Taking Woodstock is the new film from Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee - and it’s a trip! Based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, the comedy stars Demetri Martin as Elliot, who inadvertently played a role in making 1969’s Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the famed happening it was. Featuring a standout ensemble cast, and songs from a score of ’60s musical icons Taking Woodstock is a joyous voyage to a moment in time when everything seemed possible.
Working as an interior designer in Greenwich Village, Elliot is still staked to the family business - a dumpy Catskills motel called the El Monaco that is being run into the ground by his overbearing parents. In the summer of 1969, Elliot has to move back upstate to the El Monaco in order to help save the motel from being taken over by the bank.
Upon hearing that a planned music and arts festival has lost its permit from the neighboring town of Wallkill, NY, Elliot calls producer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) at Woodstock Ventures to offer his family’s motel to the promoters and generate some much-needed business. Elliot also introduces Lang to his neighbor Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), who operates a 600-acre dairy farm down the road.
Soon the Woodstock staff is moving into the El Monaco - and half a million people are on their way to Yasgur’s farm for “3 days of Peace & Music in White Lake.” With a little help from his friends and with a little opposition from townspeople Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life - and popular culture - forever.
Cast: Demetri Martin, Dan Fogler, Henry Goodman, Jonathan Groff, Eugene Levy, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber
Directed by Ang Lee
Script: James Schamus, Elliot Tiber, Tom Monte
Producer: Ang Lee, James Schamus
Tokyo is a city of transitions in three short films. A young woman who finds her life useless experiences a metamorphosis. A disheveled Caucasian emerges from a manhole to face arrest, trial, and execution; he calls himself "Merde" and speaks a language only his look-alike attorney understands. Is he human? A recluse experiences human contact when a pizza-delivery girl faints at his door during an earthquake. He conquers fear to seek her out. A chair, a corpse, a hermit: sources of urban connection?
Cast: Yû Aoi, YosiYosi Arakawa, Jean-François Balmer, Julie Dreyfus, Ayako Fujitani, Ayumi Ito, Teruyuki Kagawa, Denis Lavant, Yutaka Matsushige, Nao Omori, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Hiroshi Yamamoto
Directed by Michel Gondry ("Interior Design"), Joon-ho Bong ("Shaking Tokyo"), Leos Carax ("Merde")
Script by Michel Gondry ("Interior Design"), Joon-ho Bong ("Shaking Tokyo"), Leos Carax ("Merde")
Producer: Anne Pernod-Sawada, Masa Sawada, Michiko Yoshitake
The opening film of VII Russian Film Festival.
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In 1565, Ivan the Terrible, Tsar of Russia suffers a defeat in the long war against Poland. Around him, he can see only treachery. To struggle against the traitors, he creates a personal guard, the “Tsar’s Dogs”, whose sign of recognition is a dog’s head attached to their saddles. The Tsar’s Dogs plunge Russia into a blood bath. In alarm, the Metropolitan, the Head of the Russian Church, takes refuge in a monastery. Ivan the Terrible, believing that he can understand and interpret the signs, sees the Last Judgment approaching. So he sends for Metropolitan Philip, his childhood friend, the Superior of the monastery on the Solovki Islands. The latter, attempting to save the innocent from the Tsar’s cruelty, fights increasingly against the Tsar’s power. There is thus a clash between two violently and diametrically opposite visions of the world, smashing morality and justice, God and men.
Cannes Film Festival, 2009 – Official Selection – Un Certain Regard;
Moscow IFF, 2009 – “Opening Film”
Cast: Pyotr Mamonov, Oleg Yankovsky, Yury Kuznetsov, Ramilya Iskander, Aleksandr Domogarov, Ivan Okhlobystin, Alexei Frandetti, Alexei Makarov, Nastia Dontsova, Ville Haapasalo
Directed by Pavel Lungin
Script: Alexei Ivanov, Pavel Lungin
Producer: Pavel Lungin
Angelina lives in the Far East in a big city on the coast of the warm sea. Working with difficult children, Gelia wants to break with her loneliness: she simply needs to find happiness and, at last, start her own family. But have you ever seen that life is all that simple?
