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      <description></description>
      <language>en</language>
      <copyright>Copyright 2011</copyright>
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      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival: Moneyball</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
         ​"It's hard not to be romantic about baseball," admits Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics played, in career-best form, by Brad Pitt in Bennett Millers' Moneyball. This line, from a screenplay by Stephen Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, happens in the home stretch of a film about the push-and-pull between traditional methods of baseball team building and player evaluation, and the experimental methods Beane put into practice beginning in 2002, after a heartbreaking pennant series loss to the Yankees--a team with a payroll four times the size of Oakland's.Tired of being beaten and having his players poached by wealthy bigger-market franchises ("We're organ donors for the rich," he complains, with Pitt giving the middle-aged former player a touch of brass tacks anti-establishment swagger reminiscent of his Tyler Durden from Fight Club), Beane hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to shake up the As with the aid of math. A fictional figure based on Paul Depodesta (Beane's assistant at the A's who graduated to the general manager post at the LA Dodgers, from which he was fired in 2005 by Frank McCourt after a Depodesta-rebuilt team finished the second worst season in LA history), Brand is a Yale graduate and disciple of Bill James, the former security guard, writer and current Red Sox employee who essentially invented the advanced analysis of baseball statistic known as sabermetics.&nbsp;  
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_moneyball.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival: Moneyball" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_moneyball.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_moneyball.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Reviews</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">aaron sorkin</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">baseball</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">bennett miller</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">brad pitt</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">jonah hill</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">moneyball</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">paul depodesta</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">philip seymour hoffman</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">sabermetrics</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">world series</category>
        
         <pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:42:10 -0800</pubDate>
      </item>
      
      

      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival: Julia Loktev&apos;s The Loneliest Planet</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          

The second narrative feature from writer/director Julia Loktev (Day Night Day Night played TIFF in 2006), The Loneliest Planet stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg as Alex and Nica, a newly-engaged couple who hire a guide (played by real-life guide Bidzina Gujabidze) to lead them on a backpacking trip in the mountains of Georgia. The title, an apparent play on the Lonely Planet travel guides designed for boho tourists like Loktev's couple, takes on more complicated connotations as the trio delve into rugged, desolate terrain, both literally and figuratively.The movie opens with the most disarming image I've seen at the festival thus far. 
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_julia_loktevs_the_loneliest.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival: Julia Loktev&apos;s The Loneliest Planet" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_julia_loktevs_the_loneliest.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_julia_loktevs_the_loneliest.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">gael garcia bernal</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">georgia</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">hani furstenberg</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">julia loktev</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">lonely planet</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">the loneliest planet</category>
        
         <pubDate>Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:49:10 -0800</pubDate>
      </item>
      
      

      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival: Bad Romance From Stillman, Maddin, Payne and More </title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          ​Tragic romance is a big TIFF theme this year. Soured love tied to death and/or suicide and/or beautifully-lit misery has popped up in eight of the nine films I've seen since I last blogged. At the festival midway point, I've seen so many movies hinged on mad/bad romance, rejection and infidelity, that they all threaten to blur into one massive, incredibly melancholic scare campaign. You have been warned: open your heart at your peril.Some of these films (like Philippe Garrel's That Summer, or the long-awaited Whit Stillman romantic-musical-comedy Damsels in Distress) really deserve more careful consideration than I can give them whilst under the scheduling demands of a film festival. Others (like, say, Alexander Payne's The Descendants) don't. With that caveat, and the promise that I'll dig deeper into few of these movies when time allows, here's a notebook drop from my last 48 hours in Toronto.  
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_bad_romance_from_stillman_ma.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival: Bad Romance From Stillman, Maddin, Payne and More " ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_bad_romance_from_stillman_ma.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_bad_romance_from_stillman_ma.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Reviews</category>
        
        
         <pubDate>Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:46:27 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival: Sarah Palin and Capital Punishment</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
           

