Variety.com - Chipping away at the Indian institution of arranged marriage one feature at a time, Deepa Mehta brings her latest taboo-challenging critique home to Canada with “Heaven on Earth,” in which a beauty leaves Punjab for better opportunities abroad, only to end up shackled to an abusive husband and his unsympathetic family. Working from the testimony of true survivors, Mehta rejects notions of domestic discretion to unveil patterns of subservience and shame. But don’t expect fans keen on her exotic overseas portraits to feel the same way about a candid First World expose, suggesting limited prospects for the primarily Punjabi-language pic. “Heaven on Earth” opens with the vibrant imagery auds have come to expect from Mehta and longtime d.p. Giles Nuttgens, as friends and relatives throw a colorful bridal shower for Chand (Bollywood star Preity Zinta), who travels from India to Toronto to meet husband-to-be Rocky (newcomer Vansh Bhardwaj). For Chand, this new world feels grim and disorienting, with Nuttgens’ handheld camerawork reflecting her mental state. Almost instantly, warning signs arise that the marriage is not an equitable one. Her new mother-in-law (Balinder Johal) senses competition for her son’s affections, wedging herself between them. When Chand objects, Rocky slaps her, triggering a cycle of abuse that escalates as the story progresses… [Full Story]

indieWIRE - Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” has been awarded the Golden Lion at the 65th Venice Film Festival. The film, which screens Sunday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, gathered raves in Venice, particularly for the lead performance from Mickey Rourke. Other winners included Aleksey German Jr., who won the Silver Lion for Best Director for his work on “Bumaznyj Soldat,” Silvio Orlando for best actor for “Il papa di Giovanna,” and Dominique Blanc for best actress “L’autre.” Official Venezia 65 Awards The Venezia 65 Jury, chaired by Wim Wenders and comprised of Juriy Arabov, Valeria Golino, Douglas Gordon, Lucrecia Martel, John Landis, and Johnnie To, having viewed all twenty-one films in competition, has decided as follows: GOLDEN LION for Best Film: The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky (USA) SILVER LION for Best Director to: Aleksey German Jr. for Bumaznyj Soldat (Paper Soldier) (Russia) SPECIAL JURY PRIZE to: Teza by Haile Gerima (Ethiopia, Germany, France) COPPA VOLPI for Best Actor: Silvio Orlando for Il papa di Giovanna by Pupi Avati (Italy) COPPA VOLPI for Best Actress: Dominique Blanc for L’autre by Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic (France) MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD for Best Young Actor or Actress: Jennifer Lawrence for The Burning Plain by Guillermo Arriaga (USA) OSELLA for Best Cinematography to: Alisher Khamidhodjaev and Maxim Drozdov for Buma•nyj Soldat (Paper Soldier) by Aleksey German Jr. (Russia) OSELLA for Best Screenplay to: Haile Gerima for Teza by Haile Gerima (Ethiopia, Germany, France) SPECIAL LION for Overall Work to: Werner Schroeter The Jury decided to award a Special Lion for his uncompromising and relentlessly innovative work over a period of 40 years to Werner Schroeter. “LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS” AWARD FOR A DEBUT FILM to: Pranzo Di Ferragosto by Gianni Di Gregorio (SIC – International Critics’ Week, Italy) Aurelio De Laurentiis and Filmauro award a cash prize, of 100,000 USD, to the winning first film (50,000 to the director, 50,000 to the producer). To the director, an additional film voucher for 40,000 Euro will also be awarded, offered by Kodak… [Full Story]

Cinematical - Paris 36 tries to do a dozen different things, and does none of them well. But even that description may not be harsh enough, because it makes the film sound ambitious. It’s not. Director Christophe Barratier, whose The Chorus was a quality rendition of an age-old formula, doesn’t even pretend to give much thought to any of the disparate elements he assembles here. This is one of those middlebrow period-piece comedies that mistakes frenzy for energy and spotless soundstage gloss for visual style. It may play well with certain audiences for whom “arthouse” is synonymous with “no explosions,” but there’s really nothing to see here. Well, in theory there’s a lot to see, including but not limited to the following: a would-be portrait of the French Popular Front in the 1930’s; the story of a bunch of unemployed workers banding together to put on a show and save a historic theater; the tragedy of an old workhorse (Gérard Jugnot) who loses custody of his accordion prodigy son to his cheating wife when the theater first closes down; a romance between a communist rabblerouser (and stagehand, and actor!) and a singing ingénue (Nora Arnezeder) taken under the wing of a fascist loan shark (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu); the spiritual rebirth of an old orchestra conductor who has spent the last 20 years alone with his radio; a no-talent comic (Kad Merad) who sinks to performing for the Nazis after being booed off stage by everyone else, though he is of course much too lovable to actually be an anti-Semite. At two hours long, Paris 36 can do nothing but barrel through all of this as superficially as possible. The show that the ragtag theaterfolk attempt to stage is one of those cheesy variety revues most people today know only from movies – a little singing, a little dancing, maybe an impressionist. The film plays kind of like that too. Don’t like this subplot? Wait three minutes. Meanwhile, everything whizzes past at light speed, and nothing registers… [Full Story]

