PHILOMENA
The Virginia Film Festival announced the winners of its Audience and Programmer’s Awards for the 2013 festival. Earning top honors in the Audience Award category of Best Narrative Feature was PHILOMENA, the Stephen Frears directed drama starring Dame Judi Dench as a woman who was forced to give up her son for adoption by her Irish Catholic community decades earlier and joins forces with a BBC reporter, played by Steve Coogan, on a mission to find him.
The 25th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will honor Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Bruce Dern, Matthew McConaughey and Steve McQueen at its annual Awards Gala to be held Saturday, January 4, 2014, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The Festival runs January 3 to 13, 2014.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival will honor actor, screenwriter and producer Emma Thompson, Oprah Winfrey, Academy Award winning actress Cate Blanchett, and Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker, at the 29th edition of the Fest, which runs January 30 thru February 9, 2014.
Cutie and the Boxer
Forty feature films and six shorts are among the nominees for the 7th Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking. Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer led all films with six nominations, while The Act of Killing received five. Heinzerling and the directing duos from two films nominated for Outstanding Feature –Leviathan‘s Castaing-Taylor & Paravel and After Tiller‘s Shane and Wilson – all led individual nominees with four nominations apiece. Making Cinema Eye history with his nomination in the feature film category, Lucien Castaing-Taylor becomes the first person to be nominated for Outstanding Feature after having been previously nominated for Outstanding Debut (he was nominated in 2011 for Sweetgrass).
The British comedy horror ‘CRYING WOLF’ from director Tony Jopia and starring Caroline Munro, Gary Martin, Joe Egan, Kristofer Dayne and Ian Donnelly, has released its official trailer and first look images from the upcoming film. Due for release in the U.K. in 2014, the comedy horror movie, ‘Crying Wolf’ starts its tale in the small village of Deddington where prankster Andy is bitten by a werewolf that kills his friend Charlotte. Andy tries to warn his friends, but winds up turning them into a pack of werewolves. Enter a pair of hapless journalists doomed to a grizzly end, then add a pair of hard boiled vigilantes hot on the heels of the werewolf pack and before you know it, everyone’s ‘Crying Wolf! during a bloody camping holiday in the Cotswolds’
CHILD’S POSE by Calin Peter Netzer and Romania’s Official Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film – 86th Academy Awards, will open at Film Forum in NYC on February 19, 2014, and at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles on February 21, 2014. A national release will follow. CHILD’S POSE (Poziţia Copilului), winner of the Golden Bear for the Best Film at 2013 Berlin International Film Festival, pivots on a riveting performance by Luminita Gheorghiu (Best Supporting Actress, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Los Angeles Film Critics) as a steely, well-to-do Bucharest architect determined to keep her 30-something deadbeat son out of jail after a deadly car crash. How far will she go to convince the police, eyewitnesses and even the victim’s family that her son was not recklessly speeding?
“AQUEL NO ERA YO (THAT WASN’T ME),” Esteban Crespo, director
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 10 live action short films that will advance in the voting process for the 86th Academy Awards®. One hundred twenty pictures had originally qualified in the category.
Director Christopher Menaul’s SUMMER IN FEBRUARY, starring Dominic Cooper (The Devil’s Double), Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”), and Emily Browning (Sleeping Beauty) will be released in the US beginning January 7, 2014 on cable/telco and satellite video-on-demand and digital platforms followed by a theatrical release beginning on January 17, 2014 by Tribeca Film.
THE ROCKET was voted by 27th Leeds International Film Festival audiences as overall favorite from 139 feature films. Set against the lush backdrop of rural Laos, The Rocket is described as a spirited, fable-like family drama from Australia that tells the story of ten-year-old Ahlo, who yearns to break free from his ill-fated destiny. After his village is displaced to make way for a massive dam, Ahlo escapes with his father and grandmother through the Laotian outback in search of a new home. Along the way, they come across a rocket festival with a competition that offers a lucrative, but dangerous, chance for a new beginning.The two feature films that were closest in the voting to The Rocket are both music documentaries, FILMAGE: THE STORY OF DESCENDENTS / ALL and REVENGE OF THE MEKONS. The top ten winners in the LIFF27 Audience Award for Best Film are: 1) The Rocket 2) Filmage: The Story of Descendents / ALL 3) Revenge of the Mekons 4) Final Cut, Ladies & Gentlemen 5) Ghost Graduation 6) Mistaken for Strangers 7) Brothers Hypnotic 8) We are the Best! 9) Gravity 10) Sign Painters.
The official poster is released for FREE RIDE, written and directed by Shana Betz, and based on her true life story. FREE RIDE stars Anna Paquin, Drea de Matteo, Cam Gigandet and Liana Liberato. FREE RIDE will be released in NY, LA and on Video On Demand on January 10, 2014 by Phase 4 Films.
The Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF), celebrating its 10th anniversary, announced the members of the jury that will preside over the competition categories at the Festival, which takes place December 5th to13th, 2013. The four competition categories at BIFF are Spirit of Freedom: Narrative; Spirit of Freedom: Documentary; New Visions; and Short Film.
Edoardo Leo’s OUT OF THE BLUE (Buongiorno papa) received the NICE City of Florence Award at the 17th New Italian Cinema, presented by the San Francisco Film Society. The NICE City of Florence Award was decided by audience ballots from San Francisco screenings of films in competition.