Pedro Almodovar

Started by bonanzataz, January 11, 2003, 02:53:27 PM

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ono


modage

yeah i am actually going to have to go with GT on this one.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

NEON MERCURY

mod-age, i want to beat you over the head with a pork chop. :yabbse-cry:

this film kicks ass.  because i like you i will go a little more in depth rather than say the usual bullshiiiiiit.  

well, when i read your opinion a few posts ago. i cant really answer your questions asot why this, why that.  but i like this film as i mentioned before because is so damn sexy and seductive in twisted way.  but seriously that music/score the vibe of the whole film oozes sexuality and its vibrant.  spoilers........

even though its fucked up with her rape/molestation stuff.  i really cared about the guy.  and the girl of course and the older guy she meeats at the endand th eother girl who get bullcharged in the beginning.  basically, i am rambling on but i felt something for each of those characters..thats pretty tough thing to do but i liked the way the film pulled it off.  and the giant pussy scene speaks for itself.  and i loved the cinematography.....beautiful stuff to look at.  such a bizaare story..gotta give it up for the balls/creativity..............

MacGuffin

Almodovar Quits Spanish Academy in Voting Flap

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, whose latest film "Bad Education" was snubbed at the country's version of the Oscars last month, has quit the organization that holds the event.

Almodovar -- and his producer brother Agustin -- cited disagreement with the Spanish Film Academy's voting procedures for the annual Goya Awards, as well as the way it selects the film to represent Spain for foreign-language Oscar consideration.

The Almodovar production house, El Deseo, released a statement Monday saying the brothers quit the academy in December because of "disagreement with the voting system, as well as other aspects with respect to the functioning of the academy, such as the lack of information as far as the number of participants in each vote."

"Bad Education" lost out to Alejandro Amenabar's "The Sea Inside" for the right to represent Spain as a contender for a foreign-language Oscar nomination. Amenabar's film also set records when it snagged 14 Goyas, including best film and director nods, while "Bad Education" went home empty-handed
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Stefen

Spoilers.

So I finally watched Bad Education today, finally. I have to say, I was dissapointed. Almodovar seems to have gone away from his strong point his last two films. WRITING FOR WOMEN. In my opinion, I feel he is at his strongest when he has a strong female cast to write for. The homosexuality in Bad Education was really awful. I can handle it most of the time, but in this film, it was just over the top and unnecessary. The oral sex scene in the beginning was in bad taste (no pun) and really added nothing to the story but controversy. He had a good story that makes you think, but Almodovar is so good that you kind of expect that from him. I feel that Juan never killed Ignacio, but Berenguer did and Juan kept quiet cause of the super 8 tapes he had made that would ruin his career, so he never said anything, but kept the letters Ignacio had written, just in case push came to shove. Berenguer told Enrique, Juan killed Ignacio with him cause he knew that Enrique and Juan were intimate and that killed Berenguer inside. I really want an Almodovar film with women. Talk To Her was fantastic and a nice departure from what he normally does, but the two women in the film are speechless through the whole movie and he decided to let the men do the talking for them, and they ended up getting it all wrong, which is really what the movie was about to me. All About My Mother is still my favorite and in my opinion Almodovars BEST film. He had it going with that flick and I hope he can return to form. He seems to be too interested in causing controversy and making his audience feel uncomfortable these days. But still, a dissapointing Almodovar film is alot better than a good most every other filmmaker movie. My thoughts are scattered right now, this film will take time to digest. Maybe I'll write more later.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

MacGuffin

Penelope Cruz to Star in Comedy 'Volver'

Pedro Almodovar has confirmed that Penelope Cruz and Carmen Maura will star in his next film, "Volver", a comedy about three women from the same family seeking a better life.

The movie is set to shoot in July in Madrid and in the region of Castilla-La Mancha, where Almodovar grew up, his production house said Friday.

Maura starred in Almodovar's films in the early 1980s and last worked with him on 1988's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

The new film is a generational story involving a grandmother, a mother and a daughter who journey from Spain's south to Madrid.

