Sleeping Beauty

A haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of unspoken desires.

She’s The 0ne

She’s The One is about the wonderful story of close friends Wacky (Dingdong Dantes) and Cat (Bea Alonzo) who have been childhood friends and buddies until Wacky realized he is really madly and deeply in love with her only after he helped his male friend (Enrique Gil) to win her love and affection.

These Are Your GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

There've been snaps from the SDCC trailer around for months, but this is the first official heroes-lineup still from James Gunn's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY - the last new Marvel Studios movie before AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON and the first test of whether the Marvel brand can extend it's thus-far bulletproof box office credibility outside of the superhero genre; in this case, to a space-set scifi/action-comedy:

From left to right: Zoe Saldana as GAMORA, Chris Pratt as STARLORD, Bradley Cooper (voice) as ROCKET RACCOON, David Bautista as DRAX THE DESTROYER and Vin Diesel as GROOT.

In the SDCC footage, this scene (they're in a police lineup) served for irreverent tone-setting: following a big dump of action/FX footage, there's a hard-cut to this lineup, overseen by a pair of NOVA CORPS officers (including John C. Reilly!) who opine: "They call themselves 'The Guardians of The Galaxy..." [beat] "...what a bunch of A-Holes."

Big Picture: WORST MOVIES OF 2013

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's Worst of 2013

THE RAID 2 Indonesian Trailer

In case you missed it: I'll be at MAGFest starting Thursday afternoon. Come say hi :)

Anyway, here's the first full trailer for THE RAID 2: BERENDAL, which supposedly takes place (or, at least, starts taking place) 2 hours after the end of the original. First thing I can say in it's favor: I'm glad they didn't try to contrive a way for this to all take place inside another fortified building. Instead, hero cop Rama (Iko Uwais) will be doing the Yojimbo/Dollars/Last Man Standing thing versus rival local and Yakuza-affiliated gangs in Jakarta. Director Gareth Evans also returns. Honestly, I don't need any reason to see this beyond that baseball-bat beatdown at 1:58...

Come See MOVIEBOB at MAGFEST 2014!

Hey guys! Just a quick FYI: I will be at MAGFest from Jan 2nd to Jan 5th this year, and should you see me on the floor your invited to come up and say hello (unless, y'know, you can tell I'm in the middle of something like or phonecall or whatever.)

Officially, I'm scheduled (you can see the whole MAGFest Schedule Map HERE) to appear at four panels on what they call the "MAGES" circuit:

"THE POLITICS OF GAMING" (Friday 1pm-2pm)

"ARE AAA STUDIOS STILL CREATIVELY RELEVANT" (Saturday 11:30am-12:30pm)

"PROMOTING GOOD GAMING COMMUNITY" (Saturday 5:30pm-6:30pm)

"GAMES AS A NARRATIVE MEDIUM" (8:30pm-9:30pm)

I'm also planning to bring copies of SMB3: BRICK BY BRICK with me to sell (probably cash only, but we'll see how my Square Reader is working) and sign on request, for anyone whose interested.

Look forward to seeing folks there!

When the Love Is Gone

A woman (Cristine Reyes) and an older man (Gabby Concepcion) who meet during a stormy time in their individual lives – she after discovering that her husband (Jake Cuenca) is gay, and he, after realizing how far apart he and his wife (Alice Dixson) have drifted from each other.

They instantly fall in love with each other and not long after, decide to leave their spouses to live together. Things are not as easy for the man because he has a teen-aged daughter (Andi Eigenmann). Because he loves his daughter so much, he agrees to his wife’s proposal to keep their separation a secret. And so he divides his time between his family and his mistress. But what the couple doesn’t know is that their smart and feisty daughter has gotten wind of the deceit very early on. And she revels against it by getting a boyfriend.

ASM2 Blog Starts Teasing Venom. I Know, You're Shocked.

I called yesterday's rumor/speculation that, if Green Lantern turned up in JUSTICE LEAGUE he'd be the John Stewart version "one of the easiest" things to predict in genre film right now. THE easiest thing to predict? That Venom will turn up in the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movies. Because it's always the mid-90s somewhere, and because Venom has always moved a shit-ton of merchandise for Marvel - so long as you don't include "comic books" as part of the merchandise.

