January Advisory Meeting Candidates

Below you will find the summaries for our candidates for our upcoming meeting. Please select up to five films as your recommendations for the meeting on January 15th. Also, it is helpful to be familiar with all the films on the list, as we will do a second round of voting that will enable films to get enough votes to be put on the final list.

Some of you have been sending in additional suggestions. I appreciate it! I will send out a supplemental list closer to our meeting date that includes any of those recommendations that meet our criteria.

The following films received the committee’s endorsement at the last meeting, but were not made available to us yet by their distributors:
No Country for Old Men
Atonement
Persepolis
The Orphanage
Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Savages
Grace is Gone
We’re continuing to work on booking these (several of them should be available for March/April).

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – drama - Cristian Mungiu http://ifcfilms.com/viewFilm.htm?filmId=496
Director Cristian Mungiu's drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days unfolds in Romania in the late '80s, during the last waning days of Communist rule. Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu play, respectively, Otilia and Gabita, two female friends and students who share a Bucharest flat. They soon find themselves saddled with an overwhelming problem: Gabita is expecting. With abortion illegal in Romania at that time, the women seek an illicit termination at the hands of one Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) in a seedy Romanian hotel - but Bebe refuses to accept money in return for his services and demands a certain "alternate" commodity instead.

The Air I Breathe - crime/drama - Jieho Lee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJoGY20nNhI
Four stories, representing the emotional principles of Love, Pleasure, Sorrow and Happiness, come together in this episodic drama from first-time director Jieho Lee. A powerful crime boss, Fingers (Andy Garcia), subtly controls the destinies of four people whose circumstances have brought them to a crossroads in their lives. A quiet business executive (Forest Whitaker) is told an upcoming horse race has been rigged and bets everything he has on his belief the story is true. A noted pop singer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) discovers her career is hanging in the balance when she's forced to sever ties with her manager. A doctor (Kevin Bacon) must set aside a physician's traditional guidelines when circumstances demand he treat the woman he loves after a serious accident. And a criminal (Brendan Fraser) has a powerful vision of the future, but can't decide if his premonitions are to be trusted. The Air I Breathe received its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

Arranged - comedy/drama - Diane Crespo http://www.filmmovement.com/trailers/videoplayer.asp?CLIP=122 Two women whose peoples are often at odds find they're more alike than anyone expects in this drama from directors Stefan C. Schaefer and Diane Crespo. Rochel (Zoe Lister-Jones) and Nasira (Francis Benhamou) are two young women who have began teaching at a public grade school in Brooklyn, New York. Rochel is an Orthodox Jew and Nasira is a Muslim of Pakistani descent, and the students and the administrators at the school are concerned there might be friction between the two teachers. However, over the course of their first year of teaching, Rochel and Nasira discover they have far more in common than they imagined -- both sometimes find themselves culturally out-of-place in 21st Century New York, and both are trying to live within the traditions of their faith while struggling with their own feelings. In particular, Rochel and Nasira bond over the fact both are expected to enter into arranged marriages, Nasira with a wary optimism and Rochel with a great deal of trepidation. Arranged was screened in competition at the 2007 South by Southwest Film Festival.

The Band's Visit – comedy - Eran Kolirin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPJSB7pjKd4
When the Ceremonial Police Band of Alexandria, Egypt journeys to a gig in Israel, they can hardly anticipate getting stuck in a rut. But upon arrival at the Israeli airport, their hosts and transportation fail to show. So begins first-time director Elan Kolirin's fish-out-of-water comedy The Band's Visit (AKA Bikur hatzimoret, 2007). Trapped in a middle-of-nowhere desert town, the group members try to figure out what to do and where to go. In desperation. two of the musicians - conductor Tawfiq (Sasson Gabai) and playboy Khaled (Saleh Bakri) - accept an invitation from sexy café owner Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) to bunk at her residence, and seemingly within no time, the unlikeliest of interracial (Israeli-Palestinian) romances begin to blossom - not only between Tawfiq and Dina, but between Khaled and local wallflower Papi (Shlomi Avraham), whose night together at a roller disco turns into a veritable comedy of errors. Meanwhile, the remainder of the band members room with local resident Itzik's (Rubi Moscovich) family, which produces overwhelming conflict and innumerable tensions. As the days roll on, the co-mingling of Egyptian band members and Israeli residents imparts each individual with insights into his cultural identity and that of the others.

