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Round Up: Dark Knight, Eclipse, Tintin

Krystal Clark — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:30:32 +0000

Here are some of the top news stories you may have missed this Oscar winning weekend.

Another box office record has been shattered by The Dark Knight. It has become the fourth film ever to gross over one billion dollars in worldwide box office sales. The film now joins the company of Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. [Superherohype]
Check out some exclusive footage from this summer’s Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen. In the promotional video Shia Labeouf and Josh Duhamel talk about the film’s locations, the story, and their director Michael Bay. Be warned it’s very loud! [MTV]
Two familiar faces are teaming up again. Academy Award winner John Williams will compose the score for Steven Spielberg’s Tintin. Williams has previously worked with the director on countless films including, Jurassic Park and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. [LatinoReview]
An official release date has finally been set for the third installment of the “Twilight Saga.” Eclipse will be released on June 30, 2010. It will be the second sequel in the franchise following New Moon, which debuts in theaters this year on November 20. [ShockTillYouDrop]
The Independent Spirit Awards took place this past Saturday and Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler took top honors as Best Picture. Mickey Rourke won Best Actor, and the film’s director of photography Maryse Alberti also won for Best Cinematography. [Variety]

Interview: Mickey Rourke for “The Wrestler”

Artie — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:23:02 +0000

Out on the terrace at the Four Seasons, Mickey Rourke smokes a cigarette and chats with one of the handlers. Nattily dressed in a pinstripe suit with a clashing green vest, he looks the way you’d imagine Mickey Rourke to look, and it magnifies the extremes taken to transform him into The Wrestler. The torso-length blonde mane is gone and the gun show has left town. He still seems like he can break you in half over his knee, but minus Randy “The Ram’s” labored gait that’s like gravity working extra-hard to yank him into a crumpled heap.

The buzz around the movie is good and Rourke has decided to enjoy it. Sometimes it’s hard to get a question in. He can’t stop talking about the fight work, the culture of wrestling, the endless months of practice and exertion he put in to prove to director Darrin Aronofsky he hadn’t made a mistake. To show his director he understood what it took to make it happen, and that he was going to return to favor.

Here’s what Rourke had to tell Screencrave about what he considers the toughest gig of his entire career, and why he believes Aronofsky was the only guy ready to pull him through it.

First thing’s first, though: he has to pet the dog.

For reasons unexplained, someone in the room has brought along a snow-white teacup terrier. Rourke makes straight for it.

“Oh, you’re beautiful,” he coos. The owner asks if Rourke wants to hold it.

“Yes,” he replies, without hesitation, “they made me keep Lucky upstairs.” Lucky is one of Rourke’s five dogs. Six, actually. “ There’s a friend of mine who lives with me, he has one. A really annoying one.”

The owner tells Rourke the terrier’s a boy who goes by Timmy. Rourke retreats to the other side of the table with him, saying quietly “c’mon Timmy. We’ll change your name.”

The owner asks Rourke if he’s the alpha dog in his house.

“I’m always the alpha dog.” He grins. A minute later he crosses back around the table with Timmy cradled in his arms and returns him, ready to talk wrestling. Before this year, he admits knowing only one thing about sports entertainment.

“I knew that I didn’t like it. When I was I kid, some of the kids would go to the boxing matches and some of the kids would go to the wrestling. And I just went [to boxing]. Because wrestling was fake. I’m lookin’ at people going ‘it’s real.’ No, it’s fake. That was a big argument with kids on the block and shit. Never had no love for it until let’s see, we did three and a half months [of training]. About the beginning of the third month I went ‘this is my third trip to the hospital. My third MRI, and these guys have to be in shape.” Rourke appears to get tired just talking about it.

“I was gassin’ because it’s a different type of workout. It was like, really hard. I mean I couldn’t do some of the flips and stuff. One of the guys who was very athletic was doing these really interesting moves out the ring, across the neck, flipping over, scissors. I’d go in on Sundays and not tell Darrin.” Rourke’s admiration for the director would be a running theme in the discussion.

