News

Abel Ferrara is set to begin production on his latest feature, “American Nails,” a modern gangster story inspired by ancient tragedy that stars Asia Argento and Willem Dafoe, Variety has learned.

According to the producers, “American Nails” charts “the rise and fall of this modern Phaedra, in a tale set in the gangster world of primal violence, power and revenge. This no-holds-barred retelling of Euripides’ masterpiece pits Argento against the male-dominated remnants of power and entitlement in contemporary Italy.”

Written by Ferrara and Rossella De Venuto, pic is produced by Diana Phillips and Philipp Kreuzer for Rimsky Productions and Maze Pictures. Production is set to begin in Italy this summer.

“American Nails” marks Dafoe’s eighth collaboration with Ferrara, including the 2014 Venice biopic “Pasolini,” 2019 Cannes Film Festival selection “Tommaso” and 2020 Berlinale entry “Siberia.” Coming off his acclaimed performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar hopeful “Poor Things,” Dafoe will again team up...

The mark of an actor’s career, I think, is what extent their filmography can reflect the time they’re working. Matthew Modine is a prime case: we can point, first and most easily, to leading a Stanley Kubrick film, a title for which there are fewer living holders than men who’ve walked on the moon; there’s one of the all-time biggest box-office disasters; supporting roles for Christopher Nolan, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone; and aiding auteurs Abel Ferrara and Alan Rudolph as a star. This makes especially appreciable the Roxy Cinema’s retrospective The Many Faces of Matthew Modine, running Friday through Sunday with five films: Ferrara’s The Blackout, Rudolph’s Equinox, Cutthroat Island, Birdy, and his own feature If… Dog… Rabbit…

Having long admired Modine’s screen presence, I was happy to speak with him about this retrospective. But it engendered a longer, deeper conversation about...

French multi-hyphenate Lou Doillon, who is Jane Birkin’s daughter, is set to star in Italian comedy “Quasi a casa” directed by Carolina Pavone, a former assistant director on several Nanni Moretti films.

Shooting is underway in Rome on the sophisticated comedy, in which Doillon — a model, actor and singer-songwriter, like her half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg — plays an eclectic, successful singer who strikes up a turbulent friendship with a younger female musician who idolizes her.

Doillon became a French fashion icon in her teens after working with famed atelier Givenchy and is currently the testimonial of Cartier’s new Baignoire watchmaking collection. The Parisian star first acted in Italy in Abel Ferrara’s “Go Go Tales” and more recently appeared in French director Maïween’s “Polisse” and in “A Child of Yours” directed by her father, Jacques Doillon.

Pavone is a promising young helmer who has worked with Moretti on “My Mother” and “Three Floors,...

Market

The Cannes Film Market has launched Cannes Investors Circle, which will commence with a keynote introduction by Liesl Copland, Participant’s executive VP, content and platform strategy, who will offer her perspective on the modern media landscape. The initiative will also feature a panel discussion titled Navigating Film Finance in a Changing World that aims to offer insights on global financing and market trends in 2023 and beyond. The panelists will include Elisa Alvares, finance expert at Jacaranda Consultants; Rikke Ennis, CEO of REinvent Studios; Emilie Georges, co-founder and CEO of Paradise City; Mike Goodridge, U.K. producer at Good Chaos who is also presenting Jessica Hausner’s “Club Zero” in the festival’s official competition; with film festival consultant Wendy Mitchell moderating.

The event will also include an invitation-only session where VIP private investors will listen to pitches of nine new global film projects at the investment stage. The...

The Italian premieres of Cannes Film Festival opener Jeanne du Barry starring Johnny Depp and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny will be among the international highlights of the 69th Taormina Film Festival which gave a taster of its line-up at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday.

Principal cast for James Mangold’s Indiana Jones reboot including Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies and Mads Mikkelsen are expected to be in attendance for the screening.

The event, unfolding June 23 to July 1 in Sicily, is under the new co-artistic directorship of Barrett Wissman this year.

There will also be Italian premieres for Lisa Cortes’s Little Richard: I Am Everything, a documentary about the life and career of the legendary musician, and A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, starring Teyana Taylor.

Italian highlights include the world premiere of the comedy The Worst Days by Edoardo Leo,...

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Of the many questions one might ask when watching Abel Ferrara’s clunky portrayal of the legendary and controversial early 20th-century Italian friar, Padre Pio, the main one has to be: Why, oh why Abel, did you decide to make the movie in English?

