Over the past several years, France has produced an enormous amount of TV content, seemingly hoping to spawn some sort of breakout international hit along the lines of Homeland or Breaking Bad. They have, for the most part been unsuccessful. Until they tried zombies. The Returned (Les Revenants) is, as
The Guardian explains, "a zombie-cum-slasher-cum-crime drama centred on a mute adoptee and a reanimated butterfly." But in case you're tempted to for some reason dismiss it on those grounds, the UK newspaper goes onto note that, "The Returned handles the madness in such an effortlessly controlled manner...that it is easily among the best that European drama has to offer."
Channel 4 has already hopped onboard and made the show available to UK viewers. Now, it's coming to the U.S. courtesy of Music Box. According to Deadline, the company is preparing"for a VOD/DVD release in January. Before that though, the series will air on The Sundance Channel, making its debut on Halloween.
In the meantime, take a look at the trailer.
For the first time since 1998, an Italian film has taken home the grand prize, The Golden Lion, at the Venice film festival. Even more significant though, Jury President Bernardo Bertolucci and his team awarded the coveted prize to a documentary for the first time ever.
The hotshot film is Gianfranco Rossi's Sacro Gra, which is "about life on the ring-road highway that circles Rome." The other big winner was Alexandros Avranas' Miss Violence, which won for both directing and acting, a double dip which is normally against regulation and "requires special dispensation from the festival president." Take a look at the full list of winners below:
- Golden Lion: Sacro Gra, dir: Gianfranco Rosi
- Grand Jury Prize: Stray Dogs, dir: Tsai Ming-liang
- Silver Lion for Best Director: Alexandros Avranas, Miss Violence
- Volpi Cup, Best Actor: Themis Panou, Miss Violence
- Volpi Cup, Best Actress: Elena Cotta, Via Castellana Bandiera
- Marcello Mastroianni Award for for Best New Young Actor or Actress: Tye Sheridan, Joe
- Best Screenplay: Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope, Philomena
- Special Jury Prize: The Police Officer’s Wife, dir: Philip Groning
CRITICS WEEK
- Lion of the Future – “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a debut film:
White Shadow, dir: Noaz Deshe
HORIZONS
- Best Film: Eastern Boys, dir: Robin Campillo
- Special Jury Prize: Ruin, dirs: Amiel Courtin-Wilson, Michael Cody
- Best Director: Uberto Pasolini, Still Life
- Special Award for Innovative Content: Mahi Va Gorbeh, dir: Shahram Mokri
- Best Short Film: Kush, dir: Shubhashish Bhutiani (India)
Unfortunate news in Scandanavia: Just before principal photography was set to begin on the new film by Norwegian wunderkind Joachim Trier (Oslo, August 31 and Reprise), Norwegian production company Motlys announced that production has been postponed indefinitely because of lack of funds.
The film, titled Louder than Bombs was set to shoot in Germany and the U.S. on a €6.4 million budget, and was supposed to star Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne and Jesse Eisenberg. Hopefully funding will come through and get the project back on track, but for now, here's the synopsis.
Louder than Bombs is the story of a famous war photographer, who is killed in a car accident, leaving behind her husband and two sons, one a teenager. Three years after her death the eldest son comes home for an exhibition of her photography, when they discover an unsettling secret from her past.
In Brief
- Keys to the Street, an adaptation of a Ruth Rendell's crime novel scripted by Christopher Nolan and Michael Stokes, will be shooting soon in London with Tim Roth and Gemma Arterton. Czech filmmaker Julius Sevcik will direct the film, "where a woman accepts a house-sitting assignment in order to escape her violent and disturbed ex-boyfriend Alastair (Roth). As a series of murders occur in the neighborhood, she starts an affair with another man, played by Max Irons."
- Spain has narrowed down its Best foreign film Oscar submission short list to four: Manuel Martin Cuenca's Cannibal, Daniel Sanchez-Arevalo's Family United, Gracia Querejeta's 15 Years Plus a Day and Santiago Zannou's Scorpion of Love.
- Finally, what's a Euro Beat without a little bit more controversy about Abdellatif Kechiche's erotic Palm D'or winner Blue is the Warmest Color? Actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos are now going public with how much trauma went into making the critically acclaimed film.
For example, Exarchopoulos explained, "Most people don’t even dare to ask the things that he did, and they’re more respectful—you get reassured during sex scenes, and they’re choreographed, which desexualizes the act."
Later, Seydoux adds when discussing a fight scene, "In America, we’d all be in jail." These revelations led to one of the better French pun headlines in a while, "Palm D'Horreur."
Box Office
There was no clear winner this weekend and the European Box Office, with American sleepers like
The Conjuring (Belgium) and We're the Millers (Germany and Austria) vying for the top spots, while One Direction: This is Us was scattered at every rank across the continent, from number two to number nine. Italy finally caught up and got Elysium, making it number one, while Spain gave the crown to Epic. Then in France, for whatever reason, Red 2 dominated.
However, in Denmark local film Spies & Glistrup (pictured above),which tells the true story of a travel mogul and his attorney, beat out all foreign films with a $0.8 take and the number one spot. Also noteworthy on the local front, François Ozon's Young and Beautiful is doing fairly solid business, having pulled in 3.6 million after two weeks. This probably bodes well for the similarly-themed, but much more acclaimed Blue is the Warmest Color, which will release in October.