THE CRITERION COLLECTION PRESENTS: THE SQUID AND THE WHALE/THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS.

Criterion Collection Announce December UK Releases Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach

Glasgow Film Festival Unveil Their 2015 Line Up With Noah Baumbach's While We're Young

The programme for the eleventh edition of Glasgow Film Festival was announced today, with an exciting, innovative, audience-focused festival packed with UK, European and World premieres, and the festival’s trademark pop-up cinema events making new use of some of the city’s most unusual venues. GFF15, which is supported by Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, EventScotland, Creative Scotland and BFI, will open with the European Premiere of Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young, and close with the UK Premiere of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure. This year’s programme also offers an exciting new platform for early-career feature film directors, pays tribute to Ingrid Bergman as an early feminist icon and celebrates Glasgow as a city hooked on the silver screen.

In a major step forward, GFF has introduced a feature film award for the first time. The brand new Audience Award, which asks the ticket-buying public to vote on a selection of ten films by first and second-time directors, has been designed to showcase some exceptional early career talents creating pioneering and brilliant work, often on shoestring budgets without the backing and marketing power of major studios. The winner of the Audience Award will be announced at the Closing Gala. All film critics accredited for the festival are also offered the chance to vote on their favourite films from across the programme, and a Glasgow Film Festival Critics’ Choice list will be published after the festival.

Major UK premieres this year include Wim Wenders’ Oscar®-nominated documentary Salt of the

Earth and Still Alice, for which Julianne Moore is tipped to win the Best Actress Oscar®.It would'nt be a film festival without a Juliet Binoche film and Oliver Assayas' Clouds Of Sils Maria which also stars Chloe Grace Moretz and Kirsten Stewart an uncomfortable reflection of an actress agrees to take part in a play that launched her career.Dustin Hoffman is a choirmaster  who adopts an young boy to help develop his creative talents in Boychoir. Roy Andersson’s masterful reflection on the human condition unfolds in thirty nine meticulously composed tableaux vivants with A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.Marshland,is a richly-textured Spanish murder mystery, like True Detective set in the Andaluz swamps.The Dark Horse a richly textured biopic of chess champion Gen Potini, featuring the performance of a lifetime by Once Were Warriors’ and soon to be lead in The Walking Dead Spin-off Cliff Curtis.

The magic of Film festivals is bringing the best of films from around the world to a screen near you and Glasgow Film Festival deliver that promise for those hoping to attend. In the 16 strands the festival has the Window On The World & Cinemasters strands delivering most distinctive films from around the globe with a big focus on China and Japan.Some of the fantastic highlights include a Danny Boyle's homage to Californian/Japan noir with Man From Reno, Berlin Golden Bear winner Black Coal, Thin Ice a broody atmospheric murder mystery set in 1999 Northern China. Zhang Zimou's look at national impact of the cultural revolution with Coming Home.Daihachi Yoshida's award winning Pale Moon and Uzumasa Limelight an utterly charming salute to the art of the background actor, by Ken Ochiai makes its European Premiere.

If you adore old classic films 'Here's Looking At You Kid' will celebrate the career of Golden age icon Ingrid Bergman with great selection of her films. From Casablanca, Notorious, Murder On The Orient Express to Spellbound are some of the classics on show all for £5 a ticket. Remember its not all about the films, Glasgow Film Festival has gained a great reputations for its film related events, The Glasgow Youth Film Festival  which will open with sci-fi thriller The Signal starring Laurence Fisburne , If horror is your thing Film Frighfest will be in attendance for it's 10th Anniversary selection of the best horror from around the world.

Head over to the website www.glasgowfilm.org/festival for full line up


OPENING GALA: While We’re Young **EUROPEAN PREMIERE**
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“As acute and timely as they come... an almost perfect 90-minute hit of confident and inspired comedic commentary.” ★★★★★ Catherine Shoard, The Guardian
Growing older but feeling younger has rarely seemed as bittersweet as it does in the latest cautionary comedy from Frances Ha director Noah Baumbach. There are moments here to make everyone squirm with recognition and rock with laughter as Baumbach mines wry comic gold from an unexpected meeting of the generations. Filmmaker Josh (Ben Stiller) and his wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are settled in marriage and cosily stalled careers, while the rest of their forty-something pals are buried under babies and domesticity. Into their lives blast the twenty-something, fedora-wearing, aggressively urban hipsters Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), and the older couple are flattered and attracted by their attention and idealism. Offered a second chance at youth, who wouldn’t grab it? However, as their new best friends turn out to have a hidden agenda, the breezy comic tone deepens and darkens into something more profound. While We’re Young was a huge hit at Toronto International Film Festival, and we’re delighted to be able to introduce European audiences to the film.

