Month: October 2019

October 18, 2019 6:00AM PT “Cyrano de Bergerac” gets the “Shakespeare in Love” treatment in this entertaining yet derivative backstage farce. As fizzy as a freshly poured glass of Perrier-Jouët, though considerably less complex, writer-director Alexis Michalik’s “Cyrano, My Love” attempts to give the “Shakespeare in Love” treatment to the timeless French play “Cyrano de

October 18, 2019 6:00AM PT Mattel Films, Daniel Kaluuya’s 59% banner and Valparaiso Pictures are partnering to develop a live-action motion picture based on Barney, Mattel’s iconic purple dinosaur. “Working with Daniel Kaluuya will enable us to take a completely new approach to ‘Barney’ that will surprise audiences and subvert expectations,” said Mattel Films’ Robbie

October 18, 2019 5:27AM PT Svetla Tsotsorkova’s second feature film “Sister,” which played at the San Sebastian and London film festivals, has been picked up by Hualu in China and Tamasa in France. World sales are handled by Xavier Henry-Rashid’s Film Republic. The film, set in a small town in present-day Bulgaria, centers on a

Morelia Film Festival’s (FICM) Impulso sidebar for pix in progress will run Sunday through Tuesday this coming week, having become one of the territories most important launchpads for Latin American feature films in post-production. Many of the participating films in recent editions have gone on to find festival success the world around. Last year, Hari

October 18, 2019 5:00AM PT The 2019 View Conference will present its Visionary Award to Pixar’s Ralph Eggleston. Eggleston, who won an Oscar in 2002 for his animated short “For the Birds,” has worked on such Pixar hits as “Toy Story,” “Finding Nemo,” “WALL-E,” and “Inside Out.” “I’ve long been a fan of the View

Mexican Oscar-nominated actress Marina de Tavira (“Roma”) is receiving the Premio Cuervo Tradicional, a career recognition award from Morelia Int’l Film Festival (FICM) sponsor Jose Cuervo Tradicional. The prize ceremony will take place on Saturday, Oct. 19. The award has been given out for more than 12 years at FICM to a Mexican actor or actress who

Against the picturesque backdrop of the Alps, the View Conference will celebrate its 20th year in Turin, Italy, with its fullest program ever, featuring top creatives from around the world in film, television and games and more who will give keynote talks and present masterclasses at the weeklong event, Oct. 21-25. This edition boasts director

“If I could have a secret superpower, it would be to heal with my hands,” says French artist Prune Nourry in her autobiographical documentary “Serendipity.” It’s an understandable enough admission, given that she was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 31, fighting a battle against it that included undergoing a mastectomy, harvesting her eggs in advance

Already backed by a four-way production partnership spanning Nicaragua, Mexico, the Netherlands and Germany, Laura Baumeister’s debut feature project “Daughter of Rage” swept three of the four prizes on offer at San Sebastian’s 8th Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum this year. Now the project heads to Morelia, where Baumeister has been with short films in the

Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev earned critical acclaim for his 2017 feature “Directions,” which was selected for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar. The first installment in a planned trilogy about the social inequality and moral ills plaguing both Bulgaria and Europe at large, the film followed six cab drivers over the course of 24 hours as

No asteroids are hurtling toward Earth in “A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon,” though a flying frozen pizza does softly slice the top off an elderly shopper’s hairdo: That’s roughly the level of quirky peril we’re talking about in the latest outing from Aardman Animations, and as usual, the British stop-motion masters cheerfully prove that

October 17, 2019 4:27PM PT This riveting Aussie thriller follows the disappearance of an outspoken young female Muslim slam poet. The disappearance of a fearless female Palestinian-Australian slam poet triggers suspense and powerful social and political commentary in “Slam,” an outstanding slow-burn thriller by expat Indian filmmaker Partho Sen-Gupta (“Sunrise”). Starring Palestinian actor Adam Bakri

Igo Kantor, whose Hollywood career took him from Howard Hughes’ projection room to supervising post-production on “Easy Rider” and producing B-movies like “Kingdom of the Spiders” and “Mutant,” died Oct. 15. He was 89. Kantor, who was born in Vienna and raised in Lisbon, met “Dillinger” director Max Nosseck on the ship to New York.