“What I wanted to do was really impress Darrin and have four moves that were really hard for any wrestler to do, who’s breathing, ya know? Cause we basically had to choreograph it so any half-assed athlete could do it and then I wanted to take it another step higher and really fucking bring it. I wanted Darrin to be really happy with me. And it worked out great. I had a new sort of respect for these guys, the wrestlers.” But that respect went well beyond the physical strain these guys endure on a nightly basis.

“What I liked about them is they’re a funny breed. There’s a lot of camaraderie. They travel together, they eat together, they screw together.” We didn’t ask for details. We just let him continue.

“They drink together, they talk about different supplements that’ll help each other out better. Even if a guy only has half a bottle of this [he’s like] ‘alright, I’ll give it to you.’ Cause they always need to keep that edge. They depend on each other for their livelihood. A lot of them travel in the same broken down car together, eatin’ in McDonald’s n’ shit. They’re sharing gas money, and at the end of the day, because they’re on the road so much, they don’t have much of a family life. Or whatever they do have, wife, girlfriend, kid, they’re not able to be that responsible for them. Then time goes by and they’re left alone.” Rourke discovered that the story of his character isn’t an isolated event. A lot of performers have paid a high price through the years.

“But [Randy’s] not giving up, he’s trying to keep that edge. That’s why he’s always in the gym sticking needles in his ass. Trying to beat the time-clock which is already passed where it should have been. And he’s trying to repair the relationships he’s had, one that he will never repair and one he doesn’t quite know how to. Because he’s never been consistent in his life. I can relate to that myself. There’s a lot of stuff I could relate to.” It’s well-known Rourke can be difficult on set. Aronofsky still pushed for him in the lead.

“I knew why Darrin wanted me to do the movie and why he fought really fuckin’ hard for me. I think there was a big part of me that didn’t want to do it. [Randy] is living in a state of disgrace and shame. He was somebody at one time, now he’s nobody. He can’t even fill up his car half the time. I’ve been there and it’s no walk in the park.” In the film Randy’s money troubles force him to get a part-time job in a Jersey supermarket. Not a big stretch from a screen idol descending into straight-to-dvd hell.

“It’s pretty shameful for a guy like Randy to be behind the counter, slicing salami for some blue-haired lady. He’s waiting to go to Madison Square Garden again, not working behind a counter with a hair net on. I don’t think Randy found that much fun, y’know?” Without giving away where the scene ultimately goes, Randy’s natural showmanship starts kicking in. He pours on the charm and teases customers, throwing hail-Mary passes with containers of mac salad.

“[Randy acts up] Out of boredom, I think. Also it’s like there again is another authority figure who’s four feet tall, telling him what to do. I don’t think he’s gonna go through the rest of his life listening to some midget tell him how to dish out cole slaw. That’s no way to live. And he’s trapped in that trailer with just…memories. I think it’s why he chooses, even when he’s not feeling very well, to have that last fight. I just think sometimes you gotta say ‘it’s not gonna happen for me, I might as well just step on the gas.” Rourke isn’t proud that an element of that factors into his involvement with the picture. He shrugs.

“The way Darrin works, Darrin knew more about me than I probably wanted him to or realized he did. I also know Darrin talked to half a dozen directors that I worked with in the past. He knew a lot more about me than I knew about him. All I knew were two movies he made and stuff that was comparable, when I asked people I respected, comparable to Coppola. [I learned] about his mind, and his being smarter than the rest of us, and directors like him coming around every thirty years. Sitting around talking to him, I knew what the man was made out of.” Almost right away, Aronofsky set the ground rules.

“He didn’t have to tell me ‘you have to listen to everything I say. You can never disrespect me in front of the crew.’ I wasn’t going to. But from things I’ve done in the past and how I’ve behaved I can’t blame him for repeating that to me, and I didn’t mind it. He said how hard it was going to be to make the movie with me and how I fucked a career up for fifteen years and he couldn’t raise the money. I have been working to change for over a decade and I still can’t get back in the game. I was thinking ‘this guy’s fishing in deep water here and he’s got his balls over the fence, fighting for me.’ So I decided right then and there that if this thing happened I was going to give him all of me.” Rourke really had no idea just how much the director would run with the offer.