Twitch - Synecdoche, New York is going to be a hard sell in Schenectady, New York; and not just because it starts right off with a titular pun more inclined to make a crowd of linguists chuckle than your average crowd at the multiplex. In my book, that’s a good thing. For his first directorial effort, Charlie Kaufman proves there’s still a trick or two left to the magical art of moviemaking; especially when imagination is the confused rabbit pulled out of the tophat. This is the movie that should have been preceded by the animated short Presto. A dark mindtickler, Synecdoche, New York is a bardo state left waiting for that final trim in a barbershop of mirrors. Perhaps not so ironically—instead of a trim—things get shaggier and shaggier, which ultimately reflects Kaufman’s mentally-drenched tale as something flawed but heartfelt, cathartic and hopelessly human. Originally configured as a horror story, Kaufman borrows a cue from Jacob’s Ladder but envisions it with the relative perspectives of M.C. Escher. The ladders in Synecdoche, New York aren’t Biblically simple; they go up, down, sideways, backwards, forwards, and even bend a little caught in the gravitational compression of Kaufman’s black hole of an imagination. Wrestling with a single angel seems simple by comparison. Never before has directorial control seemed so inaccessible, if not downright impossible… [Full Story]

Ain’t It Cool News - Just got back from the Premiere of The Wrestler at the Venice Film festival. First off I would like to say I’m a huge fan of Aronofskys work and he has been very influential. The Wrestler received a standing ovation! Good movie but I would put it at the end of the list of films hes made. The reasons… I expected something visually amazing, composition wise, art direction etc. As a big wrestling fan in the past, you have to consider that its all eye candy/sensory overload, huge explosions, outrages costumes and Aronofsky could of made us experience this on the largest scale with how he knows to play with sound and visuals. I DO realize The Ram is washed up and going through the after effects of an illustrious career, I think Aronofsky wanted to achieve the same effect in another way with Rourke BEING the visually amazing. But why not do it all? Did he think it would take away from Rourke’s performance? Requiems amazing inventive visuals didn’t take away from Burstyns performance… My favorite scene from the The Wrestler shows Randy the Ram working behind the deli counter at a supermarket and an old fan starts to recognize him, as he starts pointing out who he is, Randy sticks his finger in the cutter that he was using to chop some food up and starts roid raging! Smearing his face with his own blood and yelling at everyone in sight. Just losing it! Part of the film I disliked was the repetitive back shots, If I ever see this film again Ill have to count how much time we spend following Rourke from the back, this started getting annoying after a while, it fills the movie… [Full Story]

Twitch - Iceland’s Baltasar Kormakur has built a sizable following around the globe – and here at Twitch – on the strength of a number of taut, intelligent thrillers. Films that challenge and reward their audience with the intelligence and subtlety of their storytelling. And so while White Night Wedding represents a major change of pace for the Nordic auteur, as he steps into the world of the tragic-comedy, it should come as no surprise that that same sense of intelligence and emotional honesty makes the film one of the absolute strongest to come out of the Nordic region all year. Jon and Thora are getting married. It should be a happy time, but, well, there are issues. No, not just the fact that Jon’s parents can’t seem to find their way to the wedding or that Thora’s mother has the makings a truly horrific in-law, though both of those are true. No, it’s not even that there’s a significant age gap between the two or that Jon is in debt to Thora’s parents, though that’s true as well. No, there’s something a fair bit thornier going on. You see, Jon has been married before. Jon was still married, in fact, in the days when Thora was a student in one of his university lectures. Married still when it turned out that the remote island Jon and his wife moved to for the sake of her health also happened to be Thora’s home. Not particularly happily married at that point, and with the couple struggling to cope with his wife’s severe depression, but married nonetheless. You can likely fill in what happened… [Full Story]

