This ho is crazy. Don’t believe the hype America…although we’re sure the majority of Republicans will since they think this chick spits gold. Michele Bachmann said President Barack Obama can’t relate to “the common man” because of his extreme wealth, failing to note that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is worth hundreds of millions more. “President Obama is extremely wealthy,” Bachmann said when USA Today asked how someone with “vast wealth” could connect to the American public. “He and his wife have been wealthy for a number of years, and so I think that’s really the issue. President Obama is wealthy–what does he understand about the common man right now?” According to financial disclosure reports released by the White House in May, the Obama’s hold assets worth between nearly $2.6 million and nearly $8.3 million. Romney’s net worth is up to $255 million, according to financial disclosure reports. Simple math right? Source Images via WENN/Youtube
Yeah…it’s official. It’s really no surprise that Mitt won the GOP Presidential Nomination today; Romney finished with 2,061…well over the 1,144 needed to claim the nomination but Republicans are not excited about Mitt. What many don’t know is that the Republican Party is severely divided. …the Republican National Convention has hardly played out according to the script that Mr. Romney’s advisers had written. The storm scrambled the convention schedule, while grass-root elements of the party loudly expressed their disapproval on the convention floor, threatening the images of a party united. Mr. Romney’s supporters passed new rules governing future primaries over the loud boos of Ron Paul supporters and other conservative activists who had objected to what they said was a power grab by the party’s establishment leaders. When the House speaker, John A. Boehner, called for a vote on the new rules, the chants for “no” were louder than for “yes.” Mr. Boehner ignored the protests, pressing ahead by saying the rules would be adopted “without objection,” even as the crowd continued to roar its disapproval. Despite the dissension, the task at hand remains: to use the most-watched moment of the Republican presidential campaign to humanize Mr. Romney in the eyes of voters with personal testimonials from his friends, his colleagues and — perhaps most importantly — his wife. The vote to approve the rules came after aides to Mr. Romney said they had reached a compromise with conservative activists who had rebelled against efforts by the Republican establishment to make it harder for candidates outside the mainstream to collect national delegates at the next convention. But grumblings persist among some delegates and other conservatives who say they do not trust Mr. Romney and organizers of the convention to have their interests at heart. “We were told no signs are allowed,” he said. Mr. Regi told him to try anyway, discretely handing him a poster. Who would have thought Good ‘ole Mitt would cheat and end up receiving an overwhelming number of delegate votes? SMH Source Images via WENN/Facebook
Lesbian hipster with uneventful tits sojourner morrell ….showed her uneventful tits for Jalouse France in what was only a hot shoot if you have an equestrian fetish…you know all hard for a hot bodied rich chick on a horse or with a horse…all strong legged and capable of controlling a massive beast in riding pants and riding boots and a helmet that will protect her when she’s got her face pressed into a stable wall as you stable hand her from behind….shoveling her shit with your dick from the stall that is her asshole….if you know what I mean….
Like eating a vegan sausage at a lesbian bar….her are some pics of Mel B, the Spice Girl better known as Eddie Murphy’s jump off he accidentally knocked up…but denied knocking up…cuz that’s what you do with whores who are just out to ruin your life…provided they don’t have the resources to file for paternity tests like the whores I know… allowin you to change your name, move and pretend it never happened….and not paying out millions to a bitch who doesn’t need millions…all cuz she wanted the world to know she’s not a whore with a fatherless child…when really she is a whore with a fatherless child…I mean unless the new husband grabbing her ass like a farm animal in heat has taken up the job….there’s always a sucker willing to stepfather for hot ass….. To See the Rest of the Day FOLLOW THIS LINK
Eva Herzigova is showing her old hot nipples for a fashion magazine I have never heard of and I like it more than the dude I just saw reading “O” Magazine in the park pretends to like his fat dumpy loud wife who was tending to her bratty fucking kids screaming….and not how much he really likes his wife…which is not at all cuz it was clear on his face, behind the smile of Oprah on the cover of a magazine he traded his testicles in for, that he hated her for ruining his fucking life, stealing his freedom and his soul…. while she spends his money and bosses him the fuck around….a story that ends in murder suicide for them…and hot pics of Eva Herzigova, retired model who still models… for me….
