Film

There were emotional scenes well as much laughter as Michael Douglas, Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh held a press conference for their new film which details the relationship between the flamboyant pianist Liberace and his young lover at the Cannes film festival.

Yep, you read that right. The Academy Award winning writer of Traffic and director of Syriana Stephen Gaghan has lent his pen to the phenomenally successful Call of Duty game franchise, writing the story (and presumably the screenplay) for the next installment in the series, Call of Duty: Ghosts. Apparently Gaghan didn't just drop off a script but worked from an office at developer Infinity Ward throughout the game's production.As a fan of the series and as a massive fan of Syriana which was my favourite film of 2005, this is fantastic news. While playing Black Ops with Sam Worthington's voice was oddly jarring, I think this will be a much more seamless fit while adding more depth to the gameplay experience. Watch the trailer... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

With The Bastards, director and co-writer Claire Denis has muddled up her narrative to the point much of it is almost incoherent and by the end a complete waste.

There will be more food, there will be more bickering, but will there be more Michael Caine?Following the runaway success of The Trip - the Michael Winterbottom directed BBC comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as somewhat fictionalized versions of themselves on a food tour of northern England - word has been circulating for a while about a follow up in which the duo pack up and do it all again in Italy. Yes, it's happening and more to the point it is scheduled to begin principal photography a mere three days from now.Coogan, Brydon and Winterbottom all return in their respective roles, with The Trip To Italy once again existing as both a six part BBC comedy series and a shorter feature film.... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

The Last Days on Mars finds writer/director Ruairi Robinson making his feature directorial debut with a film that's essentially zombies in space. It's well made, but it's hard to get beyond the pedestrian nature of it.

You gotta love the news that comes out of Cannes. In between burglaries (they should check and see if the Bling Ring posse is still in town) you get some wonderful juicy tidbits from artists which cause you to wonder what the fuck are these people thinking.Today's installment of "what the fuck" goes to director Francois Ozon whose main competition film The Young and the Beautiful is about a disaffected teenage girl who turns to prostitution. Ozon said in an interview with a clearly perplexed reporter from The Hollywood Reporter, that most women -- though probably not American women -- have fantasies to "do prostitution" (I am wondering about the translation here.)Here's the exchange and the push back from the reporter Rhonda Richford, who is a Paris based correspondent for the paper (so I'm guessing her French is pretty good.)Ozon: ...But I think women can really be connected with this girl because it’s a fantasy of many women to do prostitution. That doesn’t mean they do it, but the fact to be paid to have sex is something which is very obvious in feminine sexuality. THR: Why do you believe that is a desire? I really don’t think that’s the case.Ozon: I think that’s the case because sexuality is complex. I think to be an object in sexuality is something very obvious you know, to be desired, to be used. There is kind of a passivity that women are looking for. That's why the scene with Charlotte Rampling is very important, because she says [prostitution] was a fantasy she always had but never had the courage to do it. She was too shy. THR: How did you come to the conclusion that is a theme in women’s sexuality?Ozon: It is the reality. You speak with many women, you speak with shrinks, everybody knows that. Well, maybe not Americans!I really don't know what to say about this except the women I know have no desire to be an object nor have any desire for the passivity that he suggests. To be desired does not mean you are passive or an object. Dude. Get a clue.Cannes: Francois Ozon Says 'It's a Fantasy of Many Women to Do Prostitution' (Q&A)- Hollywood Reporter

Logan is sad in the new trailer for James Mangold's The Wolverine. And when Logan gets sad he likes to stab things. That about sums it up, right?... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

Hey dudes, I gotta go out and do laundry so I'll keep this short. Here is a new poster I made, a commission from someone I met recently whose favorite movie is Hocus Pocus. Which is awesome. It's now for sale in my etsy shop. I've got a few more commissions I'm working on now that my semester is over so be on the lookout for lots of new art things over the summer! Yay! Also just fyi I'm interning at this gallery and running their blog, where I get to interview awesome artists that we're exhibiting and also generally talk about art things and post pretty pictures. If you're into that please check it out!

