151 replies to this topic

[Peter T Chattaway]

Barbagallo boards Kiarostami film
Italian producer Angelo Barbagallo has boarded Abbas Kiarostami's next film "The Certified Copy," starring Juliette Binoche, which is set to start shooting in March in Tuscany. . . .
In "Certified Copy," Binoche will play a French art gallery owner who becomes entangled romantically with an older novelist, played by French thesp Sami Frey, as they travel around the Chianti countryside.
Pic is also said to explore the differences between original masterpiece artworks and their copies.
Binoche earlier this year spent time in Iran with Kiarostami to prepare for her role. Her visit raised hackles from local parliamentarians who were not pleased over Binoche being in a film by an Iranian helmer and complained of "cultural destruction." . . .
Variety, January 28

[Overstreet]

Looks like we may need to change the title of this thread:

Edited by Overstreet, 05 May 2010 - 06:52 PM.

[Tyler]

Peter T Chattaway, on 28 January 2008 - 01:16 PM, said:

Pic is also said to explore the differences between original masterpiece artworks and their copies.

Like, say, A Taste of Cherry and Goodbye Solo? (That's not to denigrate either one; I love them both, and differently. But they are quite similar.)

[Peter T Chattaway]

Overstreet wrote:
: Looks like we may need to change the title of this thread . . .

Only if we think the foreign-language title must always trump the English-language title.

But, for the search engine's benefit: Copie conforme. And while we're at it: Roonevesht barabar asl ast.

[Overstreet]

Peter T Chattaway, on 05 May 2010 - 08:45 PM, said:

Overstreet wrote:
: Looks like we may need to change the title of this thread . . .

Only if we think the foreign-language title must always trump the English-language title.

But, for the search engine's benefit: Copie conforme. And while we're at it: Roonevesht barabar asl ast.

Well, I said *may* because I'm wondering if Copie Conformie might be the title when it gets to the U.S. But yeah, I think the thread should be titled whatever it ends up being on the English-language release, for consistency.

[Overstreet]

Another poster.

[M. Leary]

Oh man. Not even a splash of green anywhere on that poster. This does not bode well.

[Christian]

Funny and sad?

[Persona]

Good gracious grief, it is an unfair world when someone known for writing crap pieces like that is still allowed into advanced screenings. And I'm not.

Edited by Persona, 17 May 2010 - 04:11 PM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Mike D'Angelo: "Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY is the first film I've seen get booed this year. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's the best film so far (83)."

[M. Leary]

Stef, whenever I read something from that Hollywood Elsewhere site, it is like I am reading a foreign language. I may just be thick, but I don't get their schtick at all. (And what is "film dweeb nation"?) From the ensuing comments, it appears that a lot of other people aren't big fans of the site either.

On topic, The Auteurs has a good report on this, including praises from people I was kind of expecting to not like the film.

[Overstreet]

IFC picks it up.

[Russ]

Jeff Wells is to the internet film community at-large what Ted Baehr has been to this one: somebody whose critical insights have never, ever merited the attention they've received. And yet, for some reason, they can't quit him.

[Overstreet]

Russ, on 20 May 2010 - 12:22 PM, said:

Jeff Wells is to the internet film community at-large what Ted Baehr has been to this one: somebody whose critical insights have never, ever merited the attention they've received. And yet, for some reason, they can't quit him.

It's because, in part, we can usually count on him for little gems like this:

Quote

I'm sure that I'll see Love Ranch eventually (I was stopped at the door when I tried to attend a Cannes market screening last week), but I'm sensing something that hadn't occured to me before now. Most people love or admire costar Helen Mirren and are certainly down with seeing her perform in an erotic context, but -- this is 90% theory, pulled out of my ass -- they don't want to see a movie that combines Joe Pesci and sexuality.

When the man's right, the man's right.

[Persona]

But will we ever see it? Iran won't.

Quote

Apparently, this year’s Cannes Film Festival found more controversy in Iran, than at the festival itself.

In what is another step in the rather growing battle over censorship between the aforementioned nation and the famous film festival, Yahoo is reporting that the country has just banned the critically beloved film, Certified Copy, directed by native son Abbas Kiarostami, due to the lead actresses clothing choices.