Be Kind Rewind – comedy - Michel Gondry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IugKepxOyY
When a bumbling movie lover becomes magnetized while attempting to sabotage a local power plant and accidentally erases all of the videotapes in the small video store where his best friend works, the pair attempt to keep the store's loyal customer base by remaking as many as the top-renting movies as possible. Mike (Mos Def) is an employee at Be Kind Rewind, a modest mom and pop video store that is owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). Mike's best friend Jerry (Jack Black) works in an auto garage/junkyard directly adjacent to a local power plant. Lately Jerry has become increasingly paranoid about the effects that the power plant is having on his health. Convinced that he has developed a brain tumor from working in such close proximity to the power plant, Jerry attempts to sabotage the plant. Unfortunately for Jerry, his brain is magnetized in the process. The next time Jerry goes to visit Mike at Be Kind Rewind, the powerful magnetization emanating from his brain erases every videotape in the store. Now the only way for Mike and Jerry to be sure that Be Kind Rewind stays in business is to remake every film on the shelves before the customers notice. But when word gets out that Mike and Jerry have remade such Hollywood classics as Back to the Future, Robocop, The Lion King, and Rush Hour without permission, the store is threatened with copyright violations and forced to close its doors. In the aftermath of the closing, Mr. Fletcher and his employees discover just how loyal their customers really are when the entire neighborhood pools their resources to transform the junkyard into a legitimate movie studio and produce an entirely original film detailing the incredible adventures of a local jazz legend.

Beaufort – Action - joseph cedar
http://www.bavaria-film-international.de/htmls/bfi/index.php?site=program_trailer&id=224
The title of Joseph Cedar's war drama Beaufort refers to the name of a fortress held by Israeli troops, during that country's contentious occupation of Lebanon from 1982-2000 - an effort that Israel roundly lost. The film itself opens at the tail end of that occupation. It follows Liraz Liberti, the then 22-year old leader of troops occupying Beaufort, as he and his subordinates come face to face with the necessity of withdrawal. As enemy fire bombards the fortress, Liraz recognizes that it will be necessary to evacuate, obliterating the structure that his men have spent two decades defending. Oshri Cohen, Itay Tiran, Eli Eltonyo and Ohad Knoller co-star.

Billy The Kid – documentary - Jennifer Venditti
http://billythekiddocumentary.com/
Filmmaker Jennifer Venditti crafts a cinema verite-style coming of age story with this portrait of a small-town teen from Maine who struggles to embrace his outsider status while still being shaped by the tragic events of his childhood. It was while casting the Carter Smith film Bugcrush that Venditti first encountered the boy named Billy- his eccentric wisdom leaving an immediate and lasting impression on the filmmaker. Later, after casting Billy in the film and preparing to craft a documentary about everyday heroes, Venditti and her crew returned to Maine to spend some five days with the troubled young boy who had commanded her attention. Shunned by his classmates and categorized as a "special needs" student by his teachers, Billy boldly refuses to be victimized by his individuality in an environment obsessed with labels and conformity.

Caramel – comedy - Nadine Labaki
A Beirut beauty salon serves as a microcosm of modern society in director Labaki Nadine's look at liberated conversation in a conflicted society. Over the course of their day it becomes readily apparent that women are truly the same all over, regardless of the society they live in. While single Layale struggles with her growing attraction to a married man, Muslim bride-to-be Nisrine fears that her husband will find out that she has already lost her virginity, and Rima wages a futile war against her lesbian instructs. As with many women who frequent the salon, Jamale does everything within her power to reverse the visible effects of ageing. As Rose laments the fact that she had sacrificed her own happiness in order to care for her older sister, the intimate conversations shared over the course of a typical day reveals just how universal how the lives, loves, and concerns of contemporary women truly are.

