Last week The Hunger Games continued its gluttony at the box office, while Adam Sandler’s Jack & Jill swept all ten categories at the Razzie Awards. Song Of Silence, The End Of Puberty, Jai Bhim Comrade, Back To The Square, The Mirror Never Lies, and Monsieur Lazhar picked up awards at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Under African Skies took home the audience award at the Cleveland International Film Festival, while Lack Of Evidence won at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Fans of foreign cinema should keep their eyes peeled this week as the Academy of Italian Cinema announces the short list for the David Di Donatello Awards on Thursday. Winners of the Hong Kong Film Awards are also expected to be announced.
If you are looking to attend a film festival, there are plenty to choose from. Perhaps the most interesting one that I have discovered is Action Fest: The Film Festival With A Body Count. How can you go wrong with a description like that? More “serious” festivals include Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, Turner Classic Movies TCM Classic Film Festival, and Images Of Black Women IBW Film Festival. We will also see the conclusion of the Istanbul International Film Festival and the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, as well as the beginning of Havana Film Festival New York, Dallas International Film Festival, Athens International Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, and Chicago Latino Film Festival.
Those who follow the Oscar shorts races will note the following directors have qualified for next year’s Oscar consideration (I hope to update my predictions in these categories soon).
1. Shawn Christensen for Curfew
2. Leo Verrier for Dripped (Animated)
3. Hayoun Kwon for Lack Of Evidence (Manque de Preuves)
4. Daniel Schmidt and Gabriel Abrantes for Palaces Of Pity
5. Sylvia Schedelbauer for Sounding Glass
6. Don Hertzfeld for It’s Such A Beautiful Day (Animated)
7. Scott Stark for Traces (Animated)
Next week we can expect Short Qualifying announcements from Atlanta Film Festival and Aspen Shortsfest. Athens, Florida and the David Di Donatello awards are also qualifiers, but will probably not be announced until later weeks.
At the commercial theaters, the wide and limited releases include: The Lady, Blue Like Jazz, The Cabin In The Woods, Deadline, Detention, Life Happens, Lockout, Monsieur Lazhar, A Simple Life, Movie 43, Touchback, Unraveled, The Three Stooges, Woman Thou Art Loosed On The Seventh Day, Badass, Falling Apart, Hit So Hard, How To Grow A Band, L!fe Happens, Post Mortem, Touchback, Bad Ass, and Here Comes The Boom.
For more on what is coming up in the world of movies, be sure to check out the full Oscar Calendar.
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You mentioned the Razzies, NTEMP... what do you think of their decision to move to April Fool's Day?
ReplyDeleteI think it was a terrible call. Completely forgot about them. I was like, oh, yeah, the Razzies! LOL. Plus "Jack and Jill" is even further away from being current... so.
Thoughts?
I completely agree with you about the new date. When they used to do it at the same time as the Oscars, they got lots of publicity from cross-over stories. It was an easy way for print journalists to fill extra space in their special Oscar section. But this year, I hardly heard anything about it, and if it hadn't been on my calendar already I probably never would have checked it out.
DeleteIt seems like it is a lot easier to connect the Razzies to the Oscars than to the Hunger Games, for example, which is the big news at this point.
But I also think that the clean sweep for Sandler probably hurt their publicity. I haven't seen the film, so I can't say whether it really deserved each of those awards, but it seems like spreading the love (or the hate) gives more people a "hook" to latch onto.
So many festivals! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Film festivals seem to be becoming more and more popular, with major cities and even small towns getting in on the action.
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