Escape to The Movies: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Yup. And here's an Intermission, too.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Dark and Action-Packed

22nd L'Acid News

While we have to wait until Tuesday, April 22 to learn the ACID selection with the nine (9) films that will get promotion at Cannes thanks to the join effort of CNC and SACD, we can take a look at the independent section of the festival poster.

The poster was designed by Natalia Olbinski, student at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD). Find poster perhaps too graphically traditional and due to the nature of the association activities poster should be a lot more with modern graphic design. Sigh.

For your information ACID is an association of film directors which, for 21 years, has been promoting the cinema distribution of independent films and encouraging debates between the authors and the audiences. The strength of ACID is its founding principle : the support given by filmmakers to other filmmakers, French or international.

ACID has had its own programme at the Cannes International Film Festival since 1993. It screens nine feature films, fiction and documentary, chosen by ACID filmmakers among hundreds of works from all around the world. ACID filmmakers follow their love for a film and wish to give visibility to directors whose work is scarcely distributed, in order to facilitate a theatrical release.

ACID’s Cannes programme is a long-awaited meeting for distributors, film programmers and international festivals. It allows them to see films and for ACID to rely on the programmers’ feedback to prepare the releases. The screenings, in the presence of ACID filmmakers and the films’ crews, are also open to the public and to high school students of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.

The films shown in Cannes are then accompanied by ACID and its filmmakers in the various stages of the theatrical release (search for distributors / promotion / programming / organization of the Q&A’s / audience research).

Among authors discovered in ACID Cannes are : Lucas Belvaux, Serge Bozon, Djinn Carrénard, Vincent Dieutre, Rachid Djaïdani, Alain Gomis, Arnaud et Jean-Marie Larrieu, Ursula Meier, Avi Mograbi, Yolande Moreau & Gilles Porte, Nicolás Pereda, Pierre Schoeller, Claire Simon…

53rd Semaine de la Critique News

For its 53rd edition, La Semaine de la Critique unveils its new poster, which captures the creative energy of a whole new generation of filmmakers.

Conceived by the digital agency “Les bons faiseurs“, the poster features Kate Moran, one of the stars of Rencontres d’après minuit (You and the Night), the first feature of Yann Gonzalez, discovered at La Semaine de la Critique. Posing for photographer Jean-Claude Moireau, the actress sits astride a motorbike, looking like she's ready to conquer new horizons.

Find the poster graphically very interesting and most of all, modern which is quite unusual for Cannes posters. Bravo! Let's hope the festival also surprise us with a modern and interesting poster.

The Grand Prize of this 53rd edition of the Semaine de la Critique will be presided over by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold. The Jury, made up of four international journalists, will award one of the seven feature films in competition. The winning entry will follow Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza's Salvo, winner of 2013's Grand Prize.

Andrea Arnold returns to the Semaine de la Critique, which helped her launch her early career by screening her short film Milk. Very quickly, her career took off thanks to very impressive works, revealing her talent and originality to larger audiences. Another short film, Wasp won the Oscar for best short in 2003. Her first two feature films Red Road in 2006 and Fish Tank, in which she directed Michael Fassbender in 2009, won both the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, which really cemented her reputation internationally as one of the very few women film makers to have been rewarded at Cannes. In 2011, she presented her adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in the Venice International Film Festival Competition. La Semaine de la Critique is delighted to welcome such an exceptional filmmaker to reward one of the emerging artists from the competition with the Grand Prize.

La Semaine de la Critique is dedicated to bringing new filmmakers to bigger audiences, following in the footsteps of their predecessors, Chris Marker, Jean Eustache, Paul Morrissey, Ken Loach, Wong Kar-wai, Leos Carax, Arnaud Desplechin, Guillermo del Toro, Jacques Audiard, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Keren Yedaya, Quentin Dupieux and Jeff Nichols.

Join us at La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes from 15 to 23 May to discover our new selection of ten short and ten feature films; twenty new pieces of work that bear witness to the vitality of the film industry.

ANNOUNCEMENT: MovieBob Will Be At CONBRAVO 2014!

Yes, it's true - we're taking this circus to CANADA!



Details on panels, appearances, etc will be announced at a later date. Me, I'm just hoping modern Canada hasn't been over-sold to me :)

46th Quinzaine des Réalisateurs News

Created by the Société des réalisateurs de films (French Directors Guild) in May 1969 to aid filmmakers and contribute to their discovery by the critics and audiences alike, this parallel section of the Cannes Festival surely will surprise us this year with their selection that surely will be announced after the fest selection is announced in April 17. But while we wait lets check what the section has been doing.

Recently the Directors' Fortnight unveiled their poster and according to Edouard Waintrop there are two diametrically opposed ways to consider the poster created by Michel Welfringer, based on a photograph by Cécile Burban.

"Either we are watching a spectator making good his escape by way of the screen...a clean getaway...Or else this man is slipping into a shadow world as it represented in a certain cinema of 2014, serie noire... if the word hadn't already been patented. We will be showing both kinds this year and you will decide which you prefer. In any case, as this poster suggests, the films we are showing will usher you into a filmic dimension which, we hope, continues to be bigger than life…"

For me the poster looks more like someone trying to get into cinema from an unconventional way, forcing himself inside or without paying (its dues?). Sigh.

Soon the Carrosse d'Or winner will be announced and some of you will recall that last year the award went to Jane Campion that this year is the Festival Main Competition Jury President.

The Cannes parallel section this year will run from May 15 to 25.

New in April: Revival of the Fittest (2014)

With the possible exception of zombies and radiation-breathing monsters, everyone loves a good resurrection, right? Especially if it means a second month in a row of Netflix reviving so many great titles from expiration lists past. It's tough to beat last month's bounty, with all its returning classics and Altman movies, but April's not too shabby either. Among personal faves I'll go ahead and plug Barton Fink (review) and Chinatown (review), both of which have already received attention here but can never be watched too often (and really, if you still haven't seen Chinatown, I'm not sure why you're even finishing this sentence. Go! Stream!).

Marilyn Monroe�and musical�fans also get some love this month, with renewed doses of There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), the latter representing Monroe's second collaboration with director Howard Hawks (the first�Monkey Business (1952)�is already available). That brings MM's presence on Netflix to nine titles, and Hawks' to four. And while this still leaves a serious streaming gap in the classics department, it's a step in the right direction.

A very special episode of Family Feud

You could even argue that these last couple months represent a conscious replenishment of many director and star catalogs. For instance, the returns of Titanic and The Terminator mark a beefing up of director James Cameron's filmography on the site, providing backstory for the already-streaming Terminator 2�and simultaneously adding to the presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ah-nuld, who recently saw the addition of The Last Stand and Last Action Hero to Instant, can now also be spotted sprinting through The Running Man�one of the more entertaining examples of his late '80s output (and one that fits neatly between two similarly themed films, 1974's Rollerball and 2012's The Hunger Games).

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Big Picture: DESTINED FOR DISAPPOINTMENT: PART I

Very happy with how this came out:

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Destined for Disappointment, Part 1