Almodovar says "Volver" is a cross between Michael Curtiz's "Mildred Pierce" and Frank Capra's "Arsenic and Old Lace," mixed with the "surrealist naturalism" of his 1984 film, "What Have I Done to Deserve This?'"
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Almodovar 'Returns' to Sony Pictures Classics with "Volver" and Nationwide Retrospective
Source:indieWIRE

Sony Pictures Classics will once again be the North American home for Pedro Almodovar with his latest project, "Volver" (Return) marking his sixth feature that will be released on this side of the Atlantic by the New York-based distributor. The comedy, starring Penelope Cruz and Carmen Maura ("Women on the Verge"), will begin shooting in July in Madrid. "Volver" is a production of Pedro Almodovar and brother Agustin's production company, El Deseo. Sony Classics plans a June, 2006 release following a nationwide theatrical retrospective of eight of Almodovar's films.

Set in Madrid's working class neighborhoods, "Volver" is described by SPC as the story of "three generations of women who survive wind, fire and even death, thanks to audacity, goodness and a limitless vitality." The film will be a "meeting of 'Mildred Pierce' (Michael Curtiz) and 'Arsenic and Old Lace' (Frank Capra), combined with the surrealistic naturalism of Amodovar's fourth film, '¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!' (What Have I Done to Deserve This?)."

"We hereby declare 2006 as the year of Almodovar," said SPC's Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, Dylan Leiner and Marcie Bloom in a joint statement. "Marking the 20th anniversary of Pedro Almodovar's introduction to American audiences, Sony Pictures Classics will launch in April 2006, in movie theatres across America, a major Pedro Almodovar retrospective highlighting eight of his most popular films - with new prints and a major presentation. 'Volver' has the makings of a bonafide summer hit, It is a privilege and pleasure to continue our fruitful relationship with Agustin, Pedro, and the whole team at El Deseo. You heard it here first: 2006 will be the 'Year Of Almodovar.'"

Sony Classics' Almodovar retrospective will include, "Law of Desire," "Matador," "Women on the Verge," "Flower of My Secret," "Live Flesh," "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her," and "Bad Education."

Agustin Almodovar will serve as executive producer, and Ester Garcia will produce "Volver."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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godardian

Quote from: MacGuffin on May 16, 2005, 02:52:58 PM
"Marking the 20th anniversary of Pedro Almodovar's introduction to American audiences, Sony Pictures Classics will launch in April 2006, in movie theatres across America, a major Pedro Almodovar retrospective highlighting eight of his most popular films - with new prints and a major presentation. 'Volver' has the makings of a bonafide summer hit, It is a privilege and pleasure to continue our fruitful relationship with Agustin, Pedro, and the whole team at El Deseo. You heard it here first: 2006 will be the 'Year Of Almodovar.'"

Sony Classics' Almodovar retrospective will include, "Law of Desire," "Matador," "Women on the Verge," "Flower of My Secret," "Live Flesh," "All About My Mother," "Talk to Her," and "Bad Education."

Agustin Almodovar will serve as executive producer, and Ester Garcia will produce "Volver."

Ah....I came here looking for an explanation of why Flower, Mother, and Talk were yanked from DVD availability. I will look forward to the retrospective (and hopefully, not too long thereafter, these films' deluxe DVD re-release).
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

godardian

Thanks, Luc! I wish there had been more info on exactly where/when the series will be playing, but I have this feeling that Seattle will be one stop on its travels....
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

MacGuffin

Señor Almodóvar looks back
The man from La Mancha discusses the roots of his work, new and old.
By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times



PEDRO ALMODÓVAR walks into a bar looking exhausted, and no wonder. "I have been here an entire week, working every day," he says, managing a smile, "and a week in Cannes can destroy even Superman."

It's a sultry evening in May, and the accomplished Spanish director, a two-time Oscar winner, is at the Cannes International Film Festival with "Volver," his 16th feature. Though he doesn't know it, in a few days his film is going to win a pair of the festival's top awards: best screenplay for the man himself and an unusual ensemble best actress award for the six women, led by Penélope Cruz and Carmen Maura, who star in it.
 
