World premiere for Lars von Trier's new film in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's latest film, "The Boss of it All", will have its world premiere at the Copenhagen international film festival, organisers said.
"This is the first time that Lars von Trier has chosen to have a world premiere for one of his films in Denmark. He is one of the biggest talents in European cinema," the head of the festival's programming, Jacob Neiiendam, told AFP.
After making "Breaking the Waves", "Dancer in the Dark" and the more recent "Dogville" and "Manderlay", von Trier's latest work is a comedy shot using the ultra realistic Dogme95 technique he created.
Among Dogme95's rules are no artificial lighting, cameras must be hand-held, scenes must be shot on location, and all sound must come from the images being shot.
The Copenhagen festival is focused entirely on European cinema, featuring 145 films.
Ten films, divided into five categories, will take part in the festival's competition.
Last year's top festival honours went to the Israeli-Romanian movie "Live and Become" by Radu Mihaileanu.
atleast he's taking a break from the same-movie-3-times trilogy.
I'm seeing this tonight!
Danish press pan von Trier's new film
Danish press have panned director Lars von Trier's latest work, "The Boss of it All", prior to the film's world premiere at the Copenhagen international film festival.
"Is von Trier having an artistic crisis?" asked daily Information, which attended a preview of the film. According to the paper, while the film had "funny moments", it was "not a success."
"It was not as powerful, original or as sharp as it could have been. We are used to more from Trier," the Information's critic said.
The director of "Breaking the Waves", "Dancer in the Dark" and the more recent "Dogville" and "Manderlay" also failed to impress daily Politiken.
His film "The Idiots" was "an explosion of energy" compared to "The boss of it all".
Haha wow Mac you are really fast with the news :)
I just returned from the premier and overall I feel satisfied with the movie. It's true that we are used to more from Von Trier but then again we are not used to a comedy from him. I think it was really refreshing to watch a situation-comedy combined with dogme and Lars' sarcastic humor. So I think its good for both Lars and his fans that he is taking a break from the more heavy films. In the beginning of the film Lars' says that this is just a comedy and people can have a laugh while watching it and afterwards they don't need to think about it - This is just the way this fim should be looked on by both the audience and the critics. It's just a freaking comedy with the sick humor of good old uncle Lars.
If you liked his 'Idioterne' and the TV-series 'The Office' you will love it!
'I'm a control freak - but I was not in control'
At 50, Lars Von Trier has handed over the reins: his new film, a comedy, is directed by a computer. Has the enfant terrible of Danish cinema finally loosened up? Geoffrey Macnab finds out
Source: The Guardian
Lars von Trier is concerned about the state of Danish-Icelandic relations. "The fact is, we have a lot of Icelandic people who are buying most of Copenhagen right now," he says. "For 400 years, Iceland was under the Danish crown. All the Icelandic people hate the Danes in that sense. They have freaked themselves out about the Danes."
The subject is on his mind because of his amiable, witty new film, The Boss of It All, in which the middle-aged owner of a Danish IT firm tries to sell his company, with the prospective buyer being an Icelandic businessman - a situation that makes a few sly points about relations between the two countries. The film also highlights an oddly masochistic streak in the Danish sense of humour: they seem to adore being told how stupid they are. "They loved it in The Kingdom when people talked about the stupid Danes," Von Trier says, referring to his 1994 TV series. "Here, when the Icelandic people scream at them and say all these nasty things, they really love it."
Von Trier's office is located in a cottage at the edge of Filmbyen, the former military barracks outside Copenhagen where his production company Zentropa is based. In the complex where he edits his films, the walls are painted green, just as they reportedly are on Death Row in certain US prisons. There are Mao slogans in Danish scrawled on the plaster. These, I am told, reflect the fact that Von Trier's business partner, Peter Aalbeck Jensen, is "an old communist".
From the window, you can see a collection of garden gnomes - a gift from an American film company. They're called the "piss gnomes" because Aalbeck Jensen likes to urinate on them.
The pair of them operate as a good cop/bad cop couple, alternating roles. "It is very unDanish to be a bad cop," Von Trier observes. "Everyone in Denmark wants to be a good cop, but the bad cop is someone who is needed. As soon as you go to the UK or US, the bad cops are there because they are needed, but the Danish people are very, very afraid of conflict."
On the day I visit, there is a sign on the door of the main offices, where Zentropa employees have their lunch, announcing that there will be no hymn singing. Aalbeck Jensen, whose father was a priest, usually conducts Zentropa's Friday morning songs of praise, but is away on a bicycling holiday. Von Trier has decided at the last minute that he doesn't want to take his place. "I couldn't do it. It's not my scene. So I had to disappoint everybody."
