- Nicolette Sheridan does not look over-Botoxed with fish lips! more ›

reviews Agnes Jaoui's Look At Me and the NY Times is also asking readers for questions for Jaoui, Pedro Almodovar, and Mike Leigh this week. Related: Newsday's John Anderson notes how this year's festival has controversial topics in it (priestly pedophilia in Almodovar's Bad Education, abortion in Leigh's Vera Drake). more ›

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the lineup for the New York Film Festival 2004, and it looks like NY will again benefit from being, arguably, the world's last major film festival by getting films that have played at other festivals by the time the NYFF starts October 1. Opening the festival will be Agnes Jaoui's Look At Me (premiered at Cannes); Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education (also at Cannes) is the centerpiece, as well there being a Pedro retrospective (Viva Pedro!); and Alexander Payne's Sideways will close the festival. Indiewire has a good article about the festival's lineup, and we've taken their lineup list and reproduced it here (after the jump). more ›

This year's competition jury has three Americans: Novelist Edwidge Danticat, Kathleen Turner, and Quentin Tarantino, who is the chair and has already been on a Cannes panel about piracy: "I would be a liar if I was to say, across the board, no piracy." more ›

Will third time be a charm for Peter Jackson? Jackson's work for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, along with Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, Clint Eastwood for Mystic River, Gary Ross for Seabiscuit, and Peter Weir for Master and Commander, is nominated for the Directors' Guild Award. The DGA nominees are very similar to the Golden Globe nominees, except Anthony Minghella was nominated instead of Ross. Guess the Cold Mountain machine doesn't fly with the directors, huh, Miramax (the Daily News is shocked that Minghella was not nominated). What this year's DGA nominees tell us is that Sofia Coppola and the momentum behind Lost in Translation are no joke and that Hollywood loves a well made studio movie like Seabiscuit, even if it's 40 minutes too long. more ›

When I read that Caetano Veloso was performing at the Oscars on March 23, I was excited, because I thought Caetano would perform "Cucurrucucu Paloma," which he performs in Talk to Her. But actually he will be singing "Burn it Blue," the nominated song from Frida, with Lila Downs. I'm sure it's good, but I'm also sure it's no "Cucurrucucu Paloma." "Cucurrucucu Paloma" is a mariachi song, about losing a love and when it's sung, it's a heartbreaking moment in the film. more ›

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, the Orange BAFTA Awards, were handed out yesterday and the big winner was The Pianist, Best Picture and Best Director Roman Polanski. Other winners included Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York, Nicole Kidman for The Hours, Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, Christopher Walken for Catch Me If You Can (I wonder what he'd rather have done - been in London to pick up his award or in NY hosting SNL as he was last night), Charlie and Donald Kaufman's adapted screenplay for Adaptation, and Pedro Almodovar's original screenplay for Talk to Her. What's funny about British awards these days is that they have corporate sponsors - Orange is a mobile phone communications company. The Booker Prize is now the Man Booker Prize, Man is an investment company. The Mercury Prize, the most prestigious music award in the UK and arguably the US, too (though the US created the Shortlist award), is the Panasonic Mercury prize. more ›

As a hopeless cinephile, I feel that the year I spend watching movies is like having a crush on some unattainable person. It makes me feel alive, with all the planning and dreaming and effort I put into it, and somehow, even when I see a bad movie, it’s okay, because it’s one of the knocks I take in wishing that maybe this in time, after paying $10+ for a movie, it might reward my desperate passion with an enlightening moment that can transcend time and place. (For the record, that includes Owen Wilson’s goofiness, Katharine Hepburn trying to hit Cary Grant, and the way Christopher Doyle moves a camera.)
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. About a Boy was one of my top ten movies last year. more ›

Tania and I had been discussing Dick Clark earlier today and I felt he was a consummate professional, infinitely smarter and classier than Nancy O'Dell and Lisa Ling during the pre-show...Virginia Heffernan agrees more ›