“I was thinking to myself ‘I can’t wait until you get your hands on the next fish you work with.’ If you’re not in shape this guy will break you down.” In a way Aronofsky is known for being as exacting as much as Rourke is known for being a wild card. But he earned his star’s respect early and it piled on as the shoot barreled ahead.

“He was like a football couch. Like Vince Lombardi, he breaks your ass at practice so on Sunday you can win. He related to me that way and pushed my buttons that way and he challenged me to bring it. He’d say ‘I want you to bring it on this one,’ and I’d do it. Then he’d go ‘now I want you to really bring it,’ and I’d do it. Then he’d grab me and [he’d whisper] ‘bring. It.’ He wanted it so bad. And I wanted it to, but he wanted it just as bad as me. He worked with me a certain way and he worked with Evan a certain way, but he got performances. It wasn’t just me.” The filmmaker’s influence went far beyond Rourke.

“I remember looking at the crew and, we didn’t have chairs in the room. It was the first time I was ever on a movie set in my life where there’s no fucking chairs to sit down. And on this set I needed a chair. [Darrin] wanted to do the whole movie sort-of documentary style, all handheld. I remember one day, I was just huffing and puffing, I had just jumped over the top rope and there was something else they wanted to throw in extra. I was hyperventilating and [after a minute] I came back to do it again. I’m standing there looking at this camera operator and beads of sweat were just pouring off this guy’s face. I just said to him ‘what’s your name?’ I just wanted to know his name, cause he was bringing it. They all did that for Darrin.” To suitably learn all the moves and look the part of an aging ring hero, Rourke did four months of choreography and stunt training.

“[In the beginning] pretty basic. Then I saw this guy, who was very athletically inclined, out of boredom do this shit from outside of the ring, over the ring, the scissors thing, the reverse scissors. I was like ‘I wanna do all that shit.’ I think it paid off cause Darrin insisted that I do everything. Everything. Plus I was more coordinated than my double.” The moves didn’t come easy. A decade of boxing put Rourke at a severe logistical disadvantage.

“For fifteen, sixteen motherfuckin years everything was short and fast. And you move gracefully. You don’t move like this…” He raised up from his chair and pantomimes Randy’s ape-like shuffle.

“It took me a month and a half to stop moving like a boxer.” The training ring was conveniently located in Aronofsky’s loft, where he could perpetually hassle Rourke over his fancy footwork.

“He’d go ‘you’re moving like a boxer,’ and I’d go ‘fucking close the door!’ Finally I told the stunt coordinator ‘please, please keep him out of the room. Let me learn a few moves and then he can yell at me.’ [With wrestling] you’ve got to sell it to the audience. It felt so artificial. I’d never [telegraph] before I hit somebody.” On top of that, Rourke began a brutal daily workout regimen, eating seven meals a day and exploding his weight from 192 up to 235. More than 40 lbs of solid muscle.

“I walked by mirrors in the gym thinking ‘what the fuck is going on?’ Then my agent said ‘lose it quick.’ He goes to me ‘I know you like walking around looking like that.’ At that point I’d taken off ten pounds of it [after wrap]. He says to me ‘lose it. How are you gonna play a doctor or a lawyer looking like that?’ I said ‘I don’t wanna play a lawyer or a doctor. Those aren’t fun roles.’” Even now, back to his normal size, in his mismatched three-piece suit with that lime green vest, the only movie in which he could pass for a lawyer is Batman Forever. It seems like some of the neon hues he had to wear in The Wrestler were still hanging on.

“The look was from the eighties. They dressed a little differently than they do now. They had a lot more color. And they all wore armbands and shit and they all had really long hair, like a heavy metal look. Ya know [Randy] is trying to get back to those glory days, and he wants one more shot at wrestling at Madison Square Garden and instead he ends up in that room with all those geriatric wrestlers, one with a piss-bag and one selling his old boxing shoes.”

