2009 |
2008
10 articles from 2009
Halfway House: Sell it to the Highest Bidder
19 December 2009 9:14 AM, PST
| FilmExperience
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Halfway through the day freeze a movie halfway through. What do we see?
I haven't done a bang up job keeping track of Olivier Assayas career. Quelle dommage. I had loved two of three films of his that I'd seen. Clean, about the misadventures of a recovering addict rock star (Maggie Cheung) did little for me but the diamond hard Demonlover and the layered Irma Vep (also with Cheung) both thrilled me. After numerous reader pleas, and the not so minor matter of those Nyfcc and Lafca foreign film prizes, I finally got around to L'heure d'été / Summer Hours (2009). It's three for four now.
51 minutes into Summer Hours, pragmatism triumphs over sentiment.
Halfway through this rich film, the three heirs to a family fortune decide to sell all of their newly departed mother's estate. It's largely composed of furniture, art and real estate. Their decision may make absolute real-life sense but -- Metaphor Alert!
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- NATHANIEL R
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Cinetic Gears Up to Distribute Arthouse Fare Online and On Demand
3 September 2009 5:32 PM, PDT
| Cinematical
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Movie blogging is cool and all, but I would argue that cinema's best use of the Internet is making rare fare available to the audience at large. That's slowly but surely starting to happen, and Crm (Cinetic Rights Management) is adding to the pile with a new arthouse deal. Teaming up with a bunch of arthouse film distributors, Crm will slip content online through their FilmBuff label, hitting desinations like iTunes and Hulu.
The plan is to make "award-winning and critically acclaimed films" available, and they've listed four titles thus far. There's Ti West's Trigger Man (Scott called it a "watchable curiosity"), Olivier Assayas' Demonlover (Jeffrey M. Anderson called it a "hopped-up, arty cover for a standard issue Hollywood thriller"), Mike Akel's Chalk (Jette said it was "a great illustration of how a movie can truly blossom with the right crowd"), and Margaret Brown's doc The Order of Myths
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- Monika Bartyzel
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Summer Hours (review)
18 June 2009 7:59 AM, PDT
| www.flickfilosopher.com
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What is the value of stuff? Perhaps it’s not at all paradoxical that as some of us begin to reject the rampant consumerism into which our culture has descended, the idea that at least some of our crap is not crap will start to see more play. As in writer-director Olivier Assayas’ (Demonlover) heartbreaking meditation on the worth of our things, which explicitly rejects the idea that made-in-China, made-to-be-scraped junk is worth our sentiment while embracing with melancholy bittersweetness the notion that even very pricey objets -- like, say, an art vase -- are priceless only in what they mean to us as everyday items, for the memories attached to them. After the death of their mother (Edith Scob: Bon Voyage), three siblings (Juliette Binoche [Dan in Real Life], Charles Berling, and Jérémie Renier [In Bruges]) face the daunting prospects of what to do with her rambling cottage in the French countryside, which is chock
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- MaryAnn Johanson
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Film: Review: Summer Hours
14 May 2009 12:03 PM, PDT
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Olivier Assayas has explored multiple genres and styles during his 20-odd years as a director, but he’s best identified with flashy genre deconstructions like Irma Vep, Demonlover, and Boarding Gate. The Assayas of those films is nowhere in sight in Summer Hours, a soft, chatty drama about a well-off, seemingly happy family that discovers hidden rifts once they lose beloved matriarch Edith Scob. Most of Summer Hours’ stylistic flourishes and emotional punch are limited to two scenes set at Scob’s sprawling country estate. The first, which opens the film, has Scob’s grown children enjoying what turns out
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Family Values
14 May 2009 11:09 AM, PDT
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A chamber piece resolutely devoid of flash and glitter, "Summer Hours" isn't a film one would have anticipated from the director of such disparate provocations as "Irma Vep," "Clean," Demonlover" and "Boarding Gate." Then again, Olivier Assayas' new release is subtly provocative in its own right. Its willingness to lay out ideas about art and life in the age of globalization makes it his biggest dare yet. What distinguishes this Assayas movie from the others is the manner with which it sustains an unspoiled blend of the intimately emotional with the unequivocally intellectual. The cumulative strengths of "Summer Hours" as a philosophic elegy and a generational saga are powerful enough to throw everything else Assayas has done in illuminated relief.
The movie's first summer dream is an idyllic one, with children playing on the grounds of an old country house whose widowed owner Hélène (Edith Scob) is celebrating her
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- Gene Seymour
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"Summer Hours" review - French master Olivier Assayas reaches new heights.
