Xixax Film Forum

On the old new boards, I mentioned this guy. He's the one that did All About My Mother (which I haven't seen) and, more recently, Talk to Her (which was damn good). I like his movies. He's a funny guy who can somehow mix raunchy, weird, and cutting edge (John Waters type subject material), and it's all around a sweet, nice, happy core somewhere on the inside. Labyrinth of Passion is really good, as is Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Those are the only three Almodovar films I've seen, but I have a few in my collection that I borrowed from a friend of mine. Can't wait to find the time to watch them.

Anybody else an Almodovar fan?

i enjoyed 'all about my mother' quite a bit... very well done

Wasnt much a fan of Todo Sobre Mi Madre but I really liked Live Flesh.

Almodovar is one of the best filmmakers working today. I have so much respect for him, getting hundreds of offers from Hollywood but still remaining in his home country making films he wants to make and not selling out.

Todo Sobre mi Madre was excellent. Atame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!), Matador, Law of Desire, Tacones Lejanos-- the ones I have seen, and have loved them all. So funny, moving, poignant, beautifully shot movies.

Almodovar is one of my favorite directors, and I actually think Talk to Her comes close to PDL.* Anyone who is trying to see Chicago, give up and look for Talk to Her. And forget all that Y Tu Mama Tambien stuff...

*kind of

I can't say much more about Almodovar that hasn't been said.  His writing is some of the most creative I have seen.  

I think this has been mentioned before, but I read that when he was younger he would go to the movies with his sisters and afterwards take the basic plot and retell it in his own fashion.  His sisters, of course, loved his version better.  

He makes chick flicks and soap operas the way they should be made.

Quote from: Pawbloechick flicks and soap operas

Hmm. I dunno, when I think of those, I think of Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Anniston, and Jennifer Lopez. Sure, Almodovar focuses on women, but... assuming, hypothetically, that a chick flick can be made "the right way"... I think Almodovar is far too unsacharine, controversial, and ambiguous to come close.

Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanAlmodovar is one of my favorite directors, and I actually think Talk to Her comes close to PDL.* Anyone who is trying to see Chicago, give up and look for Talk to Her. And forget all that Y Tu Mama Tambien stuff...

*kind of

..i agree w/ you and think that Talk to Her IMO is a better film than PDL..
i base this own first viewing alone.
I blind bought TTH b/c of peter travers(who's pinion i always admired) high praise for that film and the subsequent win ffor best original screenplay Acad. award which is one of my top three catagories.(((i like originnal sh*t)...i'll let my cinephile guard done to you guys and admit that i hate reading subtitiles...i own 7 or eight foreign ffilms and love 'em .Its just i hate reading. I rather ]watch..
so, the thing that sticks in my head after watching TTH is I felt delirious after watching it..its very strong and the music is beautiful....it sweeps you in its kind of like having a buzz from drinking to me best describes the feeling you get from this film..You can't help but sit back and smile the whole time...

as for PDL.i thimnks its wonderful aslo..But NOT near the level of TTH. i believe all the accolades it received are deserving.   i like how PTA made this very original from his other films....i still believe the coolest thingds were the lennns flares and the music.....it's shot very well.

as for Almodovar ..TTH is the only film i have seen by him..and i have heard nothing but praise for his work.....could someone suggest other films ..THAT ARE THE SAME CALIBER OF QUALITY AS TALK TO HER??

I think he is one of the best directors in the planet and most of his movies are really great... I never met him personally but I know a lot of the people (actors and crew) that have worked with him and everyone says he is a genius

He is now working on a new production called Bad Education that seems it will be very good...

I really liked All About My Mother for its quality of touch to scenes and situations that could be really hoakey in other films. Also, in that movie, I felt Almodovar trying to push the limits of what kind of characters he can get you to care about this. A little of a bad idea, but All About My Mother still works for me. It may get dated later on. I kinda don't want to watch the movie again out of this fear.
Talk About Her, on the other hand, didn't have a chance to get dated. I disagreed with its decision making of story from the beginning. Its the matter of pushing the material to get you to care about characters but I just didn't care about the protaganist at all. We follow him everywhere but he's a rapist and I knew from the beginning he was. His act of child like care and attention to the woman didn't come off to me as him being sensitive, but disillusioned the way many rapists already are. Watch the Michael Jackson tv special months back and it is similiar profiles. Does this mean I couldn't care about him? Not at all. I just couldn't care about him by only following him through the seizures of his condition. I just wish the film would have been more hands off with this character and realize a lot of what he did was just the ID of this kind of rapist and exploitive. To have understood him better would have been to profile the friend and victim more and understand the benefits he had as a friend and the problems his conditions had to those he tried to love decently but failed to do so.

Almodovar is a filmmaking master. Todo Sobre Mi Madre is a masterpiece in my opinion, one of my all time faves (Cecilia Roth owns this movie) Talk to her was very good also. I enjoyed Live Flesh but still think All About My Mother is his best and will probably always be his best.

Quote from: StefenCecilia Roth owns this movie

She's amazing

I just saw Talk To Her again and I hadn't seen it since it was released in theaters. I loved loved loved it the first time and what was impressive to me is that the movie hit me even harder this second time. It was Almodovar's finest effort to date and we can only hope he just gets better with every new release. Amazing direction, script, performances and soudtrack. Amazing film. Amazing... film...

Quote from: RoyalTenenbaumI just saw Talk To Her again and I hadn't seen it since it was released in theaters. I loved loved loved it the first time and what was impressive to me is that the movie hit me even harder this second time. It was Almodovar's finest effort to date and we can only hope he just gets better with every new release. Amazing direction, script, performances and soudtrack. Amazing film. Amazing... film...

Yes, this movie is definetely better the second time around. The characters are really fleshed out well. I might go out on a limb and say Almodovar is one of the greatest screenwriters working today. His directing isn't too shabby either. All About My Mother is still my favorite though.

Quote from: StefenI might go out on a limb and say Almodovar is one of the greatest screenwriters working today.

I couldn't agree more. Nobody else could have won the best original screenplay Oscar last year, for instance. He writes great stories and superb dialogues.

Anyone have any news on his new movie Bad Education? A plot? A Release date? Last I heard it was still shooting but that was months ago and I would assume it would be in post by now.

Found this. Some of you might be interested.

Release Date: TBA 2004 (platform limited release)

Language: Spanish with English subtitles. Original title in Spain: "La Mala Educacion"

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Production Company: El Deseo S.A. (My Life Without Me, The Devil's Backbone)

Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal (Szara), Fele Martinez, Leonor Watling, Francisco Boira, Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Javier Camara, Alberto Ferreiro, Lluis Homar (Padre Manolo), Francisco Maestre, Petra Martinez

Director: Pedro Almodovar (Talk to Her, All About My Mother, Live Flesh, The Flower of My Secret, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)

Screenwriter: Pedro Almodovar (Talk to Her, All About My Mother, High Heels, The Flower of My Secret, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)

Based Upon: This film is reportedly loosely based upon director Pedro Almodovar's own experiences as a child.

Premise: This is the story of two men, one of whom is a film director, in Spain who meet again in the 1980s, 20 years after they attended a Catholic school together as children during the time of Franco's rule in the 1960s. The film will flash back to extended sequences from their youths (in addition to sequences in between, in the 1970s), and will also include a movie-within-the-movie sequence.

Filming: Production started on June 17th, 2003 in Valencia and Madrid in Spain on a budget of $8 million. Pedro Almodovar was originally hoping to start filming in the spring of 2001, but he had to postpone the project due to problems with casting (he did Talk to Her next instead).

Genre: Drama, Foreign, Historical, Teen

Director's Journal: ClubCultura.com (English)

Official Site: LaMalaEducacion.com

Message Board: Share your thoughts on our "Bad Education" Message Board


http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hp&cf=prev&id=1808473409

Sounds very interesting.

yeah it's gonna rock. dude's in his prime.

