Hopscotch Upcoming Titles for February & March

Hopscotch Upcoming Titles for February & March

MOLIERE
In Cinemas:
Dunedin February 21
Auckland, Hamilton & Hawkes Bay February 28
Christchurch March 6
Wellington April 3
Screener Available
Censorship: PG: contains sexual reference
in the tradition of Shakespeare in Love this 17th Century tale tells a lavish story of intrigue, romance, comedy and artistic inspiration.
“Charming…clever, romantic and beautifully mounted. An ingenious story and a very satisfying film.” – The Observer

RESCUE DAWN – In Cinemas February 21
Censorship: M: contains violence & offensive language
Screener Available
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies
From legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog, comes the incredible true story of RESCUE DAWN, which is certain to join THE THIN RED LINE and FULL METAL JACKET as one of the best war movies of the modern era.
In 1997, Werner Herzog made the documentary LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY, which told the extraordinary story of a German-born American Navy pilot, Dieter Dengler, who crash-landed in Laos during the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned in a POW camp and brutally tortured. He then engineered an extraordinary escape with the other inmates, both American and Vietnamese.
Christian Bale plays Dengler in RESCUE DAWN. It is one of this accomplished actor’s most breathtaking performances. From all-American wisecracker to beaten-down victim, Bale inhabits his character with such a fierce and passionate intensity that one recalls the similarly riveting performances of Herzog’s muse, Klaus Kinski. More to the point, the film’s survivalist snarl, its intense anti-heroism and Herzog’s abiding love of freakish wise men echo the filmmaker’s earlier masterpieces, COBRA VERDE and FITZCARRALDO in particular.
Bale is matched step for step by a group of accomplished character actors, including the wonderful Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies as fellow POWs who help Dengler hatch his plans. The camerawork is characteristically stunning and the script is equally propulsive.
This incredible story of survival is played beautifully and resolutely by Bale, while Herzog’s perspective gives the film sublimity that can only be achieved by a master director.

LADY CHATTERLEY – In Cinemas February 28
Censorship: M: contains nudity & sex scenes
Screener Available
Based on the novel by DH Lawrence, this is the first version of the film to be directed by a woman. Winner of 4 Cesar Awards in France including best film.
Directed by Pascale Ferran
Starring: Marina Hands, Jean-Louis, Coulloc’h, Hippolyte Giradot
It used to be a rite of passage for American tourists to smuggle LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER past customs, feeling terribly hip. D.H. Lawrence’s once-scandalous erotic novel was years ahead of its time in dealing with sexual liberation and what Lawrence saw as quasi-mystical notions about sex and human nature.
Drawing on the most scandalous summer romance in English literature, French director Pascale Ferran has beautifully adapted LADY JANE & JOHN THOMAS, the second version of D.H. Lawrence's LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER. Lawrence wrote the novel three times in two years, while suffering from the tuberculosis that killed him in 1930. All three versions concern the intense affair between a frustrated young aristocrat and her virile gamekeeper.
It tells a disarmingly simple story. Opening in 1921, Constance Chatterley (Marina Hands) is a young wife not so much oppressed by convention as bored with her marriage and detached from her own feelings. Her husband, Clifford (Hippollyte Girardot), crippled by a war wound, has moved them to his family’s estate, Wragby, where there is not much for Constance to do. Until, that is, she meets Oliver Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h), Wragby’s gamekeeper, with his muscular physique and sad boxer’s face. LADY CHATTERLEY tells the story of their impossible love.
Winning 5 French Cesar awards in February 2007 and with a gracious break-through performance by Marina Hands (THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS) LADY CHATTERLEY is a coolly elegant, intoxicating, moving and romantic film.
Pascale Ferran shows, with exemplary clarity and subtlety, the way sexual attraction, and the connection it creates, alters both Constance’s and Parkin’s perceptions of themselves, each other and the world around them. It's a film of sun-dappled beauty and unbridled joys that arrive as much as a surprise to the audience as they do to the characters. In stripping LADY CHATTERLEY of some of its mystique, Ms. Ferran has rediscovered both the novel’s originality and the source of its durable appeal, which is not salaciousness but candor. She has made a love story that stands on its own, a film whose imaginative freedom perfectly matches the liberation experienced by its heroine.

2 DAYS IN PARIS – In Cinemas March 20
Media Screening Wednesday 27 February Rialto Newmarket
The stylish romantic comedy feature debut from Julie Delpy
Starring: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Daniel Brühl
“A biting romantic comedy… reveals more about emotional and sexual chemistry than any film I can recall”
Stephen Holden, New York Times
Julie Delpy’s directorial debut, 2 DAYS IN PARIS is a romantic comedy that has thrilled audiences in festivals around the world and garnered excellent critical acclaim. Reminiscent of early Woody Allen, Delpy’s script, direction and performance as French photographer, Marion, exposes her as an incredibly talented, funny and fearlessly original creative force.
Also starring Adam Goldberg as Jack (ZODIAC, A BEAUTIFUL MIND) this story follows Marion and her interior-designer boyfriend, Jack as they attempt to reignite their relationship with romance on a European vacation.
Their week in Venice didn’t go exactly as planned – the food didn’t agree with Jack, and when he was well enough to go out he was so focused on capturing the trip with his digital camera he forgot to experience it.
Both have higher hopes for their last two days in Paris, where they plan on staying with Marian’s family. But the combination of her non-English speaking, overbearing, off-beat parents and flirtatious ex-boyfriends, along with Jack’s continuing obsession with photography and conviction that French condoms are too small, makes for a very inauspicious beginning and only adds fuel to the fire. Will they be able to salvage their relationship? Will they ever have sex again? Or will they merely manage to perfect the art of arguing?
2 DAYS IN PARIS is a refreshing and hilarious twist on the culture-clash, relationship movie. Smart, original and laugh-out-loud funny from start to finish.
Website: http://www.2daysinparisthefilm.com

CLOSING THE RING – In Cinemas April 24
Media Screening Monday 31 March Rialto Newmarket
Richard Attenborough's Closing the Ring stars Mischa Barton, Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Neve Campbell and Pete Postlethwaite.
A young man searches for the proper owner of a ring that belonged to a United States World War II bomber pilot who had crashed onto the Cave Hill just outside Belfast in Northern Ireland on 1st June 1944

IMAGES AVAILABLE FROM www.image.net

ENDS

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