Entre les Mur Archives - The Playlist

‘The Class’: English-Language Trailer For This Year’s Palme d’Or Winner

Rodrigo Perez — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:39:00 +0000

Laurent Cantet’s “The Class” (“Entre Les Murs”) won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and after much wait, the fantastically vibrant social drama finally has itself an English-Language trailer.

To quote ourselves in our review from the New York Film Festival, “The improvised-feeling, documentary-like picture crackles with spark and vim and tackles issues of race, gender, social status, economic class within the confines of the school room without ever feeling like a didactic lesson.

Continue reading ‘The Class’: English-Language Trailer For This Year’s Palme d’Or Winner at The Playlist.

More International NYFF Trailers: “The Class,’ ‘Tony Manero’ & ‘Tokyo Sonata’

Rodrigo Perez — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:03:00 +0000

While we were thinking about other New York Film Festival pictures we had seen and images for the films, we had realized we’d never really posted trailers for “The Class,” “Tony Manero” or “Tokyo Sonata” three films, French, Chilean and Japanese that we all (pretty much) really liked. Ok, none of them are subtitled in English, but who cares if you haven’t had a chance to see these films (the majority of the world frankly), it’s a good opportunity to at least see some visuals and catch up on the aesthetics and styles of all three films — the kinetic and documentarian like French school room flick “The Class”; the “Saturday Night Live” disco-dancing dysfuncitonal obsessive of “Tony Manero”; and the Bunelian tragic-comico internalized horror of “Tokyo Sonata.” Just three random, but excellent examples of the International flavor that’s imprinted all over NYFF (rather impressively we think; some of the best films we’ve seen of the year have been at the fest; and the entire experience has been a strong reminder to go out of our way to see foreign export rather than sometimes predictable North American cinema; or at the very least a reminder that variety is truly the spice of life).

Continue reading More International NYFF Trailers: “The Class,’ ‘Tony Manero’ & ‘Tokyo Sonata’ at The Playlist.

New York Film Festival Gets A Little ‘Class’ For Opening Night

Rodrigo Perez — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:16:00 +0000

The 2008 Cannes Palme d’Or winner, “The Class” (“Entre les Murs”) has been selected to open the the 46 annual 2008 New York Film Festival which runs Sept. 26-Oct. 12 in the Big Apple.

Of note to New Yorkers, NYFF will be held at the Ziegfeld Theater due to ongoing renovations at the event’s traditional home, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, which is personally a lot better for us distance wise.

Also playing during the fest is a showcase that will be held during the festival in tribute to the Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima and the annual “Views From the Avant-Garde” featuring a 30th anniversary presentation of Guy Debord’s “We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire.”

Still no word about those ‘Che’ NYFF rumors, but as we hear it, it’s likely going to happen.

Continue reading New York Film Festival Gets A Little ‘Class’ For Opening Night at The Playlist.

Cannes 2008: ‘The Class’ Schools The Competition; Benicio Del Toro Wins Best Actor For ‘Che’

Rodrigo Perez — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:42:00 +0000

So much for Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” Jury head Sean Penn’s supposed biased lefty leanings and Clint Eastwood’s “The Changeling/I’m Not Really Sure What I’m Called, or The Exchange,” the 2008 Cannes top honor went to the French classroom film, “Entre les Murs” (“The Class”), directed by Laurent Cantet.

Prior to Sunday’s (May 25) award announcement, pundit speculation was predicting that Penn – the governor of the Cannes 2008 tribune – would campaign the jury to award the Palme d’Or to either Soderbergh’s four-hour two-part biopic of Che Guevara because of his sympathetic pinko predilections, or Eastwood’s Change, err ‘Exchange,’ because the actor had worked with him before (“Mystic River”) and because the Dirty Harry director had never been awarded with the top prize all these years (and because ‘Exchange’ was one of the few American films that was unanimously liked by the notoriously picky Cannes crowd).

Continue reading Cannes 2008: ‘The Class’ Schools The Competition; Benicio Del Toro Wins Best Actor For ‘Che’ at The Playlist.