Sorry for bumping this. But there is a review over at aintitcoolnews on bad education from a guy in spain. Says it doesn't have any of Almodovars heartbreaking women characters this time, primarily its a movie about men I guess, but you all know aint it cool so take it with a grain of salt. Still interesting nonetheless. It still seems to be a long ways off, but its shaping up to be a very intriguing film, would you expect anything else from Almodovar?

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=17112

i saw my first Almodovar tonight...Talk to Her.  My God, what an incredible movie, i absolutely loved it, and now i must rent all of his movies and watch them before the week's end.  Are all of his films framed so beautifully?

Quote from: puddnannersi saw my first Almodovar tonight...Talk to Her.  My God, what an incredible movie, i absolutely loved it, and now i must rent all of his movies and watch them before the week's end.  Are all of his films framed so beautifully?

You will not be dissapointed. He is an amazing filmmaker and an even better writer. All of his films are beautiful.

Has anyone read the script for "The Paperboy"? I actually just found out about this the way day, but one of the drafts is credited with Almodovar and Peter Dexter.

It's an english language script which they finished in `99.

Quote from: puddnannersi saw my first Almodovar tonight...Talk to Her.  My God, what an incredible movie, i absolutely loved it, and now i must rent all of his movies and watch them before the week's end.  Are all of his films framed so beautifully?

The thing is... although he's made some trully amazing films, the one you've seen is the best Almodovar ever. Although you will not be disappointed, I don't think you'll see a better movie than Talk To Her.

Quote from: El ScorchozHas anyone read the script for "The Paperboy"? I actually just found out about this the way day, but one of the drafts is credited with Almodovar and Peter Dexter.

It's an english language script which they finished in `99.

I didn't know he had got to the point of writing the script, but it was discussed a lot that he'd do that after All About My Mother. And it would be a Jan de Bont production...  :shock:

Quote from: RoyalTenenbaum

Quote from: puddnannersi saw my first Almodovar tonight...Talk to Her.  My God, what an incredible movie, i absolutely loved it, and now i must rent all of his movies and watch them before the week's end.  Are all of his films framed so beautifully?

The thing is... although he's made some trully amazing films, the one you've seen is the best Almodovar ever. Although you will not be disappointed, I don't think you'll see a better movie than Talk To Her.

I don't know. I think talk to her is his second best. All About My Mother is probably his best in my opinion, it has so much going on in it.

I think Almodovar is one of the best directors at switching genres in midscene. He can go from melodrama to black comedy, to straight drama in 3 mins and get away with it. Thats why I love him.

I love all his films.

Almodovar faces slander suit on Spain election comments

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MADRID -- Spain's outgoing Popular Party said Thursday that it has filed a suit against Pedro Almodovar for slander, citing statements the director made at a news conference to promote his latest film, "Bad Education." The remarks -- made Tuesday -- came in the wake of last week's terrorist bombing of rush-hour commuter trains and the elevation of the Socialist Party in general elections, unseating the governing Popular Party from office. Almodovar announced at the news conference -- attended by national and international media -- that Spain had been on the verge of a coup d'etat on the Saturday night before the Sunday election. "This was the price that fell in blood on the head of Mr Aznar," Spain's leading film director told the news conference, welcoming the political sea-change.

Have anyone read any of the books on Pedro Almodovar? If so which would you reccomend?

i saw my first Almodovar tonight...All About My Mother.  it was different.  the movie was interesting and (mostly) unpredictable, but maybe thats just because i didnt know anything about it unlike most movies where i go in knowing way too much.  so, that gave the film an advantage for the first hour or so of wanting to see where it would go.  by the end i wasnt sure i liked it that much, although it had some interesting elements.  i'll stick with scorsese for now, although i'm going to see Talk to Her soon before Bad Education comes here.  going in with an open mind...

Quote from: themodernage02maybe thats just because i didnt know anything about it unlike most movies where i go in knowing way too much.

that's a good thing.

watched Talk To Her tonight.  i really cant see how this is the movie i heard about all year for 2002.  i just didnt like it.    seems like almodovar has some of the right ingredients for how to make a good movie but he just hasnt gotten the recipe right yet (atleast for me, for his last two films).  while i can watch these and admire their unpredictability, i just havent connected with either.  the characters in this were inexplicable?  why did whatsisname befriend the other guy so strongly after only meeting him a few times?  how could that guy give up on his girlfriend because the old boyfriend said they had gotten back together.  although i did enjoy all about my mother more than this i really cannot see the massive appeal of this film.  when i want to watch a movie where a pervert fucks a coma patient, ill put on kill bill.  i liked the silent movie re-creation the best although it was bizarre.

Quote from: El ScorchozI think Almodovar is one of the best directors at switching genres in midscene. He can go from melodrama to black comedy, to straight drama in 3 mins and get away with it. Thats why I love him.

i guess i can see that being his appeal, but thats just not enough for me.

More comments on Talk to Her: http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=115&highlight=hable+con+ella

yeah i am actually going to have to go with GT on this one.

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..............

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

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.

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?'"

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."

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).

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....

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

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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."

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.

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.

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.

i'm actually really looking forward to this.  :shock:

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.

Almodovar eyes 'Piel' as next pic
Cruz likely to star
Source: Variety

MADRID — Pedro Almodovar is focusing on vengeance drama "La Piel que habito" as his next film, with the idea of casting Penelope Cruz in a starring role.

A final version of the screenplay has still to be finished. Until that happens and Almodovar feels a gut necessity to move into production, there's no absolute certainty when or if "Piel" will roll, or just how the screenplay will turn out, allowing a lede role for Cruz. But at the European Film Awards in Warsaw this weekend, Almodovar talked enthusiastically about "Piel" as being likely to be his next film.

The movie is a long-mooted Almodovar project, an adaptation of the 1995 novel "Mygale" by Thierry Jonquet, about the hideous revenge a plastic surgeon exacts on men who have raped his young daughter.

The large screen transfer will only retain one scene from the novel.

Almodovar's "Piel" would be a departure for the helmer, bearing little similarity to "Volver" and Almodovar's life, the director told the Spanish press.

The film is "immensely tough and complicated, targeted at select audiences, the kind of film that's discomfiting and doesn't tend to win many awards," Almodovar said.

The project had originally been talked up as teaming Cruz with Antonio Banderas, but the male lede still has to be cast.

Cruz for her part told Variety she would be "absolutely delighted" to play in another Almodovar film.

A decision about whether to move into production, and so cast, could be taken in February or March next year, said Pedro Almodovar's producer, Agustin Almodovar. "First of all we like to confirm the project ready, then we confirm the cast," he said.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fec1.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2FB000EAT24G.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V34056377_.jpg&hash=592f31ef98264993cc41215faec8077d027a0f70)

This box is goddamn greater than that whole other forum in my books.  Which haven't been well kept, truly, as I just missed theater showings of Law of Desire and Matador and will soon miss The Exterminating Angel as well.

Inside Move: Cruz, Almodovar to reteam
Thesp to star in helmer's next pic
Source: Variety

MADRID -- Penelope Cruz is expected to take the femme lead in what will most likely be Pedro Almodovar's next pic, "La Piel que habito."

Almodovar announced the project in early December. At that stage, it was probable that Cruz, Academy-nommed for her lead role in Almodovar's "Volver," would have a part in the film.

Based on Gallic author Thierry Jonquet's 1995 novel "Mygale," long-mooted Almodovar project concerns a plastic surgeon who exacts a hideous revenge on his daughter's rapists.

"The role is far darker" than the feisty heroine Cruz played in "Volver," the helmer's producer brother Agustin Almodovar told Daily Variety, confirming that the screenplay for the Spanish-language "Piel" has been rewritten.

"It's 70%-80% certain to be Pedro's next," said Agustin Almodovar. "But Pedro always works on several ideas at the same time, and he has a second screenplay on the go as well," he added.

With the Almodovars able to kickstart production without awaiting distribution contracts, final greenlight will come from Pedro Almodovar.

