Time for another batch.<\/span><\/p>\n 1. The new trailer<\/a> for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/a><\/i> rocks. (FWIW, I blogged the earlier trailer \u2014 or teaser? \u2014 here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n 2. Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron and star of The Village<\/a><\/i> (2004), talks to CanWest News Service<\/a> about Manderlay<\/a><\/i>, the upcoming sequel to Lars von Trier\u2019s Dogville<\/a><\/i> (2003) \u2014 in which Howard plays the role originated by Nicole Kidman. Along the way, she confirms von Trier\u2019s reputation as a provocateur:<\/p>\n Working with Danish director Lars von Trier pushed every button in Bryce Dallas Howard\u2019s being. Yet by the time the young actress wrapped Von Trier\u2019s new movie Manderlay \u2014 a minimalist meditation on slavery in the United States \u2014 she began to see herself, and the whole concept of America, in a whole new light.<\/p>\n \u201cHe threw water on me \u2014 literally. The first day, he wanted to see me mad and he started to say things that were hurtful. I didn\u2019t lose it, and he eventually threw water all over me,\u201d says Howard. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 3. FilmStew.com<\/a> profiles Winnipeg director Guy Maddin and movie star Isabella Rossellini, who have teamed up on a film about Rossellini\u2019s famous father Roberto, who was born in 1906:<\/p>\n Their collaboration, My Dad is 100 Years Old<\/a><\/i>, is a short, only 16 minutes long, but it is one of the best movies to come out of this year\u2019s festival. . . .<\/p>\n Paired at the festival with his seminal work, 1945\u2019s Roma, Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City)<\/a><\/i>, the short pays tribute to the neorealist auteur through his daughter\u2019s memories and her imagined conversations with her mother, actress Ingrid Bergman, and some of his contemporaries, including Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, producer David O. Selznick, and Roberto Rossellini\u2019s one time assistant Federico Fellini. . . .<\/p>\n Much of the movie is framed as a debate pitting her dad\u2019s instincts to make his films as realistic as possible (\u2018Probable films,\u2019 he calls them, because he is documenting things as they probably happened) against the Hollywood filmmakers\u2019 more commercial instincts and Fellini\u2019s erotic dreamscapes. It is an often hilarious and always affectionate portrait of a rigorous artist, but also sad, as Isabella wonders nearly 30 years after Roberto\u2019s death how well he is remembered and where his legacy stands. Is there anyone left to follow his rigorous example?<\/p>\n At first glance, Maddin \u2013 whose own movies are willfully archaic and whose expressionistic, often hallucinatory style Roberto Rossellini would no doubt disapprove of \u2013 seems like an odd choice to direct this project. Isabella first met him when she played an embittered, legless beer baroness in his Depression-era musical, 2003\u2019s The Saddest Music in the World<\/a><\/i>. She was already casting about for some way to commemorate her dad\u2019s 2006 centenary and to renew interest in his work, particularly among the young who may not have even heard of him. She knew their would be a retrospective film series, but she wanted to do something different, as well, and hit on the idea of a movie.<\/p>\n Certainly, she was aware how different Maddin\u2019s style is from her father\u2019s, but through all her years in the business, she has grown used to that. \u201cI remember always that working later on as an actress or being married to film directors that I would always get slightly nervous when a camera moved or went above the eye level, because I remember my father was so rigid about it,\u201d she laughingly tells FilmStew, adding that ex-husband Martin Scorsese was a particularly flagrant violator of Roberto Rossellini\u2019s precepts. \u201c\u2018Oh Marty,\u2019 I thought, \u2018Oh that camera movement is totally immoral.'\u201d<\/p>\n But Maddin seemed like the logical director for the project for reasons that went beyond style. \u201cThere is a such a nostalgia in his films, in his images. In his films, there is a nostalgia of cinema, and so I thought it was a good marriage,\u201d she explains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fascinating to think of a camera movement as \u201cimmoral\u201d. Also interesting to consider that her father and one-time husband both directed movies about the life of Christ \u2014 namely The Messiah<\/a><\/i> (1975; my comments<\/a>) and The Last Temptation of Christ<\/a><\/i> (1988), respectively. Anyway, this film is coming to the Vancouver film festival<\/a> as well in a few weeks, so I hope to catch it there.<\/p>\n 4. FilmStew.com<\/a> reports that Constantine<\/a><\/i> director Francis Lawrence will direct the third film version of Richard Matheson\u2019s I Am Legend<\/i>. The earlier versions were The Last Man on Earth<\/a><\/i> (1964), with Vincent Price, and The Omega Man<\/a><\/i> (1971), with Charlton Heston. No word yet on who will star this time.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Time for another batch. 1. The new trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire rocks. (FWIW, I blogged the earlier trailer \u2014 or teaser? \u2014 here.) 2. Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron and star of The Village (2004), talks to CanWest News Service about Manderlay, the upcoming sequel to Lars von Trier\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n