Anyway, Sony has a Daily Bugle Tumblr running as cheezy viral marketing for the movie (attributed to Fredrick Foswell - heh) that basically blogs references to Spider-Man characters as fake news articles. he most recent update is a bit about Herman Schultz - aka The Shocker, but what jumped out at me was the name "NYPD Special Crimes Unit Detective Stan Carter."

Ah. Okay, then.

I'll err on the side of not totally spoiling what may or may not be a plot detail in the movies (go HERE and read the entry if you don't care), but Stan Carter figures prominently in a mid-80s storyline revolving around a serial shotgun-murderer called "Sin-Eater" (for awhile it was trendy for every "city" superhero to get at least one "what if he fought a real-life style killer?" story) that also involved Daredevil and the death of long-recurring character Captain Jeanne DeWolfe.

The main thrust of the Sin-Eater arc was that his identity was especially hard to suss out, with only Daredevil's recognition of his heartbeat to go on. The long-term ramifications come in when Daily Bugle reporter Eddie Brock lands what he believes is an exclusive interview with a guy who confesses to being Sin-Eater... and, suffice it to say, he's not the guy. Brock didn't so much lie as jump the gun, but he's disgraced and unemployable as a result; which is why/how he winds up contemplating suicide in a church that happens to contain the The Symbiote Suit and... you know the rest.

Final Fantasy - Advent Children

An ex-mercenary is forced out of isolation when three mysterious men kidnap and brainwash the city's children afflicted with the Geostigma disease.

H0ng Hun Pisawat

Here Comes MAN OF STEEL 2's Innevitable Stupid Racial Controversy

I was chatting with a good friend about the MAN OF STEEL sequel recently, and the one thing we could both agree on is that it feels very, very likely that Warner Bros. etc has no real binding plan for this thing (or that, at least, they don't have one anymore) and that the film is probably going to be one of those projects that goes into production without a final script. That's not necessarily a bad thing - IRON MAN was being shot while they were still figuring out the third act and who the villain was.

Maybe we're wrong. Maybe it's a complete misreading of the production stories. But right now, the image emerging is that something that went into pre-production (prior to the release of MAN OF STEEL, back when WB was sure that Nolan/Snyder/Goyer had delivered an AVENGERS-level game-changer or a TRANSFORMERS-level moneymaker) as a Superman sequel with maybe some "world-building" cameos from Batman etc morphed into a "Batman vs. Superman" movie, then a "Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman movie - possibly also featuring The Flash...

It's like we've blown right past the point where we could've been making "MAN OF STEEL PART II: SORRY ABOUT MAN OF STEEL PART I" jokes and the Cosmic Treadmill is rapidly taking us in the direction of "MAN OF STEEL 2: OKAY, WE FUCKED UP, WE'RE SORRY, HERE'S JUSTICE LEAGUE, PLEASE STOP YELLING AT US."

This weekend's gossip started out in the ever-fertile realm of race-swapping casting rumors, namely that DC was talking to prominent black A-list stars - Hollywood-to-English translation: "Denzel Washington" - for an important role in the film. The initial guesses were that they wanted him for Lex Luthor, but I don't see that happening. Not that he'd be bad casting, more that it's A.) just inviting more DAREDEVIL jokes in the press and B.) I can't imagine even Warner Bros. being dense enough to drop a "group of white superhumans beating up the ONE black guy in the movie, who is evil" tableau into a situation where the lack of diversity in the genre is already so widely criticized. But I did find it plausible, at least in one scenario, that Warners could be talking to "Denzel or Denzel-types" for the movie...

Now, gossip site "Nuke The Fridge" says maybe that scenario is correct. Their guess (and mine?) That if Warners is talking to "name" black stars for this project, it's for John Stewart - aka The Green Lantern.

Okay, quick bit of catch-up: In the comics there've been four "modern" (read: post-Silver Age) Green Lanterns: Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner most prominently. But during the character's stint as part of DC's GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW double-act, Hal also had a "backup" in the form of John Stewart; an ex-Marine from Detroit who started out as an extension of GL/GA's recurring "Hal needs to get over his weird race issues" theme but proved popular enough that he started spending good chunks of time as "the" Green Lantern whenever Hal would be unavailable for this or that reason.