Almodovar Joins Thousands in War Protest

Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar joined tens of thousands of people in a march through the Spanish capital on Saturday to protest the war in Iraq and to demand the closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Chanting "No to War" and "The People of Madrid with the People of Iraq," the protesters marched along a 2 1/2-mile route from central Cibeles Plaza to Atocha Square. Organizers estimated the crowd at 400,000, but eyewitnesses put the attendance at less 100,000. Police did not give an estimate.

Other rallies were held around Spain, with some 2,000 gathering in Barcelona and 500 taking part in Seville, according to news reports.

Almodovar told the private Europa Press news agency he was protesting "the barbarities they have been committing in Iraq for the past four years."

"We're here for peace and for the closure of Guantanamo because it is a disgrace for civilization," he added.

Spain was the scene of major anti-war protests in the run-up to and during the first months of the war, with demonstrations in Barcelona and Madrid attracting more than 1 million people apiece.

Former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was one of the strongest supporters of the U.S. invasion Iraq in 2003. His party was voted out of office in March 2004, days after 191 people were killed in bomb attacks claimed by Islamic radicals to avenge the presence of the country's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The country's new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, immediately withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq, claiming it was an illegal war.

Elsewhere Saturday, thousands crossed the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to rally near the Pentagon. More than 3,000 people protested the war in two separate demonstrations in Istanbul, Turkey, and 1,000 people marched in Athens, Greece.

Almodovar fixes on new project
Cruz would have starring role
Source: Variety

MADRID — Pedro Almodovar is focusing on a new original screenplay as his possible next film, with a starring role for Penelope Cruz.

The film, if finally made, would also topline Blanca Portillo, who played kind neighbor Agustina in Almodovar's "Volver," and Lluis Homar, who appeared in his "Bad Education."

The long-mooted vengeance tale "La Piel que habito," an adaptation of French novel "Mygale," has been put aside, at least temporarily.

"I need to be completely sure about it," Almodovar said of "Piel," talking to the Spanish press at the premiere of the stage version of "All About My Mother," put on at London's Old Vic theater under the artistic directorship of Kevin Spacey.

"The new story has characters from a universe which is familiar to me and makes me feel more involved," Almodovar is quoted as saying.

He added that the story features five or six key roles and one is earmarked for Cruz.

Also at the presentation — she took a cameo in Almodovar's "All About My Mother" — Cruz confirmed her desire to play the role. "Pedro's call is the one I'm waiting for most." She also had a lede role earmarked for her in "Piel."

Not that there's a 100% certainty that either the new project or "Piel" will be Almodovar's next movie. The Spanish director likes to have several projects on the go simultaneously.

Almodovar is able to kickstart production without awaiting distribution contracts. A final greenlight for a project only comes when he feels a gut necessity to make a film.

Almodovar embraces 'Abrazos'
Pic to be shot in style of 50s film noir
Source: Variety

MADRID — Pedro Almodovar's next film will be "Los abrazos rotos," a "four-way tale of amour fou, shot in the style of '50s American film noir at its most hard-boiled," in Almodovar's words, and toplining Penelope Cruz, Blanca Portillo and Lluis Homar.

"Abrazos" will go into pre-production in the New Year. Almodovar aims to shoot in spring, capturing the season's light. The film will partly shoot in Madrid.

El Deseo, the Madrid production house owned by Pedro and producer brother Agustin Almodovar, will 100% produce the film. Budget will come in around $15 million.

Echoing traditional financing practices on Almodovar movies, the brothers aim to pre-sell a small clutch of foreign territories to longterm distributors of Almodovar film, said Agustin Almodovar.

Featuring characters who belong to the world of film, "Abrazos" is set in the '90s and current day.

It will mix stylistic references such as Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place" and Vincente Minnelli's "The Bad and the Beautiful" with signature Almodovar themes: "Fate, the mystery of creation, guilt, unscrupulous power, the eternal search of fathers for sons, and sons for fathers," Pedro Almodovar told Daily Variety.

Just as "Volver," a contempo drama, featured Cruz with an updated Italian neo-realist look, "Abrazos" will present her in a contemporary version of classic Hollywood heroines.

"Penelope (Cruz) will exchange the era's aprons, cardigans and the hairdos for an up-dated look but one that mixes the transparent turbulence of Gene Tierney and the mistreated, challenging beauty of Linda Darnell in Otto Preminger's 'Fallen Angel,' " Almodovar explained, talking about points of departure for the film.

Almodovar is currently completing the screenplay. "Like some of my other films — 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' — this film came easily, in one go," Almodovar said.

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Almodovar embraces 'Hugs' as next film
Source: Hollywood Reporter

MADRID -- Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has decided to switch projects and will next shoot the film noir "Broken Hugs," starring Penelope Cruz.

The Oscar-winning director made the announcement Tuesday at the presentation of EMI's "B.S.O. Almodovar," a CD compilation of 29 songs from the director's films.

According to Almodovar, "Broken Hugs" (Los Abrazos Rotos) will feature Cruz, Blanca Portillo and Lluis Homar.

"As for Penelope, I'm going to delve into one of her little-known facets," Almodovar said of the Spanish actress, who was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her role in his most recent film, "Volver." "This won't be a comedy, but humor will be present."

Almodovar, always reluctant to give details about his films in advance, said he will start preparation on the film in January. The script, which he said is his longest ever, tells of a "crazy love."

Previously, Almodovar had said his next film would be "El Piel Que Habito."

Almodovar, SPC team for 10th time
'Broken Embraces' stars Penelope Cruz
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Sony Pictures Classics, renewing its longtime ties to Pedro Almodovar, has acquired North American rights to the writer-director's latest film, "Broken Embraces," starring Penelope Cruz.

Cruz, who received a best actress Oscar nomination for Almodovar's previous film, "Volver," will play a provincial actress in the movie, which has been shooting in Madrid and the Canary Islands. Working from his own screenplay, Almodovar has described the movie as an amour fou involving four characters (played by Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lluis Homar and Jose Luis Gomez) in the style of a hard-boiled, '50s American film noir. The cast also includes Rossy de Palma, Kiti Manver, Chus Lampreave, Lola Duenas and Angela Molina, who will play Cruz's mother.

Produced by the director's brother, Augustin Almodovar, "Embraces" is the 10th Almodovar film that SPC has handled. In addition to "Volver," SPC was the domestic distributor for Almodovar's foreign-language Oscar winner "All About My Mother," his best original screenplay Oscar winner "Talk to Her" and foreign-language nominee "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

SPC brokered the deal with the Almodovars' production company El Deseo. Universal International Studio, Uni's foreign production arm, is co-financing the film with El Deseo. Uni's Focus is handling worldwide sales outside of Spain, France, the U.K., Benelux and Switzerland.

Pedro Almodovar on 'Verge' of TV series
Filmmaker teaming with Fox TV Studios to adapt 1988 hit
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar is venturing into television with a series adaptation of his first international hit, the Oscar-nominated 1988 feature "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

Fox TV Studios is developing the English-language hourlong project and has tapped Mimi Schmir to pen the pilot script. Almodovar and Schmir are exec producing.

The movie, starring Carmen Maura and featuring Antonio Banderas, was inspired by 1950s Hollywood comedies. Featuring Almodovar's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and fast-paced action, it chronicles a two-day period in the life of a voice actress who has been abandoned by her lover and gets in a series of comedic situations while frantically trying to track him down.

FtvS -- which boasts an international management team, including president Emiliano Calemzuk, an Argentine, and senior vp Diego Suarez, a Spaniard -- acquired the rights to "Women" attracted by its pedigree, subject matter and international appeal.

"Pedro Almodovar is unarguably one of the great filmmakers of our time, and this movie overflows with rich, funny, complex characters and relationships -- that isn't a bad place to start," FtvS executive vp David Madden said.

Almodovar will be very involved in "Women," which will be developed with an eye for the international market.

