Jan. 17, 2013 - Issue #900: The ongoing musical evolution of Hannah Georgas
Still reeling
Part two of our 2013 film preview
Our coming-soon preview continues with a quick tour of lauded world-cinema leftovers looking to land here at last, animation to arrive, documentaries due and more arthouse, auteur work in the works.
LEFTOVERS
Look for Saudi Arabian director Haifaa al-Mansour's feature debut Wadjda, about a 10-year-old girl in suburban Riyadh. Mexican Michel Franco's Cannes-acclaimed After Lucia covers the relationship between a bullied 17-year-old and her newly widowed father. Kleber Mendonça Filho's slice-of-wealthy-life Neighboring Sounds eavesdrops on a Recife apartment block. Audio's more sinister in Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio, where a British sound-effect maker (Toby Jones) works madly on a '70s Italian thriller. James Marsh (Man on Wire) heads to '90s Belfast, tracking an IRA member turned MI5 informant in Shadow Dancer. And Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days) takes us Beyond The Hills with two women in an Orthodox convent.
ANIMATION
Joann Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat, adapting his quizzical, Quixotic graphic novel, should get a release. Also from France comes the gentle bear-mouse friendship of Ernest and Celestine. Juan José Campanella (The Secret in Their Eyes) kicks off Metegol, about a boy trying to reunite his table-soccer team. And Studio Ghibli's 1964-set drama From Up on Poppy Hill reaches English-language screens this spring.
DOCUMENTARIES
Michael Apted's 56 Up continues his monumental, every-seven-years chronicle of 12 Brits. Errol Morris considers Ford's and "Dubya" Bush's Secretary of Defence in The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld (meanwhile, Morris's first fiction-feature, set in the world of cryonics, says Freezing People Is Easy). Rodney Ascher leads us through nine different interpretations of Kubrick's The Shining to Room 237. And American documentary-master Ross McElwee, using Photographic Memory, reviews the generation gap between him and his son.
MORE NEW FILMS
Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men) returns with Gravity, starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts surviving in a space station. Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) will try to get Under the Skin with his tale of a woman (Scarlet Johansson) preying on men. Spike Jonze offers a new romantic interest with Her—a young man falls for his operating-system. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) follows The Young and Prodigious Spivet, shot in Quebec and Alberta and based on a multimedia book about a 12-year-old map-lover. Michel Gondry puts us in Mood Indigo, from a 1947 novel about a woman (Audrey Tautou) surrounded by flowers to treat her illness.
Hot off his crime-film debut, Animal Kingdom, Australian David Michôd heads Western (and sci-fi) with The Rover, starring Guy Pearce. After Hunger and Shame, Steve McQueen's Twelve Years A Slave retells the true horror of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a born-free black man kidnapped in 1841 and enslaved on a Louisiana plantation for 12 years. Kelly Reichardt (Meek's Cutoff) returns with Night Moves, about three environmentalists planning to explode a dam.
Richard Linklater's tripped through Vienna in Before Sunrise and Paris in Before Sunset with Julie Delpy as Céline and Ethan Hawke as Jesse—now the pair reconnect in Greece in Before Midnight. Nicole Holofcener (Please Give) is back with Catherine Keener for a still-untitled drama about a divorcee who realizes the man she likes is her new friend's ex-husband. Humorist Alexander Payne (The Descendants) takes us through his home state, Nebraska, in black and white. Comedy-genius Steve Coogan hits screens twice—first as Soho smut-king Paul Raymond in Michael Winterbottom's The Look of Love, then as his most famous creation, self-centred radio-host Alan Partridge.
And ... we're out of space to talk about Thomas Vinterberg's persecution drama The Hunt, Jeff Nichols' Mud, Jim Jarmusch's vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive, Nicolas Winding Refn's follow-up to Drive, Danny Boyle's hypnotherapy and stolen-art-recovery flick Trance, Werner Herzog's return to feature-filmmaking, Lars von Trier's porn-drama, or Submarine director Richard Ayoade's double-take on Dostoyevsky.
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