Von Trier turned 50 earlier this year. Not long before his birthday, he issued a "Statement of Revitality" to mark his half-century. "In the last few years I have felt increasingly burdened by barren habits and expectations - my own and other people's - and I feel the urge to tidy up," he declared.
Tidying up in his case means no more trips to exotic film festivals, a reduction in his PR activities, a less structured routine, more time to develop his scripts, and a general "narrowing down".
It is a moot point whether Von Trier really is revitalised by his new system of working. The director is a keen gardener and claims he was delighted to miss Cannes this year because it gave him time to tend his vegetables. He also offers an idyllic image of his day-to-day life: "walking around the small woods with my iPod and dreaming", and playing the occasional game of tennis against Zentropa staff.
However, one guesses he is neither as relaxed nor as satisfied as he seems. The shoot of The Boss of It All was, he admits, as hectic and nerve-racking as ever. He only had five weeks in which to complete the movie - a satirical comedy set almost entirely in an office. It was shot on a lowish budget and in Danish, without the American and international stars who appeared in his last two films, Dogville and Manderlay. And it begins in a disconcerting fashion with a voiceover from Von Trier, where he tells his audience: "Here comes a film. It's a comedy and harmless."
Can a Lars von Trier film ever be harmless? "Well," the director says, "I felt like saying that. I had been criticised for being too political and maybe I criticised myself for that. This is a film that was made very fast. This film is not political and I had fun doing it, but good comedies are not harmless."
Von Trier being Von Trier, The Boss of It All has one very perverse twist: it was made without a cameraman. The director was using a new process, "developed with the intention of limiting human influence", which he has called Automavision. This entails choosing the best possible fixed camera position and then allowing a computer to choose when to tilt, pan or zoom. "For a long time, my films have been handheld," he explains. "That has to do with the fact that I am a control freak. With Automavision, the technique was that I would frame the picture first and then push a button on the computer. I was not in control - the computer was in control."
Surely, I suggest, forfeiting so much of his own influence to a machine must have been an alarming step for a film-maker to take. "I found it a very fresh way of working," he says. "I am a man of very many anxieties but doing strange things with the camera is not one of them."
Besides, one of the main reasons for using Automavision was to ensure the actors couldn't use any of their usual tricks. Thanks to the randomised framing and audio settings, they had no idea of how the camera was going to behave and therefore weren't able to try to show off their best side or steal scenes. (Von Trier's original idea had been to hide the camera altogether and film through a double mirror, "but we had too little light. We couldn't do it".)
Von Trier says it was "liberating" and "relaxing" to be working in Danish, with a small crew. And he is embracing comedy. As well as The Boss of It All, he also recently wrote a comedy screenplay (which he won't direct himself), called Erik Nietzsche - The Early Years, based on his film-school days in the late 1970s, the period when he decided to add the "Von" to his original name, Lars Trier. "I was extremely irritating," he says about himself in those days. "I was very demanding. I wanted to know about the techniques of film but the teachers taught a lot of nonsense."
None the less, you can't help feeling the flirtation with comedy is simply a short respite before the director tackles some more daunting challenges. As he recently told his friend and former teacher Jorgen Leth, "the moment you cannot put yourself through hell any more, or you don't feel like it any more, that's probably the time to call it a day." There is no sign that he has reached that point yet.
You suspect, too, that Aalbeck Jensen will want Von Trier to stay in the limelight. His films help to keep Zentropa in business and if he is not making them or promoting them, the company's cash flow is bound to suffer.
In the long run, Von Trier is still determined to finish his American trilogy with Washington, even though critics have accused him of being virulently anti-American. When Dogville premiered in Cannes, Variety called it "an artistically experimental, ideologically apocalyptic blast at American values that is as obvious in intent as it is murky in aesthetic achievement." However, Von Trier, who still hasn't read the review, insists that he is a fan of American culture. "I must say I am as anti-Danish as I am anti-American, but it's OK. I don't mind being called anti-American. There's a big part of America I like - but then there is a part that I am not so crazy about."
Now he is "a little child of 50 looking for what comes up", Von Trier says he hopes he is becoming less serious. It would be a mistake, though, to think the enfant terrible of Danish cinema is lightening up. "Anxiety is taking yourself very seriously," he says - and it seems he is as anxious as ever.
IFC First Take hires 'Boss' for U.S. run
Source: Hollywood Reporter
ORLANDO -- IFC Entertainment acquired all U.S. distribution rights to writer-director Lars von Trier's Danish-language comedy "The Boss of It All" for its IFC First Take program.
