All Venice articles – Page 103

  • Reviews

    Don't Think About It (Non Pensarci)

    2007-09-13T10:43:00Z

    Dir: Gianni Zanasi Italy 2007. 108 mins.The real surprise of the 2007 Venice Days sidebar on the Lido , Don't Think About It is that rarest of things: an exportable Italian comedy that features neither Roberto Benigni nor Nanni Moretti. Directed with an admirable lightness of touch by Gianni Zanasi ...

  • Reviews

    The Sweet and the Bitter (Il Dolce e l'Amaro)

    2007-09-12T16:40:00Z

    Dir: Andrea Porporati Italy 2007. 99 mins.The Italian Mafia film comes of age with The Sweet and the Bitter, a Sicilian Goodfellas that offers a refreshingly unheroic, sometimes darkly comic take on the grubby reality behind the rituals and myths of Cosa Nostra. Like another recent title, Stefano Incerti's L'Uomo ...

  • Reviews

    Exodus

    2007-09-12T15:57:00Z

    Dir: Penny Woolcock UK 2007. 110 mins.As much community project as feature film, Exodus transplants the Biblical story of Moses and the children of Israel to the depressed British seaside resort of Margate, in a dystopian future where racist politicians hold sway and asylum seekers are fenced inside a refugee ...

  • Reviews

    Nightwatching

    2007-09-12T13:09:00Z

    Dir: Peter Greenaway, Netherlands-Canada-Poland-UK. 140mins.Peter Greenaway takes The Night Watch - arguably Rembrandt's most famous painting, and certainly his most earnestly discussed and interpreted work - as the basis for a rambling, theatrical, frequently didactic study of a turning point in the Dutch painter's life. By turns both murder mystery, ...

  • Reviews

    Chaos (Heya fawda)

    2007-09-11T16:39:00Z

    Dir: Youssef Chahine France/Egypt 2007. 122 minsVeteran Egyptian director Youssef Chahine serves up a stirring, old-fashioned melodrama with a liberal conscience in his latest film, co-directed with his younger colleague Khaled Youssef. As imbued with the sounds, colours and passions of Cairo as a novel by Naguib Mahfouz, the film ...

  • Reviews

    Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou)

    2007-09-11T15:06:00Z

    Dir: Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, 2007. 95minsThe closing film at the Venice film festival, Blood Brothers is a dark gangster fable set in 1930s Shanghai - and a stylish but hollow debut for John Woo protege Alexi Tan. For all the film's lush cinematography, spot-on period detail and all-star Asian ...

  • Reviews

    12 (Razgnevannyh Muzhchin)

    2007-09-11T11:45:00Z

    Dir: Nikita Mikhalkov Russia 2007. 158 mins.Russian maestro Nikita Mikhalkov proves that Sidney Lumet's classic jury drama 12 Angry Men can work in another time and another place in this tasty adaptation, which is tough and passionate enough to survive the occasional lapse into Slavic sentimentality. It's hard to believe ...

  • Reviews

    Useless (Wu Yong)

    2007-09-10T17:54:00Z

    Dir. Jia Zhang-Ke. China , 2007. 84mins.Perennial Venice favourite Jia Zhang-Ke is back with a documentary whose title could invite all manner of cheap shots. But it also happens to be the name of a new, and highly successful, Chinese fashion brand. The second part in a trilogy dedicated to ...

  • News

    Lust, Caution is surprise winner of Venice's Golden Lion

    2007-09-08T20:03:00Z

    Ang Lee won the Golden Lion - again - at the 64th Venice International Film Festival yesterday for Lust, Caution, a surprise win for the Taiwanese auteur over the critical favourite Le Graine Et Le Mulet directed by Abdellatif Kechiche from France.Lee won his first Golden Lion two years ago ...

  • News

    Redacted goes worldwide with HDNet

    2007-09-08T16:08:00Z

    HDNet Films sealed most territorial deals on Brian De Palma's Iraq war drama Redacted ahead of its Venice world premiere.The film, which screens here on Monday and goes on to play the New York Film Festival, sold to TFM in France, New Select in Japan, AE/Eagle Pictures in Italy, On ...