These militias aren’t playing… The recent arrests of several suspected domestic terrorists, and alleged murderers, who were active in the U.S. army have also revealed shocking ties to the Republican party: Isaac Aguigui, the Army private and alleged ringleader of a plot to assassinate Barack Obama and “take over” Ft. Stewart in Georgia, apparently served as a page at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota. That’s his mug shot after he was arrested for the alleged murder of Pvt. Michael Roark on the left. At right is a 2008 Reuters photo with the caption: “Republican National Convention page Isaac Aguigui watches from the edge of the floor at the start of the first session of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 1, 2008.” Aguigui, according to Georgia prosecutors, financed a plot to kill the president, take over Ft. Stewart and poison apple orchards in Washington state with a $500,000 insurance settlement he got last year after his wife’s death. The group—its numbers are unknown—called itself F.E.A.R., for Forever Enduring, Always Ready. Aguigui is one of four soldiers charged in Roark’s death, allegedly because he was a “loose end” who threatened to foil their plans. According to the AP, Aguigui and his compatriots bore “distinctive tattoos that resemble an anarchy symbol,” but that’s the extent of the reporting thus far on their political motives. What the hell???? Here’s more on their plot via AP reports : Four Army soldiers based in southeast Georgia killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks, prosecutors told a judge Monday. Prosecutors in rural Long County, near the sprawling Army post Fort Stewart, said the militia group of active and former U.S. military members spent at least $87,000 buying guns and bomb components. They allege the group was serious enough to kill two people – former soldier Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York – by shooting them in the woods last December in order to keep its plans secret. “This domestic terrorist organization did not simply plan and talk,” prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Superior Court judge. “Prior to the murders in this case, the group took action. Evidence shows the group possessed the knowledge, means and motive to carry out their plans.” One of the Fort Stewart soldiers charged in the case, Pfc. Michael Burnett, also gave testimony that backed up many of the assertions made by prosecutors. The 26-year-old soldier pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter, illegal gang activity and other charges. He made a deal to cooperate with prosecutors against the three other soldiers. Prosecutors said the group called itself F.E.A.R., short for Forever Enduring Always Ready. Pauley said authorities don’t know how many members it had. Burnett, 26, said he knew the group’s leaders from serving with them at Fort Stewart. He agreed to testify against fellow soldiers Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, identified by prosecutors as the militia’s founder and leader, and Sgt. Anthony Peden and Pvt. Christopher Salmon. All are charged by state authorities with malice murder, felony murder, criminal gang activity, aggravated assault and using a firearm while committing a felony. A hearing for the three soldiers was scheduled Thursday. Prosecutors say Roark, 19, served with the four defendants in the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and became involved with the militia. Pauley said the group believed it had been betrayed by Roark, who left the Army two days before he was killed, and decided the ex-soldier and his girlfriend needed to be silenced. Burnett testified that on the night of Dec. 4, he and the three other soldiers lured Roark and York to some woods a short distance from the Army post under the guise that they were going target shooting. He said Peden shot Roark’s girlfriend in the head while she was trying to get out of her car. Salmon, he said, made Roark get on his knees and shot him twice in the head. Burnett said Aguigui ordered the killings. “A `loose end’ is the way Isaac put it,” Burnett said. Also charged in the killings is Salmon’s wife, Heather Salmon. Pauley said Aguigui funded the militia using $500,000 in insurance and benefit payments from the death of his pregnant wife a year ago. Aguigui was not charged in his wife’s death, but Pauley told the judge her death was “highly suspicious.” She said Aguigui used the money to buy $87,000 worth of semiautomatic assault rifles, other guns and bomb components that were recovered from the accused soldiers’ homes and from a storage locker. He also used the insurance payments to buy land for his militia group in Washington state, Pauley said. In a videotaped interview with military investigators, Pauley said, Aguigui called himself “the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet.” He used the Army to recruit militia members, who wore distinctive tattoos that resemble an anarchy symbol, she said. Prosecutors say they have no idea how many members belong to the group. “All members of the group were on active-duty or were former members of the military,” Pauley said. “He targeted soldiers who were in trouble or disillusioned.” The prosecutor said the militia group had big plans. It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state’s apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia’s goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president. It’s not a game people. Domestic terror plots are very real. These guys bought nearly six figures worth of weaponry!!! And to think — this guy was an RNC page just four years ago! SMH @ Aguigui possibly murking his pregnant wife to get the money to fun his evil plot. Source
Don’t tell David Koepp that scandal is good for box office. The screenwriter ( Jurassic Park , Indiana Jones: The Return of a Legend ) and director of this week’s Premium Rush told Movieline that speculation that the media scandal involving Kristen Stewart, her Twilight co-star and reported off-screen beau Robert Pattinson and her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders is somehow good for business is “a cynical response” to the situation. “The people involved in any kind of scandal like that might want to respond, Who gives a shit? I didn’t say you could eat my head . You know?” Koepp told me. John Kamps, his writing partner on Premium Rush, agreed: “I think historically scandal has never done well for movies.” (Movieline will post an interview with both regarding their new film on Friday.) When I asked Koepp what he made of the media frenzy surrounding Stewart, Sanders and Pattinson, he replied: “I think it was sad for all involved.” Koepp was hired by Universal to write a script to Snow White and the Huntsman but explained