Under the Skin
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Venice International Film Festival 2013
To get to the Lido — the strip of beachy land upon which the Venice Film Festival is held every year — one must take the vaporetto (or water taxi) from the Marco Polo Airport. While waiting for the transport to arrive, one is stuffed into a rectangular holding pen that sways and jerks with the current, provoking a mild but unmistakable seasickness in the more sensitive among us. Little did I know I was to experience almost exactly the same feeling the following morning while watching festival opener Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón’s first since 2006’s Children of Men. It’s an […]
by Ashley Clark on Oct 21, 2013 -
Toronto International Film Festival 2013
With 288 films unfolding over 11 days, the Toronto International Film Festival offers just about every type of viewing experience imaginable, with every viewer becoming their own curator, cherry-picking from within their favorite sections. Business types congregate around the big acquisition titles. Cineastes check out the greats of world cinema, arriving in Toronto after Cannes. Discoverers peruse the Vanguard section searching for new talent. But what’s less often commented upon are the viewing experiences a large festival like Toronto produces for viewers intending to sample from it all. Entering a theater involves, before the lights dim, a mental recalibration, an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin
The word from Telluride is rather mixed on Jonathan Glazer’s long-waited third feature, Under the Skin, a (by definition) very ambitious adaptation of Michel Faber’s remarkable novel about an alluring female alien (Scarlett Johansson) picking off hapless hitchhikers in the Scottish highlands. This teaser for the film — which plays today in Venice, and in Toronto later in the week — gives us little to go on in terms of plot but strongly indicates that Glazer has created a dark, brooding vision seemingly untroubled by commercial concerns. Johansson, an apt choice in the role of the extraterrestrial temptress, is (fittingly) the […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 3, 2013