Chicago 10 – documentary - Brett Morgan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqdM87_Lmv4
The Kid Stays in the Picture director Brett Morgen turns his unique eye toward the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in this 2006 documentary. Using a star-studded voice cast along with a blend of archival footage and animation, Morgen tells the story of the eight demonstrators who were arrested and tried for conspiracy in the wake of the violent anti-war protests. Featuring the voices of Nick Nolte and Mark Ruffalo among others, Chicago 10 premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

City of Men – drama - Paulo Morelli
http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/cityofmen/
In CITY OF MEN, producer Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardner) returns to the Brazilian favelas of his Academy Award-nominated film, City of God. Growing up in a culture dictated by violence and run by street gangs, teenagers Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) have become close as brothers. With their eighteenth birthdays fast approaching, Laranjinha sets out to find the father he never met, while Acerola struggles to raise his own young son. But when they suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a gang war, the lifelong friends are forced to confront a shocking secret from their shared past.

The Earrings of Madame de... - classic/drama - Max Ophuls
Bound via marriage to the cold General André (Charles Boyer), the Comtesse Louise de... (Danielle Darrieux) pawns a pair of diamond earrings given to her by her husband in order to pay off a large debt. Discovering his wife’s act, the General buys back the earrings as a gift for his mistress, and as the jewelry moves from owner to owner throughout upper-class Europe – ending in the hands of the Baron (Vittorio De Sica), the Comtesse’s new lover – director Max Ophüls’s constantly moving camera reveals the poignant loneliness and doomed romanticism that lie under the elegant façades of his characters. A sharp and graceful examination of love and loss, The Earrings of Madame de… is widely regarded as one of the finest romantic dramas of all time.

Half Moon – drama - Bahman Ghobadi
HALF MOON is the moving and beautiful new film from Kurdish director Ghobadi (A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES, TURTLES CAN FLY). Mamo, an iconic Kurdish musician in the twilight of his life and in failing health, must lead a dozen of his sons to Iraq for a concert - "a cry of freedom" - to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein and the end of his repression of Kurdish music. Their plan is to drive across the border between Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, but the road will be long and winding and the local wise man has predicted calamity. On their quest, the men will encounter the most sublime visions alongside the most horrendous brutality - primarily meted out by border guards. But first they must pick up Hesho, Mamo`s exiled singer and muse. The "celestial voice" she represents takes on a divine, transformative power, and Mamo is left in a state of grace no one could ever have anticipated.

Honeydripper - drama/musical - John Sayles
http://honeydripper-movie.com//trailer/
Iconoclastic filmmaker John Sayles, in his 16th feature film, continues his extraordinary examination of the complexities and shifting identities of American sub-cultures in the new film “Honeydripper.” With his usual understated intelligence, Sayles uses the rhythms of the citizens of Harmony, Alabama to immerse the audience into the world of the Jim Crow south. It’s a fable about the birth of rock n’ roll-a quintessentially American subject, but with a fidelity to time and temperament that is unusual in an American director.

In Bruges – comedy - Martin McDonagh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G6W5CTaULw
Having just carried out a particularly difficult hit in London, two hit men seek shelter in Bruges, Belgium only find their views on life and death permanently altered by their interactions with the locals, the tourists, and a film crew. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Finnes star in a action comedy from director Martin McDonagh.

Juno – comedy - jason reitman
http://youtube.com/watch?v=K0SKf0K3bxg
When a teenage girl is faced with an unexpected pregnancy, she enlists the aid of her best friend in finding the unborn child a suitable home in this coming-of-age comedy drama from Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman. Juno (Ellen Page) may seem wise beyond her years, but after sleeping with classmate Bleeker (Michael Cera), the pregnant teen quickly realizes how little she really knows about life. Thankfully, Juno has been blessed with parents (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) who trust their daughter's judgment, and a best friend named Leah (Olivia Thirlby), who's always willing to help out in a pinch. With a little help from Leah, Juno soon comes into contact with Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) -- an affluent suburban couple who have been unable to conceive a child of their own. Mark and Vanessa seem like they would make great parents, and are eager to adopt Juno's unborn child. Now, as adolescent Juno is faced with a series of very adult decisions, she will draw on the support of her family and friends in order to discover who she truly is, and discover that one bad choice can have a lifetime of consequences.