Granted, Ferrara probably felt more comfortable working in his native tongue — as likely did Shia Labeouf, who seems fully committed to his pious role, sporting a beard that’s bigger than the Book of Psalms itself. But the Bronx-born director has been living in Rome for a while now, and had he chosen Italian for this story of a priest caught between his alleged healing powers and his visions of Lucifer, between the rise of fascism and a growing communist revolt in a small village, this bungled drama may have seemed a little more credible.

Instead, Ferrera surrounded Labeouf...

Abel Ferrara is here to spice up the summer. Reteaming with Willem Dafoe following 4:44 Last Day on Earth, Pasolini, Go Go Tales, New Rose Hotel, and prior to Siberia, which recently premiered at Berlinale, they collaborated on Tommaso. The Cannes premiere, which opens on June 5 in Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema via Kino Lorber, finds them going more meta than ever before, with Dafoe’s character playing a North American director living in Rome with his younger wife and their 3-year-old daughter. Ahead of the release, a new U.S. trailer and poster have arrived.

Rory O’Connor said in our review, “Most of this is a mirror of Ferrara’s own life: his move to Rome after U.S. funders stopped backing his movies following the 9/11 attacks; his struggles with addiction; his multiple marriages; his conversion to Buddhism and so on. Ferrara, a New York native, was...

Filmmaker Abel Ferrara and actor Willem Dafoe have a bit of an ongoing working relationship. For decades now, the filmmaker and actor have collaborated on a number of films including “New Rose Hotel,” “Go Go Tales,” “4:44 Last Day on Earth,” and “Pasolini.” However, his most recent collaboration, “Tommaso” has yet to hit theaters officially.

Continue reading ‘Tommaso’ Trailer: Abel Ferrara & Willem Dafoe Collaborate Once Again In This Drama From Last Year’s Cannes at The Playlist.

One of the great collaborations in recent cinema is that of Willem Dafoe and Abel Ferrara, including 4:44 Last Day on Earth, Pasolini, Go Go Tales, and New Rose Hotel. They’ve recently reteamed for two more projects: Siberia, which recently wrapped production, and Tommaso, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The latter project finds them going more meta than ever before, with Dafoe’s character playing a North American director living in Rome with his younger wife and their 3-year-old daughter. While the film is still seeking U.S. distribution, an international trailer has now arrived.

Rory O’Connor said in our review, “Most of this is a mirror of Ferrara’s own life: his move to Rome after U.S. funders stopped backing his movies following the 9/11 attacks; his struggles with addiction; his multiple marriages; his conversion to Buddhism and so on. Ferrara, a New York native,...

For the first three decades of his career, Abel Ferrara was a seminal New York filmmaker whose gritty tales of furious pariahs, addicts, and rebels made Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” look like “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” But Ferrara fled New York after 9/11 and found a new life abroad. On a recent evening in Rome, he stood on the porch of his home, thousands of miles from the city that put him on the map, and contemplated his history of battling for final cut.

“You can’t paint a mustache on a Mona Lisa just because you fucking buy it,” he said, wearing a pair of scruffy headphones as he stared into a Skype session on his laptop. His leathery features and wisps of long white hair gleamed against a shadowy backdrop. “You dig what I mean? I’m working in my own language.”

With Ferrara, meaning can be an elusive thing.

Leading Indian producer Subhash Ghai has joined forces with Rome-based Navala Prods. to launch biographical drama “Osho: Lord of the Full Moon.” The film will be structured as a large-budget India-Italy co-venture.

The film’s focus is the controversial Indian mystic Osho, formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who died in 1990. He proposed alternative rules for living and self-improvement. His 600 books remain hugely popular best-sellers, and he was recently the subject of six-part Netflix Original documentary series “Wild, Wild Country.”

The narrative film will contain action from the time that India gained independence from British colonial rule, as well as more poetic flashbacks. Beside Osho, the other main character of the film is a female TV journalist who puts her career at stake trying to discover if the guru is a con man, or an enlightened genius. Answering this question changes her life.

The film will be directed by Italy-based...

Looking back on this still-young century makes clear that 2007 was a major time for cinematic happenings — and, on the basis of this retrospective, one we’re not quite through with ten years on. One’s mind might quickly flash to a few big titles that will be represented, but it is the plurality of both festival and theatrical premieres that truly surprises: late works from old masters, debuts from filmmakers who’ve since become some of our most-respected artists, and mid-career turning points that didn’t necessarily announce themselves as such at the time. Join us as an assembled team, many of whom were coming of age that year, takes on their favorites.

“Here in America there is no difference between a man and his economic fate. A man is made by his assets, income, position and prospects. The economic mask coincides completely with a man’s inner character. Everyone...

