Category: Newsletters

“A young girl ventures into a perilous parallel universe to rescue her best friend and fight the forces of darkness in director Chris Weitz’s adaptation of the first installment of author Philip Pullman’s best-selling fantasy trilogy. Screen newcomer Dakota Blue Richards stars as young heroine Lyra Belacqua, Casino Royale star Daniel Craig appears as Lyra’s ruthless adventurer uncle, Lord Asriel, and Nicole Kidman assumes the glamorous guise of the villainous Mrs. Coulter. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide”

“This highly anticipated biographical film about legendary singer and songwriter Bob Dylan follows six distinct characters, depicting different stages of Dylan’s life, embodying a different aspect of his life story and music. Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin all take turns playing Dylan, and Julianne Moore and Charlotte Gainsbourg appear as two of the women in his life. Lyrical, poetic and highly stylized, it’s the first biographical feature project to secure the approval of the music legend. Directed and co-written by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine).”

“Ridley Scott’s legendary adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? gave us a startling vision of a noir-ishly dystopic future, in which the line between human and non-human has worn perilously thin. Scott’s masterpiece not only anticipated our future but designed it: Much of our world today appears, well, just so Blade Runner. To commemorate its 25th anniversary, Scott has gone back, corrected a few details and fashioned a version that he feels is closest to what he had originally intended. One of the greatest American films of the Eighties has just gotten even better. – from the New York Film Festival”

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The mesmerizing new thriller from Academy Award winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the acclaimed novel by Pulitzer Prize winning American master Cormac McCarthy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law–in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) – can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers–in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (Javier Bardem) – the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morningÂ’s headline”

“Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) earns his living as a chauffeur to one of Harlem’s leading mobsters. After his boss dies, Frank uses his own ingenuity and strict business code to rise up as one of the inner city’s most powerful crime bosses. Meanwhile, veteran cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) senses a change in organized crime’s power structure, and looks for ways to bring his opponent to justice.”

“Reprising the roles they originated in seven-time Academy Award-nominated Elizabeth, Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush return for a gripping historical thriller laced with treachery and romance–The Golden Age. Joining them in the epic is Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, a dashing seafarer and newfound temptation for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age finds Queen Elizabeth I (Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett) facing bloodlust for her throne and familial betrayal. Growing keenly aware of the changing religious and political tides of late 16th century Europe, Elizabeth finds her rule openly challenged by the Spanish King Philip II (Jordi Molla)–with his powerful army and sea-dominating armada–determined to restore England to Catholicism.”

“In the far Northern Hemisphere, the small town of Barrow, Alaska, experiences a solid month of darkness every year. Though most of the residents head south for the winter, some townspeople remain behind. However, those that stay regret their decision when, one year, hungry vampires descend on Barrow to feed. Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett), his wife (Melissa George) and a dwindling band of survivors must try to last until dawn breaks over Barrow’s monthlong twilight.”

“The new film from Ang Lee, the Academy Award-winning director of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” A startling erotic espionage thriller about the fate of an ordinary woman’s heart, it is based on the short story by revered Chinese author Eileen Chang. Shanghai, 1942. The World War II Japanese occupation of this Chinese city continues in force. Mrs. Mak, a woman of sophistication and means, walks into a café, places a call, and then sits and waits. She remembers how her story began several years earlier, in 1938 China. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei). As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom) Kuang has started a drama society to shore up patriotism. As the theater troupe’s new leading lady, Wong realizes that she has found her calling, able to move and inspire audiences – and Kuang. He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yee’s trust by befriending his wife (Joan Chen) and then draw the man into an affair. Wong transforms herself utterly inside and out, and soon finds herself swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue. In Mandarin with English subtitles, 2h37m”

“A chronicle of a day in the life of a Palestinian cab driver in Los Angeles, Driving To Zigzigland, portrays the social struggle of the Arab immigrant in post-9/11 America. A film audition typecasts Bashar to play an Al Qaeda terrorist role. Bashar has twenty-four hours to make enough money to pay his bills. For the remaining hours left until tomorrow, an unceasing flow of passengers ride in his taxi and give the Arab cabbie the run-around on issues that deal with suicide bombers, George Bush, Rai music and world geography. All the while, BasharÂ’s nostalgia for Ramallah poses the question of whether or not the American Dream is an idea really worth fighting for. Shot in Los Angeles and Palestine, based on true stories.”