News: Joel & Ethan Coen's "Hail, Caesar!" to open 2016 Berlinale!

On 11 February 2016, Hail, Caesar! by Academy Award winning director duo Joel and Ethan Coen will open the 66th Berlin International Film Festival.

The 66th Berlinale announced on Friday, December 4th, their first competition film for the 2016 edition of the festival. Joel and Ethan Coen's "Hail, Caesar!" will be one of the films competing for the Golden Bear, which will be selected by an international jury headed by her majesty, Queen Meryl Streep.

According to the press notes, "Hail, Caesar!" takes place during the latter years of Hollywood’s Golden Age, during the studio system’s heyday, and features an all-star cast including Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Channing Tatum. The comedy follows a single day in the life of a studio fixer who is presented with plenty of problems to fix.

The renowned directors Joel and Ethan Coen have been a prominent fixture in international cinema for more than 30 years. After their sensational debut Blood Simple (1984), the Coen Brothers have enjoyed international successes with audiences and critics alike for films such as Fargo (1996, Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay), No Country for Old Men (2007, three Academy Awards in the categories Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Best Director), Burn After Reading (2008), A Serious Man (2009) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).

In 1998, the Coen Brothers presented their brilliant comedy The Big Lebowski in the Berlinale Competition programme, and their dramatic western True Grit opened the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in 2011.

“It’s wonderful that Joel and Ethan Coen are once again opening the Berlinale. Their humour, unique characters and fantastic narrative skill are guaranteed to thrill the audience. Hail, Caesar! is the perfect start for the 2016 Berlinale,” says Festival Director Dieter Kosslick.

Hail, Caesar! is produced by Joel and Ethan Coen, and Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, through Mike Zoss Productions and Working Title Films.

The film is released by Universal Pictures worldwide and will open in German cinemas on February 18, 2016.

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Raymond Lo

Quick Reviews: "Tomorrowland", "San Andreas"

If you have noticed i have not been active with my blog for the past month or so. I have been quite busy at my day job and have not had much time to even update this blog for some of the more important events that transpired during the past month. Cannes came and went and save for a report i did on the film selections, I did not have much chance to report here on what movie generated the most buzz and what movies and actors took home the prizes. 

And i missed going to the movies. Except for occasional Netflix movies, I haven't gone to the movies in over two months - gosh, I miss the darkness of the cinema, the quiet murmurs of the bored and excited audiences and the big screen that transports my hapless self to the world envisioned by the filmmakers... but that's over now because yesterday, I went to the movies and saw two films that are making quite a buzz now.

Tomorrowland

I finally got to see "Tomorrowland" --- I waited many months for this movie and now i know why it disappointed at the box office: It's a big yawner! The movie is too didactic and too preachy that it brought me to sleep more than a couple of times. I love the idea about it but the storytelling is so uneven that when the setting finally shifted to Tomorrowland, I was already too bored to even care. If they could re-edit the movie and trim it by like 20 minutes, it would be a better film. (Note: There was a little boy who came with his mom to the cinema and midway through the movie, he was already asking his mom how many more hours until the movie ends... that about sums up the movie.)

Rating:  – 2 ½ Stars.

San Andreas

I also saw "San Andreas" and this one was a little bit better, just a little bit. The dialogues are so cheesy that you'll find yourself laughing at supposedly crucial dramatic scenes. But the special effects here is amazing though. I expected a Roland Emmerich-type of devastation but then it's not really his film so that is just fine -- the San Francisco earthquake and tsunami scenes were awesome but one will have to sit through those agonizingly long stretches of dialogues between characters who manage to deliver those corny exchanges and break into lip-locks amidst the devastation - and threats of more - around them. i guess it's what the genre calls for but...

Rating:  – 2 ½ Stars.

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Raymond Lo

News: Watch the Japanese trailer of "Tomorrowland"!

Many film buffs are predicting that Brad Bird's return to directing will most likely have its world premiere outside of the United States -- at the Cannes Film Festival. The buzz for "Tomorrowland" has been building up steadily leading to its May 2015 bow in theaters. That it will become a blockbuster is not exactly the question but just how big it is going to be! Will it be the biggest Disney movie release of the year??? Perhaps!

Meanwhile, many fans are buzzing about the Japanese version of the film's trailer. Many are hailing this version for the George Clooney-starrer as the one definitive trailer for the sci-fi epic.

Watch it here so you can judge for yourself.

 

More Stories From "The Monuments Men"

My coverage of "The Monuments Men" came out today, February 9, 2014, on The Philippine Star. The online edition can be found through this link: http://www.philstar.com/entertainment/2014/02/10/1288483/fun-encounter-monuments-men.

The Cast of The Monuments Men

In my story, i reported the fun one hour I had with the stars of the movie. I focused on how Matt Damon was picked on by George Clooney and Cate Blanchett.

There were many other things that we talked about during the press conference. George lengthily addressed the questions by a couple of journalists from Israel about the stolen artworks that belonged to many prominent Jewish families during the war. He also discussed some scenes in the movie that depicted the harrowing atrocities the NAZIs committed. There was a German journalist who asked the cast how they find Germany which prompted George to relate how embarrassed he was during the casting of the German parts because all they offered were NAZI parts. One actor tried to rationalize the action of his character but George cut him off saying, "No, he is really bad!"

Follow the link above to read my story. I would like to share a collage of pictures i took from the junket, too.

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Raymond Lo