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Bitter Christmas review – grief, loss and artistic betrayal in Almodóvar’s film within a film

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Cannes film festival: Spaniard’s latest life-v-art auto-metafiction feels slightly muddled as he directs a director directing a director With its rich, warm, summery colours, nothing could surely be less bitter or less Christmassy than this film. It’s the latest from Cannes competition regular Pedro Almodóvar, partly set during Christmas; the female lead actually complains about the yuletide traffic at one stage. But there’s no tinsel or sleigh bells or shopping for presents. Like Die Hard, it eludes classification. It is another – which is to say, yet another – double-layered creation by Almodóvar, a kind of movie auto-metafiction of the sort that he has virtually invented, a life-v-art dialectical process that he is evidently unable to do without. Like the recent Pain and Glory , Bitter Christmas is a candidly personal movie, circling around ideas like grief, loss, the vampirism of art and the betrayal involved in basing fictional characters on real people. Perhaps by emphasising thi...
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The Job of Songs review – folk melodies and melancholia in rural Ireland

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Lila Schmitz’s documentary offers a candid look at Irish music and community struggles in a small Irish village known for its bar-room sessions That The Banshees of Inisherin may apparently be a documentary is the main takeaway of this swift but wide- and deep-ranging investigation into the musical community of Doolin, County Clare. It’s a truism to point out the absorption with the landscape in Irish folk music, and a certain attendant melancholia. But it’s hard not to go back to such ideas when one interviewee says of nearby tourist attraction the Cliffs of Moher: “Who wants to look over a big cliff? Unless you’re thinking of jumping?” Once a remote scrum of thatched cottages, Doolin is now on the tourist trail thanks to its uninterrupted tradition of bar-room sessions – in which all-comers are welcome to pitch in with whatever musical talent they have. The place seems to lie on a nexus of ley lines in time and space through which song and community irrepressibly well up. Christy B...
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‘Audiences don’t want to be challenged’: director Cristian Mungiu on exploring bigotry – and giving up film

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His Palme d’Or-winner explored abortion in his native Romania, and in RMN the director is tackling anti-immigrant sentiment head on. He explains why Europe should pay attention and whether cinema is dead “Let us mind our words, the west is watching,” says the local mayor, hoping to calm a worked-up crowd of Transylvanian villagers. But the villagers don’t mind their words. Gathered in a packed cultural centre to vent their anger about three Sri Lankans hired by the local bakery, they are angry at everything: the closure of the nearby mine; the villagers who have left for better-paid jobs in Germany and the workload in those jobs that remain; the west’s supposed assault on the nuclear family; the hypocritical European Union. “We got rid of the gypsies,” one irate man in the crowd bellows, “and now we fight over foreigners?” It’s just one scene from RMN , the new film by Cristian Mungiu , a Palme d’Or-winning director whose work has opened up his homeland Romania to the scrutinising g...
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SS Rajamouli set to present biopic on Father of Indian Cinema Dadasaheb Phalke, announces Made In India: “Our boys are ready and up for it”

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A day after reports suggested that filmmaker SS Rajamouli was set for his next big project, it turns out that he is presenting a biopic on the Father of Indian Cinema Dadasaheb Phalke. On the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi on Tuesday, the filmmaker took to his social media to announce Made In India, which will be presented by him and produced by Rajamouli’s son SS Karthikeya, along with Varun Gupta. The film will be directed by Jawaani Jaaneman fame Nitin Kakkar. The announcement teaser of Made in India had a tagline which said, “Indian cinema has witnessed many biopics. This is a biopic of Indian cinema. SS Rajamouli presents to you, Made in India.” Rajamouli wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “When I first heard the narration, it moved me emotionally like nothing else. Making a biopic is tough in itself, but conceiving one about the FATHER OF INDIAN CINEMA is even more challenging. Our boys are ready and up for it..:) With immense pride, Presenting MADE IN INDIA…” When I first heard the n...
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A Year in a Field review – calming, meditative film cycles through the Cornish seasons

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Christopher Morris filmed a field in southwest England for one year for a documentary that wants us to stop and think about the environment The title says it all: beginning at the winter solstice in 2020, academic and film-maker Christopher Morris filmed a barley field in west Cornwall for one year. A field. That’s it. For 86 minutes this thoughtful, meditative documentary reveals the comings and goings: sunsets, sunrises, the midnight frolics of bunnies, the odd crisp packet blowing in. It’s unlikely to be storming a multiplex near you – though the opening scene does feature the close-up of a corpse. The unfortunate creature in question however is a field mouse that appears – limbs present and correct – to have expired from natural causes. The film’s paciest action scene is a three-minute-plus sequence of slugs slithering across lichen on a standing stone. This eight-foot stone is more than 4,000 years old. “Carved by an alien civilisation – not from outer space, but outer time,” Mo...
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Fear the Night review – Neil LaBute on losing streak with atrocious home invasion thriller

