Cinematical - It might have impressed many filmgoers, and won both the Critics Week Grand Prize and Golden Rail award at Cannes, but unfortunately, Lucía Puenzo’s XXY didn’t get any Academy glory. I can’t be too bummed, because the foreign film category got its share of criticism this year, but I really just chalk it up to the fact I like it. Any film or performance that I find particularly stunning or moving never gets the love it deserves come Oscar time. Inés Efron’s performance is especially worthy of praise, and now you’ll get a chance to see for yourself… [Full Story]

/Film - Rumor has it that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will make it’s worldwide premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 15th - 25th 2008. Fox News reports that Spielberg’s representatives are currently in negotiations with officials of the festival to have Indiana Jones 4 open the festival, with the whole cast and crew making appearances on the red carpet at Cannes’s Palais. From what I understand, Parmaount isn’t doing a junket or prescreenings for the film, so this would be the first public screening of the new film. The rest of us will have to wait until May 22nd 2008 when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hits theaters worldwide… [Full Story]

Twitch - Twitch has three copies of The Darjeeling Limited to give away on DVD. Want one? Write them an ode to tea. Doesn’t need to be darjeeling, necessarily, I like me some pekoe and Irish Breakfast, too, but none of that herbal crap. Then email your poetic masterpiece to them here by Friday the 29th. Contest open to residents of the US and Canada only… [Full Story]

Globe and Mail, Canada - From The Women to Steel Magnolias to Beauty Shop, the beauty salon has long been cinema’s dependable setting for modern female characters to indulge in dreaming, bonding and frank talk with no men in earshot. The sassy new Lebanese feature Caramel, which made a splash at the Cannes and Toronto festivals last year and was Lebanon’s official film submission to the Oscars, shares this intimate appeal, while its backdrop of Beirut (specifically, the culturally rich Gemmayze district) gives an exotic twist to a familiar scenario.

Filming wrapped just days before Israel began bombing Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, but the bombast of war and political strife never enters the salon. Instead, as director Nadine Labaki explained during an interview at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, Caramel explores Lebanese society by focusing on the predicament of its women… [Full Story]

CBC - CBC Newsworld is presenting a free, HD screening of UP THE YANGTZE on Wednesday, March 26, at 7 pm at the Royal Cinema, 608 College Street (doors open at 6:30 pm.). Director Yung Chang will be attendance for a discussion following the film. To reserve your free seats, call 416-205-7500. Those at the screening will be eligible to win a pair of Hot Docs Festival Premium Passes… [Full Story]

CINSSU - At 7, Mysterious Skin (2004)- Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt(Brick, 3rd Rock from the Sun) and Michelle Trachtenberg(EuroTrip, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

At 8:50, Heavenly Creatures (1994)- Directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), starring Kate Winslet (Titanic) and Melanie Lynsky (Two and a Half Men). Nominated for an Oscar in Best Writing, winner of 10 New Zealand Film and TV awards and the Metro Media Award at TIFF. Two girls have an intense fantasy life; their parents, concerned the fantasy is too intense, separate them, and the girls take revenge.

Two great contemporary films dealing with sexual exploration. A great early film of acclaimed director Peter Jackson and a beautiful new film for up-and-coming director Gregg Araki. Heavenly Creatures is extremely hard to find elsewhere, save the trouble and watch it with us!

Both will be shown in 35mm prints, free for everyone to attend. Invite your friends and family. No tickets or passes necessary. Seating is limited. First come, first serve. Theatre is at Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave… [Full Story]

CINSSU - Date: Monday, March 3, 2008
Time: 9:00pm - 11:35pm
Location: Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave

Plot Summary: A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter’s journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe.

From the director of “Independence Day” and “The Patriot”. Stars Camilla Belle(When a Stranger Calls, The Chumscrubber) and Omar Sharif(Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia).

Shown for free by the Cinema Studies Student Union of UofT. Feel free to invite friends! SEATING IS LIMITED AND NOT GUARANTEED!!! Passholders will be admitted first. Non-passholders will have to wait in the rush line.

*****Passes have now all been given out! Non-passholders will have to wait in the rush line!*****… [Full Story]

GreenCine Daily - ”Fatih Akin, whose Head-On (2004) is one of the great films of the decade, returns to scour the same vexed ground of exile and migration in The Edge of Heaven,” writes Anthony Quinn in the Independent. “His obsession with the relationship between Germany and Turkey (his roots lie in both) is becoming as intense as Sam Peckinpah’s with the US and Mexico, only with less blood and whisky.”

“This is an intriguing, complex, beautifully acted and directed piece of work, partly a realist drama of elaborate coincidences, near-misses and near-hits, further tangled with shifts in the timeline - and partly an almost dreamlike meditation with visual symmetries and narrative rhymes,” writes Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian… [Full Story]

GreenCine Daily - ”At its best - and queasiest - The Counterfeiters asks disturbing questions more commonly found in the survivor literature of Primo Levi or Bruno Bettelheim than at the movies,” writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. “Without resorting to the crassly relativist reversals in Paul Verhoeven’s idiotic Black Book (treacherous resisters! sensitive Nazis! who knew?), [director and co-writer Stefan] Ruzowitzky quietly asks what counts as moral behavior under fascism, and whether or not one’s first duty is to survive.”

“Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters manages to be devastating without a hint of sentimentality,” writes Raphaela Weissman in the New York Press. “Ruzowitzky’s straightforward approach to this unusual story and cinematographer Benedict Neunfels’s documentary-style immediacy transcend the now well-worn Holocaust genre, bringing another side of the tragedy into unflinching focus.”… [Full Story]

/Film - Fox Searchlight’s Juno has now grossed over $143.1 million worldwide ($125M domestic), making the film the most successful independent movie since 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which grossed $241.4M domestically). Playing on 1,865 screens, the film continues to make over $6 million weekly. Variety also reports that “Juno also has the distinction of being the only film this year to remain on the top-10 box office chart every weekend since its debut.”

Now one could argue that Juno isn’t a independent movie because it was produced by a mini major movie studio. One could also argue that the film was made for next to nothing ($7.5 million) and was distributed in a platform release which depended on word of mouth. Either way, that argument is for another day, everyone who is anyone considers it an indie… [Full Story]