that he departed the project on friendly terms because the producers wanted to pursue a different direction. “I felt like there was a good path with her, but they wanted to explore a different thing I had no ideas for,” said Koepp, who told me he couldn’t picture SWATH 2 without Stewart and, therefore, “couldn’t follow through.” Koepp observed that the proliferation of social media has made it difficult for just about anyone, not just Twilight cast members, to maintain privacy. “In the past — in the long past now — actors were able to keep their private lives much more separate,” the filmmaker said. “Now, no one really has a private life. I don’t think it’s just actors. I have teenage sons and they’re of the social media generation. That sort of living out loud is just weird to me. “I can’t understand why you would want so much of yourself revealed to just anyone, because it is inevitably — inevitably — a target of derision. It’s impersonal, but hurtful,” he said. “You see people really get hurt by Facebook attacks. Particularly in the junior high sort of level.” Noting that “Hollywood kind of is junior high,” albeit with more money and drugs, Koepp added: “There’s a lot of pain out there for people who are exposed. I feel very bad for actors in that regard. I think it’s a suckie part of the job and, when people say, Well, you asked for it — no they didn’t. “They asked for a bunch of other stuff and were willing to make a bunch of other sacrifices,” he said. “Just because you’re in the public eye doesn’t mean that you agree that there will be a complete abrogation of decency.” Nell Alk is an arts and entertainment writer and reporter based in New York City. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal , Manhattan Magazine, Z!NK Magazine and on InterviewMagazine.com, PaperMag.com and RollingStone.com, among others. Learn more about her here . Follow Nell Alk on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Fittingly lavish, new images from Anna Karenina , the splendor of imperial Russia is merely the backdrop for a scandalous love affair. But strict rules and mores adhered to (and then broken) by high society have long been enticing setting for 99 per centers (and their friends) throughout the ages to witness aristocratic crash and burns through fleshly indulgences. And the screen version of Leo Tolstoy’s novel appears to not hold back. Keira Knightley , Jude Law , and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (aka Aaron Johnson) star in the 19th century epic, directed by Joe Wright ( Atonement , Pride & Prejudice ) and adapted by Oscar-winner Tom Stoppard ( Shakespeare in Love ). Oscar is undoubtedly on filmmakers’ minds not to mention distributor Focus Features, which will debut Anna Karenina at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, the annual September event that is the virtual launch-pad of the annual awards race. Anna Karenina has graced the big screen and small screen throughout the decades. Greta Garbo played the titular Russian aristocrat who falls in love with the dashing Count Vronsky, jeopardizing her social standing and not to mention her aristocratic husband’s displeasure. Jude Law plays the wronged husband in the latest Anna Karenina and Aaron Johnson’s Count Vronsky is the object of desire. [ GALLERY: Check out the latest photos from Anna Karenina ] ( Anna Karenina trailer is below along with the film’s official log-line) Acclaimed director Joe Wright’s bold, theatrical new vision of the epic story of love is stirringly adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s great novel by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard (“Shakespeare in Love”). The film marks the third collaboration of the director with Academy Award-nominated actress Keira Knightley and Academy Award-nominated producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Paul Webster, following their award-winning box office successes “Pride & Prejudice” and “Atonement.” The creative team also includes cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (“The Avengers”), three-time Academy Award-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood (“Sherlock Holmes”), film editor Melanie Ann Oliver (“Jane Eyre”), hair and make-up designer Ivana Primorac (“Hanna”), Academy Award-winning composer Dario Marianelli (“Atonement”), and two-time Academy Award-nominated costume designer Jacqueline Durran (“Pride & Prejudice”). The timeless story powerfully explores the capacity for love that surges through the human heart while illuminating the lavish society that was imperial Russia. The time is 1874. Vibrant and beautiful, Anna Karenina (Ms. Knightley) has what any of her contemporaries would aspire to; she is the wife of Karenin (Jude Law), a high-ranking government official to whom she has borne a son, and her social standing in St. Petersburg could scarcely be higher. She journeys to Moscow after a letter from her philandering brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) arrives, asking for Anna to come and help save his marriage to Dolly (Kelly Macdonald). En route, Anna makes the acquaintance of Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams), who is then met at the train station by her son, the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When Anna is introduced to Vronsky, there is a mutual spark of instant attraction that cannot – and will not – be ignored. The Moscow household is also visited by Oblonsky’s best friend Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), an overly sensitive and compassionate landowner. Levin is in love with Dolly’s younger sister Kitty (Alicia Vikander). Inopportunely, he proposes to Kitty but she is infatuated with Vronsky. Devastated, Levin returns to his Pokrovskoe estate and throws himself into farm work. Kitty herself is heartbroken when, at a grand ball, Vronsky only has eyes for Anna and the married woman reciprocates the younger man’s interest. Anna struggles to regain her equilibrium by rushing home to St. Petersburg, where Vronsky follows her. She attempts to resume her familial routine, but is consumed by thoughts of Vronsky. A passionate affair ensues, which scandalizes St. Petersburg society. Karenin is placed in an untenable position and is forced to give his wife an ultimatum. In attempting to attain happiness, the decisions Anna makes pierce the veneer of an image-obsessed society, reverberating with romantic and tragic consequences that dramatically change her and the lives of all around her. Director: Joe Wright (“Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice,” “Hanna”) Writer: Tom Stoppard (“Shakespeare in Love”); Based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy Cast: Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Alicia Vikander, Olivia Williams, Emily Watson MPAA Rating: R