Abel Ferrara has never had the easiest time when it comes to U.S. distribution for his films. He usually winds up with tiny companies who can only afford limited releases ("Chelsea On The Rocks") or taking literally years to find a screen stateside ("Go Go Tales"); being a Ferrara fan can be frustrating. But his last film—prior to this year's double whammy of "Welcome To New York" and "Pasolini"—"4:44 Last Day On Earth" hit U.S. cinemas in the able hands of IFC Films, and it seemed things went well. The company snatched up the rights to the director's next effort, "Welcome To New York," but it seems something has gone wrong. Arriving in theaters and on VOD in France this past spring, the movie is inspired by the scandal that surrounded by former Imf chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, when he was accused of sexually assaulting a New York City maid.

"We’re coming from a point of a lot of respect. We dig [Pasolini's] work, we dig everything about him. He’s essential viewing. His death, in 1975, was also kind of a very outrageous moment, all the bullshit surrounding, the killing. When it comes down to it, we were probably gearing up to make this movie from the moment we heard he was dead."—Abel Ferrara The last few years have not been kind to Abel Ferrara’s career if you've taken a close look, but the filmmaker has soldiered on regardless. Starting around 2007, films like "Go Go Tales" "Mulberry St," "Napoli, Napoli, Napoli" and "Chelsea on the Rocks" either failed to receive North American distribution or what roll out plan was in place was rather minuscule (and good luck finding a copy of 2005’s “Mary” on DVD or VOD as well). None of it seems to matter to the Bronx-born filmmaker who,...

Set to have its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, the first trailer for Abel Ferrara's Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe as the Italian filmmaker, poet and novelist Pier Paolo Pasolini, has premiered ahead of its upcoming Venice Film Festival premiere. The film takes a look at the final days of Pasolini's life and the confusion surrounding his death in 1975 as he struggles with the censors as he is about to finish Sal?, or the 120 Days of Sodom, pausing for an interview with a journalist that allows him to reflect on ideas of sex and politics, having lunch with his beloved mother with whom he shared a house, welcoming friends and former lovers and his obsessive predilection for cruising the nocturnal streets of Rome in search of furtive sex via. Depending on how things shape out when it comes to my Tiff schedule, I might be seeing this one on Sunday,...

As we look in the rearview mirror of the summer blockbusters, September heralds the start of the fall movie season. Filled with Hollywood heavyweights and A-listers, here’s our Big list of the most anticipated movies coming to cinemas this autumn and during the holidays.

Our exhaustive list includes films that are playing at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival as well the ones that already have a theatrical release date. With the awards season on the horizon, we also added a few bonus films at the end to keep your eye out for in the months ahead.

Pull up a chair, grab a pen and paper and get ready for Wamg’s Guide to the 100+ Films This Fall And Holiday Season.

We kick it off with what’s showing in Toronto at the film festival that runs September 4 – 14.

Maps To The Stars – September 2014 – Toronto International Film Festival; UK & Ireland September...

★★★★★If Go Go Tales (2007) and 4:44: Last Day on Earth (2011) suggested that Abel Ferrara may be entering a late master period, then Welcome to New York (2014) confirms it. It's a bold fictional take on the story of former Imf director Dominique's Strauss-Kahn's arrest for the sexual assault of a hotel chambermaid in the titular city in 2011. Eschewing the carnival of excess of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Ferrara has created a discomforting vision that unfolds in three precise acts; it's a Nietzschean digi-horror, an exorcism of national demons and a grim procession of humility. In Devereaux, brilliantly played by veteran Gérard Depardieu, the director gives us a monstrously skewed King Lear for the 21st century.

With only hours ago before the official selection for the Main Competition is announced, we’ve narrowed our final predictions to the following titles that we’re crystal-balling as the films that will be included on Thierry Fremaux’s highly anticipated list. Despite an obvious drought of Asian auteurs (we’re thinking the rumored frontrunner Takashi Miike won’t be included in tomorrow’s list) who’s to say there won’t be some definite surprises, like Jia Zhang-ke’s A Touch of Sin last year.

Several hopefuls appear not to be ready in time, including Malick, Hsou-hsien, Cristi Puiu, and Innarritu, to name a few. But there does appear to be a high quantity of exciting titles from some of cinema’s leading auteurs. We’re still a bit tentative about whether Xavier Dolan’s latest, Mommy, will get a main competition slot—instead, we’re predicting another surprise,...

Announced way back at the beginning of the year, this is a bit of news we missed, forgot about and are now reminded that not only is it actually a thing, but that it's very much moving forward. Provocateur Abel Ferrara, who is currently finishing up "Welcome To New York," a movie based on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal, is now preparing to bring the final moments in the life of one of cinema's most daring directors to the big screen. Ferrara is lining up "Pasolini" -- yes, about Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini -- a movie that will see Willem Dafoe taking on the title role. Marking the fourth film between the actor and director (following "New Rose Hotel," "Go Go Tales" and "4:44 Last Day On Earth"), the film will track Pasolini's last days, presumably leading up to his murder. While a young hustler was arrested at the time,...