Killing of John Lennon – drama - Andrew Piddington
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm_Ze81jfq8
What sort of man kills one of the most beloved musicians in the world, and what prompts him to pull the trigger? Filmmaker Andrew Piddington explores these questions in this fact-based drama which examines several weeks in the life of Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon. Chapman (played by Jonas Ball) is a self-obsessed young man who has an emotionally distant relationship with his parents and a failing marriage to Gloria (Mie Omori). Unable to hold down a job, Chapman spends a lot of time at the public library, where he re-reads J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye and browses though a photo book on John Lennon, and the two begin to fuse in his imagination, as he links Holden Caulfield's grousing about "phonies" with the fame and wealth of one-time activist Lennon. Chapman hops a flight to New York City and visits the sights Caulfield talked about in the novel when not busy standing vigil outside the Dakota, the luxury apartment building Lennon calls home, with a gun in his possession. The first time Chapman crosses paths with Lennon as he's leaving the Dakota, he asks the former Beatle to sign a copy of Double Fantasy, Lennon's new album; several hours, Lennon returns home and Chapman approaches him with a very different intent. The Killing of John Lennon was primarily filmed in the locations where the real-life events took place, and all of Chapman's dialogue in the film was taken from his diaries or interviews he's given since his arrest and imprisonment.

King Corn – documentary - Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis
http://www.kingcorn.net
America’s fast-food empire is fueled by a secret ingredient: corn. High fructose corn syrup makes the sodas sweet, corn-fed beef makes the burgers fat, and corn oil crisps the fries. As college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis find out, their junk food generation has grown up eating so much corn that if you test their hair– it’s actually made of the stuff. King Corn follows Ian and Curt to a tiny town in the middle of Iowa, where they plant and grow an acre of America’s most powerful crop, and attempt to follow its fate as food. What they find is alternately hilarious and horrifying: genetically modified seeds and home- brewed corn syrup, a bumper crop of obesity and diabetes, and a government paying farmers to grow what’smaking us sick. You’ll never enjoy a soda again.

The Kite Runner – drama - Marc Forster
http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/main.html?deeplink=media Finding Neverland director Marc Forster adapts author Khaled Hosseini's critically acclaimed novel about two childhood best friends forever torn apart as their country is ravaged by endless war and bitter strife. As children, Amir (Khalid Abdalla) and Hassan were inseparable; their long days under azure Kabul skies often spent getting into innocent mischief or preparing for the highly anticipated kite-fighting tournament. When the day of the tournament arrives, however, a glorious victory is quickly offset by a timorous act of betrayal that ultimately serves as the catalyst for catastrophe. Not long after that fateful day, Amir moves away to America, leaving his old friend behind just as the ominous specter of war turns tragically tangible. Two decades later, Amir returns to Afghanistan to find his beloved homeland has now fallen under the iron-fisted rule of the Taliban. Still, all hope for redemption hasn't been lost just yet, because now that Amir stands face to face with the irrepressible secrets that he struggled so vigilantly to bury, he will receive one last chance to make peace with the past, and lay the groundwork for a brighter future.

