Berlinale 2019: Juliette Binoche, delights & disappointments, and the festival winners

Seán McGovern concludes his coverage of the Berlin International Film Festival.

Juliette Binoche presents the Golden Bear to Israel's Nadav Lapid for his drama "Synonyms"

There is a bittersweet conundrum with film festivals, that no matter how many films you see, you still only get one colourfully subjective corner of a greater kaleidoscope of stories. But you do get a sense both from the conversations you have in line and the energy on the ground as to what you absolutely must see. Each year we ask the same question, no different for the 69th Berlinale: was it a good year, or a bad year? The answer is... a resounding shrug of the shoulders.

Not that the festival was without worthy winners. In typically pluralistic European style, a veritable bread basket of awards were given to a range of films both in the main competition and beyond, led by our “beautiful” president Juliette Binoche. I don't know if it was a translation thing, but the amount of times that Binoche was referred to as “our beautiful president” during Berlinale was insane...

Click to read more ...

Links: Binoche in Berlin, Pfeiffer in Planning, and Endgame in Post-Production

• Gurus of Gold the latest charts on our Oscar predictions
• Coming Soon The Oscars are going hostless this year for the first time in decades but as it turns out they were originally going to go with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson who still hopes to do it someday
• Vanity Fair film insiders are speaking out about the Oscars intended changes. Thankfully many in the insider are as angry as we are about shunting some awards off air.

more after the jump including Avengers Endgame, Juliette Binoche in Berlin, Michelle Pfeiffer's smell, a new Pixar short, and the Gypsy remake...

Click to read more ...

Would you rather?

Our dumb celebrity-gawking game to get your week off to a silly start. Would you rather...

... have a whiskey at a poetry reading with Martha Plimpton?
... wander the Universal sound stages with Jeff Goldblum?
... snake charm with Anya Taylor Joy?
... take in an art exhibit with Carla Gugino?
... play shadow games with Glenn Close?
... get piggy with Billy Magnussen?
... shop for tasty pastries with Kim Cattrall?
... wear mythological creatures with Juliette Binoche?
... take a drive to Sundance with Olivia Colman, Kaitlyn Dever, Alice Englert, and Thomas Mann?
... pose on the red carpet with Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, and Patty Jenkins? 

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide!

Click to read more ...

Soundtracking: "Let The Sunshine In"

by Chris Feil

Etta James’ “At Last” has to be one of the most cliched romantic song choices in the movies, diminished over the decades through overuse and reductiveness, its swooning sexual pull often taken for granted or sanitized in gauzed lensing. But leave it to an original like Claire Denis to capture the oft-revisited song with new ears.

With Let the Sunshine In, Denis delivers us her take on a romantic drama, with all of the structural turns outside of genre convention as she approached vampire films and science fiction alike. Instead of the kind of romcom story developments we expect to see in our stories of women struggling to find love, this film is turns that into a more expansive character study with Juliette Binoche as our protagonist Isabelle. It is essentially examining the desire to be in love as a state of being.

Click to read more ...

Hirokazu Koreeda is directing an all star cast!

by Nathaniel R

Koreeda, Deneuve, and Hawke working on a movie called "Truth"

Somehow this had escaped our attention so apologize to those for whom it is old news. Thanks to Juliette Binoche for getting us caught us up to speed on her instagram, sharing photos from the set of the next film from Japanese master Hirokazu Koreeda. Koreeda was already in our brain because his current brilliant film Shoplifters, which opens in the US around Thanksgiving time. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and we hope it's nominated for the Oscar for Foreign Language Film.

His next picture is called Truth. It's his first non-Japanese language picture with an all star French cast plus Ethan Hawke...

Click to read more ...