"Volver" has been greeted with nothing but success wherever it has played. In Spain it is neck and neck with "All About My Mother" as the director's highest-grossing film, and in Germany it won a coveted box office award called the Bogey. In the United States, Almodóvar's longtime distributor Sony Pictures Classics thinks so highly of the film that it is sponsoring a "Viva Pedro" series starting Friday, rereleasing newly struck prints of eight of his films as a run-up to "Volver's" Nov. 3 release. All of which makes the director very, very nervous.

"It is a gorgeous surprise, I'm not accustomed to that unanimity," Almodóvar says, his eyes twinkling through his exhaustion. "So I'm trying to prepare myself for the reverse for the next movie. I don't want get used to this comfort."

The reasons for "Volver's" success are numerous, including the best work of Cruz's career as a Spanish Mother Courage who has to hold her family together, but the key factor is its unexpected emotional accessibility. In fact, the film's ability to intertwine Almodóvar's wacky wickedness with deeply felt warmth caused the director to insist that "the most difficult thing about 'Volver' has been writing its synopsis."

He is the first to admit that "when you tell people the plot," which has at least one murder and the breaking of several sexual taboos, "it sounds like Grand Guignol. But I wanted to do it exactly the opposite: very simply, in the most direct, transparent way. Awful things happen, but the movie remains very warm, a comedy. The soul, the spirit of the movie is something you can't easily tell in a few words."

Even more paradoxically, "Volver" remains humane even though it is, in the director's words, "a picture about death, a movie about how people in my town [in the La Mancha region] accept death. They can live with it in a natural way, as part of life, as a new and different presence, not a disappearance. I myself don't feel that way; I have a much more tragic sense of death. But I admire that, and I wanted to make a film about their culture of death, the way they express their vitality through it."

Because the shooting of "Volver," which translates as "to return," took the director "back to the place where I was born and grew up, a place full of memories," the experience created "a very pleasant feeling but also a very deep and profound one." And because "Volver" was so tied to his core emotions, it provided an opportunity to talk to Almodóvar about his upbringing, his initial interest in film, his way of working with actors and his directing philosophy.

Women 'making decisions'

"VOLVER" is set in a world of women because, the director says, "up to the age of 10, I was surrounded by women all the time. I was brought up by women. I almost never saw the men. We didn't have access to the male world; they were working in the fields or talking by themselves. The region was very macho, but women governed in the house. The men were the kings, but the women were presidents and ministers. The women were in the shadows, in the shadows making decisions."

Not only were these women "always active, always doing something," they were also "talking, telling stories, thinking the small children were not paying attention. Sometimes I think those stories were the reason why fiction grew inside me."

Also a big influence on Almodóvar were movies, all kinds of movies. In fact, he claims that "my dream is to be able to shoot a western, but I need someone to write a script for me." The first movies he saw as a child were "Mexican genre films, science fiction and vampire movies, very kitsch. I learned what kitsch was very early." When he was an adolescent, Almodóvar discovered the Italian neo-realists. "They were the best movies in the world at the time," he says, noting that "Volver" is in part "a tribute to the Italian movies of the 1950s, crowded with wonderful women's parts." The director especially admires Luchino Visconti's "Bellissima," starring Anna Magnani as "the best symbol of glorious motherhood," a clip of which found its way into "Volver."

Hand the man a handkerchief

ALMODóVAR is also, no surprise, a major admirer of melodramas of all kinds. "It's a genre that talks more about human beings and the human way of life," he says. "If a movie is a melodrama, it may not seem that much is happening, but what is going on is in the feelings of the characters, and that can be as powerful as an Indiana Jones movie. I like to cry when I'm in the cinema, though not in my real life; it's good therapy. And melodrama is an opportunity for actors to give wonderful performances."

Giving the performance of the film in "Volver" is Cruz, and Almodóvar talked at length about the process of working with her and his other performers.

"I am the person that knows her best and trusts her talent more than anyone else," the director says. "I know her so well as a human being and an actress that it enables me to offer her the best conditions to bloom."