Look – drama - Adam Rifkin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEMyObf59jI
At times, it seems video surveillance is omnipresent in America, and Adam Rifkin (Underdog) spends the better part of two hours asserting just that in his fiction feature Look. This motion picture gains a historical footnote as the first U.S. mainstream movie to depict events solely through the "eyes" of surveillance video cameras. The preponderance of action unfurls in San Fernando Valley offices, stores, and shopping malls, where we witness security-camera footage of character interactions and events that would likely never occur if the perpetrators knew they were being "watched." In one subplot, Marty (Ben Weber), a beleaguered insurance salesman alienated by his co-workers, makes brazenly sexual passes at his female colleagues, secretly hatching a darker plan of his own on the side. Meanwhile, in another locale -- that of a department store at the Northridge Fashion Center shopping mall -- a chauvinistic floor manager named Tony takes full-scale sexual advantage of each of his female co-workers, letting all his inhibitions fly out the window in the "secrecy" of the back room. And in the same store, two minors, Holly (Heather Hogan) and Sherri (Spencer Redford), shop for seductive apparel in a twisted plot to seduce and presumably blackmail a high-school instructor. On a darker note, Rifkin follows convenience-store employees attempting to "bring down" a cadre of serial murderers tagged as "The Candid Camera Killers," whose doings attract the attention of police cameras. Other perspectives included in the film include those of ATM cameras, robot security cameras, and all sorts of other surveillance devices of varying ingenuity, all of which catch shocking behavior and are used to follow a myriad of substories.

Love For Sale – drama - Karim Ainouz
http://movies.go.com/trailer?cid=902761&vid=902762
After two years of living in São Paulo, Hermila returns to her village in northeastern Brazil with her newborn son, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her husband. Time passes slowly and the wait becomes an even heavier burden as she begins to realize that she`s been abandoned. Her distress increases as she renews a relationship with an old boyfriend before deciding that she doesn`t want to relive the past. Determined to raise enough money to escape her stifling hometown, she comes up with an unlikely prize to raffle off - one conceived during her chats with newfound friend and local prostitute, Georgina. Hermila adopts the name Suely, an act that distances her from her family and her past and signals the beginning of her journey toward new, open horizons.

My Blueberry Nights – drama - Kar Wai Wong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86kckraMXtI
In Wong Kar Wai’s debut English language feature, the internationally acclaimed director takes his audience on a dramatic across the distance between heartbreak and a new beginning. After a rough break-up, Elizabeth (Norah Jones) sets out on a journey across America, leaving behind a life of memories, a dream and a soulful new friend; a café owner (Jude Law) – all while in search of something to mend her broken heart. Waitressing her way through the country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are greater than hers, including a troubled cop (David Strathairn) and his estranged wife (Rachel Weisz) and a down-on-her luck gambler (Natalie Portman) with a score to settle. Through these individuals, Elizabeth witnesses the true depths of loneliness and emptiness, and begins to understand that her own journey is part of a greater exploration within herself.

Pierrot Le Fou - classic/drama - Jean-Luc Godard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycg2yb3qiUo
After abandoning his wife at a Parisian party, bored Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) flees his bourgeois existence with his babysitter and ex-lover, Marianne (Anna Karina). Taking it on the lam to the south of France, the couple becomes an existential Bonnie and Clyde, battling gunrunners, gas station attendants, and American tourists as they come face to face with their own roles as characters in a pop-cultural landscape. A profound turning point in Godard’s cinema, Pierrot le fou recalls the gangster cool of Breathless and Band of Outsiders while also pointing towards the increasingly essayistic, apocalyptic visions of Two or Three Things I Know About Her and Weekend. Janus Films is proud to present this landmark work in a new 35mm print.

Punk's Not Dead - documentary - Susan Dynner
http://www.punksnotdeadthemovie.com/trailer/
Punk's Not Dead takes you into the sweaty underground clubs, backyard parties, recording studios, and yes, shopping malls and stadium shows where punk rock music and culture continue to thrive. Thirty years after bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols infamously shocked the system with their hard, fast, status-quo-killing rock, the longest-running punk band in history is drawing bigger crowds than ever, “pop-punk” bands have found success on MTV, and kids too young to drive are forming bands that carry the torch for punk's raw, immediate sound. Meanwhile, “punk” has become a marketing concept to sell everything from cars to vodka, and dyed hair and piercings mark a rite of passage for thousands of kids. Can the true, nonconformist punk spirit still exist in today's corporatized culture? Featuring interviews, performances, and behind-the-scenes journeys with the bands, labels, fans, and press who keep punk alive, Punk's Not Dead dares to juxtapose pop-punk's music and lifestyle against the roots in