– The “Certain Regard” programme in Cannes in 2009;
– Award for Best Actor (Boris Kamorzin) – ORFF “Kinotavr”, Sochi, 2009.
Cast: Alisa Khazanova, Boris Kamorzin, Yuri Safarov, Dmitri Podnozov
Directed by Nikolai Khomeriki
Script: Alexander Rodionov, Nikolai Khomeriki
Producer: Roman Borisevich, Alexander Kushaev
The screenplay is an adaptation of Chekhov’s mysterious paradoxical and disturbing story, which can be in all justice called the most pessimistic and also the most life-asserting work of the author. The story is based on a real life incident and centers around the head doctor of an asylum who winds up as the asylum patient. Lonely, estranged, reflecting doctor Andrei Ragin is one of the focal characters in the work of Chekhov and the entire world literature of the 20th century. Preserving the story-line the authors deliberately move the scene into the present. Shooting of the film was done in a real asylum.
– Award for Best Actor (Vladimir Ilyin) – Moscow IFF, 2009.
Cast: Vladimir Ilyin, Alexei Vertkov, Alexander Pankratov-Chiorny, Evgeny Stychkin, Victor Soloviov, Alexei Zarkov, Albina Evtushevskaya, Anna Siniakina
Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov, with participation Alexander Gornovsky
Script: Alexander Borodiansky, Karen Shakhnazarov
Producer: Karen Shakhnazarov
In a village at edge of a large city a girl was born. This settlement was called Settlement. The mother did not know who gave her this present. And it was very difficult to figure out, since there had been so many accidents in her life. Now there are two of them, mother and daughter. They have no names. They run. Constantly, without stopping. The mother runs from the daughter in search of her self, of life, of the world. The girl runs after the mother because she can’t imagine either herself or the world without her. Their run is an infinite line of repeated mistakes, like the melody of a street organ, like the spinning of a top: the ridiculous toy which the mother once gave the little girl. But one day the spinning stops…
– Main prize (Grand-Prix), Prize for the best actress (Yana Troyanova), Grigory Gorin's Prize for the best screenplay (Vasily Sigarev), Prize of the Russian Film Critics' Guild "White Elephant" – Russian Film Festival "Kinotavr", Sochi-2009;
– Special mention (Don Quixote Award) of the International Federation of Cine Clubs – IFF in Karlovy Vary
Cast: Yana Troyanova, Polina Pluchek
Directed by Vasili Sigarev
Script: Vasili Sigarev
Producer: Roman Borisevich, Ruben Dishdishian
In 120 A.D. Flavius Aquila led 5,000 elite Roman soldiers on a mission beyond the edge of the known world – to highlands of Caledonia (modern days Scotland). They were never seen again… 20 years later the commander’s son Mark Aquila (Channing Tatum) makes promise to himself to solve out the mystery of their disappearance and restore the reputation of his father, the commander of the Ninth, by finding lost legion's golden emblem – the Eagle. Hearing a rumor that the Eagle has been seen in a tribal temple in the far north of Caledonia, Marcus sets out to the dangerous journey. Saving the life of a young Caledonian, Esca (Jamie Bell), tossed like bait in a gladiatorial contest, Marcus takes the grateful but surly fellow as his slave and, despite warnings that “No Roman could survive across the Hadrian's Wall”, ventures beyond the edge of the known world on a dangerous and obsessive quest to confront the savage tribes and retrieve the Eagle of the Ninth.
Casting: Channing Tatum, Mark Strong, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Denis O'Hare
Directed by: Kevin MacDonald
Octave is the master of the universe.
Octave exercises the profession of copywriter. Today he decides what you will want tomorrow. For him, "man is a product like everything else." Octave works for the world's largest advertising agency, Ross & Witchcraft, nicknamed "The Ross."