The first top ten lists of 2012 have arrived by way of Sight & Sound and the distinguished French magazine Cahiers Du Cinema, and to no surprise we are looking at a pair of lists that largely target festival features rather than anything mainstream. Sight & Sound's is compiled through contributions of approximately 100 critics and does contain a few more "well known" features, but for the most part you're looking at a pair of cinephile lists that will probably include a few titles you haven't heard of... no problem with that. Three films crossover between each list with Leos Carax's Holy Motors landing at #4 on the Sight & Sound list while coming in as the #1 film on Cahiers' list. Then, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis starring Robert Pattinson, which wasn't necessarily well received everywhere it landed, comes in at #2 on the Cahiers list and ties for the eighth spot on Sight and Sound's. Finally,...

Still from Holy Motors

Léos Carax’s Holy Motors has been named the best in Top-10 of 2012 list of French film journal ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’. The film won the Award of the Youth and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival 2012 and three other awards, Best International Feature, Best Actor and Best Cinematography awards, at the Chicago International Film Festival 2012. Holy Motors has replaced Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope, that was last year’s number one. Carax has twice earlier featured on Cahier’s list with Bad Blood and Lovers on the Bridge.

David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis has secured the second place. The film has been one of the festival favourites of the year. It was nominated for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Started in 1951, Cahiers du Cinéma has seen prominent cinephiles like Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut,...

Cahiers du Cinéma's December issue has arrived, and with it the journal's annual conversation-starting top ten list, featuring not one but two nods to Abel Ferrara and topped with this year's notorious limousine-themed double bill.

The list:

1. Holy Motors, Dir. Leos Carax

2. Cosmopolis, Dir. David Cronenberg

3. Twixt, Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

4. 4:44 Last Day on Earth, Dir. Abel Ferrara

4. In Another Country, Dir. Hong Sang-Soo

4. Take Shelter, Dir. Jeff Nichols

7. Go Go Tales, Dir. Abel Ferrara

8. Tabu, Dir. Miguel Gomes

9. Faust, Dir. Alexander Sokurov

10. Keep the Lights On, Dir. Ira Sachs...

Cahiers du Cinema has released its Top 10 Films of 2012, and it's appropriately eclectic, with Leos Carax's berserk "Holy Motors" topping the list. David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis," Miguel Gomes' "Tabu" and Hong Sang-Soo's "In Another Country" also make the cut. Jeff Nichols' 2011 poetic, apocalyptic "Take Shelter" also represents, as does Francis Ford Coppola's "Twixt" and Abel Ferrara's "4:44 Last Day on Earth." Full list below. Check out our Toh! review of "Holy Motors" here. Cahiers du Cinema's Top 10 of 2012 (with several ties): 1. Holy Motors (Leos Carax) 2. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg) 3. Twixt (Francis Ford Coppola) 4. 4:44 Last Day On Earth (Abel Ferrara) 4. In Another Country (Hong Sang-Soo) 4. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols) 7. Go Go Tales (Abel Ferrara) 8. Tabu (Miguel Gomes) 8. Faust (Alexadre Sokourov) 10. Keep...

Well, Thanksgiving has barely started and the first top ten list of 2012 has arrived from the snooty folks (kidding guys, we love you) at French movie bible Cahiers Du Cinema, and as usual, it's pretty...eclectic... If you ever doubted the magazine's dedication to Auteurs, this list will set your mind at ease. Topping it is Leos Carax's celebrated (and somewhat divisive) poem to the movies themselves, "Holy Motors," which we suspect will be finding its way to many lists as the year winds down. Equally divisive, David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis" slots into second place, but from there, things get a bit funky. Francis Ford Coppola's not-very-well-received 3D jaunt "Twixt" places, while Cahiers found room for two Abel Ferrara movies (complicated distribution only saw "Go Go Tales" debut overseas this year). We're really glad to see Jeff Nichols' underrated "Take Shelter" get some love (it arrived in.

News.

The Aurora tragedy, in which a man took the lives of 14 people, and injured many others, in a horrific shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, has devastated everyone. David Hudson rounds up some of the responses critics have offered in the wake of this unthinkable event. Issue 63 of Senses of Cinema is now available online for your perusal. Among the offerings are pieces on Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Ferrara's Go Go Tales and an assortment of festival reports. Above: Jerry Lewis sure knows how to keep busy. The 86 year-old is hard at work on directing his first play, a stage adaptation of The Nutty Professor. Dave Itzkoff, who visited Lewis during rehearsals, has a piece on the subject in The New York Times. Claire Denis is set to begin shooting The Bastards, her next feature. We've yet to get any plot details, but...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 17, 2012

Price: DVD $24.98, Blu-ray $29.98

Studio: IFC/Mpi

Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh cope with impending doom in 4:44 Last Day on Earth.

