With Fall Festival season about to kick off, this week The Rocchi Review features James chatting with Cinematical's Film Festivals Editor Kim Voynar about the strange splendor of the Telluride Film Festival, what the most-anticipated movies will be at this year's Toronto Film Festival and much, much more. Will Zack and Miri Make a Porno make a splash? Will Rachel Getting Marriedget Anne Hathaway some respect? And does one of...
Sundance Deal: The Weinsteins Buy 'Roman Polanski'
He grew up in terrible conditions; he directed great movies; his wife was murdered; he fled the country; he made some more good movies. Roman Polanski's life story sounds like it would make a great film, and Marina Zenovich focused on one aspect to make her documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The film had its World Premiere at Sundance on Friday night, and instantly sparked a bidding war. The Weinstein Co. won, according to Variety.
(Since Juno is now screening in limited release, we're re-publishing Kim's review of the film from Telluride. We'll also publish a new review of the film when it goes wider later this month.)
I've been waiting to see Juno for a long, long time now. I first heard that Jason Reitman was going to be working with Ellen Page on this film shortly before Sundance this year, and I talked briefly to the young actress about Juno...
Oscar Watch: Day-Lewis Looks Like a Lock, but Will Dano Get a Nod?
The ever-astute Anne Thompson, over on her Thompson on Hollywood blog at Variety, has an analysis up of the Oscar buzz around Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. I've not yet seen the entire film though I did see a 20-minute sneak-peek at Telluride that was more than enough to whet my appetite for the film (Cinematical'sScott Weinberg saw it at Fantastic Fest, much to the jealousy of the rest of our reviewing team) Thompson has seen the film twice now and recommends highly that people see it twice in...
The Savages, starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a brother and sister who must deal with their aging, estranged father, Lenny (Philip Bosco) who suffers from dementia and has no memory of the sibs' unhappy childhood. I first caught The Savages back in January at Sundance, and I've seen Jenkins speak about the film a couple times, at Sundance and again at Telluride, when she had in intimate early-morning Conversation with Juno...
One of my favorite films of the entire year (so far), Juno, just got a bumped up release date of December 5 the other day, and now it has a spandy-new poster, too (click on the image above for an even bigger view of what tiny Ellen Page would look like with a big old pregnant belly. The poster nicely captures the quirky feel of the film (I just LOVE those dorky yellow gym shorts...
Okay, is this not one of the coolest posters you've seen all year? I simply love the color scheme for this film, and since I'm seeing it tomorrow -- and interviewing writer-directors Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi on Friday -- this poster just totally puts me in the mood for, what some are calling, a shoe-in for an Oscar nod in the Best Foreign Language category. Persepolis, which won the Jury prize at Cannes earlier...
Ordinarily, I probably wouldn't write about a PBS series on Cinematical, but Ken Burns' The War deserves an exception. The lengthy documentary, which has seven episodes, first caught my attention at Telluride last year, where one of the episodes was shown as a sneak peek. I knew who Burns was, of course -- his previous documentary series -- The Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz -- are noted for their exceptional quality. But still, The War being added to the Telluride schedule seemed to...
The Toronto International Film Festival is over, we have a couple months respite before Sundance, so naturally thoughts turn to the Oscar race. While I'm as curious as anyone else which films will end up garnering the big nod (and I will be really surprised if Juno doesn't get a few noms, especially for screenwriting), as an indie girl I'm most interested in...
I first saw Babel at Telluride last year, and I remember how nervous director Alejandro González Iñnáritu was as he introduced the film for one of its first (it may have even been the first) screenings. He talked in his intro about how he set out with Babel to make a film about the ways in which we are different, and ended up making a film about the ways in which we are alike, and how the borders...
He grew up in terrible conditions; he directed great movies; his wife was murdered; he fled the country; he made some more good movies. 
The ever-astute Anne Thompson, over on her Thompson on Hollywood blog at Variety, has an .jpg)
.jpg)
Ordinarily, I probably wouldn't write about a PBS series on Cinematical, but Ken Burns' 