Actress Nicole Kidman and retiring Film Society of Lincoln Center Program Director Richard Peña will receive gala tributes at the upcoming 50th New York Film Festival. Kidman stars in Cannes world premiere The Paperboy , which has also joined the NYFF lineup. Kidman’s tribute will take place Wednesday October 3rd, while the gala in Peña’s honor will take place Wednesday, October 10th. Peña has been the Program Director at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. “It is very fitting that we celebrate the 50th birthday of the New York Film Festival by honoring the man who has guided the festival’s artistic vision for the last 25 years,” said FSLC’s executive director Rose Kuo. “Richard Peña helped us discover directors like Pedro Almodovar, Abbas Kiarostami, Olivier Assayas, Lars von Trier and Hou Hsiao-hsiien, making an indelible contribution to film culture in New York City and around the world. We hope that his friends and colleagues will join us fora special evening to celibate his achievements.” The 50th New York Film Festival will open with the world premiere of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi . The 50th New York Film Festival main-slate: AMOUR (2012) 127min Director: Michael Haneke Country: Austria/France/Germany The universally acclaimed winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, AMOUR is arguably Michael Haneke’s crowning achievement to date, a portrait of a couple dealing with the ravages of old age that is as compassionate as it is merciless. The great veteran French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are staggering as Georges and Anne, long-married music teachers living out their final years surrounded by the comforts of books and music in their warm Paris apartment. After Anne suffers a stroke, Georges attends to her with firmness shot through with love. The underlying unease, as well as some abrupt surprises, are hardly unexpected from Haneke, who challenges the viewer to confront the experience of his characters as directly as he does. But he rewards the effort with a film that is all the more moving for its complete avoidance of sentimentality. An unquestionable masterpiece. A Sony Pictures Classics release. ARAF – SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN (2012) 124min Director: Yeşim Ustaoğlu Country: Turkey/France/Germany The title refers as much to the film’s main location—a tiny Turkish town comprised of no more than a few houses and a large motorway rest stop where the locals work impossibly long hours—as it does to adolescence, the way station where the child transforms into an adult. What seems at first like a piece of low-key realism comes into dramatic focus when an adolescent girl begins an obsessive sexual relationship with a middle-aged trucker, fueling the fury of the teen-aged boy who hoped to marry her. Yesim Ustaoglu, whose debut feature JOURNEY TO THE SUN is one of the treasures of the New Turkish cinema, is not only a visual poet of her country’s harshly beautiful landscapes; she also depicts with great empathy and uncompromising honesty the heart’s desires and the body’s needs. BARBARA (2012) 105min Director: Christian Petzold Country: Germany Set in 1980, Christian Petzold’s latest masterfully controlled, absorbing work centers around a doctor—played by the incomparable Nina Hoss, in her fifth film with the director—exiled to a small town from East Berlin as punishment for applying for an exit visa from the GDR. Planning to flee for Denmark with her boyfriend, Barbara remains icy and withdrawn around her colleagues, particularly with the lead physician (the excellent Ronald Zehrfeld), who is hiding a secret of his own. With her patients, however, the guarded doctor is kind, warm, and protective, even risking her own safety for one of her charges. This subtle, perfectly calibrated Cold War thriller expertly details the costs of telling and withholding the truth. Winner of the SIlver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films Release. BEYOND THE HILLS (După dealuri) (2012) 150min Director: Cristian Mungiu Country: Romania This harrowing, visually stunning new film from director Cristian Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS) unfolds in and around a remote monastery where pious young women toil dutifully under the ever-watchful eye of an austere priest known as Papa (the excellent Valeriu Andriuta). As the film opens, Alina (Cristina Flutur) arrives to visit her friend Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), one of the nuns in training. As children, the two women lived together in an orphanage where the tough, short-tempered Alina served as a protector for her more delicate friend. Now, Alina wants Voichita to leave her cloistered life and return with her to Germany, but as the fateful hour draws near, Voichita seems disinclined to go, and so Alina stays on for a while, which is when the real trouble begins. Inspired by a case of alleged demonic possession that occurred in Romania’s Moldova region in 2005, BEYOND THE HILLS is not a supernatural film but rather an all too believable portrait of dogma at odds with personal liberty in a society still emerging from the shadow of Communism. For their remarkable lead performances, screen newcomers Flutur and Stratan shared the Best Actress prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Mungiu also received the Best Screenplay award. A Sundance Selects release. BWAKAW (2012) 110min Director: Jun Robles Lana Country: Philippines BWAKAW is the film you hope for at any festival, a work by an unknown director that comes out of nowhere to captivate and enthrall with its emotional truth, high humor and sage assessment of the human condition. Filipino cinema great Eddie Garcia gives a career-capping performance as Rene, a 70-plus single gent in a quiet provincial town who, having alienated almost everyone with his caustic comments, is resigned to seeing out his days alone, save for the company of his loyal canine companion (whose name gives the movie its title). Rene has his secrets but is disinclined to share them until he befriends a brawny tricycle taxi driver. Employing frequent outrageous humor, director Jun Robles Lana elegantly captures the quality of everyday life in this backwater while crafting a superior character study of a man who has allowed most of life to pass him by until an emotional jolt emboldens him to go where he’s never dared venture before. CAESAR MUST DIE (Cesare deve morire) (2012) 76min Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani Country: Italy Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Padre Padrone, The Night of the Shooting Stars) triumphantly reasserted their eminence among modern Italian directors by winning