The 2011 film 4:44: Last Day On Earth is a science fiction-tinged drama-fantasy by the inimitably independent and ferocious Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, King of New York).

The movie hinges on the idea that tomorrow at 4:44 a.m., the world is going to come to an end, brought about by the destruction of the ozone layer. As panic hits the Earth’s population, two lovers – actor and recovering drug addict Cisco (Willem Dafoe, Antichrist) and painter Skye (Shanyn Leigh, Public Enemies) – seclude themselves in their Manhattan apartment to spend their last hours of existence together. Accepting their doomed fate, Cisco and Skye take care of some personal business—they call their families to say goodbye, they make love, they order Chinese takeout—and...

I used to believe, like Wenders or Godard, in the death of cinema. I accepted it as fact but never believed in it. The movies, that’s what I believed in—a dark room, shadows on a surface, a bunch of lonely people sitting down, looking up.

Like Leos Carax to Serge Daney, Abel Ferrara showed me there’d be cinema ‘til the end of the world.

***

At first I thought Abel Ferrara’s films were badly acted; I soon realized Ferrara would take bad acting with truth in it over a masterpiece of falsehoods. (Later I found out that Ferrara would, in Dangerous Game and New Rose Hotel, use one to create the other.)

I thought his films were too commercial. “Already captivated by cinema, I didn’t need to be seduced as well,” as Serge Daney put it. Hollywood in the 21st century is a highly sophisticated marketing ploy.

Abel Ferrara (Go Go Tales, Nyff ’07), cinema’s chronicler of humanity’s damned, opened this year’s S.F. Indie Fest with 4:44 Last Day on Earth. IFC Films has unveiled the trailer for Ferrara’s crazy Southern take on the last days before the end of the world. Moviegoers will stay awake for the full 85 minutes of [...]

Continue reading 4:44 Last Day On Earth Trailer Featuring Willem Dafoe on FilmoFilia.

Related posts: Abel Ferrara’s 4.44 Last Day On Earth Starring Willem Dafoe First Look Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg stars in “Antichrist” Willem Dafoe to Join Stephen Sommers’ Odd Thomas...

Abel Ferrara continues to insist disgraced French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be the inspiration for an upcoming film. First revealed at the tail end of last year, reports surfaced that the director was looking at Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Adjani to star in a movie that will use the Strasse-Kahn affair, and incidents involving Bill Clinton and Silvio Berlusconi and more to tell a fictionalized tale about sexual scandals. Production company Wild Bunch were quick to downplay any connection to Dsk saying the film would only have "a little bit" of influence from his highly publicized incident in New York City. While, we'll have to see how it all plays out, Ferrara is quickly moving on the project. Apparently fueled on cocktails during the France premiere of "Go Go Tales" (delayed in the country for a variety of arcane reasons), Le Monde caught up with the chatty director. Ferrara said...

Looking back at 2011 on what films moved and impressed us it becomes more and more clear—to me at least—that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, our end of year poll, now an annual tradition, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2011—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2011 to create a unique double feature. Many contributors chose their favorites of 2011, some picked out-of-the-way gems, others made some pretty strange connections—and some frankly just want to create a kerfuffle. All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2011 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative...

Prepping today's Briefing, I realized that there's been such a deluge of year-end lists, awards and nominations for yet more awards that it's best to simply siphon them off into one entry.

The headliner today has to be the pair of "Best of 2011" lists from New York Times critics Manohla Dargis and Ao Scott. You'll find both lists rattled off in alphabetical order at the bottom of this page following a conversation of their favorites and of the state of cinema in general. Two snippets from that conversation, the first from Manohla Dargis:

In recent years smaller distributors and studio subsidiaries have become hip to the Oscar-driven seasons and adjusted accordingly. Now some of the best films turn up in the late winter, early spring. If you lived in New York between January and April, you could have seen Go Go Tales (Abel Ferrara); Cold Weather (Aaron Katz); Poetry (Lee Chang-dong...