14 May 2009
| Movie Jungle
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"Summer Hours" review
By Steve Ramos, Writer
____________________________________
French master Olivier Assayas reaches new heights with family drama 'Summer Hours'
For French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, moving to the highest levels of filmmaking excellence, after 23 years of directing, involves making a subtle and somewhat intimate family drama distinctly different from his sexy thrillers “Demonlover” and “Boarding Gate” and his hip movie- about-making-movies “Irma Vep,” the film that earned him international acclaim in 1996.
“Summer Hours,” (“Heure d’été”) perhaps the closest Assayas will ever come to an Anton Chekhov-like drama, showcases the storytelling talents of the former writer for France’s “Cahiers du Cinema” and veteran director. Lyrical, well told (Clémentine Schaeffer supplied the script) and beautifully shot (cameraman Eric Gautier first worked with Assayas on “Irma Vep”), “Summer Hours” is a mature drama about children, parents and the value they place on past experiences and the family home. It
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"Summer Hours" review - French master Olivier Assayas reaches new heights.
14 May 2009 12:32 AM, PDT
| Movie Jungle
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French master Olivier Assayas reaches new heights with family drama 'Summer Hours'
For French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, moving to the highest levels of filmmaking excellence, after 23 years of directing, involves making a subtle and somewhat intimate family drama distinctly different from his sexy thrillers “Demonlover” and “Boarding Gate” and his hip movie- about-making-movies “Irma Vep,” the film that earned him international acclaim in 1996.
“Summer Hours,” (“Heure d’été”) perhaps the closest Assayas will ever come to an Anton Chekhov-like drama, showcases the storytelling talents of the former writer for France’s “Cahiers du Cinema” and veteran director. Lyrical, well told (Clémentine Schaeffer supplied the script) and beautifully shot (cameraman Eric Gautier first worked with Assayas on “Irma Vep”), “Summer Hours” is a mature drama about children, parents and the value they place on past experiences and the family home. It’s not Assayas’ first movie about families
»
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"Summer Hours" review - French master Olivier Assayas reaches new heights.
14 May 2009 12:32 AM, PDT
| Movie Jungle
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»
French master Olivier Assayas reaches new heights with family drama 'Summer Hours'
For French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, moving to the highest levels of filmmaking excellence, after 23 years of directing, involves making a subtle and somewhat intimate family drama distinctly different from his sexy thrillers “Demonlover” and “Boarding Gate” and his hip movie- about-making-movies “Irma Vep,” the film that earned him international acclaim in 1996.
“Summer Hours,” (“Heure d’été”) perhaps the closest Assayas will ever come to an Anton Chekhov-like drama, showcases the storytelling talents of the former writer for France’s “Cahiers du Cinema” and veteran director. Lyrical, well told (Clémentine Schaeffer supplied the script) and beautifully shot (cameraman Eric Gautier first worked with Assayas on “Irma Vep”), “Summer Hours” is a mature drama about children, parents and the value they place on past experiences and the family home. It’s not Assayas’ first movie about families
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Summer Movie Preview
6 May 2009 4:12 PM, PDT
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We're all for getting out in the summertime, but there might not be anything more refreshing than cooling off in a movie theater... or seeing a movie in the comfort of your air-conditioned home on demand, on DVD, or online... or better yet catching a classic on the big screen at a nearby repertory theater. With literally hundreds of films to choose from this summer, we humbly present this guide to the season's most exciting offerings.
May 1
"Eldorado"
The Cast: Bouli Lanners, Fabrice Adde, Philippe Nahon, Didier Toupy, Franise Chichy
Director: Bouli Lanners
Fest Cred: Cannes, Warsaw, Glasgow, Palm Springs,
The Gist: When Elie (Adde), a hapless young thief attempts to rob Yvan (Lanners), a 40-year-old car dealer, the two form a unlikely friendship that leads to a road trip across Belgium in this slight comedy that won the Best European Film at the Director's Fortnight at Cannes last year.
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- Stephen Saito
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12th Annual EU Film Festival Highlights, Week Four: ‘Sauna,’ ‘Apres Lui,’ ‘Ben X,’ ‘Patrik Age 1,5’
25 March 2009 4:33 PM, PDT
| HollywoodChicago.com
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Chicago – The final week of the 12th Annual EU Film Festival at the Siskel Film Center perfectly illustrates the main strength of this festival - amazing diversity. From what we had time to see of the final stretch of films, the four highlights couldn’t be more diverse, featuring movies from four different countries with four completely different tones and styles.
The highlights of the first three weeks of EU included a coming-of-age drama from Ireland (“Kisses”), a sexy romantic comedy from France (“The Girl From Monaco”), an amazing Danish drama (“Worlds Apart”), and a very interesting horror film from Belgium (“Left Bank”). Read more here, here, and here)
The final week takes us back to two of those countries - Belgium and France - and also features a fascinating Finnish shocker before closing with a gentle and sweet film from Sweden. Overall, it’s been a fantastic festival for
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- adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
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2009 |
2008
10 articles from 2009
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