the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival with CAESAR MUST DIE. The sight of inmates putting on a play in prison is not entirely new, but beginning with the brilliant opening scenes of convicts with wildly differing accents and backgrounds auditioning for the immortal roles of Brutus, Anthony, Cassius and, most impressively and menacingly, the title character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, this approach resonates in ways that both Pirandello and Brecht would have appreciated. The play’s director must not only help guide these amateurs in their performances, but is also forced to police real-life rivalries and rages that threaten to derail the production before it can ever be seen. Vital, provocative and entirely engaging, CAESAR marks a wonderful late-career triumph for this still-formidable brother act. An Adopt Films release. CAMILLE REWINDS (Camille redouble) (2012) 110min Director: Noémie Lvovsky Country: France Noémie Lvovsky’s ebullient twist on the comedy of remarriage transposes Frances Ford Coppola’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED to present day France, which means that when the titular Camille—who’s in the throes of divorcing her husband of 25 years—passes out drunk, she wakes up as a high school senior in the mid-1980s (leg warmers, “Walking on Sunshine” on the turntable, and no cell phones in sight.) Lvovsky is hilarious and touchingly vulnerable as Camille. Hard as she tries to avoid the classmate (Samir Guesmi) who she knows will become her first love, her husband, and the father of her daughter, and who will ditch her after she turns 40, she nevertheless winds up in his arms. Her double take, just before their lips meet for a first kiss the second time around, is indescribably delicious. In the tiny role of a watchmaker who may have set Camille’s time travel in motion, New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud is perfect. THE DEAD MAN AND BEING HAPPY (El muerto y ser feliz) (2012) 94min Director: Javier Rebello Country: Spain/Argentina For his third feature, the gifted Spanish director Javier Rebollo (WOMAN WITHOUT PIANO) has decamped to Argentina and created a literate, screwball road movie that Borges surely would have loved. The “dead man” of the title is Santos (veteran Spanish screen star José Sacristán), a cancer-stricken hired killer who flees his Buenos Aires hospital bed and sets off on one last assignment. It is a journey that takes him through an interior Argentina rarely glimpsed in movies, from the Cordoba resort town of La Cumbrecita (with its disproportionate—and disconcerting—population of elderly Germans) to the northern province of Santiago del Estero. Along the way, Santos finds himself joined by Alejandra (the wonderful Roxana Blanco), an attractive middle-aged woman who impulsively jumps into his vintage Ford Falcon at a gas station and soon thwarts him from his intended path. At one point, our curious couple stops off at a decrepit beach town described by one of the film’s dueling voice-over narrators as “a strange mix of paradise and apocalypse”—which, as it happens, also perfectly sums up Rebollo’s playful and unexpectedly moving reverie on love, death and the open highway. FILL THE VOID (Lemale et ha’halal) (2012) 90min Director: Rama Burshtein Country: Israel With her first dramatic feature, writer-director Rama Burshtein has created a work that is very likely unprecedented: a woman’s view of Tel Aviv’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community from the inside. Typically, a story about a devout 18-year-old Israeli being pressured to marry the husband of her late sister, would include the option of the woman declaring her independence in the modern fashion. Such a choice is not even on the table in this cloistered, intimately rendered world where religious law, tradition and the rabbis’ word are absolute. A graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem and Hassidic herself, Burshtein startlingly brings to life a world known to few in this provocative, undeniably talented debut from a most unlikely source. WORLD PREMIERE FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED (2012) 78min Director: Alan Berliner Country: USA Sometime in the new millennium, Edwin Honig—the distinguished poet, translator, critic and university professor—began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, which gradually but inexorably brought on the loss of his memory, command of language and relation to the past. Filmmaker Alan Berliner—for whom Honig was a cousin, a friend and a mentor—documented their meetings over five years; his new film chronicles the steady decline of Honig’s mind and body, but also the strength and stamina of his spirit, as well as his innate charm and wonderfully playful way with words and sounds. Occasional moments of lucidity offer an insight as to the ways in which Honig attempts to make sense out of what is happening to him. FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED is an unflinching essay on the fragility of being human, and a stark reminder of the profound role that memory plays in all of our lives. An HBO Documentary Films release. WORLD PREMIERE FLIGHT (2012) 138min Director: Robert Zemeckis Country: USA Triumphantly returning to live-action filmmaking for the first time since Cast Away 12 years ago, Robert Zemeckis teams with Denzel Washington on the tense and edgy thriller FLIGHT. In a brilliant, heart-stopping sequence, pilot Whip Whitacker (Washington), after an all-nighter of booze, sex and drugs, boldly guides a crippled airliner to a crash landing that nearly all the passengers survive. Although he is acclaimed as a hero, the legal, moral and ethical aspects of Whip’s behavior before and after the accident are much more ambiguous than initially meet the public eye. A study of addiction far more complex than the norm, FLIGHT is a compelling drama anchored by a great performance from one of our most distinguished actors. John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo and Kelly Reilly offer vibrant supporting turns in what is certain to be one of the most talked-about movies of the season. A Paramount Pictures release. FRANCES HA (2012) 86min Director: Noah Baumbach Country: USA Reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s celebration of the mystery and vulnerability of his muse Anna Karina in BANDE Á PART, Noah Baumbach’s love poem to Greta Gerwig is an effervescent, seeming effortless comedy about a young woman taking the first shaky, post-Ivy League steps in what will become her real life. Gerwig, who also co-wrote the script, proves herself far more articulate and funny than any of her former Mumblecore colleagues. Her Frances arrives in New York determined to become a post-modern dancer despite the fact that she’s constantly