4:44 Last Day on Earth

Directed by Abel Ferrara

Written by Abel Ferrara

2011, USA

Following the trend of doomsday as with Melancholia, Abel Ferrara brings his own take on the genre with 4:44 Last Day on Earth. Willem Dafoe stars as Cisco, a New York City actor who lives with his younger lover Skye (Shanyn Leigh) as they live out their last day on Earth. By 4:44am the next morning, Earth as anyone knows it will experience a total meltdown and survivors will be nonexistent. As they go through their day together, they find themselves partaking in their last intimate moments and simple pleasures along with resisting the temptations to slip into bad habits and figuring out what to make of everything. By no means a big film, 4:44 is a slice into the life of an everyday city couple struggling to figure out what to do with the time they have left.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Actor Willem Dafoe and writer/director Abel Ferrara have teamed together before for 2007′s completely off the radar screwball comedy Go Go Tales (bet you’ve never heard of that one, have ya?) but their next collaboration has considerably more buzz, a sci-fi thriller awkwardly titled 4:44 Last Day on Earth about the last hours on Earth of mankind, which premiered today under the spotlight of the Venice Film Festival Crowd.

The concept is simple: at 4:44 am Eastern Time the world will come to an end. This time all the scientists agree, there is no escape. So what would you do with your last hours of your life? Who would you spend that time with?

Willem Dafoe plays Cisco, a man who is still trying to figure out what happened and why doomsday cannot be avoided. Basically the whole film is set in a New...

By Mike Collett-White

Venice, Italy (Reuters) - Director Abel Ferrara ponders how we would behave knowing death was coming to us all in an environmental disaster in "4:44 Last Day on Earth," his latest film starring Willem Dafoe.

The movie, one of 23 in the main competition at the Venice film festival, has its world premiere Wednesday as the annual cinema showcase enters the final stretch ahead of Saturday's awards.

In the film Dafoe plays Cisco, a successful actor, while Shanyn Leigh portrays his partner, an artist, in the actress's first lead role.

The couple have sex, eat, cry and bicker as 4.44 a.m., the time when everyone knows the end will come, gets closer.

Rather than reflecting the shock and panic of first learning of Earth's fate, the movie is set instead when people have accepted what awaits them.

Ferrara, who has worked with Dafoe before on "Go Go Tales...

Dread Central is always on the lookout for intriguing new information to share with our readers. So when an email arrived informing us of a supernatural thriller that was the equivalent of "The DaVinci Code meets The Exorcist", of course we sat up and took notice.

The film being described is none other than director Joseph Tito's Death of the Virgin. It's been an official selection of the Toronto and Rome International Film Festivals. And if the trailer is any indication, this religious-themed horrific thriller certainly looks to be able to deliver on the whole DaVinci Code/Exorcist thing.

Starring Maria Grazia Cucinotta (Rite, The Postman (Il Postino), James Bond – The World is Not Enough), Daniel Baldock (Letters to Juliet, Pope Pius Xii, Pillars of the Earth, Go Go Tales), Linda Valadas (Novellas Morangos Com Acucar, Detective Maravilhas, Tu E Eu) and Natasha Allan (Take Your Place (Prenez Vos...

The 2011 New York Film Festival has announced its full lineup of films, and as expected, a few more genre/horror films have appeared to join Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In, most of which have been popping up on all the major film fest rosters also.

4:44: Last Day on Earth

Abel Ferrara, 2011

How would we spend our final hours on Earth? And what does how we choose to die say about how we have chosen to live? In the hands of the inimitable Abel Ferrara (Go Go Tales, Nyff '07), this thought experiment takes on a visceral immediacy. With the planet on the verge of extinction, a New York couple (Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh) cycle through moments of anxiety, ecstacy, and torpor. As they sink into the havens of sex and art, and Skype last goodbyes in a Lower East Side apartment filled with screens...

The 49th New York Film Festival has announced their main slate which takes place September 30th thru October 16th at Lincoln Center. The closing night selection is Alexander Payne’s The Descendants which joins the gala screenings of opening night’s Roman Polanski’s Carnage, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and the Almodóvar/Banderas reunion The Skin I Live In. Check out the lineup below along with a synopsis of each film:

Opening Night Gala Selection

Carnage

Director: Roman Polanski

Country: France/Germany/Poland

Centerpiece Gala Selection

My Week With Marilyn

Director: Simon Curtis

Country: UK

Special Gala Presentations

A Dangerous Method

Director: David Cronenberg

Country: UK/Canada/Germany

The Skin I Live In

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Country: Spain

Closing Night Gala Selection

The Descendants

Director: Alexander Payne

Country: USA

Main Slate Selection

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Director: Abel Ferrara

Country: USA

The Artist

Director: Michel Hazanavicius...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants (pictured) will be the closing night film for this year’s New York Film Festival. Nyff’s main slate was also unveiled and includes David Cronenberg‘s A Dangerous Method and Pedro Almodóvar‘s The Skin I Live In, which both will be screened as special gala presentations; Simon Curtis‘ My Week With Marilyn, which will have a centerpiece screening; and Roman Polanski‘s Carnage, which will open the fest. Read the complete lineup below.