 
Friday was Foreign-Born Documentary All-Stars Tackle Powerful Symbols of America day at TIFF. The scarily prolific Werner Herzog (whose first foray into 3D, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, premiered at this festival last year before its blockbuster theatrical run this summer) is back with another new feature, Into the Abyss, which considers the different fates of two young men accused of collaborating on a murder: one was sentenced to 40 years in prison, the other to die at age 28 via lethal injection. The press screening of that Texas-set story preceded Sarah Palin: You Betcha!, an attempt by British documentarian Nick Broomfield (whose work has long circled infamous American women, from Heidi Fleiss to serial killer Aileen Wuornos to Courtney Love) to "find out about the real Sarah from the people who know her best."
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_sarah_palin_and_capital_puni.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival: Sarah Palin and Capital Punishment" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_sarah_palin_and_capital_puni.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_sarah_palin_and_capital_puni.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Reviews</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">cnn</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">into the abyss</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">nick Broomfield</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Sarah Palin</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">sarah palin you betcha</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">werner Herzog</category>
        
         <pubDate>Sat, 10 Sep 2011 01:35:37 -0800</pubDate>
      </item>
      
      

      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival: Jafar Panahi&apos;s This is Not a Film</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
           
 
TIFF 2011's opening night festivities were emblematic of the Festival's sometimes chaotic diversity. While a press screening of the highly-anticipated Moneyball and the world premiere of Davis Guggenheim's U2 doc From the Sky Down thrilled the red carpet media at other theaters, one of the larger screens at TIFF's flagship venue, the Bell Lightbox, hosted a free screening of This is Not a Film, the 75-minute video diary documenting a day in the life of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. 
Panahi has been under house arrest in his apartment in Tehran since May 2010, after spending nearly three months in Evin Prison. The internationally celebrated director (a neorealist who works often with non-actors and real locations, his most recent film was 2007's Offiside) spent nearly three months in prison last year, and is currently appealing a sentence of six years in prison and a 20 year ban from filmmaking on charges of "assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country's national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic."  (Panahi's wife has said her husband, an outspoken supporter of the opposition movement who was initially arrested near a gathering at the grave of slain protester Neda Agha-Soltan, had been working on a film that "had nothing to do with the regime.")
This is Not a Film, billed in the end credits as "an effort by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb," is a dispatch from Panahi's life behind closed doors--it stemmed from Mirtahmasb's desire to go "behind the scenes of Iranian filmmakers not making films"--and as such it's implicitly about the regime that put him there. That regime is well aware of the film, which was infamously smuggled out of Iran for its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on a flash drive hidden in a cake. Originally scheduled to appear in Toronto with the movie, on Monday Mirtahmasb was stopped at Tehran Airport, where his passport and luggage were confiscated, and he barred from leaving the country. That very recent turn of events gives chilling irony to one moment in Film, in which Mirtahmasb, filmed by Panahi on his iPhone, says with a laugh, "Take a shot of me in case I'm arrested."
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_jafar_panahis_this_is_not_a.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival: Jafar Panahi&apos;s This is Not a Film" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_jafar_panahis_this_is_not_a.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_jafar_panahis_this_is_not_a.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">iran</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Jafar Panahi</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Mojtaba Mirtahmasb</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">tehran</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">This is Not a Film</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">toronto film festival</category>
        
         <pubDate>Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:03:20 -0800</pubDate>
      </item>
      
      

      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival: Todd Solondz&apos;s Dark Horse</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
           
"We're Jews, and Jews we shall always be." 

So a main character warns of the us-vs-them difference that would define the first half of the 20th century, in A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg's period piece triangulating the Oedipal relationship between Sigmund Freud, (Viggo Mortenson), Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), and the latter's young patient-turned-mistress Sabine (Kiera Knightley). That film screened last week at the Venice Film Festival but has not premiered yet in Toronto, and while embargo prevents me from publishing a full review at this moment, I bring it up because the line could double as an unspoken thesis of another film on the Venice/Toronto circuit, Todd Solondz's Dark Horse. 
It seems notable that it's Cronenberg's unsubtle but terrifically entertaining film--a comedy of sexual and psychological confusion which fractures into a sincerely sad romance shrouded in heavy-handed foreshadowing--that exploits the audience's knowledge of the fate of Jews at the hands of Aryans for the purpose of narrative weight, while Solondz's strange, almost flippantly psychographic Dark Horse rises to the Jungian challenge of dismantling the Jewish collective unconscious.
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_todd_solondzs_dark_horse.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival: Todd Solondz&apos;s Dark Horse" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_todd_solondzs_dark_horse.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_todd_solondzs_dark_horse.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">a dangerous method</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">christopher walken</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Dark Horse</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">david cronenberg</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">happiness</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">jordan gelber</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">selma blair</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">storytelling</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Todd Solondz</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">toronto film festival</category>
        