falling over her feet or putting one of them in her mouth. The movie is lightning-in-a-bottle–deft, sophisticated, and, in its myriad shades of digital gray, radiantly beautiful in a brand new way. THE GATEKEEPERS (Shomerei Ha’saf) (2012) 90min Director: Dror Moreh Country: Israel Since its stunning military victory in 1967, Israel has hoped to transform its battlefield success into the basis for long-lasting peace. Simply put, this hasn’t happened: 45 years later, violence continues unabated while the mistrust between both sides increases daily. In what can only be called an historic achievement, filmmaker Dror Moreh has brought together six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s Secret Service, who reflect on their successes and failures to maintain security while responding to the shifting politics and imperatives of the “peace process.” Each man weighs in on topics ranging from preemptive strikes to confronting terrorists both Palestinian and Israeli; their thoughts and responses are candid, well-informed and rarely short of remarkable. An insider’s guide—and what insiders!—to five decades of Israeli history, THE GATEKEEPERS will surely be one of the most widely and hotly discussed films of the year. A Sony Pictures Classics release. GINGER AND ROSA (2012) 89min Director: Sally Potter Country: UK In 1962 London, two teenage girls, best friends since they were toddlers, are driven apart by a scandalous betrayal. Making her NYFF debut, writer-director Sally Potter (ORLANDO, ND/NF 1993) has crafted an intimate, riveting coming-of-age story—one made all the more powerful by a revelatory performance by Elle Fanning as the bright, anxious Ginger, increasingly affected by both the misery of her parents (deftly played by Alessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks) and the era’s all-too-real fears of nuclear destruction. As her private dramas unfold against the backdrop of broader historical terrors, Ginger proves to be one of cinema’s most fascinating and formidable young heroines. Talented newcomer Alice Englert, the daughter of filmmaker Jane Campion, makes her impressive feature film debut as the troubled Rosa. HERE AND THERE (Aquí y Allá) (2012) 110min Director: Antonio Mendez Esparza Country: Spain/USA/Mexico Pedro returns home to a small mountain village in Guerrero, Mexico after years of working in the U.S. His daughters feel more distant that he imagined, but his wife Teresa is delighted he’s back. With the money he’s earned he can create a better life for his family, and maybe even start the band with his cousins he’s dreamed about for years. But work back home remains scarce, and the temptation of heading back north of the border remains as strong as ever. Antonio Mendez Esparza has made a most remarkable debut; rarely, if ever, has a film about US/Mexican border experience felt so fresh or authentic. Using non-professionals, Mendez Esparza gets remarkably nuanced performances that gives a richness of nuance and detail to each of his characters that goes way beyond cliché and stereotype. Winner of the Grand Prize at this year’s Critics Week in Cannes. HOLY MOTORS (2012) 115min Director: Leos Carax Country: France This unclassifiable, expansive movie from Leos Carax (Lovers on the Bridge)—his first feature in 13 years—operates on the exhilarating logic of dreams and emotions. After a prologue in which Carax himself, clad in pajamas, walks through a corridor that leads to a theater full of silent spectators, HOLY MOTORS segues to actor Denis Lavant, Carax’s longtime collaborator, playing a mysterious man named Oscar who inhabits 11 different characters over the course of a single day. This shape-shifter is shuttled from appointment to appointment in Paris in a white-stretch limo driven by the soignée Edith Scob (EYES WITHOUT A FACE); not on the itinerary is an unplanned reunion with Kylie Minogue. To summarize the film any further would be to take away some of its magic; the most accurate précis comes from its own creator, who aptly described HOLY MOTORS after its world premiere in Cannes as “a film about a man and the experience of being alive.” An Indomina release. HYDE PARK ON HUDSON (2012) 95min Director: Roger Michell Country: UK Bill Murray provides a career-topping performance as President Franklin D. Roosevelt in this captivating, winningly acted comedy-drama that pulls back the curtain on the complicated domestic arrangements at FDR’s beautiful New York country estate. Told from the perspective of Roosevelt’s little-known sixth cousin Margaret “Daisy” Suckley (Laura Linney), a member of the president’s intimate inner circle of women, HYDE PARK ON HUDSON revolves around the royal visit of King George VI (yes, him again!) to the United States on the eve of World War II. In a film both buoyantly comic and inescapably serious, screenwriter Richard Nelson and director Roger Michell (NOTTING HILL, VENUS) subtly examine the tricky dynamics of the chief executive’s relationships with his wife, mother and devoted female staff while also taking stock of his ego, shrewd manipulations and consummate ability to win people’s favor and confidence—most notably in the case of the insecure young king. It’s an entrancing peek at a time when the personal secrets of our leaders were well and truly kept. A Focus Features release. KINSHASA KIDS (2012) 85min Director: Marc-Henri Wajnberg Country: Belgium/France Perhaps the most ebullient “musical” you’ll see this year, Marc-Henri Wajnberg’s singular documentary/fiction hybrid follows a group of street kids—kicked out of their homes for being “witch children”—in the titular Congolese capital. These ever-resourceful youngsters decide to form a band and team up with Bebson, an eccentric impresario and one-time recording star; he’s just one of many unforgettable adults who, whether as informal instructors, fellow musicians, or menacing pursuers, impact the lives of these indefatigable tykes. Completely devoid of sentimentality and condescension, KINSASHA KIDS celebrates and honors both the resilience of its young protagonists and the chaotic city in which they live. THE LAST TIME I SAW MACAO (A Última Vez Que Vi Macau) (2012) 82min Director: João Pedro Rodrigues Country: Portugal/France This stunning amalgam of playful film noir and Chris Marker–like cine-essay from João Pedro Rodrigues (TO DIE LIKE A MAN, NYFF 2009) and João Rui Guerra da Mata explores the psychic pull of the titular former Portuguese colony. After a spectacular opening scene, in which actress Cindy Scrash lip-synchs, as tigers pace behind her, to Jane Russell’s “You Kill Me”—from Josef von Sternberg’s MACAO (1952), a key reference here—the film shifts to da Mata’s off-screen recollections of growing up in this gambling haven in the South China Sea. He’s come back to Macao