Sharkwater – documentary - Rob Stewart
http://www.sharkwater.com/downloads.htm
For filmmaker Rob Stewart, exploring sharks began as an underwater adventure. What it turned into was a beautiful and dangerous life journey into the balance of life on earth. Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas. Filmed in visually stunning, high definition video, Sharkwater takes you into the most shark rich waters of the world, exposing the exploitation and corruption surrounding the world's shark populations in the marine reserves of Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

Shrooms – horror - Paddy Breathnach
http://www.shroomsthemovie.com/
When five American college students arrive in Ireland to go on camping trip with their old college buddy Jake, they are in high spirits. Jake has promised them the ‘trip’ of a lifetime’ because he claims Ireland has the best magic mushrooms in the world. It sounded like it would be great fun. Now that they are tripping things don’t seem so funny. BLUTO, one of the gang is missing. TARA thinks he’s dead because she feels she has seen his death before but nobody believes her they think she is just out of it. They’re out of it too. That was the whole point of coming here, but there is something out there, something watching them, something that will kill them if they don’t get out of the forest and get help.

Singing Revolution – documentary - James Tusty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA9PmZo-2jo
After enduring WWII-era brutalization by Hitler's Nazi Party and decades of repressive Soviet dictatorship, the tiny Eastern European nation of Estonia began to declare its independence from Communist rule in the late 1980s. Over a five year period, beginning in 1986, hundreds of thousands of Estonians began to systematically and repeatedly gather in public venues to collectively sing illegal patriotic songs, declaring their desire for national independence but never resorting to violence amid their protests. Uncoincidentally, Estonia was indeed one of the first nations to break away from the Soviet Union in the events leading up to the fall of the Iron Curtain. The documentary The Singing Revolution chronicles this extraordinary yet seldom told chain of events.

Southland Tales - comedy/drama - Richard Kelly
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/southlandtales/trailer/ California is at the epicenter of a political and environmental disaster that threatens to destroy the world in this ambitious fusion of comedy, drama, dystopian science fiction, and music from writer and director Richard Kelly, his first film after gaining a cult following with Donnie Darko. In the year 2005, a nuclear attack wipes out part of the state of Texas, and three years later America is a virtual police state, with the government taking control of nearly every part of people's lives, supposedly for their own good. A German firm has found a way to generate energy using seawater, but both public and private concerns are desperate to prevent the new technology from being introduced in the gasoline-starved United States. A Marxist underground based on the West Coast is determined to bring down the federal government through violent revolution. In this midst of this chaos, we follow a number of stories that continually return to three principle characters. Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock) is an actor famous for his role in action films; he's trying to secure financing for a new project, but reality keeps mirroring the events in his script and he struggles to hold on to his identity following a bout with amnesia. Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a porn star who is reinventing herself as a television pundit offering her views on politics, contemporary culture, and teenage sex. And Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott) is an L.A. police officer whose identity has mysteriously split in two and he struggles to track down his other half. Featuring a massive supporting cast which includes Mandy Moore, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Jon Lovitz, Kevin Smith, Amy Poehler, and Justin Timberlake, Southland Tales received its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival; director Kelly also created an accompanying series of three graphic novels which chart these events and characters prior to this story.

Starting Out In The Evening – drama - Andrew Wagner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NmF2Dx46RY
Frank Langella (Dracula, Good Night, and Good Luck.) stars in Andrew Wagner's independent drama Starting Out in the Evening, an adaptation of the acclaimed 1999 best-seller by Brian Morton. Langella plays Leonard Schiller, a once-celebrated author whose first four novels inspired Heather Wolf (Lauren Ambrose) to pursue a career as a writer. These days, Leonard is still working toward completion of the novel that has occupied his life for nearly a decade. On the surface, Leonard has removed himself completely from the deep-seated need for success that characterized his life at an earlier point in time; but on a more buried level, he still longs for his fiction to be rediscovered and reacclaimed. Now an eager graduate student in the throes of her thesis, Heather is writing her dissertation on Schiller, and promptly convinces him that she can use the thesis to regenerate popularity and discovery of his work. Heather also projects personal interest in Leonard, however, which cuts straight through to the core of his loneliness and brings him in touch with his need for a meaningful relationship even as it leaves him feeling shaken and increasingly uncertain. Meanwhile, Leonard finds that his relationship with his daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor) is challenged, both by Heather's presence and by Ariel's decision to begin dating her former boyfriend Casey (Adrian Lester) once again -- a fact that Leonard finds most upsetting thanks to his disapproval of Casey. Suddenly, Leonard feels his entire world turned upside down, from his familial relationships to the security of his writing to his own physical vitality -- but he is also taking risks and plunging headfirst into the core of life for the first time, thus living out the principles long celebrated and upheld in his fiction and giving himself the capacity to grow.