Randy gets his big match at the end, however, against an old foe (or “heel” as they’re called by the insiders). It led to one development where Rourke’s past as a fighter, not to mention his address book, came in handy.

“I used to come out [in my boxing days] to “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” So I asked Darrin if we could blast that. We didn’t have enough money for this so I called up Axl to ask him. He did us a really great favor and gave us “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” I’m so thankful to him for that. Slash gave us some riffs. We couldn’t afford either one of those guys.

“In Germany or Argentina or Oklahoma or in places where I’d fought. I’d always get nervous in the dressing room. When Freddie Roach was wrapping my hands. I’d go ‘it’s too tight’ and he’d go ‘it’s not too tight,’ and I’d go ‘it’s too tight,’ he’d go ‘it’s not to tight.’ I’d say ‘ I can’t breathe.’ Then the door would open and you’d hear the crowd and then it’s fucking terrifying. Then my music would come on and I’d be okay.” Rourke then wrote a letter to Bruce Springsteen and, sure enough, The Boss sent something back: that haunting theme that graces the trailer and closes out the picture.

Rourke takes a long sip of coffee.

“After about the sixth day, I think it was the scene with Evan Rachel Wood, it was a very emotional scene and we didn’t even know each other. I didn’t even know her name, I didn’t even know all three of her names put together. It was like ‘I think we got something special here,’ and I knew Darrin did. It was very rare I looked forward to going to work with an actor the next day and I was really looking forward to working with her or just going into another room with this pro wrestler guy and learn these sophisticated moves. It was the hardest fucking movie I ever made. It was just physically and emotionally draining and when I got done with the movie, it was the first time in twenty years I wanted to go to a wrap party.” Rourke stops and thinks about that for a moment.

“…But I couldn’t get off the couch for four days.”

The Wrestler opens December 18th 2008

Movie Releases: Seven Pounds, The Wrestler, Yes Man…

Mali Elfman — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:00:05 +0000

Finally we get The Wrestler in theaters. This film has more people saying good things about it than almost any other film coming out this year. In fact, aside from The Wrestler, everything coming out this week is good but has a better option. Seven Pounds is good, but not great, I would say The Wrestler, Doubt, or The Reader are much better picks, although I’m guessing that by shear Will Smith-power the film will make it to the top of the box office. Yes Man (review here) really isn’t as funny as it should be, do see Role Models or rent Hamlet 2 instead. I think Bolt is a better pick than The Tale of Despereaux. To be honest, I have not seen, nor heard anything about Nothing But the Truth, so it has escaped my cynicism for now!

Trailer below…

Seven Pounds Trailer:

The Tale of Despereaux Trailer:

The Wrestler Trailer:

Yes Man Trailer:

Nothing But the Truth Trailer:

Interview: Marisa Tomei for “The Wrestler”

Artie — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:13:42 +0000

As she bills time in big fares like Wild Hogs or Anger Management, Marisa Tomei has been building a stealth career in indie circles. In the Bedroom was the game-changing critical darling. She stole scenes as the two-timing Gina in Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Most stars are happy to get pigeonholed for life, with minor exceptions, because the work is guaranteed. Angelina Jolie will always get suitcases of money to play asskicking femme-fatales. Try to find a variation of middle class manchild that Adam Sandler won’t tackle for a solid script and a good price.

That’s not to say the aforementioned haven’t taken left turns here and there, or that Tomei herself is above a safe, studio gig. But with a project from the Duplass Brothers (writer/directors of Screencrave-fave Baghead) on the horizon and now Aronofsky’s The Wrestler opening this weekend, Marisa Tomei’s trajectory is becoming impossible to predict. She doesn’t have a packaged anecdote for why this is so, and she bristles when she’s pressed about it. She’s attracted by the ambiguous and, for lack of a better term, the ugly truth. She’s inspired by it.

Last week she spoke to ScreenCrave about what gives The Wrestler its edge, and how she managed to take some of the shine off the Stripper with A Heart o’ Gold.