Honestly? That John Stewart would wind up being "the one" if Green Lantern ever turned up in a Justice League movie has been one of the easiest calls to make all along for two simple reasons: 1. a non-white face is the most visible way possible to immediately tell the entire world "This is NOT in any way the same as that terrible Ryan Reynolds movie you all hated;" and 2. while WB/DC has the advantage of the Justice League being a much more widely known entity in popular culture than The Avengers were prior to their movie, the "catch" is that very (VERY!) few audiences under 40 are primarily familiar with them from comics. If they know them, they know them from the DC Animated Universe JL/JLU cartoons. I don't think that's an exaggeration in the slightest: I'd bet that, if polled, there's a sizable part of the target-generation for this movie for whom Stewart - NOT Hal Jordan - is "the" Green Lantern.

If this turns out to be true (I'd say Denzel being considered is a 50/50 but Stewart being in the movie and/or JL is more like a 70/30), it would make him the biggest "name" on the team by far, with Affleck a close second as Batman. Maybe this is part of WB's overally strategy for this series: "We have the bigger-name heroes AND the bigger stars?"

UPDATE: Yes, I agree it's also possible that he could be reading for J'onn J'onzz, The Martian Manhunter. The reason I'd call that a remote possibility is that I seriously doubt even half of the people making decisions on this movie know that "Martian Manhunter" is a thing that exists.

Escape to The Movies: "THE WOLF OF WALL STREET"

The best movie of 2013.

...and also WALTER MITTY, which is not.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Wolf of Wall Street

Enemy at the Gates

A Russian sniper and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Road Trip

Four friends take off on an 1800 mile road trip to retrieve an illicit tape mistakenly mailed to a girl friend.

Eraser

A Witness Protection specialist becomes suspicious of his co-workers when dealing with a case involving high-tech weapons.

Sosy Problems (2012)

Category by FTI Movie House:  Pinoy Movie

Cars 2

Star race car Lightning McQueen and his pal Mater head overseas to compete in the World Grand Prix race. But the road to the championship becomes rocky as Mater gets caught up in an intriguing adventure of his own: international espionage.

Very Early Predictions - 2014 Oscar Nominations

As we know the Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 16, 2014 but as the majority of critics groups have already announced their 2013 winners plus we have at least one guild nominations and because some of you have been asking for how I see the possible Oscar nominations, will dare to play the guessing game this early.

Please recall that -with exception of the guilds- NONE of the critics are Academy members consequently do not vote in the nomination process, but definitively they are viewer's influencer and after all, like it or not, Academy members are also viewers.

My crystal ball says that for the following categories probable Oscar nominations are ...

Best Picture
Very Sure
12 Years a Slave
Gravity

Maybe
Her
American Hustle
August: Osage County
Dallas Buyers Club
Inside Llewyn Davis
Saving Mr. Banks
Philomena

Wouldn't mind if are NOT nominated
Captain Phillips
Nebraska
The Wolf of Wall Street
Lee Daniels' The Butler

Dare the Academy to nominate
Blue is the Warmest Color
Jagten (The Hunt)

Best Foreign Language Film
Very Sure
Jagten (The Hunt)
La Grande Belleza (The Great Beauty)

Maybe
The Broken Circle Breakdown
L'image manquante (The Missing Picture)
Omar
The Notebook
Two Lives

My Winner: The Hunt

Best Director
Very Sure
Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity
Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave

Maybe
Spike Jonze for Her
David O. Russel for American Hustle
Joel and Ethan Coen for Inside Llewyn Davis

Wouldn't mind if are NOT nominated
Paul Greengrass for Captain Phillips
Alexander Payne for Nebraska
Martin Scorsese for The Wolf of Wall Street

Dare the Academy to nominate
Woody Allen for Blue Jasmine
Abdellatif Kechiche for Blue is the Warmest Color

Best Actress
Very Sure
Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock in Gravity

Hope the next three (to make the 5 nominees) are:
Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks
Judi Dench in Philomena
Meryl Streep in August: Osage County

Maybe
Brie Larson in Short Term 12
Kate Winslet in Labor Day
Greta Gerwing in Frances Ha

Dare the Academy to nominate
Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color

Best Supporting Actress
Very Sure
Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle
Lupita Nyong'o in 12 Years a Slave

Maybe
Amy Adams in American Hustle (should be nominated in this category to have better chances)
Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine
June Squibb in Nebraska
Octavia Spencer in Frutivale Station

Wouldn't mind if are NOT nominated
Julia Roberts in August: Osage County
Oprah Winfrey in Lee Daniels' The Butler

Dare the Academy to nominate
Scarlett Johansson in Her (already read that will not qualify BUT absolutely disagree, voice only require great performances; if not agree, have you seen dubbed movies with awful voices that have absolutely nothing to do with what you see in the screen?)