         <pubDate>Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:08:49 -0800</pubDate>
      </item>
      
      

      <item>
         <title>Toronto Film Festival 2011 Preview</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
         ​The Toronto Film Festival kicks off tomorrow, offering the usual mix of Oscar bait, new films from foreign and experimental masters, and basically every conceivable thing in between. With the caveat that the lineup, hundreds of films strong, could not possibly be tackled in full by one lone lady critic, here's a sampling of what I'm most excited to see over my eight days in the north.
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_2011_preview.php">Continue reading "Toronto Film Festival 2011 Preview" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_2011_preview.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/09/toronto_film_festival_2011_preview.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">3D</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">ALPS</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Andrea Arnold</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Ashley Sabin</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Bennett Miller</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Bobcat Goldthwait</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Brad Pitt</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Crazy Horse</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Damsels in Distress</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Dark Horse</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">David Redmon</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Day Night Day Night</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Dogtooth</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Duplass Brothers; Sarah Polley</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Francis Ford Coppola</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Frederick Wiseman</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Gael Garcia Bernal</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Girl Model</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">God Bless America</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Goodbye First Love</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Greta Gerwig</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Guy Maddin</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Into the Abyss</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Isabella Rossellini</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Jafar Panahi</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Jeff Who Lives at Home</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Julia Loktev</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Keyhole</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Killer Joe</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Louis Garrel</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Lynn Shelton</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Matthew McConaughey</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Mia Hansen-Love</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Michael Fassbender</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Michelle Williams</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Moneyball</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Monica Bellucci</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Nick Broomfield</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Philippe Garrel</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Sarah Palin You Betcha</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Seth Rogen</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Shame</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Steve McQueen&apos;s latest</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">strip club</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Take This Waltz</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">That Summer</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">The Loneliest Planet</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">This is Not a Film</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Todd Solondz</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">toronto film festival</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Twixt</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Werner Herzog</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Whit Stillman</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">William Friedkin</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Wuthering Heights</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Yorgos Lanthimos</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Your Sister&apos;s Sister</category>
        
         <pubDate>Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:43:34 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Cannes 2011: The Winners</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          

CANNES, FRANCE. The 64th Cannes Film Festival provided an exceptionally rich and varied slate and the jury--headed by Robert De Niro--proved both gracious and judicious in dividing their prizes among eight films.

As expected, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life won the Palme d'Or, which was accepted on behalf of the reclusive director by his producer Bill Poland. The award seemed a forgone conclusion, thanks to the bizarre press conference performance that resulted in Melancholia's director Lars Von Trier being banned from the festival. Another powerful contender, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's challenging police procedural Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, was likely shown too late in the festival to wrest the Palme from The Tree, although it's a tribute to the movie's partisans that it split the second place Grand Prix with the Dardenne brothers' The Kid With a Bike. The third place Prix du Jury went to Polisse, a melodramatic portrait of the Paris Child Protection Unit. Resplendent in a revealing red toga and bondage high heels, the director Maïwenn gave the award ceremony's liveliest performance--the exaggerated sighs with which she gave thanks for her prize were as hilariously bogus as the movie itself. 

      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_winners.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: The Winners" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_winners.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_winners.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Awards</category>
        
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         <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 10:40:50 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Cannes 2011: The Middle of the Pack</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
         ​Film festival coverage tends towards hyperbole. If you're at home experiencing something like Cannes through blogs, you'll likely get the sense that there are masterpieces and travesties and nothing in between. In fact, the middle is huge--it's just hard to find space and time to talk about it within the on-to-the-next festival culture. What follows are brief notes on three Cannes films that fall squarely in central percentile of what I was able to see. The ArtistAs a formal stunt, this (mostly) silent film love letter to the last days of the silent film era "works," in that it adapts some basic tenets of pre-talkie visual storytelling to suit a modern gaze. But since there's little here other than form--director Michel Hazanavicius has nothing to say about the massive transition at the dawn of sound other than that it happened--that process of adaptation feels like a cheat. If you're making a silent film just to make a silent film, why employ a performance style that mimics not silent film acting nor naturalistic behavior, but the mid-century mugging of musicals like Singin' in the Rain (The Artist's most obvious influence)? Why filter silent style through multiple layers of remove? 
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_middle_of_the_pack.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: The Middle of the Pack" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_middle_of_the_pack.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_middle_of_the_pack.php</guid>
        