Although it wasn’t an especially cold day in Los Angeles, Tomei was all but vanishing into an oversized grey sweater. The interview starts off a bit slowly. She seems reluctant to talk at length, especially about learning how to striptease.

“Yeah. I did.” She replied.

Mickey Rourke can be pretty method. When the topic is broached about how his research compares to hers, she laughs.

“I just had a friend who teaches pole classes.” She says nicely, but succinctly.

New topic: how the world of wrestling as portrayed in the script.

“I thought it was really really interesting. The rabbit hole it went into, that wrestling world. It was so intricate. And done lovingly. I was familiar with it [beforehand]. But not in-depth. That wasn’t really my area. I was in the club and he was in the stadium. We didn’t really get into that part of it [in my scenes].” She had also never met or worked with Rourke until their first day of shooting together.

“That was the first time I met him. Darrin had set such a realistic atmosphere with everyone on-location, and the characters were so intricately drawn that we just showed up and didn’t really rehearse. We didn’t have any meetings beforehand, we just jumped right in. Neither of us really like to talk about what we’re doing, I think.” Tomei admitted. If she didn’t like going into specifics, she wasn’t unwilling. The lack of rehearsals was a bit of a revelation as her character’s history with Rourke’s Randy “The Ram” comes across naturally. How much of that could have been improv?

“I think there was [improv] throughout, but not so much in the scenes that I did. Maybe a little bit, but we’d always circle back to the script itself. Darrin really took the time talking to each of us separately, through each of our scenes. So if he wanted to change something he did it way before we got near shooting it. Sometimes he’d want to do a lot of takes and then we’d let go of the script and mess around and improvise that way. It seems like we always went back to [the script] just maybe to open it up or loosen it up in places.”

Tomei plays a Jersey stripper and single mother who’s slowly realizing her age is catching up with her. It’s a story that’s been told before, but never in close parallel with that of a faded Pro Wrestling superstar.

“That was something Darrin talked to me about. He thought about a lot of different parts that the female protagonist would play, different kinds of jobs she might have, but he kept coming back to that.” She explained, but she was at peace with the director’s final decision to make Cassidy a dancer.

“(Randy “The Ram”) uses his body. They’re both performers. They both have stage names. In any occupation you can be at a crossroads, but these roles are particularly athletic.”

Aronofsky has stated he had a fair share of convincing to do for this picture. He had to get the financiers to back his call with Rourke. He had to let Rourke know he would protect him. Once he set down how Cassidy and Randy would reflect on each other, Tomei really invested herself in the part and did the legwork.

“Some of it was osmosis, just being in different clubs and talking to people. I didn’t really do any interviews or anything like that. I just kinda hung around. There’s a lot of variety. With anything, you start peeling away the layers and get past the stereotype and you see the persons or group for who or what they are. There’s certainly a lot of different types of girls in that business. I don’t really want to generalize but it seems there are some who use a lot of creative energy, who are artists. They just don’t like to be in a normal nine-to-five job.” Tomei chose her words carefully, and further explained how it reflected on her character’s inner life.

“[In Cassidy’s house] there’s a lot of black and white photos on the wall. The emphasis isn’t really on my character so you don’t really see those details, but the idea was that she was more of that kind of creative person. Even if she has a lot of demons, that’s just the way she uses them. It’s not like she’s this great artist because she’s an exotic dancer but it’s a form of expression. It’s a form of empowerment, in certain ways. There are those parts of the job that are degrading, but I think the interesting thing is seeing the parts that aren’t degrading.” For her, part of that process was incorporating the elements of exotic dancing that Hollywood prefers to ignore. Like who cleans the pole afterwards.

“They have this windex thing to clean the pole and [the girls] go up and do it in this sexy way. They shake their asses while they’re cleaning the pole, because you can’t [do moves without it] otherwise you’ll slip. I like those little details, but really didn’t have time for it in this movie. That’s the kind of thing I was looking for.” She may have been overruled on that particular detail, but Aronofsky trusted her knowledge when shooting the onstage performances.