Best Actor
Very Sure
Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave

Maybe
Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club
Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips
Bruce Dern in Nebraska
Forest Whitaker in Lee Daniels' The Butler
Joaquin Phoenix in Her
Michael B. Jordan in Frutivale Station

Wouldn't mind if are NOT nominated
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street
Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis
Robert Redford in All is Lost

Dare the Academy to nominate
Mads Mikkelsen in The Hunt

Best Supporting Actor
Very Sure
Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club

Maybe
Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave
Daniel Bruhl in Rush
Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips
James Gandolfini in Enough Said

Wouldn't mind if are NOT nominated
James Franco in Spring Breakers

Best Documentary
Very Sure
The Act of Killing
Stories We Tell

Maybe
20 Feet From Stardom
Blackfish
The Square
The Crash Reel (because director is Lucy Walker)

Movie that will win most tech awards, similar to what Life of Pi did last year, Gravity.

Up-to-date most critics predictions for all categories rotate around the SAME movies, let's hope that when the nominations are announced they include a larger number of films and not only the 5+ that many predict will be nominated so will not be too easy to guess who will win in what category. Sigh.

That's it. Wont guess more as is too early. But if you ask me which movie(s) I believe is the best that have seen during 2013 have to say that there are three choices that make very difficult to select only one: The Hunt, Blue is the Warmest Color and The Act of Killing.

3096 Days

A young Austrian girl is kidnapped and held in captivity for eight years. Based on the real-life case of Natascha Kampusch.

The Descent

A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

Big Picture: BEST OF 2013

Here's a few minutes of distraction from The Holidays. Enjoy!

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's Best of 2013

F0rce of Execution

A crime lord who sits atop a powerful underworld empire longs to go straight, putting his faith in his conflicted hit-man protégé as an ambitious young player plots his rise to power.

H0URS

A father struggles to keep his infant daughter alive in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Hanna

A 16-year-old who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.

True Lies

Harry Tasker is a secret agent for the United States Government. For years, he has kept his job from his wife, but is forced to reveal his identity and try to stop nuclear terrorists when he and his wife are kidnapped by the terrorists.

VALKYRIE

Based on actual events, a plot to assassinate Hitler is unfurled during the height of WWII.

Nothing But the Truth

In Washington, D.C., a female reporter faces a possible jail sentence for outing a CIA agent and refusing to reveal her source.

Behind the Pink Door

Don Jon

A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.

"TRANSCENDENCE" Gritty-Reboots "THE LAWNMOWER MAN."

This feels like the fastest we've gone from a teaser to a full trailer - literally a matter of days. I wonder if that has anything to do with the teaser essentially being a slow-reveal of Johnny Depp's face, and "Oh, it's Johnny Depp!" having gone from a boxoffice-benefit to a punchline over the last couple of years...




Anyway, this looks pretty damn good. Depp is a TED-Talky computer whiz with a mad on for The Singularity who gets assassinated by some kind of anti-technology terrorist group (the guy has "UNPLUG" tattooed on his writst), leading his colleagues to preserve his work by uploading his brain patterns into digital space which - spoiler alert for people who've never seen or read ONE other brain-uploaded-to-technology story - leads to him manifesting as a vaugely malevolent cyber-god.

Should be interesting, though I'm getting the sense I'll have to just accept that this is one of those stories where the back-asswards luddite guys wind up having been right all along or at least "had a point." Just once, I want to see one of these "tampering in God's domain!" movies where the visionary dudes trying to drag the damn species across the next goal-line of evolution are the heroes. For cinephiles, the main attraction is likely finding out if cinematographer Wally Pfister - making his directorial debut - is going to be the real deal. He's talked a lot of shit, and "Cinematographer of Great Movies Becomes Director of Middling-to-Bad Movies" is VERY common career story in this industry.