"We know that the Almodovar brand will be meaningful both internationally and domestically," Madden said.

FtvS produces drama series for U.S. cable networks, including "Burn Notice" and "Saving Grace," as well as lower-budget series made with international co-producing partners, including "Mental" and "Persons Unknown."

Schmir, an Almodovar fan, already has mined the arena of women in midlife crisis in a novel she is writing based on her "Hot Flashes" blog.

The "Women" series "will be a suburban drama about a group of women who have known each other for a long time, perhaps from college, who are in the middle of their lives and looking at the second half of their lives," Schmir said.

Like the movie, the series will feature a fair amount of humor. Schmir also is planning to pay homage to the movie by keeping some elements, like the film's ongoing gag of unsuspecting visitors to the actress' apartment being knocked out by sleeping pill-laden gazpacho she had intended for her philandering lover.

Almodovar, who won a writing Oscar for "Talk to Her," will premiere his next movie, "Broken Embraces," next month at the Festival de Cannes.

Schmir, whose series credits include "Grey's Anatomy" and "Shark," is repped by WMA and Mosaic.

The deal for Almodovar's "Women" comes on the heels of FtvS aligning with another well-known international filmmaker, "Internal Affairs" director Andrew Lau, who inked a first-look deal with the studio.

Antonio Banderas in Almodovar's 'Skin'
Pair will work together for the first time since 'Tie Me Up'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

MADRID -- Antonio Banderas will star in Pedro Almodovar's next film, marking one of the most anticipated film reunions in Spanish cinema more than 20 years after the actor starred in "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down."

"La Piel que Habito" (literally translated: "The Skin I Live In") will shoot this summer over 10 weeks in a studio in Spain and other unannounced locations.

"The film will be a terror film, without screams or scares," Almodovar told the Spanish daily El Pais. "It's difficult to define and although it comes close to the terror genre -- something that appeals to me that I've never done -- I won't respect any of its rules. It's the harshest film I've ever written and Banderas' character is brutal."

Almodovar had not planned to announce the project yet, but Banderas jumped the gun in an interview published in the Russian daily "Kommersant," while attending the first St. Petersburg Film Festival.

"Antonio is impatient," Almodovar told El Pais in an exclusive interview. "And I understand it. He had to push back his return to Broadway to do the film and he also had to reject other important projects. And despite the law of silence we had imposed on him, he couldn't keep quiet any longer."

Almodovar was not available for further comment.

While the rest of the cast is yet to be announced, the director confirmed it will not include his muse of recent years, Penelope Cruz.

"As the story has developed, I don't see her in that role," he said in the interview. "But that's not a problem because I'm going to continue seeing her in other roles. I have a lot of stories I want to shoot. Without going any further, I have four scripts in development in my drawer."

"Skin" narrates a plastic surgeon's revenge on the man who raped his daughter.

Almodovar said he had rewritten the script, based on Thierry Jonquet's novel "Tarantula," nine times.

Before launching his career in Hollywood, Spanish actor Banderas starred in some of Almodovar's most emblematic early works like "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," "The Law of Desire," "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down" and "Matador."

"He's exactly the same as when he left," Almodovar told El Pais, referring to his chemistry with Banderas 20 years after finishing their last film together. "From the minute he walked in, it was as if we had just finished "Tie Me Up" the night before."

Almodovar said he could have continued in the vein of "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down," where Banderas played a marginalized young man crazed by his love for a woman, but has chosen to go a different route.

"I could have continued with a puerile guy with an overpowering power of seduction, but this guy (in "Skin") is a real psychopath and Antonio, at 50, is perfect for this exercise is something so different from anything I've done until now."

A spokeswoman for Almodovar's production company El Deseo said she couldn't give any more details, but that the film is in active preproduction.

SPC scores Almodovar's 'Skin'
Gothic tales stars Antonio Banderas
Source: Variety

Sony Pictures Classics has snagged North American rights to the latest Pedro Almodovar pic, "The Skin that I Inhabit" toplined by Antonio Banderas.

A gothic tale about a father out to avenge the death of his daughter, "Skin" began production in August. Elena Anaya ("Talk to Her") and Marisa Paredes ("The Devil's Backbone") also star in the movie, based on Thierry Jonquet's novel "Mygale."

"Skin," produced by Pedro and Augustin Almodovar's production company El Deseo, will be the tenth Almodovar film released by SPC, following a string of prior films including "Broken Embraces," "Volver" and "Bad Education."

Pedro Almodovar To Next Tackle A Biopic Of Italian Singer 'Mina'
Source: The Playlist

As Pedro Almodovar sculptures his latest film "The Skin I Live In" in hopes of finishing a cut in time for its inevitable première at Cannes, word has already surfaced of his follow-up plans.

According to several reports that have been circling for a while, Almodovar's next project will be a biopic titled "Mina" about the life of the Italian singer of the same name. Based on a novel by Paolo Limiti—who worked a lyricist for the singer—the film is set to depict Mina's life as a talented singer who stirred up controversy when she had a child with a married man in turn forcing her to withdraw from the public eye in the late 1970s. Though early discussions of the picture circulated as far back as last May, Screen Daily has announced that the film will indeed be Almodovar's next feature.

Seems pretty straight forward for an Almodovar flick, but as with the rest of his films, expect the seasoned director to have more up his sleeve than one would imagine. Mina is expected to feature Almodavar veteran, Marisa Paredes ("All About My Mother", "Talk to Her", "The Skin I Live In") in the lead as the controversial musician.

His current feature, "The Skin I Live In", is expected to finish post-production in March with a release to follow in September, though, as mentioned above, the film will more than likely make its first splash in France come May. Anticipation is high on this one with Antonio Banderas back once again with the director that helped make him a star.

Best poster of 2011. Reminds me of something you would see in an encyclopedia at your grandmas house. Can't wait for this one.

i have no idea what to expect. almodovar has kinda lost steam recently and i wonder if making the same movie over and over again has finally worn him down.. kinda like hitchcock.

so if this is no good maybe his next film the biopic will be his comeback.

Pedro Almodóvar Says His Next Project Will Likely Be In English
Source: modage wrote this

¡No lo hace, Pedro! Pedro Almodóvar may have just finished up his latest, "The Skin I Live In," but enterprising journalists in Cannes are already digging for details about his follow-up. The Spanish director's fifth film in the last decade has received mixed reviews, with our reviewer calling it "uniquely beautiful and distinctively imperfect," but that hasn't stopped us from being just as excited to check it out for ourselves. Almodóvar is one of world cinema's most distinctive voices, having tackled every genre from comedy to melodrama to horror, usually switching between several of these in the same film. Despite success all around the world, including winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2003 for "Talk To Her," he's hasn't yet been lured to Hollywood. While he isn't signing up for the latest Katherine Heigl rom-com, he has been working on an English language project. Speaking with Indiewire, the director said, "I have a few different projects right now and one of them is in English -for the first time. It's based on a story and it's pretty far along actually, but I don't want to talk about it too much right now because everyone will keep asking me about it." While we'd follow Almodóvar anywhere, we're having a hard time picturing the directors extremely stylized vision working in, say, LA? It's possible that he's describing "Mina," the biopic of the controversial Italian singer we reported on a few months back. AP also reports that he's writing the script in Spanish but has spoken with an American writer about doing the English version. While switching to English has been the kiss of death for many foreign auteurs (remember "My Blueberry Nights"?), we can think of a couple directors who have successfully crossed over. (Ang Lee comes to mind.) Still, it seems like a shaky proposition to us, though we'll surely find out more about the project in the coming months. "The Skin I Live In" opens stateside in November (with a likely North American premiere at the NYFF before that).

