Film Fan Fridays for Friday January 25, 2008!

Hello Film Fans and Fanatics!

Welcome to Film Fan Fridays for Friday January 25, 2008! Here is another week of movie madness with not only Oscar nominations but ten new releases. Ten! But first a little about the Oscar nominations, the big contenders are: No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood both with 8 nominations closely followed by Atonement and Michael Clayton with 7 nominations each. Michael Clayton is reappearing in theatres this week so if you missed it originally you will have a chance to see it now! Add Juno to the list and those are the 5 nominations for best picture. Other multiple nominations go to Ratatouille (with 5), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (with 4) and La Vie En Rose and Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street both with 3 nominations. See various lists of nominations here.

I'm thrilled to say that this weeks releases include three Canadian films. Out of the three I am most excited about How She Move, set right here in Toronto and it's a dance movie. It's actually stepping, but I still consider that a dance movie. Very exciting! Additional Canadian releases include the drama/western All Hat which played at TIFF in 2007, and the creepy horror film They Wait.

Our limited releases outnumber the wide release by 6:4 this week. They include two highly acclaimed films: Still Life and The Rape of Europa - a documentary on what happened to works of art during WWII. We also have the black comedy Waiter which looks quite funny, a live action 3D concert film U2 3D as well as All Hat and They Wait.

The wide releases include How She Move, Meet the Spartans which is a parody on 300 with a gist of pop culture added in, Sylvester Stallone's latest revival project Rambo and the internet thriller Untraceable.

Touching base on last weeks releases: if you are considering seeing Cloverfield I would recommend seeing it before you hear too much about it and also to seeing it in the theatre. I would not recommend it if you have trouble with shaky-cam style filming (a la Blair Witch Project), there were walk outs during the screening I went to and I've also heard people complain of nausea. I didn't have this issue myself but it was very obvious that it affected people.

Have a great week!

Shannon

Friday January 25, 2008 Releases

All Hat
Dir: Leonard Farlinger (The Perfect Son, Collateral Damage)
Cast: Luke Kirby, Rachael Leigh Cook, Lisa Ray, Keith Carradine
Canada/UK/USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer
Trailer shows a lot, safe to about the 1/2 way point

How She Move
Dir: Ian Iqbal Rashid (Touch of Pink)
Cast: Rutina Wesley, Dwain Murphy, Tre Armstrong, Brennan Gademans, Shawn Desman
Canada
MySpace Page (autoplays trailer), IMDb Page, Trailer
Trailer shows a fair amount, after 1/2 way point shows a lot of the film

Meet the Spartans
Writers/Directors: Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer (Epic Movie)
Cast: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Ken Davitian, Kevin Sorbo
USA
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Rambo
Writer/Dir: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa, Staying Alive)
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Julia Benz, Paul Schulze
USA/Germany
Official Film Site (autoplays trailer), IMDb Page, Trailer
Trailer doesn't appear to spoil the plot

The Rape of Europa
Dir: Richard Berge & Bonni Cohen - feature film directorial debuts
Documentary on the theft of art during World War II, narrated by Joan Allen
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Still Life / Sanxia haoren
Dir: Jia Zhang-Ke (Dong, Unknown Pleasures / Ren xiao yao)
Cast: Zhao Tao, Han Sanming
China/Hong Kong
Limited Release
IMDb Page
Unable to locate legit trailer

They Wait
Dir: Ernie Barbarash (Cube Zero)
Cast: Jaime King, Michael Biehn, Pei-pei Cheng, Terry Chen
Canada
Limited Release
Official Film Site and Trailer (disturbing images, autoplays trailer) IMDb Page
Trailer is pretty disturbing, I turned it of 2/3 of the way through which is pretty scary

U2 3D
Dir: Catherine Owens -debut & Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies)
U2 Concert film of the "Vertigo" tour, in "Live Action 3D"
USA
Official Film Site (including trailer), IMDb Page
The trailer shows next to nothing and has 5 showings of sponsorship/ads.

Untraceable
Dir: Gregory Hoblit (Fracture, Hart's War, Frequency, Fallen)
Cast: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross
USA
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer
The trailer is really long, and you get gist of film in the first half after which I think it shows too much

Waiter / Ober
Writer/Dir: Alex van Warmerdam (Grimm, Little Tony / Kleine Teun)
Cast: Alex van Warmerdam, Ariane Schluter, Jaap Spijkers, Mark Rietman
Netherlands/Belgium
Limited Release
Official Film Site (English), IMDb Page, for Trailer: go here, select theatrical, search title 'Waiter'

**please note this list of releases reflects first run film released in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as of January 25, 2008**