Steep – documentary - Mark Obenhaus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7_4LrF8As
In this documentary about the sport of mountain skiing, director Mark Obenhaus explores the motivation behind the athletes who risk life and limb for the adrenaline high of their high-altitude sport, and the challenge that it offers their sense of athleticism and sportsmanship. Full of lush images of white slopes and mountain landscapes, Steep offers the chance to experience the atmosphere that mountain skiers experience when they're engaged in their sport.

Sunflower – drama - Yang Zhang
The tumultuous relationship between a father returning home after years in a labor camp and the nine-year-old son who doesn't quite know what to make of this new man in his life lies at the heart of director Zhang Yang's heartfelt drama addressing the nature of change and the importance of family in Chinese culture. Chairman Mao has died and the Gang of Four have fallen, leaving former painter Gengnian (Sun Haiying) to return home to his wife, Xiuqing (Joan Chen), and the pair's nine-year-old son Xiangyang (Zhang Fan). His hands permanently damaged by the ravages of hard labor, Gengnian cannot return to painting, though his young son has shown an abundance of artistic promise. Troubled by the sudden presence of a father he has never known and rebelling against the path laid before him, Xiangyang ignites a firecracker in his hand in hopes that it may derail his artistic career. In the years that follow, Xiangyang's reputation as a talented artist grows while his relationship with his father remains forever troubled.

Taxi to the Dark Side – documentary - Alex Gibney
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rZFkoptik8k
From the producer of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Who Killed the Electric Car? comes a documentary that takes a critical look at the Bush administration's policy on torture by investigating the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Force base whose suffered fatal injuries at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

Teeth – comedy - Mitchell Lichtenstein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH8yuld4DUE
A high school student struggling to suppress her budding sexuality makes a startling discovery about her womanhood after becoming the victim of sexual violence in director Michael Lichtentenstein's semi-surreal exploration of the vagina dentate myth. Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a proud virgin and the most active member of her local chastity group. Though she struggles with every ounce of her willpower to resist the pleasures of the flesh, Dawn finds her noble efforts to remain chaste repeatedly challenged by her disturbed step-brother Brad - whose provocative advances are becoming increasingly difficult to resist. When Dawn is sexually assaulted and discovers that her vagina actually has teeth, she struggles to comprehend her anatomical anomaly while experiencing both the benefits and drawbacks of this strange new revelation.

There Will Be Blood – drama - Paul Thomas Anderson
http://www.therewillbeblood.com/index.php?section=media
There Will Be Blood is a movie " loosely " adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson from the 1927 novel OIL! by Upton Sinclair. The movie centers on a character Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who starts out as a simple silver miner, that happens upon oil in his silver efforts. Fast forward a few years and he's made himself a pretty rich man, a wise and shrewd business/oil man, that gets to the point to where he'll step over anyone to get what he wants. You see, Daniel Plainview is not a very decent person, who constantly wrestles with his demons. He is a borderline nihilist, who doesn't like people and thinks most humans are lazy and ignorant. You understand the only reason that he has people in his life is because he couldn't benefit financially if he didn't. Otherwise he could care less. It's all about finding new oil spots with him, and nothing will get in his way and derail his goals. He may not be a good man, but you cannot deny his desire and work ethic. He risks his life more than once setting up oil derricks. But, he almost meets his match in the form of a young man of the word of God in Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano.

