Matt Damon and Frances McDormand starrer Promised Land by Gus Van Sant is one of six films that will screen in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival. Also starring John Krasinski and Rosemarie DeWitt, the film is one of two American titles the festival announced Thursday. Also joining the group is animated feature The Croods, playing out of competition. The title includes voices from Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds.
Promised Land centers on Steve Butler (Damon) a former farm boy turned big city business guy who teams up with Sue (Frances McDormand) to sell financial prosperity to a struggling Pennsylvania town that has rich deposits of natural gas deep underground. The sales execs offer up easy cash in return for drilling rights on their property, but the process of extraction – known as fracking – divides the town.
[Related: Gus Van Sant On 'Promised Land' & His Desire 'To Always Work' With Matt Damon]
Other titles included in the initial lineup of six films hail from Austria, Chile, France, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Romania and Spain. The 63rd Berlinale takes place February 7 – 17.
The first six Berlinale ‘13 titles follow with information provided by the festival.
Competition:
Gloria, Chile/Spain
By Sebastián Lelio (La Sagrada Familia, Navidad, El año del tigre)
With Paulina García, Sergio Hernández
World premiere
Nugu-ui Ttal-do Anin (Nobody’s Daughter Haewon), Republic of Korea
By Hong Sangsoo (Night and Day, Hahaha, In Another Country)
With Eunchae Jung, Sunkyun Lee
World premiere
Paradies: Hoffnung (Paradise: Hope), Austria/France/Germany
By Ulrich Seidl (Dog Days, Import Export, Paradise: Love)
With…
This short-lived tourism poster for North Dakota is supposed to make you think that North Dakota is the land of lit up peen signs (I see you lit up peen sign) and street sluts of all races in Coldwater Creek clothes who will hump on you. But I see this more as North Dakota the land where it’s perfectly acceptable to wear a turquoise collar outside of a black blazer!
I don’t even know why this ad was pulled. It works for me! They should’ve just tweaked their tagline a bit. North Dakota: Where Literally The Only Thing There Is To Do Is Fuck Strangers.
via The Daily What
So you might remember that Angelina Jolie wrote and directed a feature — a real good-time-party-blast called In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the illicit romance between a Muslim woman and a Serbian troop at the peak of the war in Bosnia. Now there’s a trailer.
Honestly, I don’t even have an opinion on this because we all know that FilmDistrict just cuts trailers together to sell totally different movies than they ones they actually release, so for all any of us can tell, this putative holiday tear-jerker about love and war and van explosions is really just another one of their thoughtful, sophisticated, moody, arty dramas for adults. Boooooo!!! I can see the lawsuit now: “I was promised blood and honey. I received blood and a couple gallons of tobacco-flavored Eastern European teardrops.” And they’d be right.
VERDICT: Sold, obviously.
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One of the more mysterious curios of the fall movie season is Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey. In an interview with Vanity Fair (on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles this week), Jolie says that she wrote the script for the Bosnian War-set romance while she was ill and quarantined from her children. “I don’t watch TV and I wasn’t reading anything. So I started writing. I went from the beginning to the end. I didn’t know any other way.” Afterward, she passed the draft to Brad Pitt; what did her super-famous husband think? “He called and said, ‘You know, honey, it’s not that bad.’” Oh. Maybe leave that one off the poster. [VF.com]
The Land of the Rising Sun does not mess around. Joining his wife, boobsy chanteuse Katy Perry, on the Japanese leg of her world tour, Brand was taken into custody by local authorities and forcibly deported from Japan. So why the strong arm? Perry tweeted that “it was for priors from over 10 years ago,” but didn’t go into more detail than that. To be fair, Brand has been arrested more than 11 times in the past, so I’m sure Japan had quite the rich buffet to chose from. At least now Paul McCartney isn’t alone with his Japanese Outlaw status. [Us Weekly]