The story involves the owner of a computer company (Peter Gantzler) who wants to sell his firm. He is forced to hire an actor (Jens Albinus) to play the fictitious president he has invented as a shield for any unpleasant business dealings.
Vibeke Windelov, Meta Louise Foldager and von Trier's Zentropa Entertainment produced the project. It recently screened out of competition at the Copenhagen and San Sebastian film festivals.
IFC's Jonathan Sehring, Liz Nastro and Arianna Bocco negotiated the deal with Natja Rosner and attorney Frederik Stege of Trust Films.
Trailer here. (http://www.filmtrailer.dk/direktoeren_for_det_hele)
Amazing!
The framing is indeed weird (with the Automavision thing going on).
I am looking forward to this.
ein tripod! vashis wasington, zoh :ponder:
Quote from: matt35mm on December 11, 2006, 12:46:46 AM
The framing is indeed weird.
that's because it's still.
I love foreign trailers and you know why.
Domestic Trailer here. (http://images.hollywood.com/quicktime/bossofitall_ifc_t_low.mov)
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A Pause to Refresh a Weary Dogmatist
By CARYN JAMES; New York Times
CHARMING, modest and funny are not words usually associated with Lars von Trier, but they are exactly right for his playful new comedy, "The Boss of It All." Made in just five weeks, and set mostly in an office building, the film follows a doofus actor hired to masquerade as the owner of a company whose employees have never set eyes on him. Such an engaging film is not what anyone would expect from this Danish director whose international breakthrough came in 1996 with the glorious but emotionally grueling "Breaking the Waves" and who more recently made two bleak, stylized films set in Depression-era America, "Dogville" (2003) and "Manderlay" (2005).
This is typical of Mr. von Trier: His work-in-progress, "Antichrist," posits a world created by Satan rather than God, and in an interview this month with a Danish newspaper he said he had been treated for depression in a hospital early this year and doesn't know when he'll be ready to work again.
Against this cheerless backdrop "The Boss of It All" (which opened on Wednesday) makes sense. It puts Mr. von Trier in a great tradition of directors who have been freed artistically by making little movies at strategic points in their careers, films that paradoxically often turn out to be better than their overtly ambitious, budget-bloated works.
Francis Ford Coppola's new movie, his first in a decade, is the $5 million independently financed "Youth Without Youth." The intellectual and philosophical themes in this World War II-era story, with Tim Roth as a professor grappling with the origins of language, would almost have to make it a smaller work. That sounds like a relief to Mr. Coppola, who has said he had been inspired by his daughter, Sofia, to make personal films after years of dealing with studios to make money on commercial works like "The Rainmaker," his 1997 adaptation of the John Grisham novel. (Sony Pictures Classics recently bought "Youth Without Youth" and plans to release it in the United States late this year.)
Martin Scorsese made the 1985 comedy "After Hours" as a kind of quick palate cleanser following a long, difficult production on "The King of Comedy." The ease and liveliness of "After Hours" comes through even now, as Griffin Dunne crawls through a New York night during which nothing goes right.
Mr. Scorsese may even have established the pattern — one for the studios, then one for himself — that directors like Steven Soderbergh have followed. Mr. Soderbergh sandwiched two extraordinarily inventive films between "Oceans 12" (2004) and "Oceans 13" (which opens June 8 ). The minuscule, digitally shot "Bubble" is like a fine short story; running all of 73 minutes, it follows the emotional tangle of workers in a spooky Ohio doll factory. The lush, black-and-white homage to '40s movies, "The Good German," may have been too stiff to work, but it was an intriguing experiment worth trying.
Mr. von Trier has never made popcorn movies, but he still needed to shake up his career, especially after "Dogville" and "Manderlay." Two parts of a projected trilogy, "U.S.A. — Land of Opportunities," they evoked such fierce responses that he was lionized by some for his daring and artistry, and reviled by others as an anti-American fraud.
To me "Dogville" is a great achievement, resonant and powerful. Nicole Kidman is Grace, who runs from her mob-boss father to the protection of a folksy Colorado town, only to be raped and forced into prostitution. The theatrical style, with walls indicated by chalk marks on the floor of a bare stage, enhances the focus on the characters' moral twists and turns. There is no reason to reject this dark vision of American morality and redemption just because it comes from a Dane.
"Manderlay," which brings Grace (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) to an Alabama town where slavery still exists in 1933, is an ambitious failure. Where Ms. Kidman glows with inner radiance and delivers lines with the eloquence of an experienced stage actress, Ms. Howard recites speeches stiffly. Americans have a more complicated sense of our racist history than this incendiary film conveys, but Mr. von Trier didn't deserve to be attacked for trying. No wonder he has abandoned the proposed third part of the trilogy, "Wasington." (Now we may never know why he dropped that H from Washington.)