“I didn’t want it to be choreographed. I wanted it to be authentic to the world, not that cleaned-up kind taught at places for regular people. So I went to a lot of clubs to see a lot of different styles, and in the end it was a friend of mine who does teach those classes, who taught me how to do the pole stuff. But she’s, like, a strip aficionado and she’s there every weekend. Also someone who’s an ex-stripper came and hung out with me a bunch. I asked to learn a bunch of different steps and moves so I’d have a vocabulary and make it up myself. There are three different times in the movie when I dance and they have different tones to them. I wanted [the dancing] to come organically from me and from the character, rather than having it be imposed on me or being kind of “heightened,” like burlesque.” She seems proud of the results. The dancing looks real and there are the bruises to prove it.

“You get a lot of black-and-blues. A lot.” She smiled. Tomei started as a dancer (the non-exotic variety) and pursued acting out of her love of musicals. But that’s a dream that has yet to materialize.

“[Playing an exotic dancer] is the closest I’ve gotten so far!” she cracked.

“There were a couple of times, a couple of different projects I almost did, but it wasn’t the right combination or the right creative team. I’m hoping, I mean that’s why I became an actress in the first place, because I worshipped Gene Kelly. I’m like, very very very old school. I was writing to Gene Kelly while everyone else was writing to Scott Baio.” She laughs it off, but a trace of frustration seeps in.

“I’d like to do a musical. But I’m a stronger dancer. I sing well. But not great. I’d like to do some more period things. I’d like to play a leading part!” Her indie work is a strong case to that end, but how did she end up here, with an oscar and a shortage of marquee placement? The response is almost blunt in its pragmatism. She knows when she’s said too much.

“I think it’s kind of the luck of the draw. You don’t really know what you’re gonna get offered. I try to just keep it mixed up because you never know what you’re going to get.”

We move on to the other details, like capturing spontaneous dance sequences. She gives a lot of the credit to her rapport with veteran cinematographer Maryse Alberti.

“Maryse was incredible with the lighting. A lot of it was practical. We had an operator shooting it handheld and I didn’t have to hit exact marks but he had to move with me. It was really more of a tango. If I’m spinning, he’s on the floor trailing me. Or ahead of me. So we had to work out the choreography, he and I. But we did it on the day. Boy, he was sweating. That camera’s really heavy! And we did it twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-eight times, two minutes a shot! It’s strenuous. It was an interesting day.”

Tomei respects the movie that the countless takes and threadbare budget managed to produce. When pressed to give her two cents about the ending, she sticks by it as it stands.

“I think Darrin wanted to leave it ambiguous, for everyone to have their own feelings. I’ve heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people.”

On that note, will she be channel flipping to the WWE a little more from now on?

“I don’t think so. But I think I’ll be going to a few more strip bars.” She has a really good laugh at that one.

TRAILER: The Wrestler

Mali Elfman — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:15:32 +0000

The Wrestler is definitely a film not to miss. It’s the story of a real life, everyday hero.

The film is about a wrestler named, Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) and back in the late ’80s, he was a headlining professional wrestler. Now, twenty years later, he ekes out a living performing for handfuls of diehard wrestling fans in high school gyms and community centers around New Jersey. His daughter has abondoned him. He has no money. The only thing he has, is his wrestling.

Check out the trailer below…

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Robert Siegel
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Ernest Miller
Release: December 19, 2008

AFI festival: Che, Kazakhstan, Brazilian clown dwarves and more

Tom von Logue Newth — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:20:33 +0000

Taking place at venues around Hollywood (Mann’s, Grauman’s, LACMA, Cinema Lounge, the Arclight/Cinerama Dome) from Thursday 30th tiil Sun day 9th, the American Film Institute’s annual festival this year features over 150 films from around the world. Take your pick from Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s semi-documentary about factory closure, 24 City (Mon 3, Sat 8), Beat Takeshi’s lastest, Achilles and the Tortoise, a meditation on art and money and life (Mon 3, Fri 7), or Paul Schrader’s Jeff Goldblum starrer Adam Resurrected, an unsentimental, semi-absurdist post-Holocaust flick (Sat 8, Sun 9).