According to Deputy Culture Minister Javad Shamaqdari, “if Juliette Binoche were better clad it could have been screened, but due to her attire there will not be a general screening.” This is Kiarostami’s first film shot outside of his native Iran, and while it’s been one of the most lauded films out of Cannes, it appears as though Iran will continue to reign down on filmmakers whose films they deem out of step with their beliefs.

This comes days after announcing the release of imprisoned filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was jailed for nearly three months for making what Iran officials deemed an “anti-regime” film.

Hopefully these tales of government oversight will weigh on the minds of American filmmakers who deem studio involvement a step on their creativity. Filmmakers from around the world can make any film they pretty much please, outside of things like snuff films, except when under this Islamic regime. For every film that gets stepped on by an overzealous producer, you get a filmmaker who is being jailed, or who has a film banned, for simple things like actress attire, or personal politics.

Hopefully this adds a bit of perspective.

[Peter T Chattaway]

: . . . it appears as though Iran will continue to reign down on filmmakers . . .

That's an interesting typo.

[Overstreet]

... in several ways.

You can "rain down."

You can "rein in."

And you can "reign over."

So... what would "reign down" mean?

To reign oppressively, perhaps... which would be the truth of the situation.

But then, if he'd written "rein in"... that would have worked too.

If he'd said "rain down on filmmakers"... that could have worked too.

I love it.

Anyway...

Here's Bryant Frazer's review, which I started to read, then bookmarked so I'll read the rest after I've seen the film.

Edited by Overstreet, 29 September 2010 - 10:36 PM.

[Nathan Douglas]

No review yet, but Siciniski's listed it on his site as a "10."

Beginning to really regret missing this at the festival.

[Peter T Chattaway]

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Kiarostami's career, up to and including Certified Copy:

To what extent does Abbas Kiarostami, Iran’s best known and most celebrated filmmaker, still belong to Iran, and to what extent does he now belong to the world? Insofar as the first sixteen of his seventeen features have been shot in Iran –- only Certified Copy, filmed in Italy, which premiered in Cannes last May, qualifies as a feature shot in exile –- he might be said to “belong” in some fashion to his native country. But the last of his features to date to have opened commercially in Iran was his tenth, Taste of Cherry (1997), and one wouldn’t expect this situation to change anytime in the near future. The violent government reprisals against protests following the “stolen” presidential election of 2009, and the arrest of Kiarostami’s most talented and politically daring protégé, Jafar Panahi — the director of The Circle, Crimson Gold, and Offside, who, in December 2010, was sentenced to six years in prison and forbidden to leave Iran, make films, or even write scripts for 20 years — do not suggest a climate very compatible with Kiarostami’s brand of cinema, quite apart from the fact that the last films of his to have enjoyed much commercial success in Iran have been Where is the Friend’s House? and Close-up, both made roughly two decades ago. By necessity, it would seem, he is already on his way towards becoming an international filmmaker working in exile. . . .

Saeed-Vafa remarked to me after she was able to see Certified Copy in Chicago that the film is limited by being essentially the film of a tourist. This reminded me that, according to Pedro Costa, Jean-Marie Straub once criticized one of Kiarostami’s Iranian features as the film of a tourist. One might even say that an outsider’s vantage point — even when he’s objectifying and/or critiquing his own ambiguous relation towards his characters — is an essential part of his equipment as a filmmaker, and one that distinguishes him sharply from Mohsen Makhmalbaf – a filmmaker who now lives with his family in Paris and has suffered immeasurably as an artist by being effectively forced into exile. . . .

When we were working on our book, Mehrnaz and I discovered that a major difference between our view of his work was that she mainly viewed him as an Iranian filmmaker while I viewed him more as someone making films about the contemporary world who happened to be Iranian. Yet now that he’s starting to make films about the contemporary world outside of Iran, it’s possible that the absence of an Iranian context may limit his view of that world in certain respects. . . .

[Peter T Chattaway]

Glenn Kenny asks if this might be "the first great science fiction film of the year".

And now I have *NO* idea what to expect, if and when I get around to seeing this.