I looked in my crystal ball and saw that Michel Gondry is making a French movie. That’s a first. What’s the most American of our filmmakers (he’s always claimed he’s French but I know that Parisian accent is fake) doing making a movie across the pond? For one thing, he’s been able to cast France’s leading man Romain Duris (no, it’s not Guillaume Canet as you might have presumed), along with the Gauls’ answer to Natalie Portman, Audrey Tautou (Amelie). More to the point, however, is that the film is a book adaptation from a Boris Vian novel, called “L’écume des jours,” which in English roughly translates as “The seafoam of the days” (the official English title is “Froth on the daydream”).

Raúl Ruiz died today, the Chilean director who had exiled himself to France after Pinochet’s acceding power, was better known there for having directed a number of made-for-TV films. As prolific artist who wrote and directed his films, and the author of a well-received adaptation of a Proust novel (Marcel Proust's Time Regained; 1999) he earned his place in the pantheon of film auteurs.

American movie studios have retrofitted thousands of movie theaters across the country to make them fit for 3-D movies viewing. And in times like this, with a crop year that hasn’t been this mediocre in a long time, it’s clear that justifying the costs of these conversions come before any attempt at making good movies. And sometimes, you can tell all this just from watching a trailer.

When I recently watched

Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, the talented team behind the highly successful Hurt Locker and now working on a film about the hunt for Bin Laden, are being taken to task by Rep. Peter King (R-NY).

The New York congressman wondered whether the filmmakers’ had cooperation from government agencies and special access to classified information. In other words, did the team receive special

Do you remember the documentary Protagonist (Jessica Yu, 2007) about [...]

The Locarno Film Festival closed yesterday; here’s the comment from our colleague Eric J. Lyman at The Hollywood Reporter:

“Abrir Puertas y Ventanas (Back to Stay), the story of two sisters struggling with the death of the grandmother who raised them, won two major prizes at the Locarno Film Festival including the storied Golden Leopard honor, while Din Dragoste cu Cele Mai Bune Intentii (Best Intention) was given another two awards and Japanese film Tokyo Koen was given Locarno’s first-ever special jury prize

The news is that I saw Melancholia here in Paris where it came out on Wednesday (since France’s Wednesday is our Friday). I understand that Melancholia will come out in the U.S. at the end of September and hope to land an interview with someone from the film. My review will appear in these columns on the day of the release.