps on coming back to Yuddy’s house each night. And sitting on a bench outside. Each time promising herself that this would be the last night. A sympathetic policeman (Andy Lau) patrolling the area helps her to endure the long, interminable minutes and hours. One night as Su’s leaving, the policeman realizes that this is really the last night. In a haunting scene, we see him still walking the streets on his daily beat. And stopping for a while each time he passes the phone booth. Waiting for her call. Though he knows that it’s never going to come.

At the same time, Yuddy’s roguish friend, Zeb is falling in love with Mimi. In spite of Mimi’s half-joking warning to be careful about the same.

Towards the end, there is shootout in a station restaurant. The device is sort of forced. It’s used to bring about a sense of closure. But who cares about such trivial flaws when your senses have been overpowered by Christopher Doyle’s masterful cinematography. (I forgot to mention that this was their first collaboration.)

Wong Kar-Wai entirely eschews the traditional three act structure of storytelling. Here there is no conflict between form and content. Because form itself is the content.

In his world, lives are ruled by the inscrutable whims of time. For his characters, romance is an inescapable malaise. Bringing moments of bliss followed by an eternity of anguish. For us, the audience, it is an opportunity to see an artist discovering his vision. And irreverently reinventing the cinematic language.

Terrance Malick has not been in the news for quite sometime. But i guess its for all the right reasons. He was recently seen shooting in Houston for his new movie Tree of Life. Sunning by the pool Sunday at the Four Seasons, Penn did not go unnoticed by fans, once discovered, the film star allegedly quickly ducked indoors. Pitt was also seen shooting close to the Houston Museum of Natural Science some of the scenes for the movie. There is not much written about what the film is about. But we have some of the news regarding what the film might encompass.

Another shooting area Smithville has returned to normal. The cast and crew of Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” wrapped up the 1940’s-1960s portion of the ambitious film and are off to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah after a couple days filming in Houston.

Later, the film will shoot in Iceland, of all places. These locations suggest that “Tree of Life,” starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, is the film Malick wrote in the late ’70s after making “Days of Heaven.”

Originally titled “Q,” the movie starts in prehistoric times and ends in the far future, although the bulk of the film follows a family (Pitt as father and Jessica Chastain as mother of three boys) from 1947 through 1968. Most of the filming took place at 709 Burleson St., where the title tree remains.

There also news that the film has totally wrapped up shooting and is in the final post production stages. It is probably releasing next year and it will mark a see of change for the directors style.

Terrence has also been in the news for his joint venture with Robert Redford called The Unforseen. THE UNFORESEEN directed by Laura Dunn, It chronicles the story of an eager, ambitious Texan named Gary Bradley who aims to put his stamp on the land. That means he’ll play God, pummeling the environment into submission in the name of development. The heroes and villains in this story are clearly defined, and the filmmakers’ sympathies are obviously with the environmentalists :- the developers are cancer carriers here. But the film, which sometimes covers too much ground, plays its hand by about the 75-minute mark.

I hope you guys are wating with bated breath for the release of the trailer. We will post it as soon as we get word of it.

Directed by: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes

Its is a case of a film which thrives on reiteration with tone and placing. There is a weird sense that this film oozes with that makes it one of the new wave thrillers of our generation. At the helm of the project is the uncanny Colin Farell and the voice over of the sublime Ralph Fiennes.

The film is an anti tourist film. I just don’t know how did they get away with that. They lambaste the place for all its fairy tale like scenes recreating something that is truly beautiful to watch. But why all this distaste on the part of the characters. I haven’t even drawn a character sketch to let you know about the sourness. The men in this are all contract killers who are from Dublin with all their cocky accents. They end up in Bruges for reasons only known to their employer. The two men Ken and Ray are sent to Bruges after a shootout gone wrong. It gives them an opportunity to bask in the glory of this place. But these men are here to scoff and feel they are stuck in a cage of beauty.

It doesnt take long for the plot to turn over its heads in unexpected turns. This taut thriller is beaming with some unusual clever dialog and tone. One of my personal favorites and I am sure many of you will have a liking to several others is ” Your a fucking inanimate object”. The dialog is mouthed by the cleverly conniving Ralph Fiennes. His voice in the whole movie is really unusual and stems from a rage that is part of his business.

