MOSCOW -- Independent filmmaker Abel Ferrara will be honored in a special tribute program at the 12th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival next year, organizers said Wednesday. Ferrara, whose latest film, the Juliette Binoche-starrer Mary, received a special jury award at the Venice International Film Festival in September, will be in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina to present a selection of films from his 35-year career and participate in public discussions following the screenings. The director is best known for such gritty thriller and horror films as The Driller Killer (1979), the Christopher Walken-starrer King of New York (1990) and Bad Lieutenant (1992), starring Harvey Keitel.
- 11/16/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
VENICE -- The best line in Abel Ferrara's murky and forgettable religious film Mary comes when a television journalist asks a movie star and director why he's made a film about Jesus Christ. "Gibson made a billion dollars!" comes the reply.
Unconvincing in all its premises, Mary, screened In Competition at the Venice International Film Festival, is shot mostly in the dark with little attempt to make things clear. Mel Gibson has nothing to worry about.
Forrest Whitaker plays the journalist, the first one ever to persuade an American network to devote a week's worth of primetime to talking heads examining the life of Christ. It's especially remarkable since he appears to be still compiling the shows just before they go on the air.
He appears not to be aware that superstar Tony Childress (Matthew Modine) is opening his epic This Is My Blood that very week and it's only when he meets the filmmaker at a screening that he invites him on his show.
Meanwhile, the film's leading lady, Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) has been missing, presumed to be in Jerusalem, for a year, having had some kind of religious trauma due to playing Mary Magdalene and being brutalized by Childress.
Ted's wife Elizabeth (Heather Graham) is close to a dangerous childbirth but she is conveniently Marie's best friend, so that when Ted decides to have Marie call in to his show to confront the director, she's easy to reach.
There is cross-cutting between indistinct scenes of Marie in the Holy Land, the film within the film, and Whitaker having an emotional breakdown, but it's hard to tell what it all means, if anything.
Whitaker and Graham do professional work as a couple threatened by the loss of their newborn. But Binoche can do nothing with her role as Ferrara does little to flesh out the character, so her fate is of no interest. And poor Modine is stuck playing a cocky film director who calls reporters Baby. Right.
Unconvincing in all its premises, Mary, screened In Competition at the Venice International Film Festival, is shot mostly in the dark with little attempt to make things clear. Mel Gibson has nothing to worry about.
Forrest Whitaker plays the journalist, the first one ever to persuade an American network to devote a week's worth of primetime to talking heads examining the life of Christ. It's especially remarkable since he appears to be still compiling the shows just before they go on the air.
He appears not to be aware that superstar Tony Childress (Matthew Modine) is opening his epic This Is My Blood that very week and it's only when he meets the filmmaker at a screening that he invites him on his show.
Meanwhile, the film's leading lady, Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) has been missing, presumed to be in Jerusalem, for a year, having had some kind of religious trauma due to playing Mary Magdalene and being brutalized by Childress.
Ted's wife Elizabeth (Heather Graham) is close to a dangerous childbirth but she is conveniently Marie's best friend, so that when Ted decides to have Marie call in to his show to confront the director, she's easy to reach.
There is cross-cutting between indistinct scenes of Marie in the Holy Land, the film within the film, and Whitaker having an emotional breakdown, but it's hard to tell what it all means, if anything.
Whitaker and Graham do professional work as a couple threatened by the loss of their newborn. But Binoche can do nothing with her role as Ferrara does little to flesh out the character, so her fate is of no interest. And poor Modine is stuck playing a cocky film director who calls reporters Baby. Right.
MADRID -- The 53rd annual San Sebastian International Film Festival announced Friday that it has brought together 12 favorites of the past festival season for its Zabaltegi-Festival Top sidebar. The section includes Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know. Other films included are: Woody Allen's Match Point, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's Inside Deep Throat, Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now and Carlos Reygadas' Batalla en el Cielo. Abel Ferrara's Mary will open the event.
- 8/26/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Marion Cotillard has signed to star opposite Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's A Good Year, based on the novel by Peter Mayle. Tom Hollander also will join the cast, which includes Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart and Didier Bourdon. Scripted by Marc Klein, the film is about failed London banker Max Skinner (Crowe), who moves to Provence, France, to tend a vineyard he inherited from his uncle (Finney). There, he encounters Cotillard's character, a beautiful California woman who says she is a long-lost cousin and lays claim to the property. Hollander plays a pompous, scheming real estate broker. Cotillard, a French actress best known for her roles in Tim Burton's Big Fish and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, also stars in Abel Ferrara's Mary, set to hit the Venice-Deauville-Toronto circuit next month.
- 8/23/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Marion Cotillard has signed to star opposite Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's A Good Year, based on the novel by Peter Mayle. Tom Hollander also will join the cast, which includes Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart and Didier Bourdon. Scripted by Marc Klein, the film is about failed London banker Max Skinner (Crowe), who moves to Provence, France, to tend a vineyard he inherited from his uncle (Finney). There, he encounters Cotillard's character, a beautiful California woman who says she is a long-lost cousin and lays claim to the property. Hollander plays a pompous, scheming real estate broker. Cotillard, a French actress best known for her roles in Tim Burton's Big Fish and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, also stars in Abel Ferrara's Mary, set to hit the Venice-Deauville-Toronto circuit next month.
- 8/23/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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