As production continues on Peter Jackson’s two-part adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Hobbit , the director continues to leak photos of his epic adventure. Last week, he teased audiences with images of Bilbo and Gandalf (played by Martin Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen) and now the New Zealand visionary has unveiled the first still of The Hobbit ‘s bickering dwarf trio of Dori, Ori and Nori.
Catherine Breillat’s movies are so bold and brash in their views of women’s sexuality that no one could accuse her of being subtle. ( Tampon teabag, anyone? ) But Breillat’s latest, The Sleeping Beauty , originally made for French television, is so visually and stylistically delicate that watching it, you can almost forget how forthright, in characteristic Breillat style, it is. I gasped at some of its images, like that of a young princess, dressed in a pink coat trimmed with white fur, crossing the snowy landscape of Lapland on the back of a doe, the Northern Lights shimmering in the vast sky behind her. Personally, I don’t remember the journey from girlhood to womanhood as being all that pretty (or, luckily, all that perilous), but I’ll take it when I see it.