KillerFilm » Berlin Film Festival

Howl tip-toes to September

Melissa Molina — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:28:21 +0000

The Sundance and Berlin Film Festival picture Howl is making it’s way off that circuit and onto the big screen as Oscilloscope Laboratories announces that it will be set for release on September 24th of this year, reports Film School Rejects. The Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman written/directed film stars the acting talents of James Franco, Jeff Daniels, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker and David Strathairn.

Howl was nominated for two awards on it’s festival run, the one at Sundance being the Grand Jury Prize and the nomination at Berlin being the Golden Berlin Bear.

It’s San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society’s reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

Polanski gets best director at the Berlin Film Festival

Melissa Molina — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:04:35 +0000

Either you love or hate Roman Polanski, there never really is an in-between especially nowadays with all of the public what-not over his arrest last year. Apparently that did not really matter too much as this year’s Berlin Film Festival awarded him with Best Director for his work on The Ghost Writer, reports HitFix.

The feature, released already in limited theaters until it gets a wider release on March 5th, stars Ewan McGregor as The Ghost, sensing something’s not right from the minute he gets the lucrative assignment to complete Adam Lang’s (Pierce Brosnan) autobiography. For starters, the previous ghostwriter, a longtime aide to the ex-Prime Minister, is dead—an apparent suicide victim. As Lang becomes engulfed in a scandal over his administration’s harsh counterterrorism tactics, The Ghost digs into the charismatic politician’s past, discovering clues that he may be hiding something far more shocking than the current allegations against him.

The famed and controversial director could not go to the ceremony to receive the award due to the current house arrest he is handling at the moment. If you want to dive into the gossip aspect of his life, it still remains up in the air as to whether or not he will be extradited to the U.S. to face further charging over the case that’s been going on for decades.

Polanski’s Ghost Writer premiering at Berlin

Melissa Molina — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:19:05 +0000

Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer is finally going to be coming out as it premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival, reports Dark Horizons. The feature stars Ewan McGregor as a ghostwriter hired to complete the memoirs of a former British prime minister uncovers secrets that put his own life in jeopardy. Even though Polanski was locked up, he was still able to, for the most part, finish up the post-production for this film.

The Ghost Writer will be going toe-to-toe at the Berlin Film Festival with Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. Do not worry, over in the U.S. we all will be able to watch Polanski’s film sometime in 2010 thanks to Summit Entertainment for picking up the distribution rights. Ewan McGregor was last seen in the George Clooney starring comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats and earlier this year alongside Tom Hanks in Angels & Demons.

Metropolis making its debut at the Berlin Film Festival

Daniel Herrera — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:56:23 +0000

For years many have been dying to see director Fritz Lang’s definitive version of his masterpiece “Metropolis”. Now, after 80 years of waiting, the full length film will be making its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in 2010. This will mark the first complete cut screening of the film since its 1927 showing in which more than 30 minutes of the film were removed by the UFA studio during its re-release.

It has been almost a full year since the excised 30 minutes of footage were found early last year at a museum in Argentina. It is almost completely restored just to be spliced back with the original printing for its long awaited debut on February 10th.

Source: Variety