Wednesday 18 February (19.00) | repeated Thursday 19 February (13.00, 15.30) | GFT

CLOSING GALA: Force Majeure **UK PREMIERE**

Winner: Best Foreign Language Film, Critics Choice Movie Awards

One single moment can change everything in a relationship, and that’s exactly what happens in Force Majeure, a brilliant, Cannes Jury Prize-winner destined to leave you debating long after the final credits. A happy family are on a skiing vacation in the French Alps when an avalanche heads inexorably towards their mountaintop restaurant. Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) grabs his mobile and runs, leaving his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their children to fend for themselves. His instinct for self-preservation is the spark for a scalpel-sharp examination of love, guilt and devotion that may be even more destructive than the avalanche. By creating the circumstances in which everything we take for granted is torn away, writer/director Ruben Östlund has found an ingenious way to explore the flaws and cracks in a marriage. Is there just an unbridgeable gap between the way men and women view the world? Prepare to battle for the moral high ground at the UK premiere of one of the year’s most audacious and gripping films.

Sunday 1 March (20.00) | GFT

Tickets for the main festival programme are on sale from 10am on Monday 26 January. Passes for FrightFest, GFF’s horror festival-within-the-festival, go on sale at 10am Thursday 22 January. The brochure will be available online from 19.15 on Wednesday 21 January at www.glasgowfilm.org/festival

EIFF 2013 - Frances Ha Review

Rating:
15
Release:
21-22 June (EIFF) 26th July 2013 (UK Cinema)
Director:
Noah Baumbach
Stars:
Greta Gerwig,
Mickey Sumner,
Adam Driver

Chances are the most charming film you will see at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival is Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha. The feature sees him team up with Greta Gerwig in what serves as a love letter to New York and an amusing glimpse at the crossroads in life that many twentysomethings will undoubtedly find themselves at.

Frances is an amusingly awkward young woman (who her friend dubs 'undateable') drifting between her student-like lifestyle and ever approaching adult responsibilities.

Baumbatch's feature has a real sense of authenticity and addresses issues that many young people will undoubtedly feel after moving on from years of studying. We see Frances' best friend move into a serious relationship, her struggle to make her career as a dancer work out, and her failure to connect with adults. These are showcased through Gerwig and Baumbatch's smart screenplay and Gerwig's immediately likeable and rich performance. Whilst it does have a tendency to drift Frances Ha ultimately works because Frances is a character that simply finds herself drifting through life.

There's a great self-awareness to Frances Ha - it is clear that she is incredibly awkward (hilariously showcased on one scene where she attempts to play fights with someone who does not get her) - yet this is what makes her such a fascinating and undeniably watchable protagonist. There is something admirable about such a lost and aimless character in today's nine-to-five society, but she is also one driven by fun and expression. Gerwig packs her performance with a slight sensitivity and manages to craft a sense of sympathy in a role that may have lacked it in an another actor's hands.

The setting of New York and black and white style immediately echoes the charm of Woody Allen's earlier features, whilst Baumbach appears inspired from the likes of the French New Wave to Lena Dunham's Girls. Baumbach's soft, intimate direction crafts a delicate sense of breezy light-heartedness which makes Frances Ha a very absorbing watch.

Frances Ha's charming aesthetic and amusing yet sympathetic narrative and characters results in a stellar concoction, perfectly channelled through Gerwig's pitch perfect leading performance. Frances Ha is a film viewers will be unlikely to forget.

★★★★☆

Andrew McArthur

Dance Your Sorrows Away In First Trailer for Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha

 If you look back at American independent films over the last 20 years or so there's always going to be a few  directors names who will always pop due to their distinctive style, vision of film making; Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch and you have to also say Noah Baumbach. Since Summer 2012 on the festival circuit Baumbach's Frances Ha has been gathering some critical acclaim on it's travels and now it's time for the film to go theatrical and tonight we have the film's first trailer.

Frances Ha  sees Baumbach co-write the film with the film's main star Greta Gerwig who plays Frances a young New York woman who yearns to get more from life and relationships. Apart from the classic Modern  Love by David Bowie the film is delivered in black and white  to me is quint essential American independent. Frances Ha proves once again Greta Gerwig qualities in indie films rather than mainstream (Arthur remake) and Baumbach certainly knows how to get the best out of his leading lady lady. Visually this reminds me of Woody Allen's Manhattan with the tone and dialogue of Len Dunham's Girls, Frances Ha maybe sliding into that 20 something in crisis type film which we've seen a millions times but Noah Baumbach seems to deliver something more engaging and panache.

No word on a UK release so the film may creep into some UK based film festivals this year, Frances Ha will get a 17th May U.S limited release. The film co-stars Mickey Sumner, Adam Driver, Michael Zegen and Patrick Heusinger.



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