But this film is filled with some amazing acting pieces by the accidental actor Colin Farell. He carries the whole movie with his eyes and his affecting high pitch. This is not a movie to go home crying or delving about. The whole film is meant for only one thing intelligent entertainment. But it takes pride by the use of a repetitive technique that is common in the Irish language. Bendan Gleeson (Gangs of New York) is the only one who gives a fair idea of where the plot is going. The whole film delves in the flesh of the dialog so it is not easy to take to this film at first. But the whole story pieces together everything with some remarkable visuals.

There are alot of mindless action for those who get their kicks out of it. But the ending is what sort of brought me down from the many peaks that this film had reached. It tries to be sublime in a film that was just firing bullets on the surface. It really didnt need that to make a mark on the minds of the critics. But it is a welcome fan for many Colin Farell fans whose career resembled an abnormal sine curve. It would take him another couple of these kind of movies to revive what he has lost.

HE is rusty, lipless, sub-literate and keeps company with garbage. Worse, he’s a “Hello, Dolly!” fan. This little robot, who goes by the name Wall-E — for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class — is also the newest face (not that he has one) of Pixar.

Andrew Stanton wrote and directed the almost-silent “Wall-E.”

Last year’s offering, “Ratatouille,” about a cartoon rat with Cordon Bleu aspirations, seemed like a hard sell. But Pixar may have outdone itself in the weird-premises department with “Wall-E,” a $180 million post-apocalyptic, near-silent robot love story inspired by Charlie Chaplin.

Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed the film, doesn’t care if the kiddies want to hug Wall-E or not when the movie comes out on Friday. “I never think about the audience,” he said. “If someone gives me a marketing report, I throw it away.”

Mr. Stanton, 42, sat in a Toronto hotel room this month, shaggy-haired and bearded, bouncing in his chair with a tween’s frenzied energy. In this way he seemed to embody the anti-corporate posture that is part of the Pixar mythology. When John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative executive, announced the company’s $7.4 billion acquisition by the Walt Disney Company in 2006, he did so in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Employees at the Pixar “campus” in Emeryville, Calif., ride scooters and play foosball. “It’s like a film school with no teachers,” Mr. Stanton said. “Everyone actually wants you to take risks.”

Such is the Pixar brand, or anti-brand: a multibillion dollar company that acts like a nerd hobbyist in a basement. But that balancing act is even tougher to pull off as a subsidiary of Disney, a company whose very name has been turned into a neologism — Disneyfication — for a kind of bland commercial aesthetic.

Perhaps to assure the public that nothing has changed under new ownership, an early trailer for “Wall-E” plays up Pixar’s carefree mystique. The teaser, narrated by Mr. Stanton, describes a 1994 lunch, when the central Pixar players were finishing “Toy Story,” the first feature-length CG animated film. Over lunch they sketched on napkins characters that would end up in “A Bug’s Life,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo.”

On one napkin a lonely robot emerged. “We said: ‘What if humanity left and some little robot got left on and kept doing the same thing forever?’ ” said Mr. Stanton, who joined Pixar in 1990 as its second animator and ninth employee. “That was the saddest character I’d ever heard of.”

“Wall-E” took a back seat to another project, a film Mr. Stanton wrote and directed about a fish father looking for his son: “Finding Nemo” (2003). It went on to earn $340 million domestically and $865 million worldwide. The day after the 2004 Academy Awards, in which Mr. Stanton won the Oscar for best animated feature, he went to work on “Wall-E,” forgoing a planned six-month vacation.

“We were always frustrated that people saw CG as a genre as opposed to just a medium that could tell any kind of story,” he said. “We felt like we widened the palette with ‘Toy Story,’ but then people unconsciously put CG back in a different box: ‘Well, it’s got to be irreverent, it’s got to have A-list actors, it’s got to have talking animals.’ ”

So Mr. Stanton took “Wall-E” to a more somber, less sassy place (though there is some sass of course). The film is set in 2700 on an uninhabitable Earth, a dystopia covered in towers of garbage. Mr. Stanton drew on films from science fiction’s golden age: “1968 to ’81,” he said, with a film geek’s specificity. Software imitated the film — mostly Panavision 70 millimeter — that gave movies like “2001” and “Blade Runner” their visual sweep. Casting Sigourney Weaver in one of a handful of speaking parts is a nod to “Alien.”