86th Academy Awards Foreign-Language Film - Shortlist of 9

To my surprise late yesterday the Academy released the names of the nine (9) films that will advance to the next round of voting in the category and to must Oscar season followers the selected films meant surprises and huge snubs. We know that every year this is one of the most controversial Oscar categories and this year is NO exception.

There is an article written by Scott Feinberg that if you wish to read in full go here, that could help us understand more about the selection process. The following is a cut and paste paragraph from the article.

The Academy's best foreign-language film Oscar short-list is determined in two phases. During the first, all of the eligible submissions -- which this year numbered 76 and included three documentaries, two animated films and 16 films directed by women -- are divided into groups, as are the members of a foreign-language committee which consists of several hundred Los Angeles-based Academy members, all volunteers from a wide cross-section of the Academy's branches whose names are never released. Each group of members is then assigned to a different group of films. In order to retain the right to weigh in on the short-list at the end of the process, members must attend screenings of a certain percentage of the films in their assigned group. This year, screenings of all of the submissions took place between mid-Oct. and Dec. 16, and members had to attend no fewer than 17. Those who maintained their eligibility then got to vote, and their six highest-scoring films were passed along to an executive committee.

So we know that watching 76 films is almost humanly impossible in a couple of months (unless you really enjoy films like me) so the shortlist is generated by selecting films from each of the groups with eligible voters. From this exercise six (6) films are selected giving to the executive committee the task to add 3 more films that they considered HAVE to be in the shortlist. If you don't remember this decision came after excellent non-commercial films were left out of the race. Even if the process has improved a lot than in the past, still is not infallible and excellent movies are left out of the race in the first phase.

From the films I have seen major snubs for me come from countries like Argentina, Chile, Iran, Mexico and Romania. These five films are absolutely must be seen and strongly recommend you do not skip them. But then let's be honest, if you enjoy great cinema there are about 50+ movies that were submitted to Oscar that are must be seen for me and most of you that read the blog regularly, so I assume that all the fuzz and buzz about snubbing is that some USA distributors already had commitments with movies that they hoped will made the list of nine at least.

From the list of 9 films, haven't seen more than half BUT can share with you that definitively The Hunt and The Great Beauty HAVE to be nominated plus if one of them wins the Oscar I would not be upset at all. Still my Oscar goes to The Hunt even when Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza was a true cinephile pleasure like the ones that Fellini used to give us back then.

These are the nine (9) films that advance to the second phase that ends with generating five nominees to be announced on Thursday, January 16, 2014 at 5:30 am PT.

Belgium: The Broken Circle Breakdown, Felix van Groeningen (Berlinale)
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Epizoda u životu berača željeza (An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker), Danisa Tanovića (Berlinale Jury Grand Prix winner)
Cambodia: L'image manquante (The Missing Picture), Rithy Panh (documentary) (Cannes Un Certain Regard winner)
Denmark: Jagten (The Hunt), Thomas Vinterberg (Cannes 2012)
Germany: Zwei Leben (Two Lives), Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas
Hong Kong: 一代宗师 Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster), Kar Wai Wong (Berlinale)
Hungary: A nagy füzet (The Notebook), János Szász, (Crystal Globe for Best Film at 2013 Karlovy Vary)
Italy: La Grande Belleza (The Great Beauty), Paolo Sorrentino (Cannes)
Palestine: Omar, Hany Abu-Assad (Cannes Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize winner)

Basically we have 4 Cannes films, 3 Berlinale films, 1 from Karlovy Vary and 1 film from Göteborg (Germany), so ALL are festival films, which only assures an above average film quality. Let's go more in-depth.

Belgium: The Broken Circle Breakdown by Felix van Groeningen
From all the films in shortlist perhaps this is the one that pleased audiences the most as many of the film accolades are Audience Awards in festivals like Berlinale, Karlovy Vary, Tallinn Black Nights, etc.

I believe that film has excellent performances, great screenplay, and good director which makes a very unusual non-commercial crowd pleaser film.


Bosnia and Herzegovina: Epizoda u životu berača željeza (An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker), Danisa Tanovića
To be honest I was going to skip this film but now I know will watch it as not only won the Jury Grand Prix at 2013 Berlinale but now is being honored by the Academy.

