Leonid Rozhetskin, David Arquette, and L+E Productions got some great news this week when his Sundance movie, Hamlet 2, was bought for $10 million making it one of the biggest deals at the festival ever! Congrats! Via Pop Sugar.
Category Archives: Film
Suna No Onna (Woman in the Dunes) is a Masterwork
When my mom was 27 she dated a boy in NYC who was obsessed with Japan. He was in finance but was doing graduate work in Japanese so that he could continue his banking in Japan for work. When they dated, he would take her out to sushi dinners and then to Japanese films — well before most of the West was eating sashimi.
My mother was so moved by the Hiroshi Teshigahara masterpiece, Suna No Onna (Woman in the Dunes), that she has been looking to see the movie again as the film was burnt indelibly into her memory. Mom found the DVD on Netflix and moved it to the top of her queue and it arrived yesterday and we watched it together last night.
The film is visually stunning. The psychology of the film reminds me a little of nihilism and existentialism but has obviously influenced modern film-making. The same sort of desperation, struggle, frustration, aggression, resignation are used again and again in shows that are suspenseful and surreal — productions such as television’s Lost — films that are often obtuse, dense, and open for interpretation.
This is a brilliant movie, especially since if you spend some time with the academic film critique — the Video Essay by James Quandt — that is available on the Criterion Collection DVD, which I highly recommend since it is a complete version and not the version that was screened in the US, missing 20 minutes.
We Are Fixated by UNUSUALS Cartoons
We’re friends with the gang from UNUSUALS, www.unusuals.net, an online portfolio, presentation, and search tool for the entire galaxy of people who are responsible for putting together movies, films, documentaries, commercials, television, music videos, etc. The reason I am blogging about UNUSUALS is because their little video clips make Mark and I very literally Roll On The Floor Laughing (ROTFL). Check them all out — each is more amazing, surprising, bizarre, and UNUSUAL than the last.
Sundance Selects L+E Productions’ Hamlet II
You know I have been rubbing shoulders with Hollywood producer Leonid Rozhetskin. Well, it looks like Leonid Rozhetskin and L+E Productions does a fine job of selecting scripts and projects because I got some breaking news: the Sundance Film Festival selected L+E Productions’ Hamlet II in its premiers category.
“The Sundance Film Festival nomination of Hamlet II is not up on the Sundance website, but here’s some information about the Premiers Category: To showcase the diversity of contemporary cinema, the Sundance Film Festival’s Premieres program offers a selection of the latest work from established directors and world premieres of highly anticipated films. This is not a competitive category. It’s L+E Production‘s first Sundance selection.” (More about Hamlet II)
I Love French Cinema and Too Beautiful For You
Too Beautiful For You, Trop belle pour toi, is a terribly very French film with Gérard Depardieu. Depardieu’s character, Bernard Barthélémy, is wealthy, has a gorgeous young wife, kids and a palatial home. Even so, he cannot resist his temp, a frumpy middle-aged women, played by Josiane Balasko as Colette Chevassu, with whom he quickly and irrevocably falls in love.