Quote from: MacGuffin on May 21, 2011, 04:01:33 PM
Source: modage wrote this

Haha, I totally did! Watch for an Aronofsky one coming soon.  :yabbse-grin:

NYFF: Pedro Almodóvar Told Antonio Banderas To Watch Cary Grant Movies To Prep For 'Skin I Live In'
The Director Reveals He's Not Doing A Biopic On Mina; Tension, Twists & More From The Team Behind The Film
via The Playlist

DEFINITE SPOILERS

Pedro Almodóvar crafts a creepy Frankenstein-esque tale of rape, revenge, and survival in "The Skin I Live In" – a polarizing film which is one of his most ambitious yet. Because the movie features an unexpected twist halfway through the film, discussing it becomes difficult – how do you debate the themes, the issues and the meaning without giving it all away? We leave that task to the esteemed director and his cast that includes Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya, who hit NYFF this week to present this latest concoction, a tale unlike anything Almodóvar has put on the big screen before. Covering everything from the twist in the movie (don't worry, we won't reveal it here), the reason why Antonio Banderas had to watch Cary Grant movies to prepare for the film, and the themes of identity that run through the story, the trio were happy to discuss in detail the quirky, provocative and unforgettable film.

1. Almodóvar first read the story on a plane – and took flight with it.
While looking for a bit of light reading for a one-hour plane trip, Almodóvar came across a trashy hardboiled noir novella by Thierry Jonquet called "Mygale," also known as "Tarantula," also known as "The Skin I Live In," depending on which language you read it in. After reading the story of a plastic surgeon's revenge against a man who raped his daughter, Almodóvar decided to transform the story into a little something extra. "I got the idea that this man was trying to create a new skin, and when the skin became the big idea, I was abandoning the original idea of the book," he said. "I was just creating something different. We have the rights, so it's good to mention the book, I was inspired by the book, but I created my own way."

Consequently, Almodóvar asked his cast not to read the original story, which was darker in some areas. (A woman isn't just kept prisoner, she's pimped out as a prostitute; a man doesn't just commit rape, he unknowingly rapes his own friend, whom he doesn't recognize). "Pedro first told me about the story in 2002," Banderas said. "And he said, 'Don't read the book. It's not going to help you. It's going to take you in a different direction, and I don't want that. I just want you to use the material we have, and I don't want you to get confused by information that you can't use.'" Of course, now that the film is completed, Banderas is "very curious" and plans to read it right away.


2. Pedro Almodóvar says the twist gets more satisfying on subsequent viewings
While elements of the surgeon's revenge have changed and take on broader meaning, one detail of the revenge is the same in the book and the film – and one we won't give away just yet. Suffice to say, like "The Crying Game," "The Skin I Live In" bears repeat viewing just to get one of the characters straight. "There are two movies here," Almodóvar said. "There's the first time you see it, and the second time you see it, when you are familiar with the plot, with the twist of the plot, and you can enjoy it more. I invite you to see it a second time."

Banderas explained, "The whole entire first hour of the movie is a question without an answer. You don't know anything about why this woman is there as a prisoner. What did she do? You're mostly learning about the doctor. You see how he's lost his wife. You learn that his daughter is in a mental institution. You start feeling for him. But then Pedro takes the rug out from under your feet, and says, 'OK, but look at it from here.'" When the point of view shifts, Banderas says, "then the movie takes off."

3. In casting the movie Almodóvar wanted a reunion with an old friend – and possibly also found a new muse.
When the director thought about who should play his central characters – which include the surgeon Dr. Robert and his prisoner Vera – he immediately knew who he wanted, since he had worked with them before, and in a sense, had discovered them both. Banderas got his start as a young actor in a series of five Almodóvar films in the 1980s—"Labyrinth of Passion," "Law of Desire," "Matador," "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" – before Hollywood beckoned. But the two hadn't collaborated in 22 years.

"At the beginning of the process, I thought about Antonio," Almodóvar said. "I talked to him at Cannes. I went to L.A. and talked to him. And let's say when I decided I was ready to make this movie, I knew I wanted him. I wanted someone who was 50, who was attractive, and who doesn't give the feeling of looking at him that he's a psycho."

As for the part of the psycho's prisoner, Almodóvar remembered an actress he had given a small part to in 2002's "Talk to Her" – Elena Anaya.  Back then, he called her asked her to do the part as a favor.

"I said, 'Of course,' because I'd play even a microphone for him, I'd be so happy," Anaya recalled. "It was like biting the forbidden apple to act for him, so delicious." Ten years later, he called her again. "He was offering me this amazing character, so complex, so many layers, for such an amazing story," she said. "He wanted to tell a story that is much farther than he's ever gone, so we follow him, of course."

"I really love her," Almodóvar said. "I'm sure that I'm going to work with her again." Could she be his next muse, given his penchant to collaborate with actresses over a long period of time? "I hope so!" he said. "I'll sign up tomorrow!" she said.

Banderas is game to team up with Almodóvar again as well. "I know for a fact that we will work together again," he said. "I don't know when or in what context, [but] we will. I personally would love to make a comedy with him again. I was telling him in the middle of this movie, 'Pedro, we need to laugh like in the old days! Let's do something light and fun.'"

4. Almodóvar told Banderas to watch the iconic noir "Le Cercle Rouge" to help prepare for the film.
Despite their long history, Almodóvar wanted something out of Banderas he hadn't seen before – something cold and calculating, but not obvious. "For this character, I wanted him to hide everything," Almodóvar said. "No emotion in the face. For me, the movies I have with Antonio couldn't be better, but I wanted to explore something we didn't do in the '80s. I wanted him with a surgeon's precision, a kind of tone we didn't do before. Something that was the opposite of Antonio himself."

This was no easy task. Banderas said he struggled to throw away his usual style and techniques and to make his face a mask. "This can make you very insecure," he said, "because you're starting from zero, from scratch."

Even things that Banderas didn't pay as much attention to before were thrown into focus – such as the position of his eyebrows. "It's the quantum physics of acting," he said. "Pedro would say, 'Don't do that with your eyebrow.' 'Don't do what?' 'When you pronounce that word, your eyebrow moves. You did it three times.' I wouldn't have even known about that, those little details."

To help Banderas get into character, Almodóvar pointed him to chilly classic French crime flick "Le Cercle Rouge" with Alain Delon, noir films starring Robert Mitchum, and anything with Cary Grant. (For Anaya, he asked her to watch Hitchcock, "Double Indemnity" and pre-code classic "Baby Face").

"He wanted me to reflect back to a type of acting from the '40s and '50s, so we played the game like that," Banderas said. "The idea was how after you discover someone's a serial killer, everyone always says on the news, 'Oh no, he was so nice and charming, so polite and well-mannered,' and yet he had five people mutilated in the fridge for five years. These characters have to melt into society and be undetectable."

5. After finally seeing the movie at TIFF, Melanie Griffith understood why her husband was tense for three months when making the movie.
Getting into character was difficult. So was getting out. After finally seeing "The Skin I Live In" at the Toronto International Film Festival, Banderas' wife Melanie Griffith was pensive the whole night, even after attending a few parties. Then he said, they had the following conversation:

Melanie: Now I understand.
Antonio: What do you understand?
Melanie: Now I understand certain behaviors you've had for the last three months.
Antonio: You can't be serious?
Melanie: I'm not saying you're a bad person or you want to cut somebody's parts off, but there was something you were carrying these past three months and I didn't know where it was coming from. Now I do.

"That really scared the shit out of me!" Banderas said. "I wasn't conscious of how the film affected me, but it stays with you. Even when you think you're fine. I was kind of creepy, and I didn't know it."

"This movie remains in your gut," Anaya agreed. "How bad people can be. How crazy people can be."

Still, Banderas said, he knows where his character ends and he begins. "I have daughters. If someone did this to one of my daughters, yes, I might take revenge and take an axe and cut his head off," the actor said. "But to do this for every day for six years? This is something deeper than revenge. There's something suicidal in the action he's taken. Pedro might disagree."