to help a friend who later vanishes—a mystery that begets not only poetic ruminations on time, place, and memory but also magnificent compositions of flora, fauna, and cityscapes. Rodrigues will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule. LEVIATHAN (2012) 87min Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel Country: USA Having previously immersed us into the worlds of Montana sheep herding and Queens auto salvaging, respectively, NYFF alumni Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass) and Véréna Paravel (Foreign Parts) team for another singular anthropological excavation, this time set inside one of the world’s most dangerous professions: the commercial fishing industry. Taking to the high seas of the North Atlantic—Herman Melville territory—the filmmakers capture this harsh, unforgiving world in all of its visceral, haunting, cosmic detail, using an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to literal bird’s-eye views. The result is a hallucinatory sensory experience quite unlike any other. To paraphrase Francis Coppola describing his Apocalypse Now, LEVIATHAN isn’t a movie about commercial fishing; it is commercial fishing. WORLD PREMIERE LIFE OF PI (2012) Director: Ang Lee Country: USA Based on the book that has sold more than seven million copies and spent years on the bestseller list, Academy Award winner Lee’s LIFE OF PI takes place over three continents, two oceans, many years, and a wide world of imagination. Lee’s vision, coupled with game-changing technological breakthroughs, has turned a story long thought un-filmable into a totally original cinematic event and the first truly international all-audience motion picture. LIFE OF PI follows a young man who survives a disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship¹s only other survivor…a fearsome Bengal tiger. A Twentieth Century Fox release. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (2012) 109min Director: Abbas Kiarostami Country: Japan/Iran/France Fresh from the triumph of his Tuscany-set CERTIFIED COPY (NYFF 2010), master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami travels even further afield from his native Iran for this mysteriously beautiful romantic drama filmed entirely in Japan. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE revolves around the brief encounter between an elderly professor (the wonderful 81-year-old stage actor Tadashi Okuno, here playing his first leading role in a film) and a sociology student (Rin Takanashi) who moonlights as a high-end escort. Dispatched to the old man by her boss—one of the professor’s former students—the young woman finds her latest client less interested in sex than in cooking her soup, talking, and playing old Ella Fitzgerald records (like the one that gives the film its allusive title). Eventually, night gives way to day and a tense standoff with the student’s insanely jealous boyfriend (Ryō Kase); but as usual in Kiarostami, nothing is quite as it appears on the surface. Are these characters—who conjure in one another the specters of regret and roads not taken—meeting by chance, or is it fate? Is this love, or merely something like it? A Sundance Selects release. LINES OF WELLINGTON (Linhas de Wellington) (2012) 151min Director: Valeria Sarmiento Country: France/Portugal After conquering Spain, Napoleon Bonaparte sent a powerful army to invade Portugal in 1810. The French plowed through the resistance mounted against them until, as they approached Lisbon, they were met by a combined British and Portuguese army under the command of the Viscount Wellington. That’s the general historical outline for Valeria Sarmiento’s extraordinarily intimate epic of the Peninsular War. Along the way, we witness love affairs and treachery, noble action and selfish cruelty, from the highest social echelons to the most humble quarters. Prepared by the late Raul Ruiz from a screenplay by Carlos Saboga (Mysteries of Lisbon), LINES OF WELLINGTON was completed by Sarmiento—Ruiz’s longtime editor as well as his widow—who has created a revealing portrait of life during what has been called one of the first examples of “total war.” The all-star cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Elsa Zylberstein, Marisa Paredes, and John Malkovich as Wellington. MEMORIES LOOK AT ME (Ji Yi Wang Zhe Wo) (2012) 91min Director: Song Fang Country: China Song Fang’s remarkable directorial debut, in which she travels from Beijing to Nanjing for a visit with her family (many of whom play themselves), gracefully expounds on several poignant topics: how an adult child’s relationship with her parents changes as they grow older, and how to negotiate one’s place as a single woman in a world of married couples. Song, who many will remember for her wonderful performance as the nanny and aspiring filmmaker in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon (NYFF 2007), perfectly captures the rhythms of brief sojourns home, trips filled with reunions (both joyful and heart-wrenching), reminiscences, and moments of feeling painfully out of place. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET (La Noche de enfrente) (2012) 107min Director: Raul Ruiz Country: France/Chile In August 2011, the cinema sadly lost one of its most magical artists, director Raul Ruiz—but, happily, not before he left us with one final masterpiece. Returning to his native Chile, Ruiz introduces us here to Don Celso, a bespectacled office worker heading into retirement. After an evening’s poetry class, Celso starts to narrate several tales from his childhood to his teacher, guiding the audience both within and outside the film through various levels of reality that mix the private and the public, the historical and the mythic, the here and the beyond. The journey is, of course, full of Ruizian flights of visual and verbal wit, where resonances between words and images form connections that at times defy traditional storytelling. NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET is both a moving meditation on one man’s mortality as well as an insightful summation of an artist’s brilliant career. A Cinema Guild release. Ruiz will also have his work presented during NYFF’s soon-to-be-announced Views From the Avant-Garde schedule. NO (2012) 110min Director: Pablo Larrain Country: Chile/USA/Mexico In 1988, in an effort to extend and legitimize its rule, the Pinochet military junta announced it would hold a plebiscite to get the people’s permission to stay in power. Despite being given 15 minutes a day to plead its case on television, the anti-Pinochet opposition was divided and without a clear message. Enter Rene Saavedra (an excellent Gael Garcia Bernal), an ad man who, after a career pushing soft drinks and soap, sets out to sell Chileans on democracy and freedom. Winner