Nyff’s 49th edition will take place Sept. 30 – Oct. 16. General public tickets will become available starting Sept. 12. Learn more here.

49Th New York Film Festival

Films & Descriptions

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Abel Ferrara, 2011, USA, 82min

How would we spend our final hours on Earth? And what does how we choose to die say about how we have chosen to live?...

Press Release:

New York, August 17, 2011 -The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Alexander Payne.s The Descendants will be the Closing Night Gala selection for the 49th New York Film Festival (September 30-October 16). Nyff.s main slate of 27 feature films was also announced as well as a return to the festival stage of audience favorite, On Cinema (previously titled The Cinema Inside Me), featuring an in-depth, illustrated conversation with Alexander Payne.

The 2011 edition of Nyff will also feature a unique blend of programming to complement the main-slate of films, including: the Masterworks programs, additional titles added to the previously announced Ben-hur, Nicholas Ray.s We Can.T Go Home Again and Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial, as well as Views from the Avant-Garde, and several special event screenings, all of which will be announced in more detail shortly.

.In many of the films in this year.s Festival,...

The New York Film Festival have officially announced their main slate, including the closing night film. The latter will be Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants starring George Clooney, which will also bow at Toronto. Their line-up includes a lot of Cannes holdovers including new films from the Dardenne brothers, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Joseph Cedar, as well as buzzed-about hits like The Artist, Le Havre, Once Upon a Time in Antatolia and Miss Bala. Out of the new films, we’ll be getting Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison doc, Steve McQueen‘s Hunger follow-up Shame, as well as Abel Ferrara and Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky films. I was also glad to see Sean Durkin‘s utterly excellent Martha Marcy May Marlene as part of the slate. Check out the full line-up below.

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Abel Ferrara, 2011, USA, 82min

How...

If you generally like depraved movies and you love temperamental and mercurial curmudgeons, it's pretty much mandatory that you adore Bronx-born filmmaker Abel Ferrara. Maybe you don't think all his films are successful ("Dangerous Game", "Body Snatchers"), maybe you think some of them are near Big Apple sleaze-masterpieces ("King of New York," "Bad Lieutenant") and very possibly you haven't seen the ones that have had trouble finding proper distribution ("Mary," "Go Go Tales," "Chelsea On The Rocks"), but in theory, you love his no holds barred approach, his refusal to sugarcoat anything in an interview, and his general cantankerous mien.…...

Chicago – The balcony is officially open and back in business at Wttw Chicago, the same network where Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel hosted “Sneak Previews” roughly 35 years ago. On Friday, Jan. 21 at 8:30pm Cst, public television stations nationwide will premiere “Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies,” the latest reinvention of the celebrated TV series championing the art of film criticism.

Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of Mubi.com will serve as co-hosts of the program, which is executive produced by Ebert and his wife Chaz, and directed by “Siskel & Ebert” veteran Don Dupree. The hosts will be joined each week by an alternating group of contributing critics offering their own distinctive segments on cinema. Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun, Omar Moore of The Popcorn Reel, Kartina Richardson of Mirrorfilm.org, Jeff Greenfield of CBS, Nell Minow of Beliefnet.com, and David Poland of Movie City...

I have to admit, I find the way ads are served on the Film Annex sites is kind of weird. My browser gets spazzy as the “Pet Fit” commercial affixed to the head of this Abel Ferrara clip montage plays. That said, it’s worth sitting through a chirpy model telling you how to slim down your canine for this collection of prime moments from Abel Ferrara’s career. (How great was Madonna in Dangerous Game?) Ferrara is the subject of a series of mostly new films at the Anthology Film Archives this week, “Abel Ferrara in the 21st Century.” (Note to self: have someone key in my old Ferrara interviews from the print editions of Filmmaker.) Included: Mary, Chelsea on the Rocks, Go Go Tales, Mulberry Street, and Napoli, Napoli Napoli. I’ve only seen Mary, and it’s great — to my mind, his best film since Bad Lieutenant.

Abel Ferrara is an uneven but always interesting director whose films unfortunately don’t get the exposure they should. To the rescue comes Anthology Film Archives, which will devote a week to his movies of the past decade. Ferrara will be at the Anthology on opening night, Friday, and at “selected screenings” during the rest of the series. The retro includes his two most recent works, both documentaries: “Mulberry St.” (2009), a portrait of Ferrara’s home base, Little Italy, and “Napoli Napoli Napoli” (2009), about the Italian city of Naples. I enjoyed...