He's swimming in money, girls and coke. Even so, he has his doubts. Two events will turn Octave's life on its head: his love affair with Sophie, the agency's most beautiful employee, and a meeting at Madone to sell an advertisement to this major company in the diary sector. Gifted Octave loses the plot and decides to rebel against the system that created him, by botching his greatest publicity campaign.
From Paris, where agency bosses negociate deals, to Miami, where advertisements get shot while gulping anti-depressants, from Saint-Germain-de-Pres to an isolated island in Central America, will Octave manage to escape his golden prison?
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Jocelyn Quivrin, Patrick Mille, Vahina Giocante, Élisa Tovati, Dominique Bettenfeld, Nicolas Marie, Antoine Basler
Directed by Jan Kounen
Joe Wright, the BAFTA Award-winning director of "Pride & Prejudice," has reunited with his filmmaking team and his Academy Award-nominated actress, Keira Knightley, for another classic British romance, starring James McAvoy (BAFTA Award nominee for "The Last King of Scotland") opposite Ms. Knightley. Christopher Hampton (Academy Award winner for "Dangerous Liaisons") has written the screenplay adaptation of Ian McEwan's best-selling 2002 novel Atonement. Shot on location in the U.K., the film's story spans several decades. In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion. On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Briony's vivid imagination. Robbie Turner (Mr. McAvoy), the educated son of the family's housekeeper, carries a torch for Briony's headstrong older sister Cecilia (Ms. Knightley). Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings; all it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust. When it does, Briony - who has a crush on Robbie - is compelled to interfere, going so far as accusing Robbie of a crime he did not commit. Cecilia and Robbie declare their love for each other, but he is arrested - and with Briony bearing false witness, the course of three lives is changed forever. Briony continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination, she finds the path to her uncertain atonement, and to an understanding of the power of enduring love.
Cast: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn, Vanessa Redgrave, Juno Temple
Directed by Joe Wright
From director Roland Emmerich comes a sweeping odyssey into a mythical age of prophesies and gods, when spirits rule the land and mighty mammoths shake the earth. In a remote mountain tribe, the young hunter, D'Leh (Steven Strait), has found his heart's passion - the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle). When a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D'Leh is forced to lead a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. Driven by destiny, the unlikely band of warriors must battle saber-tooth tigers and prehistoric predators and, at their heroic journey's end, they uncover a Lost Civilization. Their ultimate fate lies in an empire beyond imagination, where great pyramids reach into the skies. Here they will take their stand against a powerful god who has brutally enslaved their people.
Cast: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis
Directed by Roland Emmerich
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford delves into the private life and public exploits of America's most notorious outlaw. As the charismatic and unpredictable Jesse James (Brad Pitt) plans his next great robbery, he wages war on his enemies, who are trying to collect the reward money - and the glory - riding on his capture. But the greatest threat to his life may ultimately come from those he trusts the most.
Cast: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner,
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Andrey is a Moscow yuppie working as a creative manager in a large advertising agency. That day he smokes out an entire pack of cigarettes. With each cigarette the storm of events and conflicts Andrey is involved in becomes more and more violent. Confronted to a situation in which his professional and personal future is jeopardized, Andrey must make the one and only right decision.
Script writer Dmitry Sobolev: "Taking sides, making your choice in the world where everyone strives to achieve success. It is absolutely true about Moscow. In other areas of Russia changes haven't been so drastic. The way of life has remained the same. In Moscow success makes you. As a matter of fact I attempted to reveal that success was not all in life. The most important is the decisive choice. God has endowed us with the ability to choose and has given us the opportunity to make the choice. Success is not of vital importance, there is something else that counts. No use shrinking from taking sides. No one knows with whom the correct choice lies. The movie has no ready answer; it poses the question and leaves it unanswered. No answer is available; it can't be supplied either by philosophy or by any kind of art".