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The director of In the Company of Men continues his run of terrible films with this awfully acted, ungripping drama In the most dismaying possible way, Neil LaBute has done it again. The dramatist and film-maker who gave us the 90s toxic masculinity classic In the Company of Men and the interesting and undervalued Samuel L Jackson thriller Lakeview Terrace in 2008, seems now to be going through a period of churning out exploitation content like a hack-for-hire. Last year we had the dismal revenge horror House of Darkness ; now it’s this terrible home invasion thriller, with awful acting, clunking dialogue cues and drearily ungripping action and suspense sequences, along with a ChatGPT-ish title. Maggie Q plays Tess, a military veteran who has seen action in Iraq and is now a recovering alcoholic struggling with a return to civilian life. She agrees to come to her sister’s bachelorette party (despite being out of place with all the girly types), and the bride-to-be has implausibly d...
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Ganapath: A Hero is Born unveils Kriti Sanon's raw and rugged avatar this Ganesh Chaturthi!

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Ganesh Chaturthi this year brings with it an electrifying cinematic revelation set to challenge our perception of the talented actress, Kriti Sanon. Ganapath: A Hero is Born, a mass entertainer starring the dynamic trio of Tiger Shroff, Kriti Sanon, and the legendary Amitabh Bachchan, is all set to transport audiences into a futuristic world. After the poster launch featuring Tiger Shroff sent waves of excitement through fans, the unveiling of Kriti Sanon's character look has taken the anticipation for the film to soaring heights. In her raw and rugged action-packed avatar, Kriti Sanon teases a transformation that promises to leave audiences spellbound. This thrilling glimpse assures viewers that Ganapath - A Hero is Born is destined to be a roller-coaster ride, packed with adrenaline-pumping action.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Pooja Entertainment (@pooja_ent) One of the driving factors behind the growing excitement for this futuristic action thriller...
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Vicky Kaushal shares that Katrina Kaif is his “biggest and most brutal critic”; says, “She is a straight bullet”

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Bollywood actor Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif tied the knot in 2021, marking a significant moment in their relationship. In a recent conversation, Vicky, who hails from a nuclear family, shared insights into his life with Katrina, who comes from a large family of six sisters and a brother. The actor expressed his admiration for Katrina's family, describing them as down-to-earth and enjoyable company. Talking to India Today, Vicky said, “It's great, they are fun people and they are as normal as any other family, very loving people. I always love hanging out with them, whenever that opportunity comes. When it's a full house, all the siblings get together, and the entire family comes together, it's like a party.” During the conversation, the actor candidly revealed that Katrina Kaif serves as his most honest and uncompromising critic. He explained, “Katrina is my biggest critic, she is the most brutal critic. My parents also tell me the truth about what was good or bad,...
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Literary satire American Fiction takes Toronto film festival’s top award

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Cord Jefferson’s story of a novelist (Jeffrey Wright) grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers is now practically guaranteed serious Oscar consideration American Fiction, the literary satire starring Jeffrey Wright as a novelist grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers, has won the Toronto international film festival’s influential People’s Choice award, a result that practically guarantees it serious Oscar consideration and contention for major awards. Described by the Guardian as “hilarious and withering” , American Fiction triumphed over pre-festival favourites such as Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers and Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Boy and the Heron , which were named the runners-up. It is written and directed by Cord Jefferson, a credited writer on TV shows including The Good Place, Watchmen and Station Eleven, and now making his feature directing debut. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/...
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The Tower review – apocalyptic lockdown horror goes into the dark, deadly void

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This tale of a tower block enveloped in nothingness, and the terrible things its residents do to survive, starts grim and just gets grimmer … and grimmer At the beginning of this remorselessly bleak apocalyptic nightmare, the residents of a tower block in Paris wake up to find the world outside has disappeared. “There is no outdoors,” marvels one man. In its place is a vast black nothingness that swallows up everything and anyone that enters it. About five minutes in, you might start thinking about the plot holes, which feel as gaping as the void’s blackness. Such as, how is that the flats still have electricity? What is making the TVs flicker like it’s the 1980s? Why hasn’t the building been sucked into the abyss? Actually, these questions are a pleasant distraction from the film’s grim vision of how low humanity can sink. Its writer and director, the novelist and film-maker Guillaume Nicloux, clearly subscribes to a Hobbesian view that, in the event of society breaking down, we’ll ...
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Junaid Khan and Sai Pallavi starrer to be set in Sapporo, Japan

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Aamir Khan’s son, Junaid, made his acting debut with theatre in August 2017, having worked for over 6 years in the field and while he has made a mark there with lots of impressive work over the years, he is all set to make his screen debut very soon with Yash Raj Films’ Maharaj, which was announced during the press conference of Netflix. Meanwhile, readers may recall that Bollywood Hungama recently broke the news of him having one other film in the lineup where he will star opposite Sai Pallavi. A source close to the film reveals, “Junaid accompanied the team of his next film, an untitled love story in which he will star with Sai Pallavi under the direction of Sunil Pandey, to the city of Sapporo in Japan. The team had gone to do a recce for the film in the works as the preps for the same have begun. It is a love story set in the scenic beauty of this city, Sapporo which has never before been shown in Indian cinema, so there’s going to be something really different in that aspect, in ...
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