After this the lighthearted "Boss of It All" seems to come out of nowhere. It begins with sly self-reference as we see Mr. von Trier behind the camera, his distant image reflected in the windows of a high-rise office building. He says this is a comedy "not worth a moment's reflection," with "no preaching or swaying of opinion," and asks "Why not poke fun at artsy-fartsy culture?" These comments sound like some pre-emptive rebuttal for those who find his films heavy going.
Yet "The Boss" quickly gets past that defensiveness, and simply allows us to be amused by Kristoffer, a self-important bad actor who has been hired by Ravn, the owner of a technology company who has always pretended to be the manager so he can foist off unpopular decisions on his phantom boss. This sounds like a recipe for a French farce, which the film sometimes resembles.
The office is crammed with neurotics, including a woman who screams in horror whenever she starts the copying machine. Because of the real boss's manipulations, the fake finds himself trapped into making a marriage proposal to one employee and being seduced by another.
Despite the opening disclaimer, though, this trifle is also a wily examination of art and control, with Ravn the symbolic director trying to keep Kristoffer the actor from running amok with his own ideas. And artistic control is more than a casual theme for Mr. von Trier, who constantly transforms obstacles into aesthetic choices.
That was the game behind the Dogma '95 filmmakers' manifesto, which he helped mastermind, and which forbade such flourishes as artificial lighting. It was the theme of his dazzling "Five Obstructions" (2003), with the Danish director Jorgen Leth remaking one of his short films several ways, following draconian rules set by Mr. von Trier. (No scene longer than 12 frames is one of them.) "I want that feeling of a tortoise on its back," Mr. von Trier tells Mr. Leth in that film, speaking just as much about the challenges he has thrived on to inspire his own creativity.
In making "The Boss of It All," Mr. von Trier played one especially silly trick on himself. He filmed in what he calls Automatavision, positioning the camera then letting a computer choose when to move within a shot. Viewers won't notice; the film merely looks like a fly-on-the-wall documentary without the jittery feel of a handheld camera.
The important obstacle, which his voice breaks in halfway through to comment on, is more telling and productive: to follow the rules of comedy. Ravn plans to sell the company and get rid of his band of neurotics. Can Mr. von Trier abide by the rules that say a comedy must lead to a happy ending?
You don't need to know how it ends to see that "The Boss of It All" was a freeing step for him creatively. And for his fans this small, unexpected delight will just have to hold us while we're waiting for the Antichrist.
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Director in the Dark
Depressed Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier gets happy
By Matt Thompson; Radar
When Lars von Trier's morose musical Dancer in the Dark debuted at Cannes in 2000, the audience erupted into equally throaty cheers and boos. Looking back, they hadn't seen anything yet. From Dogville and Manderlay—a pair of movies depicting a savage America—to the rigors of the Dogme 95 manifesto—a set of filmmaking rules so rigorous that the director himself has completed only one film that meets its standards—to famous feuds with Björk and Roman Polanski, the Danish director has left a wake of divided opinions behind him. Perhaps that's why his latest movie, a slight office comedy called The Boss of It All, was such a surprise.
Here, Mr. von Trier takes a moment to speak with Radar about his recent bouts with depression, what he actually thinks of America (a country he has never visited), and what he'd like to be remembered for.
RADAR: There's been a lot of concern for you ever since you told a Danish newspaper that you were depressed.
LARS VON TRIER: Yes, I know. Maybe my problem is that I talk too much. I've been through three months of depression in the last year, and for some reason everyone seems to think I'm in a straight jacket, which I'm not.
That's a relief.
[Laughs.] Yeah, that's good. They took me out of the straight jacket so I could pick up the phone. A lot of the people from my company were at Cannes and they needed me to take a picture of myself to prove that I was not completely insane. Which, of course, you all still can discuss.
It must have been odd not to be at Cannes this year. This is one of your first movies not to make the festival's premiere in a while.
Yes, that's right. I think the Danish press was a little ... the reviews here are the worst reviews I've ever had.
Really? What do you think of The Boss of It All?
I'm fond of it. It's one of the most traditional films I've done, story-wise. It's supposed to be like some of these comedies you make in America: The Shop Around the Corner, Bringing Up Baby, and The Odd Couple, all these little talent films. Maybe not so sentimental. Those films were part of my childhood. I was always feeling very secure when I saw them. I was trying to find this mood in Boss of It All. It shouldn't be like Naked Gun, where you're supposed to laugh all the time. It should only be a little time where you can feel secure.