This was a tad unexpected.

Over the past few years, Abel Ferrara has had quite an underground career. Films like Go Go Tales and Chelsea On The Rocks were pretty much unseen by the public, and even much hyped projects like his Jekyll & Hyde film were either stalled or completely shelved.

Read more on Director Abel Ferrara going to Broadway…...

Above: Henner Winckler's School Trip.

Compiling a top ten European films of the decade is a tricky business—what do we mean by "European", by "film", or even by "decade"? My personal run-down of the truly outstanding feature-length, made-for-tv, world-premiered after 1st January 2000 comes to eleven titles, an awkward number in any sphere except the football pitch. For what it's worth, my "first XI" of favourites, in alphabetical order, reads as follows:

Control (2007; Anton Corbijn; UK)

Dancer in the Dark (2000; Lars Von Trier; Denmark)

Dead Man's Shoes (2004; Shane Meadows; UK)

Gunnar Goes Comfortable (2003; Gunnar Hall Jensen; Norway)

The Intruder (L'Intrus; 2004; Claire Denis; France)

Last Resort (2000; Pawel Pawlikowski, UK)

René (2008, Helena Třeštíková, Czech Republic)

Satan (aka Sheitan; 2006; Kim Chapiron, France)

The State In Am In (Die innere Sicherheit; 2000; Christian Petzold; Germany)

United 93 (2006; Paul Greengrass; UK)

Volver (2006; Pedro Almodovar; Spain)

Many of the above will be familiar to most The...

In the course of covering Dan Fogler’s Hysterical Psycho at the Tribeca Film Festival (see our review here), Fango chatted up actor Nicholas De Cegli (a.k.a. Nicky Dee, pictured left), who plays “The Giant” in Psycho. He has also appeared in several movies by cult fave Abel Ferrara, and gave us the scoop that the director will soon be revisiting a classic horror icon.

“It’s a takeoff on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, with Forest Whitaker as Dr. Jekyll and 50 Cent as Mr. Hyde,” the actor tells us, adding, “It's gonna be played totally straight. In this movie, it’s the rich white people who get terrorized, and I’m going to be playing one of those white guys. This is a really great project; he wrote it as a modern-day version of the story, and he’s just waiting for the green light on it.

What is it we love so much about big-screen strippers, aside from the obvious? Is it the eyes that reveal a trapped soul? The bruises that reveal a wounded heart? The solitary dances that reveal a lonely spirit? Obviously the stripper makes for a very complex character on screen as she (and he) has appeared in countless films over the years, spanning several different genres. The latest stripper to hit the stage comes in the form of actress Marisa Tomei, who may just nab an Oscar nod for her performance in The Wrestler (in limited release this weekend). And in the past couple of years, we've watched a number of different strippers do their thing -- from the fantastic ensemble cast of Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales to the somewhat fascinating ensemble cast of Zombie Strippers, our thirst for people who take their clothes off for money has not...

NEW YORK -- Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins and Matthew Modine are set to star in writer-director Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales, a screwball comedy that has taken an equally circuitous path to production.

Dafoe will play the owner of a New York go-go dancing club whose brother and financial backer (Modine) threatens to pull the plug on his business. The owner and his accountant (Hoskins) face a bumpy night as the strippers threaten to strike. Longtime Ferrara pal Asia Argento is attached to play a small role as one of the dancers.

Ferrara originally was slated to begin principal photography on the project in January 2005, but after several territories were presold, the production never got off the ground. According to a statement from Bellatrix Media, which is producing the project, Italian state film organization Istituto Luce and producer Gam Film filed suit against the director, who then filed a counterclaim against them. The parties settled out of court, with the screenplay rights and Ferrara's services turning over to producer Bellatrix, owned by Swiss entrepreneur Massimo Gatti.

After a lengthy search, Drea De Matteo of The Sopranos fame has landed the role of Joey Tribbiani's sister on NBC's upcoming Friends spinoff series, Joey. The comedy, from Warner Bros. TV, centers on the relationship between Joey (Matt LeBlanc), who moves to Los Angeles, and his sister Gina (De Matteo), a hairdresser who lives with her son. Probably smarter than Joey, Gina has a way with men, much like Joey has with women. She's a strong woman who isn't afraid to speak her mind. De Matteo is best known for her role on HBO's cult mob drama The Sopranos, on which she plays Christopher's (Michael Imperioli) fiancee, Adriana, who is recruited by the FBI. Her new gig on Joey will not interfere with her contractual obligations to the 10-episode sixth and final season of David Chase's hit series, sources said. De Matteo, whose credits also include Swordfish and Deuces Wild, next appears in Go Go Tales and Assault on Precinct 13.