Tim Roth To Exec Produce British Dance Feature ‘Hilda’; Premieres At Raindance Film Festival

By Peter White. Photo: Odds On. Source: deadline.com

The film, which is directed by Rishi Pelham, stars Megan Purvis (The Audition), newcomer Yasmin Al-Khudhairi, Tessa Hatchet, Catherine Adams (Fears), Stanley Rawlings (Boiling Point) and Alex Humes (Britannia).

Hilda is a gritty drama set in modern-day London. Nearing her final year of school, Hilda must contend with the abandonment of her parents and the dependency of young siblings. With fiery determination locked behind a deadpan stoicism, Hilda depends on dance to keep the enclosing chaos at bay. Nassim Mniai and Tomos Roberts produce.

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The Lion’s Path

By Marc Savlov. Photo: Funfilm. Source: austinchronicle.com

This debut feature from Québecoise director Stéphan Beaudoin gets high marks for its excellent ensemble cast and its clever and occasionally alarming portrait of a communal psychotherapy group in rural Canada and the manipulative mind games that go on there.

In that regard, it’s a second cousin/cousine of sorts to David Cronenberg’s The Brood, although audience members hoping for the therapeutic and gore-drenched histrionics of Oliver Reed’s Dr. Hal Raglan will come away disappointed;

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‘Love,’ Gaspar Noé’s Romance Told Through Sex

By Jeannette Catsoulis. Photo: Alchemy. Source: nytimes.com

“Love,” the fourth, and easily the least unsettling, feature from the Argentine director Gaspar Noé, has but one goal: To tell the story of a romance entirely through sex. This ambition may be straightforward, but it is far from simple, as will become abundantly clear if you closely monitor your responses to its unsimulated explicitness.

You’ll have plenty of opportunity, as Mr. Noé gets down to business immediately with an interlude of mutual masturbation that introduces Murphy (Karl Glusman), an American film student living in Paris, and his lover, Electra (Aomi Muyock).

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Patrick Bernatchez: Absurd scenarios and meditations on time

By John Pohl. Photo: Patrick Bernatchez. Source: montrealgazette.com

[…]
In the film Lost in Time, the watch is discovered buried in an Arctic landscape. The film opens with a man on horseback, whose costume suggests both a knight and an astronaut, a scene borrowed from Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. Lost in Time includes Bach’s Goldberg variations, which Gould interpreted.

Bernatchez sees the film as a confrontation between subconscious urges and the conscious mind that tries to inhibit them. The horse, which represents instinct, leaves on its own when it disagrees with the rational man. Both freeze, but it’s the horse that is reborn when a block of ice is found and thawed out.

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TIFF 2015 to open with Jake Gyllenhaal in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition

By The Canadian Press. Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images. Source: cbc.ca

Quebec director’s Jean-Marc Vallée’s collaboration with Jake Gyllenhaal, an outer space thriller starring Matt Damon and a gangster film topped by Johnny Depp are among the films heading to the Toronto International Film Festival this September.
[…]
Gyllenhaal stars in Demolition, Vallée’s first movie since the Oscar-nominated Wild. The film will open the festival.

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Moved by music: François Girard reunites his twin passions in Boychoir

By T’Cha Dunlevy. Photo: Peter McCabe. Source: montrealgazette.com

An underdressed François Girard stood on the fire escape of his immaculate St-Laurent Blvd. loft on a frigid Monday afternoon, taking hauls off a cigarette as he chatted freely with the Montreal Gazette photographer about the virtues of Nikon vs. Canon cameras and changing tides in the realm of cultural criticism.
[…]
Music is a guiding light in Girard’s work, from his 1993 breakthrough Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould to the Oscar-winning (best original score) The Red Violin (1998) and now Boychoir, his first feature in eight years, starring Dustin Hoffman as a no-nonsense elite children’s choir director who pushes a rebellious young charge to be all he can be.

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Jean-Marc Vallée wins at Hollywood Film Awards

By Lindsey Bahr. Photo: PC/Jordan Strauss. Source: radio-canada.ca

About halfway through the first televised Hollywood Film Awards, Chris Rock took the stage to accept a trophy for his film Top Five. ”Wow, do you feel the excitement in the room?” he asked facetiously, eliciting the first real laughter of the night from an otherwise restrained audience.
[…]
Eddie Redmayne was honoured for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Reese Witherspoon presented an award to her Wild director, Quebec’s Jean-Marc Vallée.

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Toronto Film Review: ‘Boychoir’

By Peter Debruge. Photo: George Pimentel. Source: variety.com

The voices are the stars, while Dustin Hoffman is just along to support the gifted preteen sopranos in “Boychoir.” A welcome return to feature filmmaking by “The Red Violin” director Francois Girard, this relatively by-the-numbers boarding-school drama distinguishes itself through song, thanks to the exceptional musical talents of the American Boychoir School, preteen sopranos whose otherworldly talent lasts for only a few years at most. The mystery of where that ability comes from, coupled with the urgency to share it, lends urgency to an otherwise generic coming-of-ager sure to delight those seeking spiritually grounded, emotionally uplifting entertainment.

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GSCA 2014 Achievement Awards: Jerusalem wins Best Film and Best Cinematography

By GSCA. Photo: James Hyder. Source: giantscreencinema.com

The GSCA 2014 Achievement Awards were presented the evening of September 20 at the Ontario Science Centre during the opening reception of the GSCA 2014 International Conference and Trade Show. IMAX Corporation also presented its Maximum Image Awards that evening. Congratulations to the following award recipients:

Best Film, Short Subject
Best Cinematography
Jerusalem
A National Geographic Entertainment Presentation of a Cosmic Picture/Arcane Pictures Film. Written and directed by Daniel Ferguson. Produced by Taran Davies, George Duffield, and Daniel Ferguson. Executive Producers Jake Eberts and Dominic Cunninham-Reid.
Reed Smoot, Director of Photography. Ron Goodman, Director of Aerial Photography. Peter H. Chang & Dustin Farrell, Time Lapse DOPs and additional cinematography.

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Reese Witherspoon’s ‘Wild’ Premieres to Oscar Buzz in Telluride

By Tim Gray. Photo: Reese Witherspoon Instagram. Source: variety.com

Fox Searchlight’s world premiere of “Wild,” starring Reese Witherspoon, kicked off the 41st Telluride Film Festival on Friday, screening to a packed Chuck Jones theater audience that included Witherspoon, co-star Laura Dern, director Jean-Marc Vallee and surprise guest Oprah Winfrey.

The pre-screening buzz on the adventure drama was all about Witherspoon. It was deserved: she offers a tour de force performance that moves her solidly into the Oscar race in the best actress category, where she last won in 2006 for “Walk the Line.” But the film should compete in many other categories, including supporting actress for Dern, who plays Witherspoon’s mother.

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