of the top prize in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, NO is little short of a miracle: shooting on U-matic video tape to give the film the look of the Eighties, filmmaker Pablo Larrain (TONY MANERO, POST MORTEM) has created a smart, funny and totally engrossing political thriller with a powerful resonance for our times. A Sony Pictures Classics release. WORLD PREMIERE NOT FADE AWAY (2012) 112min Director: David Chase Country: USA The time is the 1960s, on the cusp of the summer of love. The place, suburban New Jersey. The music, 100 percent pure rock and roll. For his feature filmmaking debut, The Sopranos creator David Chase has crafted a wise, tender and richly atmospheric portrait of a group of friends trying to do what so many awkward suburban kids of the time dreamed of doing: form their own rock band. And these guys are good, fronted by a preternaturally gifted singer-songwriter (terrific newcomer John Magaro) who’s a dead ringer for the young Bob Dylan, even if dad (James Gandolfini) doesn’t take kindly to seeing junior strut around in long hair and Cuban heels. Masterfully capturing the era’s conflicting attitudes and ideologies, all set to a killer soundtrack produced by the legendary Steven Van Zandt, NOT FADE AWAY just might be the best coming-of-age movie since Barry Levinson’s Diner—and one of the best rock movies ever. A Paramount Vantage release. OUR CHILDREN (À perdre la raison) (2012) 111min Director: Joachim Lafosse Country: Belgium How does it happen that a vibrant, capable young woman loses her sense of self-worth and ends up destroying what she most loves? Belgian director Joachim Lafosse structures an all too familiar contemporary story that was headline news in Europe as a classical tragedy. Émilie Dequenne more than fulfills the promise of her award-winning performance in the Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta with this portrait of a young school teacher who marries a Moroccan immigrant (Tahar Rahim) and has four children with him, while gradually becoming aware of how much he is in thrall to his mentor, a domineering doctor (Niels Arestrup). Rahim and Arestrup reprise their father/son relationship from Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet but with an even more corrupt twist. Lafosse’s direction of this perverse narrative of patriarchal power and female oppression is like steel wrapped in silk. PASSION (2012) 94min Director: Brian De palma Country: USA Brian De Palma exhibits great panache and a diabolical mastery of frequent, small surprises in his first fiction feature since his magical comedy-of-coincidences, FEMME FATALE. With tongue planted in cheek, or maybe not—it’s up to you to decide—De Palma turns French director Alain Corneau’s 2010 LOVE CRIME into a far more droll, erotic tale of female competition. Noomi Rapace more than matches her performance in the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO as the assistant to an unscrupulous advertising honcho (Rachel McAdams), who steals her ideas and acts as if it’s all good sport. It’s great fun until De Palma zeros in on the fury in Rapace’s eyes. The De Palma trademarks are all present and deployed with coolly calculated abandon: a brilliant use of split screen; a confusion of identical twins; dreams within dreams; and shoes to die for. SOMETHING IN THE AIR (Après Mai) (2012) 122min Director: Olivier Assayas Country: France In the months after the heady weeks of May ’68, a group of young people search for a way to continue the revolution believed to be just beginning. For Gilles (newcomer Clément Mettayer), this means having to balance his political commitments with his desire to explore painting and filmmaking; for his girlfriend Christine (GOODBYE, FIRST LOVE star Lola Créton), this means throwing herself wholeheartedly into the task of organizing. Olivier Assayas (CARLOS, SUMMER HOURS) here describes the sentimental education of a generation that was too young to have been on the barricades; he brilliantly captures its explorations of new lifestyles, the arguments about strategies and tactics, and above all its music, a constant presence that becomes something like the artistic unconscious of an era. The period details are perfect, but what makes this film so special is the sense it conveys of history as lived experience. A Sundance Selects release. TABU (2012) 118min Director: Miguel Gomes Country: Portugal The ghosts of F.W. Murnau, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Cornell and Jack Smith hover above Miguel Gomes’s third feature—an exquisite, absurdist entry in the canon of surrealist cinema. Shot in ephemeral black-and-white celluloid, TABU is movie-as-dream—an evocation of irrational desires, extravagant coincidences, and cheesy nostalgia that nevertheless is grounded in serious feeling and beliefs, even anti-colonialist politics. There is a story, which is delightful to follow and in which the cart comes before the horse: the first half is set in contemporary Lisbon, the second, involving two of the same characters, in a Portuguese colony in the early 1960s. “Be My Baby” belted in Portuguese, a wandering crocodile, and a passionate, ill-advised coupling seen through gently moving mosquito netting make for addled movie magic. The winner of the Alfred Bauer Prize (for a work of particular innovation) and FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films release. YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET (Vous n’avez encore rien vu) (2012) 115min Director: Alain Resnais Country: France From its impish title to its vibrant formal experimentation, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET proves that, at age 90, master French filmmaker Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, WILD GRASS) is indeed still full of surprises. Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh, the film opens with a who’s-who of French acting royalty (including Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and frequent Resnais muse Sabine Azéma) being summoned to the reading of a late playwright’s last will and testament. Upon their arrival, the playwright (Denis Podalydès) appears on a TV screen from beyond the grave and asks his erstwhile collaborators to evaluate a recording of an experimental theater company performing his Eurydice—a play they themselves all appeared in over the years. But as the video unspools, something curious happens: instead of watching passively, these seasoned thespians begin acting out the text alongside their youthful avatars, looking back into the past rather like mythic Orpheus himself. Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Eric Gautier on stylized sets that recall the French poetic realism of the 1930s, YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema.