6. The movie has a message: "Beauty is only skin deep, identity goes even deeper."
Issues of identity are key to "The Skin I Live In." Almodóvar wants us first to think about how our skin – our largest organ – is not fixed but malleable. "Up until recently, our skin has been a way of identifying us," he said. "It says what race we are. It can betray whether we slept badly. It's supposed to be a mirror of the soul, but I don't think we can say that anymore."

Plastic surgery is the primary reason why, and both Banderas and Anaya are concerned with how prevalent it's getting, especially in Hollywood. "Unfortunately, plastic surgery is nothing but a symptom. It's not the real problem," Banderas said. "The problem is in society, which is heavily pushing everyone to be better than they are on the exterior. And there is something sick about it, because they don't only want you to look more beautiful, but also look younger, and that is against nature. And so we are always trying to bend nature."

"Most plastic surgery is going a little far," Anaya said. "We live in a society that doesn't accept growing up, getting older. And that's anti-natural. All the time we are being pushed by commercials to be young, to be beautiful, so people start changing their faces, their skin, and that should be forbidden. Sometimes with the photographs , they change your face, and it's like, 'Thank you, but don't do it.' I hope to have a face full of wrinkles when I get old."

Anaya's character's flawless on-screen skin wouldn't be possible in the real world, surgery aside. "You cannot create that kind of beauty in the real world," Banderas said. "Maybe in thirty years, it will be possible." (It took a lot of lighting tricks and post-production magic, Anaya said, so her skin looked baby new.)

Almodóvar is also concerned with the rapid progress made in the fields of transgenesis and genetic modification, and not just because he always gains weight when he eats GMO food on trips to the U.S.!  "Most of the food here is transgenic," he said. "And while transgenesis has its pluses, the diseases that disappear, we're moving beyond curing disease and into determining the characteristics a human being can be born with. There are limits placed on transgenesis by the scientific community, but if they're not already, they will be skipped over, because science is not something that is going to limit itself."

The director predicts that eventually, science will create an artificial, synthetic human being, at which point "our relationship to creation, to God as creator, will change drastically. I don't know if this is good or bad, but it is scary."

7. Long a champion of transexuality, in "The Skin I Live,"  Almodóvar uses it as a gruesome punishment.
Almodóvar has featured transgendered persons and defended issues of transexuality in many of his films, but this is the first instance in which sex reassignment is forced. "Of course, surgery can save lives, and make people feel comfortable in a body that didn't feel like their own," Anaya said.

"But this is the opposite of what's going on in this film," Almodóvar said. "Transexuality is used as a punishment here, and it's hard to imagine anything worse."

Almodóvar said attitudes about transsexuals have changed drastically since he first addressed the issue on film, because they're no longer thought of as "freakish figures," at least in Spain. In his brother's apartment building, a family invited him to a party to meet their "new daughter" – because their 18-year-old son had a sex change operation and was now female.  "This girl was a boy my brother used to see go up and down the stairs," the director said. "And now the boy is being presented as a girl, by the family, and not as a strange thing."

As a side note – the dilators given to a character in the film, in increasing sizes so to gradually enlarge a new vaginal opening post-op, are the real deal. "That was one of the more horrific sequences to shoot," Almodóvar said. "I told Antonio, 'You have to tell her how to insert them like a doctor, very cold, very mechanical.' And those things are completely and absolutely real. You cannot and should not invent that."

8. Banderas has two more sci-fi films on the way that he's making back-to-back
Next up for Banderas is a sci-fi film called "Automata," about robots in a future world which start to develop a consciousness, leading to a possible war. "It's not a Hollywood movie," he cautioned. "It's about singularity. The robots don't jump from building to building. They're just supposed to be performing tasks, but they break the second law famous in [Isaac] Asimov's world, and they're better than us, so they take over."

Anaya is not joining Banderas in Automata, however. "You know, this is something we need to erase from IMDB!" Anaya said. "This is a mistake on there. A friend of mine gave the script to Antonio, he loved the script so much he's also going to produce it, but I'm not in the film. I would love to, though."

Besides "Automata," Banderas is prepping his next directorial effort, called "Solo." "I'm doing these two movies back to back," he said. "Solo is a reflection on solitude and war environments. It's the story of a lieutenant colonel from the Spanish army who comes home from Pakistan and he's messed up about events that happened to him in the war, during an experiment. Ultimately, something's happening in his head."

9. Almodóvar is planning an English language movie, but not a Mina biopic.
Like Anaya, Almodóvar wants IMDB to make a correction. Despite previous reports, he has no plans to direct a biopic about the Italian singer Mina. "That is something that someone invented, and it wasn't me," he said. "My office called IMDB and said it was not true, and Mina's son was in contact to say it wasn't true, either. I like her very much, but I don't have this project at all. I've never even talked about it, but do you know how many people ask me about it?"

However, Almodóvar is planning to proceed with another previously reported project – an English language film. It won't be his next film – he's choosing one of four others in development first – but perhaps his second one.

"My English is very poor, but I wrote the script in Spanish, and after the promotion of 'The Skin I Live In,' I'll try and look for an English writer," he said. "It happens here, in America, with American characters. They are not Latin people living here. So I need a good writer to finish the script in English. I don't want to give away any details, because it's in the process right now, but I really like the subject, so it's a real possibility. Just don't tell anyone!"

OH MY!  Don't read that at all if you haven't seen it!  It's very spoilery!

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Pedro Almodóvar Launches Career Anthology With L.A. Book Signing
Source: THR

The Spanish director will sign copies of "The Pedro Almodóvar Archives" Nov. 9 at the Taschen store in Beverly Hills.

Pedro Almodóvar, the acclaimed Spanish director, is launching The Pedro Almodóvar Archives, a new book chronicling his career, at a special book signing at the Taschen Store in Beverly Hills on November 9 at 7 pm.  The book will be published by Taschen in December.  During his appearance, Almodóvar will sign a limited number of early print copies, about 150, to those who pre-order through the Taschen Beverly Hills store.

Almodóvar gave Taschen unprecedented access to his personal archives to produce the book, including many never-before-published images and personal photos.  

Almodóvar personally wrote the captions for the photos in the book.  Prominent Spanish authors contributed short essays about each of his films.  In total, The Pedro Almodóvar Archives contain over 600 images, including some from his new film The Skin I Live In and a never seen film strip from Volver.

Almodóvar 's new film The Skin I Live In is a psychosexual thriller about a plastic surgeon who has unique plans for a woman he has imprisoned in his basement.  Almodóvar calls it "a horror story without screams or frights."

The movie reunites Almodóvar with Antonio Banderas.  Although the two have not worked together in nearly two decades, Banderas made his name with appearances in Labyrinth of Passion, Law of Desire and Matador.

Almodóvar's films include Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, and Volver.  
He won the Academy Award in 1999 for the Best Foreign Language Film for All About My Mother.  His feature films play with classic American genres—including film noir, melodrama and screwball comedy—to explore the rhythms of modern Spain and its cultural history.

Pedro Almodovar To Reunite With Cecilia Roth & Lola Duenas For 'The Brief Lovers'; Comedians Carlos Areces & Raul Arevalo Also Join
via The Playlist

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After doubling his cast to two just yesterday, Pedro Almodovar's latest cinematic venture is now shaping up very quickly with four more actors added to the cast today. The helmer has set up a reunion with "Volver" star Lola Duenas and "All About My Mother" actress Cecilia Roth for the pic while Spanish comedians Carlos Areces ("Extraterrestrial") and Raul Arevalo are also on board.

The quartet, of course, join the previously cast Javier Camara (an Almodovar regular himself) and Jose Maria Yazpik for what's now confirmed to be an out-and-out comedy that'll reportedly see the helmer bring back the flavour of his '80s pics --presumably in the vein of his early comedies "Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown," "Labyrinths Of Passions" and "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"

"It's going to be pure comedy [after] two darker pictures as 'Broken Embraces' and 'The Skin I Live In,'" Agustin Almodovar, Pedro's brother and producer explains. "It will be about a group of people who are on the verge of a disaster. It will be very fresh and brazen. Very much like the films that we did back in the '80s." ScreenDaily adds that there have been rumors that the whole film will be set entirely on a plane, which certainly fits the "on the verge on a disaster" description.