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          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">charlotte rampling</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">declaration of war</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">the artist</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">the look</category>
        
         <pubDate>Sat, 21 May 2011 10:39:43 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Cannes 2011: We the Jury</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          

CANNES, FRANCE. The fun is winding down and the sad thing is, there could have been even more.
 
Cannes's programmers had carefully contrived a Palme d'Or celebrity death match between two wildly polarizing contenders with Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life in the white trunks and Lars von Trier's Melancholia in the black. Then, as Melancholia's star Kirsten Dunst told one journalist, Lars had to "run his mouth." Why couldn't the irrepressible Dane have informed reporters that it was Stalin or Qaddafi or Milosevic whom he "understood"?

Given Tree vs. Trier, the Cannes jury--headed by Robert De Niro and including Argentine actress Martina Gusman, Hong Kong producer Nansun Shi, Norwegian writer Linn (daughter of Liv) Ullmann, directors Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Johnnie To and Olivier Assayas, plus Uma Thurman and Jude Law--might have deadlocked. This in turn could have opened the path for the Weinstein Company's newly acquired crowd-pleaser and late competitive entry, The Artist--a surprisingly agreeable silent-film pastiche made by Michel Hazanavicius in a nearly unexhibitable screen format--with the two heavyweights recognized by friendly consolation prizes for actors Brad Pitt and Dunst. (The latter still might happen, although Tilda Swinton's scenery chewing turn in We Need to Talk About Kevin is, as is often said here, bad enough to win.) 

      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_we_the_jury.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: We the Jury" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_we_the_jury.php</link>
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          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
        
         <pubDate>Fri, 20 May 2011 14:04:03 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Cannes 2011: Lars von Trier Kicked Out </title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          

CANNES, FRANCE. Big news day on La Croisette: First, the only outside story with any traction here became a bit more intense when reports of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's resignation fueled the conspiracy stories to which some French subscribe: Had the IMF chief been set up by Sarkozy? The Russians? The New York Post? Then the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi made an on-screen appearance in a 75-minute long home-movie verite essay created in defiance of the government ruling banning him from working in cinema, called quite pointedly This is Not a Film. And finally, just as an audience of journalists was waiting for the Panahi film to begin, smart phones throughout the room began to buzz with the news that the Cannes Film Festival had suspended professional handful Lars von Trier for professional stupidity at the press conference following the screening of his new movie Melancholia.
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_lars_von_trier_kicked_out_of_fest.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: Lars von Trier Kicked Out " ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_lars_von_trier_kicked_out_of_fest.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_lars_von_trier_kicked_out_of_fest.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">News</category>
        
        
         <pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2011 11:19:14 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Cannes 2011: Karina Longworth&apos;s Best and Worst</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
         ​Thanks to the idiosyncrasies of Air France's pricing schedule, I am departing Cannes on Thursday morning, before the premieres of some of the festival's most anticipated titles--including the Ryan Gosling-starring Drive; This Must Be the Place, featuring Sean Penn in rock star drag; and new titles by Pedro Almodovar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Jafar Panahi and my personal favorite, Hong Sang-Soo. So, after 21 films in 7 days--miraculously, I got into every film I attempted to see and walked out of nothing--my Cannes 2011 ends here. I'll have a full recap of my Cannes experience in next Thursday's LA Weekly. In the meantime, what follows is a list of everything I saw, ranked from most hated to favorite, without commentary (but with links where appropriate).21) Code Blue20) Silence of Joan19) Sleeping Beauty18) Hors Satan17) Restless16) Return15) The Artist14) Loverboy13) The Look12) Midnight in Paris11) Oslo, August 3110) We Need to Talk About Kevin9) House of Tolerance (L'Apollonide)8) Declaration of War7) Poliss6) Goodbye5) Miss Bala4) The Kid on a Bike3) The Tree of Life2) Bonsai (above)After the jump, my number one film of Cannes 2011... 
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_karina_longworths_best_and_worst.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: Karina Longworth&apos;s Best and Worst" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_karina_longworths_best_and_worst.php</link>
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          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
        
