Tag Archives: festival

Damon’s weighty role in comedy ‘The Informant!’

It could be Matt Damon’s most weighty role to date. The athletic Bourne star gained 30 pounds, as well as donning a false moustache and prosthetic nose, to look the part for his latest role as salary man whistle-blower, Mark Whitacre, in Steven Soderbergh’s comedy “The Informant!” Damon remembers Soderbergh describing the look he hoped Whitacre would have in the film as “doughy.” “He just said ‘doughy,'” Damon told CNN at the film’s North American premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month

Share

Stirring the pot of controversy with film remakes

Love them or hate them, when it comes to remakes, it seems the only thing people can agree on is that they more often than not stir controversy. The fall festival season has seen its own showdown of late over “Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans,” Werner Herzog’s remake of the Abel Ferrara original.

Share

Two rockets strike southern Israeli city

Two rockets were fired Saturday morning from Gaza and landed in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, one of them hitting an educational institution and the other landing in an open area, the Israeli military said. Josias Krumpf, 83, lived for years after the war in Racine, Wisconsin.

Share

Will James Cameron’s 3D ‘Avatar’ change cinema forever?

Director James Cameron is today unveiling a 15-minute taster of his hotly-anticipated 3D sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar" to sold-out audiences in selected cinemas across the world. Those who snapped up a ticket to the event that has been dubbed “Avatar Day” will be privy to footage of the much-hyped, technically-advanced 3D science fiction epic that some are saying will revolutionize the way we watch movies. The Oscar-winning director is famous for pushing the boundaries of technology in film and has long been an enthusiastic proponent of 3D technology

Share

The Darker Side of Owen Wilson

It’s rarely a shock when a star’s personal demons rear up in the form of a police blotter. Robert Downey Jr.’s ’90s jail stints, Christian Slater’s 59-day stay behind bars on assault charges in 1998 and Lindsay Lohan’s alleged coke-fueled car chase this summer all followed a pattern of prior troublesome behavior

Share

‘Sin Nombre’ unmasks Mexican gang culture

If riding on top of a Mexican freight train while bandits lie in wait, or inviting real-life gang members to improvise street battles doesn’t sound like the wisest approach to making your first feature film, try telling Cary Fukunaga. Because those are exactly the scrapes the 32-year-old writer-director got into during production of his highly-acclaimed debut “Sin Nombre.” Set in Mexico against the backdrop of the country’s ballooning people trafficking problem, Fukunaga’s social-political thriller shows one boy’s struggle to escape Mexican gang culture after meeting a Honduran immigrant girl.

Share

The Man Who Organized Woodstock

For three days in August 1969, 400,000 people gathered on a dairy farm in upstate New York to listen to rock ‘n’ roll. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair boasted performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who and Jefferson Airplane. But the festival is most famous for exuding a harmonious, we-are-all-one attitude that rain, traffic jams and overcrowding could not dispel.

Share

‘Ponyo’: More Ani-Magic from Miyazaki

While Hurricane Gustav was chewing up Cuba and storming toward Louisiana, the screen of the Venice Film Festival’s Sala Grande was showing a very sweet tsunami. In the animated movie Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, the swelling waves take the form of dolphins, and when a Japanese coastal village gets submerged no one is killed or hurt — just amusingly displaced. The rising up of the marine world is not insurrection against humanity but gently cautionary instruction for it

Share