Osvaldo Golijov Movies
- 2009
- R
On the heels of the self-financed, modestly budgeted 2007 drama Youth Without Youth -- his first directorial outing after a ten-year hiatus -- filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola remains situated in the director's chair for this semi-autobiographical family drama concerning an artistic family of immigrants whose fierce rivalries span several generations. Vincent Gallo stars with newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, with Carmen Maura, Maribel Verdú, and Alden Ehrenreich rounding out the cast. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich, (more)
- 2008
The title is a literal one: Mark Kidel's A Journey with Peter Sellars embarks on a day-by-day journey with the titular celebrity, one of the top-tiered film and stage directors in the modern world, and easily one of the most controversial, given his postmodern inclination to reposit classical operas in anachronistic and unlikely environs. The film in question follows Sellars's doings over a pivotal two-year period that finds him engaging in such activities and roles as rehearsals of Osvaldo Golijav's Ainadamar at the Santa Fe opera house and lectures as World Arts and Culture Professor at UCLA, even as Kidel looks back to trace Sellars' prodigious and meteoric rise to a theatrical phenomenon (and the director of the American National Theater in Washington) at the age of 26. Kidel also provides an opportunity to witness the gestation of Sellars's opera A Flowering Tree. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola returns to the director's chair after a ten-year hiatus with this adaptation of Romanian author Mircea Eliade's tome detailing the arduous journey of a professor whose life is thrown into chaos as World War II looms ominously on the horizon. When the 70-year-old scholar is struck by lightning, his age begins to reverse as his mind grows infinitely more brilliant. Now determined to understand the origins of language and consciousness, the fugitive professor leads authorities on a wild chase through Romania, Switzerland, Malta, and India. Tim Roth, Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, and Marcel Iures star in an ambitious low-budget drama trumpeted by Zoetrope as a "return to personal filmmaking" for the revered Godfather director. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tim Roth, Bruno Ganz, (more)
The documentary Lights! Action! Music! consists primarily of interviews with composers, directors, and actors who explain the many challenges involved in writing original music for motion pictures. Among the many famous names who appear on camera or whose work is used during the film are Francis Ford Coppola, Carter Burwell, Rachel Portman, and Spike Lee. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
In the aftermath of the tragedies on September 11, 2001, the French film company Studio Canal called upon a group of filmmakers, representing various regions of the world, to address the scope of the situation in however broad or intimate a context as they saw fit. The one guideline they were given was that no one film could exceed 11 minutes, nine seconds, and one frame. The resulting omnibus film, 11'09"01, showed at festivals around the world the following year and garnered a theatrical release in 2003. Each filmmaker's entry takes a different approach: French director Claude Lelouch tells the tale of a World Trade Center tour guide who is on the verge of a breakup with his deaf girlfriend when the terrorist attacks hit; similarly, Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn chronicles the lonely existence of an old man living not far from the Twin Towers. Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and British social realist filmmaker Ken Loach created the most controversy with their entries, which, respectively, address the points-of-view of a suicide bomber and of a Chilean who recalls the brutal coup funded by the United States in his country on September 11, 1973. Alejandro González Iñárritu's piece is the most abstract, taking images from television on the day of the attacks and cutting them with selected bursts of sound. Samira Makhmalbaf, Danis Tanovic, and Idrissa Ouedraogo all tell small-scale stories of the effects of the attacks on tiny villages in Iran, Serbia, and Burkina Faso, respectively. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