         <pubDate>Wed, 18 May 2011 16:01:29 -0800</pubDate>
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         <title>Cannes 2011: Lars Von Trier&apos;s Melancholia. Wow.</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          

The second shoe dropped--or rather exploded--this morning in Cannes. A combination of luck and programming genius contrived to have Lars von Trier's Melancholia screened for the press a mere 48 hours after the first showing of Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. On Monday I characterized The Tree of Life as a train wreck--I was wrong. It's Von Trier who has contrived the spectacle impossible to turn away from.

There will surely be people who don't much care for either of these monumentally, even monstrously, ambitious movies--both family dramas drenched in classical music and played against the most cosmic of circumstances--but I cannot imagine there will be many who care for them equally. For when Von Trier obliterates the world in Melancholia he also destroys Malick's worldview, or at least puts it in perspective.

      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_lars_von_triers_melancholia_wow.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: Lars Von Trier&apos;s Melancholia. Wow." ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_lars_von_triers_melancholia_wow.php</link>
         <guid>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_lars_von_triers_melancholia_wow.php</guid>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Features</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Reviews</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Cannes</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Cannes 2011</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Cannes Film Festival</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Lars Von Trier</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Melancholia</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">The Tree of Life</category>
        
         <pubDate>Wed, 18 May 2011 10:42:12 -0800</pubDate>
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         <title>Cannes 2011: White People Fucking and Team Tree of Life</title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
          
I saw Tree of Life on Monday morning when everyone else saw Tree of Life, but instead of writing about it right away, I went straight into a screening of Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan. By the time I emerged two hours later, many of my colleagues had already posted their Tree of Life reviews, which I thought was astonishing for a few reasons, but mostly because several times during Hors Satan I had to close my eyes because I was still so physically and psychologically overwhelmed by the experience of Terrence Malick's gorgeously form-defying film that trying to take in Dumont's blunt, brutal one actually hurt. I didn't know how to translate that feeling into an evaluative response.

24 hours later, I think I still don't, but before the negative response to the film from some of my colleagues calcifies and liking this movie starts to look like a deliberately oppositional stance, let me state for the record that while I have questions and reservations, I am on Team Tree of Life.  
      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_is_teamtreeoflife_a_trending_topic_yet.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: White People Fucking and Team Tree of Life" ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_is_teamtreeoflife_a_trending_topic_yet.php</link>
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          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Festivals</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Reviews</category>
        
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">bertrand bonello</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">bonsai</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">brad pitt</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">cristian jimenez</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">julia leigh</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">l&apos;appolonide</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">sean penn</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">sleeping beauty</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">terrence malick</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">the new world</category>
        
          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">the tree of life</category>
        
         <pubDate>Tue, 17 May 2011 14:30:30 -0800</pubDate>
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      <item>
         <title>Cannes 2011: The Tree of Life </title>
         <description>
         <![CDATA[
           

CANNES, FRANCE. Much improved since I last posted, the Cannes Film Festival celebrated its midpoint in train-wreck fashion, its wagon to hitched to The Tree of Life. 

The first screening of Terrence Malick's long-awaited new movie, three years in the editing, ended with in a moment of near total silence, followed by short fuselage of irate boos and an answering burst of applause--thin, but impassioned. Were the international critics gathered early Monday morning to bear witness to The Tree stunned or stupefied? (To judge from the instant raves found in the trades, the answer is both.)

Malick goes one on one with God, not to mention Stanley Kubrick, and on both counts comes up short--very short. Tree of Life, which opens with God addressing Job from out the whirlwind ("Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"), is nothing if not overweening in its spiritual ambition. It's essentially a religious work and, as such, may please the director's devotees, cultists, and apologists. I doubt however that it will make many new converts.	

      
         <a href="http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_tree_of_life.php">Continue reading "Cannes 2011: The Tree of Life " ></a>
         
         ]]></description>
         <link>http://www.voicefilm.com/2011/05/cannes_2011_the_tree_of_life.php</link>
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          <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Reviews</category>
        
        
         <pubDate>Mon, 16 May 2011 10:51:50 -0800</pubDate>
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