One of those conditions is to prepare with the actors the same way he would on stage, by going slowly, with a lot of time for rehearsals. With all his performers, Almodóvar takes the time to "tailor the script to the actors, rewriting so that you can get the impression that no other actor in the world would be better to play it. When I directed Penélope, I was completely in love with her; she was my personal object of desire." Because Cruz's character, the undaunted Raimunda, "is not like her, three months of rehearsal were especially important. Penélope is slim, elegant, young. Raimunda is more of a country woman, earthy." As a result, the director asked Cruz to wear an artificial bottom in the film. "She is very light, she has studied ballet, her way of walking emphasizes the upper part of the body. I needed something to push her down, like gravity. Once she had the false bottom, she walked in a completely different way. A simple thing like that changed her image."

Almodóvar also asked his actress "to learn to speak in the dialect of La Mancha. We worked day by day, line by line, and once she really felt in touch with her character, she was able to go far beyond what you would expect. I am very lucky with her; she really trusts me. Whatever I asked her to do, she did, which gives me a huge responsibility not to ask for too much."

Not surprising, given the pains he takes with his actors, Almodóvar thinks patience is perhaps the key quality directors need to have.

"There are so many people between what I say and what has to be done, things have to be told and retold thousands of times, there is no other way of doing this," he says.

"The rest of the crew's participation in the movie is completely different from the director's. I invest my whole life; for them it is just another movie.

"Also, directors need common kindness. A film can turn into a sour thing without good relationships with everyone in the crew. You have to know a lot about human nature to direct" — a final smile here — "and just a little touch of talent too."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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matt35mm

Apparently "Viva Pedro" isn't the hip thing to do for college students.  But I had fun.

Tonight was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and All About My Mother.  It was my first viewing of Women, second viewing of Mother.  But it was my first time watching an Almodóvar movie in a theater, and his movies definitely suit being viewed in a theater.  The audience laughter and projected beautiful colors and visuals are lovely.

So I believe I'll be catching all eight of the movies during the next couple of weeks.

MacGuffin

Pedro Almodovar Fears Hollywood System

Pedro Almodovar says he would like to make a movie in English but is scared of losing his independence in Hollywood. "Part of my career I would like to make a movie in English," the Oscar-winning Spanish director said Saturday at a New Yorker Festival event, adding that he had been approached several times to make a film in the United States.

But he said he feared the Hollywood production system. "I was always scared of losing my independence and freedom.

"My experience, talking with other directors here, even Scorsese, I said, 'Oh my God, this is incredible. I feel more lucky than you, I mean I work in much better conditions than you.'"

Almodovar said in the past he had been interested in making films based on several novels in English, such as "The Silence of the Lambs" "The Hours," "The Accidental Tourist" and "The Human Stain." But he found out their film rights had already been sold. He would do a film in English, but with European money, he said.

Almodovar's latest film "Volver" a comic drama starring Penelope Cruz about women making do without men has been chosen to represent Spain among movies vying to be candidates for the best foreign film Oscar. It opens in the United States in November.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce its five candidates for best foreign film Jan. 23. The Oscar ceremony will be held Feb. 25.

Almodovar's "All About My Mother" won the 2000 Oscar for best foreign film and "Talk to Her" won the 2003 Oscar for best original screenplay.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Pedro Almodovar's Best Box
A collection of nine Pedro pics coming in Jan.

On January, 2007, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release The Pedro Almodovar Collection on DVD. The DVD collection of the filmmaker's greatest achievements include All About My Mother, Bad Education, Talk to Her, the Flower of My Secret, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Live Flesh, Law of Desire and Matador. It will be available for the MSRP of $117.95.

Box art is currently unavailable for this set.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

modage

i'm actually really looking forward to this.  :shock:
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Pubrick

Quote from: MacGuffin on November 22, 2006, 09:32:49 PM
Pedro Almodovar's Best Box
A collection of nine Pedro pics coming in Jan.

On January, 2007, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release The Pedro Almodovar Collection on DVD. The DVD collection of the filmmaker's greatest achievements include All About My Mother, Bad Education, Talk to Her, the Flower of My Secret, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Live Flesh, Law of Desire and Matador. It will be available for the MSRP of $117.95.

Box art is currently unavailable for this set.

if that's got any good extras, i know what i'm getting for ecksmas.
under the paving stones.