The Witnesses – drama - André Téchiné
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKy64h6TH0
The early days of the AIDS crisis in France provides the backdrop for this powerful, life-affirming drama from writer and director André Téchiné. It's 1984, and Mehdi (Sami Bouajila) is a police detective who, unbeknownst to his wife Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart), is a bisexual who has occasional trysts with men. Mehdi and Sarah are proud parents of a new baby, but to Mehdi's chagrin, Sarah doesn't seem the least bit concerned about her responsibilities as a mom. Manu (Johan Libereau) is a handsome young man who shares a flat with his sister Julie (Julie Depardieu), who is struggling to make a career as an opera singer. And Adrien (Michel Blanc) is a middle-aged doctor and close friend of Sarah who occasionally picks up younger men in the park, and nearly seduces Manu one evening. Adrien joins Sarah and Mehdi for an idyllic weekend at the beach, where Manu once again crosses his path; however, Manu also meets Mehdi when he saves the detective from drowning, and the two soon become lovers. Several months later, Manu has discovered he's contracted a strange and deadly new disease doctors are calling AIDS, which has a dramatic impact on many of the people he knows. Mehdi has confessed his infidelity to Sarah, and they wait to find out if they also have AIDS, while Adrien is devoting most of his days to treating Manu and other young men who are wasting away under the effects of the illness, and Julie helps to care for her dying brother. The Witnesses (aka Les Témoins) received its premiere at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation – drama - Cao Hamburger
http://www.oano.com.br/english/index.php
A twelve-year old Brazilian boy who longs to see his team win out over Italy in the 1970 World Cup match finds his entire world turned upside down as his left-wing parents are forced into hiding and he is sent to live with his grandfather in Sao Paulo's Bom Retiro district. Though his country is being held in the grip of a military dictatorship and the war in Vietnam is raging abroad, young Mauro can't seem to think about anything else but the upcoming World Cup match between Brazil and Italy. If Jairzinho, Pele, and company can just win their third World Cup title, team Brazil will earn their third star on the strip - a feat that no other team in the history of the sport has ever managed to accomplish. When his Catholic mother and Jewish father are suddenly forced to go "on holiday," young Mauro is swept out of his middle class existence in Minas Gerais and taken to stay with his paternal grandfather in bustling Bom Retiro. A multi-ethnic district in which Jews, Arabs, and Greeks all live side-by-side, Bom Retiro begins to heat up with World Cup fever as things both at home and abroad all seem to be spiraling towards disaster.

Youth Without Youth – drama - Francis Ford Coppola
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn0XGlwTKCI
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 seventy year-old scholar is stricken 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.

Nanking - Documentary - Bill Guttentag/Dan Sturman
http://movies.aol.com/movie/nanking/27490/video/trailer-no-1/2041513
Nanking is a powerful reminder of the heartbreaking toll that war takes on the innocent, and a testament to the courage and conviction of a few individuals determined to act in the face of evil. The film tells the story of the Japanese invasion of Nanking, China in the early days of World War II and focuses on the efforts of a small group of unarmed Westerners who established a Safety Zone where over 200,000 Chinese found refuge. The events of the film are told through deeply moving interviews with Chinese survivors, archival footage, and chilling testimonies of Japanese soldiers, interwoven with staged readings of the Westerners’ letters and diaries as performed by Jurgen Prochnow, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Dorff, and Mariel Hemingway, among others.

Up The Yangtze - Documentary - Yung Chang
http://www.uptheyangtze.com/trailer.php
A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.

Last Year at Marienbad - classic - Alain Resnais
http://www.filmforum.org/films/marienbadtrailer.html
A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the movie is a riddle of seduction, a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge. The film stars Giorgio Albertazzi as an unnamed sophisticate attempting to convince a similarly nameless woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they met and were romantically involved a year ago in the same enormous, baroque European hotel. In the end, it hardly matters -- they're not characters so much as pawns anyway. Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. According to screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, the movie is a pure construction, without a frame of reference outside of its own existence -- the lives of its characters begin when the lights go down, and conclude when they come back up.