Maybe I was reading into the movie a little, but I felt that you were expressing your frustration over reactions to your more transgressive films.
[Laughs.] Maybe I was. For me to do this film was like a really serious artist [making] pop music. I had to make a little joke about it: this fine artist has now gone pop.
This is certainly the first of your movies to get widespread comparisons to a sitcom—namely, The Office. But I heard you hadn't seen the show.
Right. That was on purpose, because I knew everybody was crazy about this show. I said, "I don't want to see it until I've made the film." Now I've started to see it, and it is very funny. But, no, it's nothing that I've directly stolen.
I'm surprised that The Boss of It All is getting some of your harshest reviews, because it seems like, at least in America, there were some very strong reactions to Dogville and Manderlay.
It has actually been very well reviewed in all other countries but Denmark. So it has been one of my best reviewed films so far. It's very strange. But this "one star or six" [mentality] is very Danish. I think the fact that it didn't open in Cannes was one of the reasons why the Danish critics were so hard on it.
I see. Speaking of Dogville and Manderlay, does the fact that you've snapped out of your depression mean you'll be completing the trilogy of movies about America you began with them? A lot of people seem to think you wouldn't.
It's not going to be the next film I make, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it. Right now I've fallen in love with a horror film. And I have a project called Antichrist, of course.
The American political climate has really changed since you were working on those first two movies. Who knows how much it will have changed by the time you get around to the third one. Do you think that will affect how you portray America?
I had not thought about that. No, I don't think that will change. These films were maybe more for myself than for America. What do you think has changed?
For starters, around the time you were shooting Dogville, Bush's approval rating was up around 80 to 90 percent, and everyone was all for going to war in Iraq. Now it's exactly the opposite.
From my perspective, there is not such a big difference whether it's Clinton or Bush. It's still America.
What do you mean? The same idea of America?
Yeah. No matter who's in charge it's very capitalistic, which some will say is good. And of course, for an American, it makes a difference as to whether poor people get mistreated. But as for foreign policy, I could see Clinton going into Iraq also. Would that be so impossible?
Seems like it's impossible to know either way. You ended both Manderlay and Dogville with a montage of poor people being mistreated set to David Bowie's song "Young Americans." A little bit of an intentional provocation on your part?
Yes. Well, first, it's a song I like very much. And somehow I just like this idea of America being very young. Which for me, somehow, is right. It's a very young country, historically, of course, But I have not gone through the text of the song. I don't know if it's provocative or not.
It's interesting that both you and David Bowie are non-Americans writing about America.
That was a conscious decision. The whole narration of both Dogville and Manderlay was done by a non-American. It is not a film that takes place in America. It is a film about America in the same way that American films were made about Casablanca. It is a European product.
A movie set in the European idea of America?
Yes. Precisely.
So what sort of ideas will your next movie, Antichrist, be set in? You're a Catholic, aren't you?
The whole European society is based on Christian ideas, but I am a very, very poor Christian. I'm very bad at being religious. I've tried. It's very hard. I'm sure that being religious is very good for people. Maybe it's not very good for the world, but it's good for the people that are religious. You want to think there's a big idea behind the whole thing.
The Boss of It All?
Yes. That's what we like! [Laughs.] But it's very difficult for me to believe because it smells too much of being a human idea. The whole moral side of religion is very good. But religion is what people are killing each other for all the time.
You created Dogme 95, a list of rules that limit what you do in the movie. For this movie you used a computer program called Automavision that made all lighting and camera movement decisions. I wonder if there's a religious appeal for you in rules to live by.
Oh yeah. There is no God. You've got to make your own commandments.
I was thinking to myself as I watched The Boss of It All that this is such a departure from your last two movies. How would you feel if, somehow, every other record of you in the world were erased and it was just The Boss of It All you were remembered for?
I would like to be remembered for doing Dogville. I can't see that film being made by anybody else in any other place than where I am right now. Maybe I'm wrong. But I was quite proud that we could produce a movie like that. But I think I'd be okay with just The Boss of It All. I see that this film is made from the other films. But, yeah, when you're dead you don't care.
Quote from: MacGuffin on June 06, 2007, 11:36:29 AM
what he actually thinks of America (a country he has never visited)
so sick of this. anytime any american douche bag on the street offers his opinion on iraq -- or anywhere for that matter -- it should be prefaced with (a country he has never visited). unless they've been there, and even then it should be qualified if they've been outside the green zone or not (a zone he has never been to).
so it should be:
america (a country that he has never visited/ attacked)