Lensing will take place this summer in Madrid and El Deseo with a spring 2013 release already being eyed in as many territories as possible in an effort to "avoid piracy." There are no plans for a festival premiere, as yet.

Paz Vega Joins Pedro Almodovar's Spanish-Language Movie
She has been cast in the director's dramedy, which shoots this summer in Spain and will be released in spring 2013
Source: THR

Paz Vega will be reunited with director Pedro Almodóvar this summer when she joins the cast of his latest movie, Los Amantes Pasajeros (Standby Lovers).

Vega, who was born in and began her career in Spain, worked with Almodóvar on 2002 Spanish language comedy-drama Talk to Her, which won the 2002 Oscar for best original screenplay and the 2003 Golden Globe for best foreign language film.

Vega made her American debut in director James L. Brook's Spanglish. She has since starred in a number of films such as The Spirit, the independent movie 10 Items Or Less, Burning Palms, Angel of Evil and is the voice Carmen in the soon to open Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

Vega is a native of Seville, Spain, and joined a theater school right after high school at age 16. She made her debut as an actress on Spanish television and made her big screen debut in 1999 in Zapping.

Vega, who also is a model, in 2011 replaced Penelope Cruz as the face of L'Oreal in Spain. She is married to Orson Salazar, with whom she had her third child in 2010.

Almodóvar's most recent film was The Skin I Live In, which grossed about $22 million worldwide and was released by Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S. where it grossed about $3.2 million.

Los Amantes Pasajeros, which Almodóvar also wrote, is a comedy drama that follows a group of travelers who are placed in life-threatening situation on board a plane flying to Mexico City, according to an announcement during the Cannes festival by FilmNation, which is handling international sales. The passengers are defenseless in the face of danger, which provokes colorful confessionals that are their way to put out of mind the possibility they may be about to die. 

Along with Vega, the movie stars Javier Cámara (Talk To Her), Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother) and Lola Dueñas (Volver). Spanish comedians Carlos Areces, Raúl Arévalo and José Maria Yazpik are also reportedly in the cast.

The director's brother Agustín Almodóvar is producing the film, which is expected to shoot in Madrid, Spain this summer, and be released in spring 2013 by production company El Deseo.

Sony Pictures Classics to Distribute Pedro Almodovar's New Film
via blu-ray.com

Sony Pictures Classics has secured the North American distribution rights for Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's So Excited, starring Javier Cámara, Cecilia Roth, and Lola Dueñas. Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Paz Vega will also contribute to the project. Shooting will begin in July.

So Excited is expected to arrive in theaters in the summer of 2013.

For One Week Only - Documentary about Almodovar

Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADuskWcSuTo&feature=relmfu)

Part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbH-CjBWPwQ&feature=mr_meh&list=PLPV3nUyTvwwp1UwkRkXF2dvjQuuDQwgP2&playnext=0)

(Part 3 unavailable)

Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RedA5NmxsSs&list=UUilpeGc6QD-oiDjMcC9onOg&index=47&feature=plcp)

Part 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DGOo6_beCc&list=UUilpeGc6QD-oiDjMcC9onOg&index=45&feature=plcp)

Inspired By 'Body Snatchers,' Pedro Almodovar Plots Sci-Fi Movie
via The Playlist

So what's next? There was talk last year that his next project would be a biopic titled "Mina" about the life of the Italian pop singer of the same name, based on a novel by Paolo Limiti. That could still be the case, but in an interview with Variety that ran today, Almodovar brought up his desire to go into a world previously uncharted for the filmmaker: sci-fi. And evidently his inspiration is his love for the 1956 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

"I am still young enough to make a science fiction movie. I have ideas for this genre," the director said this weekend. "The way I would like to do it is present something impossible in a real, domestic way. One of the scripts on my desk is of that genre, so I hope to make that."

One note of caution, Almodovar doesn't seem to have a timetable yet. "I live with my stories for many years. I write more like a novelist than a screenwriter," he said. But with a sci-fi screenplay in his hands, hopefully he can tweak it to his needs and make it work. Much like "The Skin I Live In," we assume a sci-fi film by Pedro Almodovar wouldn't be a traditional sci-fi film to say the least, but in delving into genre, it simply allows the filmmaker to keep things fresh -- something he's done for over thirty years with hardly any clunkers in the bunch. No small feat. Pencil in Almodovar untitled sci-fi project conservatively for 2014 or later?

Pedro Almodovar Announces 'Silencio' as Next Film
via The Hollywood Reporter

Pedro Almodovar has picked his next film.

The director told the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/568f623a-8f4e-11e4-b080-00144feabdc0.html) that his next project is a film called Silencio.

"It's a return to the cinema of women," he said of the film, "of great female protagonists, and it's a hard-hitting drama, which excites me."

Almodovar, whose last film was 2013's I'm So Excited, revealed that the Silencio script has been completed, with the film set to begin shooting in April. He said that the film is currently casting but that the parts don't quite fit for the actors with whom he typically works.

"It's called Silencio because that's the principal element that drives the worst things that happen to the main female protagonist," he continued.

The Spanish director won the best foreign-language film Oscar for 1999's All About My Mother and the original screenplay Oscar for 2002's Talk to Her.

Cast And Plot Details Emerge For Pedro Almodovar's 'Silencio'
via The Playlist

While not prolific in the vein of Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar usually doesn't let two or three years pass without delivering a new movie. And right on schedule, his next effort, "Silencio," is gearing up. Word first emerged on the project at the beginning of the year, and now much more has been revealed as casting has been put in place. And this time around, Almodovar is choosing new faces to work with instead of his usual ensemble roster of players.

Emma Suarez and Ariadna Ugarte have been cast in the lead roles, with Inma Cuesta, Rosy de Palma, Nathalia Pozo, Pilar Castro, Dario Grandinetti, Daniel Grao, Joaquin Notario, and Blanca Pares in support. Here's the synopsis via THR:

The film tells of a 30-year time span in Juliet's life, starting from 1985 when it seemed like everything was much better than in the present, 2015, when everything seems beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

Suarez and Ugarte will both play Juliet, with the story told through the eyes of the character's daughter, played by Pares. Production will start in May.

First images from Silencio

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Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte lead the movie with Inma Cuesta, Rossy de Palma, Nathalie Pozo, Pilar Castro, Dario Grandinetti, Daniel Grao, Joaquin Notario, and Blanca Pares in support, in the story of the tumultuous life of Juliet, tracking the character across thirty years from 1985 to 2015.

"It's a return to the cinema of women, of great female protagonists, and it's a hard-hitting drama, which excites me," the director said earlier this year about the movie. "It's called 'Silencio' because that's the principal element that drives the worst things that happen to the main female protagonist."

Pedro Almodóvar's Working On 2 English-Language Films, Including A Short Starring Tilda Swinton
via The Playlist

While "Pain & Glory" didn't pick up any Oscars on Sunday, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar's latest film is one of our favorites of the past year and has continued his tradition of releasing personal, beautiful work. And for his follow-up projects, it appears that Almodóvar is going in a new direction, with two English-language projects.

Speaking to IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2020/02/pedro-almodovar-tilda-swinton-a-manual-for-cleaning-women-1202209989/), the acclaimed filmmaker talked about what's next, since the chapter of his career focused on "Pain & Glory" has officially come to an end. And while he's going to continue to make films, the director's next project isn't a feature. Apparently, he's going to work with actress Tilda Swinton on a new short film, titled "The Human Voice," adapted from Jean Cocteau's one-act play, about a woman's final phone call to her lover.

"It's weird when friends ask me what I'd like to do next, and they're surprised when I say that I'd really like to shoot a short, which would be like 15 minutes, not a series. That is the story I'm really in love with now and I'm very happy to be pursuing it," said Almodóvar.