Twitch - As if Millions left any doubt about Danny Boyles ability to draw compelling performances out of young actors Slumdog Millionaire abolishes those doubts utterly. In many ways Slumdog plays like the older and edgier cosusin of Millions and, just like that very under rated picture, Slumdog stands as one of Boyle’s absolute best. Jamal is a very lucky man. Maybe. The eighteen year old orphan from Mumbai is about to strike it rich. Jamal is a contestant on the local version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and a very successful one at that: concluding his first appearance on the show just a single question away from winning the twenty million rupee grand prize. But perhaps Jamal is a little bit too successful … after all, how could an orphaned, uneducated teenager who grew up hard in the slums possibly have been able to know the answer to the assortment of questions that had been thrown at him? Doctors and lawyers fail well before the stage he has reached and so there can be only one conclusion: Jamal must be a fraud artist of the highest order and so the police bring him in for questioning overnight to judge if he should be allowed to rejoin the show the next day for his shot at the prize… [Full Story]

Twitch - Sometimes the ridiculous can be truly sublime but surprisingly rare is the film that manages to latch on to a particularly silly concept and work it to its potential without pounding it to oblivion in the process. Toshio Lee’s Detroit Metal City? Brilliantly silly concept definitely in place, no doubt there. And there’s also no doubt as far as Lee’s ability to work his concept to their absolute maximum effect. This is glorious, absurd perfection. Kenichi Matsuyama is Souichi an awkward, clumsy, gentle country boy on his way to the big city of Tokyo both to pursue his dreams, dreams of pursuing a ‘trendy’ lifestyle and making it big as a pop musician, playing his sweetly naïve, saccharine sweet songs. The idea of Souichi ever being trendy is laughable in and of itself – with his mushroom hair cut and hick town clothes he’s as far away from trendy as can possibly be. And the chances of a boy so gentle his mother tells us he was often confused for being a girl when younger surviving at all in the big city seem slim at best but Souichi somehow manages to find a niche, settling in with a group of similarly minded friends through college, friends who adore the sweet simplicity of his songs and adopt his slogan of “No Music, No Dreams” as a worthwhile motto for life. They encourage him to pursue music professionally and that’s where it all falls apart… [Full Story]

Twitch - At first glance the idea of an animated documentary seems odd, maybe even counter-productive. After all, isn’t the point of a documentary to get as close to its subject as possible with as little interference from the film maker as possible? And doesn’t animation by its very nature require constant interpretation and reshaping by the director? But mere moments into Waltz With Bashir the decision to make the film an animated feature not only makes sense, it is arguably the only real option to make the film at all. Much as Art Spiegelman’s Maus – one of the greatest graphic novels ever written – dramatically re-cast the holocaust memoir by drawing his own family history as a literal game of cat and mouse, Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir is a total re-envisioning of what the war documentary can be. Like Spiegelman, Folman is not so much concerned with the history of the events he is documenting – though neither project is light on history by any means – as he is with the effects on those involved, the prime person involved being Folman himself… [Full Story]

Cinematical - …We had to ditch the party a bit early to allow time to grab a bite of dinner, then headed over to the Ryerson; when Detroit Metal City director Toshio Lee and the film’s star, popular Japanese actor Ken’ichi Matsuyama, showed up, a pack of Japanese girls and women who’d been allowed to gather to get an up close view went absolutely wild, screaming so loudly that a guy passing by in front of the red carpet wondered aloud, “Who is it? Brad Pitt?” Lee briefly introduced the film — currently the #2 film in Japan and being seen tonight for the first time outside Japan — which was adapted from an enormously popular manga , by telling the crowd that if they had, in fact, thought they were coming to see a film about Detroit, they were in for a big surprise, and he’d gladly refund their money. Judging by the crowd’s reaction to the film, I don’t think Lee has anything to worry about. In brief, the film is a bright, loud tale that immerses you into the story as if you’ve stepped into the pages of a manga. It tells the tale of a kind, gentle young man named Negishi Soichi, who just wants to make people happy by singing Swedish pop with his acoustic guitar. Instead, life takes a different turn for Negishi, who finds himself the reluctant lead singer of a death metal band called Detroit Metal City (DMC for short), and it’s Neghishi’s conflict with the dual sides of who he’s become, and a love interest who hates DMC but has no idea that he’s in the band, that drives the story. It’s a fun, loud, riot of a film, and a perfect addition to this year’s Midnight Madness… [Full Story]