Wall-E, a generic robo-janitor, contentedly compacts trash into perfect cubes, until he’s shaken up by the appearance of an egg-shaped search robot named Eve. This high-tech, piano-key-smooth egg-bot has dropped from the sky, seeking a sign of life on Earth. Wall-E, who knows about love from a video of “Hello, Dolly!,” falls hard.

“Technically there have been romances in animation,” Mr. Stanton said, but does anyone care about them? Mr. Stanton loves a rhetorical question: “Why can’t you have a love story that just completely sweeps you up? It happens in other movies, why not animation?”

In “Wall-E,” a mega-corporation called Buy n’ Large has transported Earth’s populace to luxury space ships, where the obese human race moves around in robotic loungers, drinking super-size soft drinks, placated by television and robot servants. Environmental disaster; corporate takeover; a global psychological coma: “Wall-E” starts to seem like “An Inconvenient Cartoon.” Yet Mr. Stanton dismisses talk of an allegory.

“I was writing this thing so long ago, how could I have known what’s going on now?” he said. “As it was getting finished, the environment talk started to freak me out. I don’t have much of a political bent, and the last thing I want to do is preach. I just went with things that I felt were logical for a possible future and supported the point of my story, which was the premise that irrational love defeats life’s programming, and that the most robotic beings I’ve met are us.”

And is the ubiquitous, all-powerful Buy n’ Large a sly dig at Disney Pixar’s new corporate bedfellow? With a fervent head shake no, Mr. Stanton turns company man.

Through The Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind and the forthcoming Master of Space and Time, filmmaker Michel Gondry is examining the process of being creative.

Michel Gondry only recently realized it, but the idea for his latest surreal comedy Be Kind Rewind, new this weekend on DVD, started germinating nearly 30 years ago. The movie takes place just down the highway from Manhattan in Passaic, New Jersey in the here and now as Mos Def and Jack Black turn guerrilla filmmakers in a frantic attempt to replace a video store’s erased tapes with their singular remakes of Hollywood favorites like Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy. But for Gondry the story really begins thousands of miles away and a lifetime ago in France.

It was in 1980 that the Versailles native moved to Paris when he was just 17, to find a city littered with abandoned movie houses. Just like in the United States, the single screen theater gave way to the multiplex in the 1970s. But where most other people would see derelict buildings, the teenager saw possibilities.

“I was thinking that we can recycle one of those theaters and get people together to shoot their own film and they would pay to watch their own films,” Gondry recalls during a recent interview with FilmStew. “With the money they would collect, they would produce their next movie. It would be a completely self-sufficient system that would bypass the [industry]. I just realized that this is what the movie is about, to me.”

On one level, Be Kind Rewind - which made a modest $11.1 million domestically and another $17 million overseas - is a great big valentine to the movies. Gondry jokes that he chose Ghostbusters for one of the remakes in a bid to catch the attention of an ex-girlfriend who loved the 1984 sci-fi comedy.

“I thought maybe if I do this one, maybe she’s going to like me again,” he chuckles, adding that picking which films to remakes was based on their universal popularity. “They are iconic and everybody knows them and they are great movies. I mean, I love RoboCop, for instance.”

The remakes that Def and Black christen “sweded” delight customers who become so enamored with these Hollywood knockoffs that they become active participants in tackling new titles. And that is the filmmaker’s point. To him, Be Kind Rewind is not intended as the typically passive DVD-watching experience. Instead, the film is Gondry’s way of encouraging movie buffs to get off their duffs and pick up a camera.

“It’s more about making movies than watching movies, because the idea is they are making the movies themselves, so uniquely and so cheaply in a way that they become very special,” he avers. “So it’s more of a comment, make your own entertainment, and participate.”

“People tend to gather together to watch these kinds of films,” Gondry notes. “They watch it in a different way because they made it. I think that’s very important to me, the idea that people can reinforce the community by being creative together.”

Even Be Kind Rewind’s low-rent special effects are in service to Gondry’s message. He is not hostile to state-of-the-art effects. He points out that he has been known to use them, especially in his music videos. But both Be Kind Rewind and his last film, The Science of Sleep, are of an entirely different nature, a crafter’s dream in a sense with their emphasis on what magic such household items as paper, scissors, and glue can create.

“I like the idea that you can show people how things are make them think they can do it themselves,” Gondry enthuses. “Of course, heavy technology doesn’t allow that. I have a tendency to like low-key technology better.”