The filmmaker went on to explain why Swinton is the perfect actress to help bring the story to life. He said, "You need that feeling that someone understands you completely. In the case of Tilda, it was exactly how I dreamed of her. She's so open, so intelligent. She gave me a lot of confidence with the logic. In the rehearsal, we understood each other very closely."

After his short film with Swinton, Almodóvar is lining up another English-language film, this time a feature-length project based on the short story collection, "A Manual for Cleaning Women" from American author Lucia Berlin. The film will take place in Texas, California, and Mexico, with English and Spanish dialogue.

No release dates have been announced for Almodóvar's short film or his upcoming feature-length follow-up to "Pain & Glory."

Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz Look to Team Up on Motherhood-Themed 'Madres Paralelas'
Variety

Pedro Almodóvar and his favorite female lead Penelope Cruz look set to re-team on feature "Madres paralelas," a Madrid-set drama that returns to Almodóvar's biggest creative inspiration — motherhood — and a model that has served him very well over the last 30 years.

Set to go into pre-production in October, "Madres paralelas" is scheduled to shoot from February next year and bow commercially in Spanish theaters by the end of 2021, Agustín Almodóvar — Pedro Almodóvar's brother and producer — told Variety.

Though there is still no formal contract with Cruz, she has read and liked the screenplay, Pedro Almodóvar commented.

"Madres paralelas" is a project that Almodóvar has developed over time. However, three months of confinement during Spain's COVID-19 crisis allowed him to advance and finish the screenplay, which turns on two mothers who give birth the same day. The film follows their parallel lives over their first and second years raising their children, Almodóvar told Spanish press agency EFE, which broke the news of what looks like Almodóvar's next feature.

"Madres paralelas" will shoot, like nearly all Almodóvar's productions since 1988's "The Law of Desire," at least partly in Madrid and totally in Spanish, produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Esther García at El Deseo, the company Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar set up to make "The Law of Desire."

Almodóvar's short with Tilda Swinton, adapting Jean Cocteau's one-act play "The Human Voice" and his first work in the English language, is scheduled to shoot in two weeks.

The "Madres paralelas" shoot will delay Almodóvar's feature-length adaptation of the late American writer Lucia Berlin's short story collection, "A Manual for Cleaning Women," which was envisaged, when announced this February, to be Almodóvar's first feature in English. Almodóvar is still intending to make it but the complexity of adaptation requires more work on the screenplay, said Agustín Almodóvar.

Almodovar's short film The Human Voice will screen virtually through NYFF (https://virtual.filmlinc.org/tv/the-human-voice-conversation/1) September 24th - September 29th

Quote from: The Playlistinspired by Jean Cocteau's one-act play of the same name. The story follows a woman that is reeling from the final phone call she had with an ex-lover, who is supposed to marry another woman the next day.

Cate Blanchett to Star in Pedro Almodóvar's First English-Language Feature 'A Manual for Cleaning Women'
Variety

Cate Blanchett has officially signed on to star in Pedro Almodóvar's first English-language feature film, "A Manual for Cleaning Women."

The film is an adaptation of Lucia Berlin's short story collection of the same name, which includes 43 stories about women in multiple types of demanding jobs.

It was confirmed to Variety exclusively that the project is in the early stages of development, with Blanchett's production company Dirty Films producing the feature for New Republic Pictures, in association with El Deseo. Andrew Upton and Coco Francini are producing alongside Blanchett for Dirty Films. Brian Oliver and Bradley Fischer are producing for New Republic Pictures alongside Almodóvar.

Almodóvar spoke with Variety for our "Up Next" series in December about the project, saying he was writing the script in Spanish before translating it to English.

'Strange Way Of Life': Pedro Almodóvar's Western Short Film Will Star Ethan Hawke & Pedro Pascal
The Playlist

According to an interview with IndieWire, Pedro Almodóvar has revealed that his next project is going to be a 30-minute English-language short film titled, "Strange Way of Life." This comes on the heels of his previous English-language short, "The Human Voice," which debuted two years ago. These two projects are serving as ways for Almodóvar to work in English-language productions without jumping headfirst into a feature-length project, just yet.

"It's very convenient for me," Almodóvar said. "I feel much freer to do things in English this way."

"Strange Way of Life" stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal and is expected to begin production in August. The short is said to be a Western and will follow the story of a sheriff and a gunslinger who find their paths crossing. The short is produced by the filmmaker's studio, El Deseo, as well as Saint Laurent, whose head designer Anthony Vaccarello will also work as a costume designer.

"So one of them travels through the desert to find the other," he said. "There will be a showdown between them, but really the story is very intimate."

When asked if the relationship turns romantic, Almodóvar said, "You can guess. I mean, masculinity is one of the subjects of the movie."

Film fans who have been following Almodóvar's career over the years might learn about this project and immediately become reminded of when the filmmaker was approached to direct "Brokeback Mountain" years ago. Almodóvar would eventually pass because he "never believed that they would give me complete freedom and independence to make what I wanted." The film would eventually go to Ang Lee and the rest is Oscar-winning history.

While talking about "Brokeback Mountain" and why his vision wouldn't have ever gotten made, Almodóvar said, "The relation between these two guys is animalistic. It was a physical relationship. The punch of the movie comes when they have to separate, and Heath Ledger discovers that he can't think about leaving. That's a strong discovery. But until that moment, it is animalistic, and for me, it was impossible to have that in the movie because it was a Hollywood movie. You could not have these two guys fucking all the time."

While "Strange Way of Life" doesn't share a lot of the same DNA as "Brokeback Mountain," the filmmaker admits that the short "could be like my answer to 'Brokeback Mountain.'"

Again, taking on two English-language shorts back-to-back seems to be the perfect practice for Almodóvar, as he preps for "A Manual for Cleaning Women," which is expected to begin production in early 2023 with Cate Blanchett attached to star. "Strange Way of Life" doesn't have an expected release date, but if "The Human Voice" is any indication, expect Almodóvar's new short to have a long festival run before arriving in theaters and/or at home.

Quote from: DeadlineOscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar will not be making his first English-language feature directorial debut with A Manual for Cleaning Women, which has Cate Blanchett set to star and produce under her Dirty Films, Deadline has learned.

The filmmaker finally had all the elements to realize the magnitude of this future production. However, he came to the decision that he's not ready to tackle such a monumental project in English. A search for another director is underway.

A man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship.

Sony Pictures Classics Releasing Pedro Almodóvar's Short 'Strange Way Of Life'
Deadline

Pedro Almodóvar's short film, Strange Way of Life, which had its world premiere at Cannes back in the spring, is hitting theaters in NYC and LA on Oct. 4 thanks to Sony Pictures Classics.

There will be an expansion nationwide on Oct. 6.

Pic stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal and will play in theaters alongside Almodóvar's 2020 short film, The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton, which was also distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Together, the two shorts represent Almodóvar's only English-language projects to date. 

Strange Way of Life follows two gunmen who reunite after many years. In the film, a man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship... 

Produced by Almodóvar's El Deseo and presented by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, Strange Way of Life, stars Pedro Casablanc, Manu Ríos, George Steane, José Condessa, Jason Fernández and Sara Sálamo. It is produced by Agustín Almodóvar, with Esther García as EP and Bárbara Peiró, Diego Pajuelo, and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello as associate producers. 

The score is composed by 4x Oscar nominee Alberto Iglesias, a regular Almodóvar collaborator who received his most recent Oscar nomination in 2022 for Almodóvar's Paralell Mothers. All characters are costumed by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. 

SPC has long-teamed with Almodóvar on a majority of pics in his canon, including most recently Parallel Mothers in 2021 and Pain and Glory in 2019. Sony Pictures Classics, which received two Oscar nominations each. 

TIFF announced earlier today that they're honoring Almodóvar at their Tribute Awards next month with the Jeff Skoll Award in Impact Media presented by Participant.