  • News

    Memento strikes Venice deals for Under The Bombs

    2007-09-08T15:16:00Z

    Since receiving an emotional standing ovation in Venice, Philippe Aractingi's Under The Bombs has sealed two distribution deals just as Toronto gets underway.Memento Films, which is handling world rights to the film, has sold it to the UK's Channel 4 and Italy's Fandango. Memento's Tanja Meissner says she is also ...

  • News

    Pyramide takes on salse for Zanasi's Don't Think About It

    2007-09-07T06:00:00Z

    Pyramide International has acquired world rights, excluding Italy, for Venice Days title Don't Think About It (Non pensarci) - a generational comedy by Italian directorGianni Zanasi.Pyramide confirmed that sales have been completed in Venice with Hopscotch for Australia, Audiovisual for Greece, and Xenix for Switzerland. A Benelux deal has also ...

  • News

    Jia Zhangke plans factory worker film before 2008

    2007-09-07T06:00:00Z

    Golden Lion winning director Jia Zhangke, whose new documentary Useless about the fashion industry screened in Venice's Horizons last week and in Toronto this week, has revealed further details of his next dramatic feature, which he is planning to have ready in time for the Olympic Games in Beijing in ...

  • News

    TF1 takes on Suso's Tower and Mutum

    2007-09-07T06:00:00Z

    France's TF1 International has acquired Suso's Tower heading into festival season. The film is in selection at San Sebastian and is directed by Tom Fernandez with Javier Camara, Gonzalo De Castro, Cesar Vea and Jose Luis Alcobendas making up the cast. Produced by Mediapro, the film tells the story of ...

  • Reviews

    Disengagement

    2007-09-06T23:00:00Z

    Dir. Amos Gitai. France / Israel / Germany / Italy , 2007. 115 mins.Amos Gitai's systematic chronicle of modern Israeli history reaches one of its more sensitive and inevitable points in this dramatised version of the recent crisis generated by the unilateral decision, taken by the Sharon government, to dismantle ...

  • Reviews

    The Secret Of The Grain (La Graine Et Le Mulet)

    2007-09-06T15:53:00Z

    Dir/Scr: Abdellatif Kechiche , France , 2007, 153mins.A cine-verite tour-de-force, Abdellatif Kechiche's follow-up to the award- winning L'Esquive loads an apparently slight story set against the background of France 's first-and-second generation Maghrebi immigrant communities with surprising dramatic weight. There's even less story and even more of the director's trademark ...

  • News

    Loach's Free World lands more buyers in Venice

    2007-09-06T05:00:00Z

    In advance of its Toronto screening, Ken Loach's It's A Free World has closed several more deals for Pathe Pictures International in Venice.The immigration-themed film has gone to Japan (Cinequanon), Portugal (Lusomundo), and Greece (Audiovisuel).Pathe's Mike Runagall is also reporting strong US interest in the film. 'Venice was very positive ...

  • Reviews

    The Hunting Party

    2007-09-05T23:00:00Z

    Dir: Richard Shepard USA 2007. 100mins A textbook study in the dangers of trying to have one's cake and eat it, The Hunting Party mixes earnest sentimentality and black comedy in an unlikely yarn about the search for a Bosnian Serb war criminal by a maverick TV news crew. On ...

  • News

    Mad Detective screens as Venice's surprise competition entry

    2007-09-05T21:01:00Z

    The Venice Film festival unveiled Hong Kong crime film Mad Detective as this year's competition surprise film entry on Wednesday night.Co-directed by Hong Kong action film specialist Johnnie To and producer/director Wai Ka Fai, the film was presented Wednesday night at a press screening with no official pre-announcement but widespread ...

  • Reviews

    The Sun Also Rises (Taiyang zhaochang shengqi)

    2007-09-05T17:46:00Z

    Dir. Jiang Wen. China , 2007. 116 min . Five years in preparation and three years in the making, Jiang Wen's explosively energetic third feature film is a feast for the eyes and a delight for the ears. But at the same time this may prove a perplexing, often infuriating ...