From trailer and images imagine that will be not easy to watch; still story reminds me of a great Romanian movie about how hard life can be when you deal with state institutions.

Cambodia: L'image manquante (The Missing Picture) by Rithy Panh
The most interesting facts about this film is that is a documentary, is animated plus tells a story that IF told not this way surely could be unwatchable. Film has collected major honors like the Un Certain Regard Award at 2013 Cannes, Best Documentary Award at 2013 European Film Awards and 2013 Jerusalem Film Festival's In Spirit for Freedom Award.

No doubt that 2013 is the year when documentaries told unthinkable stories in the most unthinkable way (bordering beauty) that definitively touches viewers deep. Also think Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing.

Denmark: Jagten (The Hunt), Thomas Vinterberg
Thomas Vinterberg masterful opus won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in 2012 Cannes as well as Best Actor for the incredible performance by Mads Mikkelsen; also won Best Screenwriter award at 2012 European Film Awards, 2013 Nordic Council's Film Prize Award and was not 2012 Denmark submission to Oscar because was released after the Academy deadline. So one year after was sent and made the shortlist of 9. Not a fan of ranking movies I see BUT this year will be the exception as The Hunt is my number 1 movie of the year, the one that has my Oscar and the one I hope wins.

Strongly suggest you watch movie as film is fantastic but watching Mads is truly, truly an awesome experience I highly recommend to many people that call their profession "actor".

Germany: Zwei Leben (Two Lives) by Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas
Have not seen movie and yes, I am "dying" to see it especially because lead performances by Liv Ullman and none other than Juliane Köhler that many of you will remember from great Aimée & Jaguar. Film was not screened in major festivals but was a selection in 2013 Göteborg Film Festival running for the International Debut Award.

It is the second film by Maas (documentary filmmaker) and the first by Kaufman (cinematographer) and know their work as have seen Maas Liv Ullmann documentary and many movies were Judith Kaufmann was the cinematographer like 4 minutes, When We Leave, Unveiled and more.

Update: film has extraordinary cinematography, good performances more Scandinavian than German style, an interesting story told in slowish pace but believe is not Oscar worthy material as is entertaining but not much else.

Hong Kong: 一代宗师 Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster) by Kar Wai Wong
Some of you know my blind love for Wong Kar Wai and his master filmmaker style so masterful developed in films like In the Mood for Love, 2046, Chungking Express and more; add that I still believe that the greatest actor in the world is Tony Leung (thanks to his extraordinary performances in Wong Kar Wai's films and other directors) and you have an idea of the expectations I had for this film. Perhaps my expectations were too high but film doesn't look/feel much like great Wong Kar Wai (perhaps the close film style is Ashes of Time) so in a way I was disappointed but not much as film is absolutely outstanding when you think cinematography, truly awesome visual pleasure.

Still film has already won 14 awards plus more nominations, including Ziyi Zhang winning Best Performance by an Actress at 2013 Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Best Cinematography in 2013 Golden Horse Awards where also won the Audience Award. Worth watching but try to minimize the effect the director may have in your expectations.

Hungary: A nagy füzet (The Notebook) by János Szász
Not really interested in watching as many will remember that do not enjoy war movies and need someone/something to force me to perhaps consider watching.

Still seems that film has impressive cinematography and already collected accolades at 2013 Karlovy Vary where won the Crystal Globe and Label Europa Cinema awards.


Italy: La Grande Belleza (The Great Beauty), Paolo Sorrentino
My second favorite actor in the world is Toni Servillo and see everything with him, not really a fan of the director (but loved Il Divo with Servillo) and had no expectations. This film gave me the greatest surprise this year as never, never imagined Sorrentino could make a movie so decadent that gave me the chills as almost felt I was watching early Fellini. One of the best five movies this year and one that already won great accolades from being in competition at 2013 Cannes to win several awards in 2013 European Film Awards including best film and best actor. If you ever loved (and miss) great Italian cinema then this film is must be seen for you.

Palestine: Omar by Hany Abu-Assad
Not in my film watching queue (even when won 2013 Cannes Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize) but called my attention when won Best Film at 2013 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Surely will not be easy to see but accolades suggest that maybe story has something different, especially when story has been told too many times in many different ways/points-of-view. Will watch.

The Entitled

A young man, broke and jobless, abducts three rich college kids to try and get money from their fathers.