Then there’s Before the Fall, about the days leading up to the end of the world, which being Spanish is probably quite crazy, and having won big at the Málaga film fest could also be quite good (Sun 2, Wed 5) and the new picture from Brick helmer Rian Johnson, The Brothers Bloom, starring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz about the world’s greatest conmen on a globe-trotting last hurrah (Mon 3, Sat 8).

Soderbergh’s already notorious Che turns up in all its 262-minute glory (Sat 1), as does Palme d’Or winner The Class, another semi-documentary about high school in the Parisian banlieues (Sun 2, Sat 8). Po-mo US indy Deadgirl might just be worth a look, tho it sounds like an extremely unpleasant balancing act concerned with the objectification of women (Fri 31, Mon 3). Much more fun, on the other hand, will be Divizionz by Ugandan visual (and musical) arts collective Yes! That’s Us (Fri 7, Sun 9).

Described as a cross between Momento and Rocky, Gachi Boy Wrestling With A Memory sounds like a fun Japanese high school wrestling picture, an under-exploited genre if ever there was one (Sat 8, Sun 9) whilst much-hyped from Naples comes local mafia saga Gomorrah (Sun 2, Fri 7). I like the sound of LA-based A Good Day To Be Black And Sexy, which promises to be about, erm, being black and sexy in contemporary LA (Wed 5, Fri 7) and of The Good The Bad And The Weird, described as a Korean take on The Good the Bad and the Ugly but, erm, weird (Sat 1, Thu 6).

Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Hunger comes to town, the story of the 1981 IRA hunger strike and dirty protests in the notorious Maze prison, directed by Turner Prize winner Alexander McQueen flailing around for a style, but held together mesmerically by the Michael Fassbender’s central performance (Sat 1, Sun 2). In complete contrast, how about Pindorama -The True Story of Seven Dwarves, a documentary about the eponymous Brazilian travelling circus and the seven dwarvish progeny of one of the nation’s most beloved clowns (Mon 3, Wed 5)? Still Orangutans could be infuriating but could just be brilliant, a Slacker-like whizz around the crazy population of a Brazilian town, shot in one take (Mon 3, Tue 4). The same goes for Time Crimes, a time-bending, weirdness-stuffed Spanish thriller (Fri 31, Mon 3).

Samira Makhmalbaf’s latest Two-Legged Horse was scripted by pa and Iranian maestro Mohsen and sounds like a typically clear-eyed look at socio-political conditions via a small-scale human story (man hires boy to carry disabled son around on his back) (Tue 4, Wed 5); apparently inspired by recent Iranian cinema, (Kiarostami specifically) another acclaimed female director, Kelly Reichardt, returns with Wendy and Lucy which sounds pleasingly Dardennesian and stars Michelle WIlliams, broke and wandering around Portland with her dog (Sat 1, Sat 8). And finally, much anticipated and apparently the highlight of a weak Venice fest, Aronovsky’s The Wrestler puts in an appearance, cannily using the plastic disaster of Mickey Rourke’s face in a Fat City-type tale of a once great mat-monkey (Thu 6).

That’s only the tip of the iceberg: with strands like the documentary and shorts competitions and showcases on Kazakhstan and Argentina, there’s plenty more to choose from . There’s an extensive tribute to French director Arnaud Desplechin, a bulging documentary competition and a Milestones section commemorating various dead folks: The Hustler, Major Dundee, Ned Kelly (for dead Ned Ledger, not Ned Jagger), The Talented Mr Ripley (for Anthony Minghella not Jude Law, sadly), They Shoot Horses Don’t They? - once again, no-one seems to care about Brad Renfro and whilst personally I don’t care a great deal about Bergman and not at all for Antonioni, a little something for each might have been a nice internationalist gesture.

Anyway, the fun thing about festivals is catching a good film that you might never hear of again, and the pot-luck element that might just lead to something great, so mosey on over to the site and check it out.

images: afi, wikipedia

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