In a way, this do-it-yourself movie magic harks back to the 45-year-old’s first adventures in “filmmaking” when he was 12 or 13-years-old and he and his cousin would experiment with animation on flipbooks they constructed out of cash register rolls. It is another example he uses as he tries to demonstrate that a creative life is within everyone’s grasp.

Even the decision to weave the life of jazz great Fats Waller into Be Kind Rewind’s narrative is part of Gondry’s DIY message. A longtime fan, Gondry sees parallels between the straits the fictional video store and the surrounding impoverished community find themselves in and the desperate circumstances that Waller and his cohorts faced in the 1920s and ’30s, when people would throw rent parties to try to make it through another month. The parties were also contests of sorts as Waller and his fellow musicians would compete against one another there.

“I really liked this idea of how through difficulties, you bring the community together and you yourself develop your art,” Gondry says. “Those pianists became so good, because of the competition. It wasn’t like you do something and you become a star, because it plays on MTV. You have to be the best of the best to have any recognition in this music. I respect that.”

Currently, Gondry is collaborating on an animated project with his 16-year-old son Paul (Master of Space and Time). “He’s very unique and very funny and very violent in his drawing and his art, and everything that you think I should have stopped him from being in contact with, but I failed,” laughs the proud father. “He grew up watching Tex Avery, Tom and Jerry, Ren and Stimpy, SpongeBob, you mix all that, plus gangster movies with blood, that’s his universe.”

Ghost World’s Dan Clowes is writing the screenplay, which like Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep, is very much concerned with the creative life. “[It’s about a] dictator who runs a crazy world where hair is a source of energy and where people in jail are forced to create art and if their art is too good, they’re executed,” Gondry says. “The dictator doesn’t want anyone making art better than him.”

Four years after graduating from Kansas University, a pair of filmmakers finds themselves belatedly following in the footsteps of the 2007 Irish Oscar winner.

Even though Jeremy Osbern and Christopher Blunk started working on their low-low-budget movie musical Air right after graduating from Kansas University’s film program in 2004, it has taken four years and the calling in of every possible favor to get the movie made. After picking up the Best Feature Award at the recent Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee event, Air screened last night - Monday, June 16th - in Lawrence.

“Right now we are distributing it throughout the state of Kansas one city at a time,” Osbern tells the Lawrence Journal World. “This was so much a Kansas-made film. There were so many people in Kansas who helped us in so many ways, whether giving us financial help or loaning us an aquarium to put in the background of a scene.”

Air weaves together the stories of three different couples – a pair of widowed middle-agers, an aspiring rock singer and his gal, a parking lot attendant and his stunning companion – set to music composed by fellow former KU student Steve Unruh. Befitting a low-budget film enterprise, every instrument heard in the film’s 20 songs except for the brass section was also played by Unruh.

Since graduating from KU in 2004, Osbern and Blunk have been making a living in the commercials, industrial and documentary world via their company Through a Glass Productions. The Wichita Eagle dubbed Air as “very enjoyable,” while The Kansan went a step further and wrote that “it is, by far, one of the most well done musicals in a very long time.”

If a lifelong pattern holds true, it will only be in 2017 that the great reviews start pouring for Nicolas Roeg’s latest film Puffball.

Logically speaking, any filmmaker who manages to crank out a new feature-length movie at the ripe old age of 78 should receive some sort of exemption from being critically savaged. Perhaps a gentleman’s agreement that if a reviewer does not like the film, then that reviewer should gently move on rather than attack the cinema of a twilight septuagenarian (Roeg turns 80 in August).

But of course, that’s not the world we live in, and so when Puffball screened last fall at the Montreal and Toronto film festivals, critics variously described it as “surprisingly terrible,” “sludge,” “a misshapen whatsit” and “atrophied and arthritisized.” Does this bother the auteur responsible for such films as Performance, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Don’t Look Now? Not at all.

“It’s a strange thing with my films,” Roeg tells Ireland’s Evening Herald newspaper. “Mainly, good reviews have come about ten years after the films are made.”

Who knows, perhaps a decade from now, critics will take more kindly to the use - in this adapted tale of one small village woman’s cursed pregnancy (Kelly Reilly) - of a “Cervix cam,” which attempts to show the male orgasm from the point of view of the lead character’s insides. Puffball, which was filmed in Ireland, is scheduled to open in that country July 18th.