Gribiche (1925). Kristin here: Lazare Meerson was one of the great set designers of the late silent period and into the 1930s. His name may not immediately ring a bell, but he designed the great French films of René Clair (La Proie du vent, An Italian Straw Hat, Les deux timides, Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million, À nous la liberté, and La Quatorze Juilliet) and Jacques Feyder (Gribiche [above], Carmen, Les Nouveaux Messieurs, Le Grand Jeu, Pensions Mimosas, and La Kermesse héroïque). He crossed paths with most of the major French Impressionist directors, sometimes in their post-Impressionist periods: Marcel L’Herbier (Feu Mathias Pascal, his masterpiece L’Argent, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune, and Le parfum de la dame en soi), Jean Epstein ( Les Aventures de Robert Macaire), and Abel Gance (Le fin du monde and Poliche). His credits include work with such French directors as Maurice Tourneur, Julien Duvivier, and Claude Autant-Lara. Meerson was born in Russia and fled the Revolution. Making his way via Germany to Paris, he became the assistant to set designer Alberto Cavalcanti on Feu Mathias Pascal. That’s one of the five French films on a new Flicker Alley release, “From Moscow to Montreuil: The Russian Émigrés in Paris: 1920-1929.” Meerson’s illustrious career led him to England in the second half of the 1930s, where he designed several notable films, including Paul Czinner’s As You Like It, Clair’s Break the News, and Feyder’s Knight without Armour, as well as the classic The Scarlet Pimpernel. He died in 1938 at the young age of 38. (The best online source on Meerson is R. F. Cousins’ filmography, bibliography, and brief biography.) His influence lives on in the work of his most prominent student, Alexandre Trauner (Le jour se lève, among many others). I begin with Meerson in order to stress how many important strands of film history come together in this very ambitious Flicker Alley set. It allows us to trace Meerson’s early years, from his first apprentice work, Feu Mathias Pascal, to his first and third projects for Feyder. That in itself would be enough to make this release notable, but the Albatros film studio in Paris during the 1920s hosted an amazing collection of talented people working in the cutting-edge styles of the era. Here we also find three films starring the extraordinary Russian star Ivan Mosjoukine, known to most audiences by reputation only, and then only for the ephemeral Kuleshov experiment that used footage from an old film with Mosjoukine.  This experiment is not known to survive. In it a close view his impassive face reputedly was edited together with shots of a dead woman, a bowl of soup, a small child, or perhaps other subjects, depending on which report you read. Spectators supposedly credited Mosjoukine with a marvelous performance, based on eyeline editing rather than any changes in his expression. We shall probably never know the exact form this experiment took and who saw it. I have to believe that the shots of Mosjoukine were inserted at wide intervals in a feature film, not strung together one right after the other, as makers of modern “reconstructions” of the experiment seem to assume. It’s much more interesting to watch Mosjoukine in the three very different performances presented here: Le Brasier Ardent, Kean, and Feu Mathias Pascal. His face is anything but impassive We can also appreciate Belgian-born director Jacques Feyder, who had begun his career with Crainquebille (on our 10-best list for 1922) and then suffered a box-office disappointment with the charming, poignant Visages d’enfants, making two notable films for Albatros. Gribiche contains the first performance by Françoise Rosay, Feyder’s wife, who became one of the grandes dames of French cinema. Most of all, however, this set makes a big step in showing us what happened after the Revolution to the most important Russian prod

Our favorite DC fixer Olivia Pope (a.k.a. the lovely, talented Kerry Washington) gave the commencement address at George Washington University. Washington, a GW alumna, spoke about being the lead character in your life, made Scandal jokes and mentioned the time she played a frog in a musical at GW. Watch: Scandal's Kerry Washington Addresses GWU Grads (DCist) Kerry Washington Tells GW Grads All About Her Frog Years (Jezebel)