After the release of long-awaited films, such as Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In and Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, we take a look at what’s coming next from some of our greatest living directors.
Twixt (2011), Franis-Ford Coppola
In Coppola’s new detective thriller, Val Kilmer plays a pulp horror writer living in a Californian town, who becomes involved in a dramatic murder story of his own. Narrated by Tom Waits, the cast includes Ben Chaplin, Bruce Dern and Elle Fanning.
Making a rare public appearance, this year Coppola showed parts of Twixt to the Comic-Con fan convention in San Diego. He used real-time editing tools to present a version of the film which was directly influenced by the audience’s response. This was the first run of an interesting project due before Twixt‘s theatrical release: a national tour in which Coppola will show a different version of the thriller each night.
Carnage (2011), Roman Polanski
Carnage is based upon God of Carnage, the 2009 Tony-winning play written by French playwright Yasmina Reza. Reza and Polanski started adapting the play for the big screen in 2009. Set in Brooklyn, Carnage is based on the interaction between two sets of middle-class parents who meet after their sons are found fighting in the school playground. In this witty film, hostility and resentment are unleashed between two couples: the Longstreets (John C Reilly and Jodie Foster) and the Cowans (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet). Premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Carnage will open the 49th New York Film Festival on 30 September.
Melancholia (2011), Lars von Trier
From the director of the 2000 Palme-D’Or-winning Dancer In the Dark, comes this visually stunning end-of-the-world melodrama. The film was in the running for this year’s Palme D’Or, but lost to Terence Malick’s Tree of Life.
A mysterious new planet called “Melancholia” threatens to collide into the Earth, which has a damaging affect on the relationship between two sisters: Justine and Claire. Kirsten Dunst won Best Female Actress at Cannes this year for her role as Justine, a bride-to-be who suffers from depression. The more rational sister, Claire, is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. The film also stars Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt.
Gambit (2012), Michael Hoffman
The remake of the 1966 British action thriller starring Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine has a screenplay written by Joel and Ethan Coen.
In his first film since The King’s Speech, Colin Firth stars as a cat burglar trying to rob a billionaire. The criminal employs the help of a waitress (Cameron Diaz) who closely resembles the billionaire’s ex-wife. Gambit‘s shooting in London began in May this year, and it should be released in 2012.
The Great Gatsby (2012), Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann is dedicating a vast budget of £90m to his film production of one of the best novels of all time. First published in 1925, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby conveys how a materialist and hedonistic culture can both attract and estrange people from one another. The novel is set in Long Island and New York City, but the film is being shot in Australia.
In parallel with his role as Jay Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio is stupendously rich, topping the 2011 Forbes list for the top-earning male in Hollywood. Tobey Maguire plays the novel’s narrator Nick Carraway and Carey Mulligan stars as Gatsby’s love, the enigmatic and unforgettable Daisy Buchanan. In other roles, Isla Fisher stars as the sassy Myrtle and Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan.
It’s said that Luhrmann will shoot the film in 3D. This has sparked anger from some who fear that the form is suited to fast-paced action films rather than to an adaptation of a classic novel.
The Bop Decameron (2012), Woody Allen
Woody Allen’s first film set in Rome is a romantic-comedy partly influenced by Fellini and the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century collection of bawdy stories.
Allen will star in the film, alongside actors such as Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg, Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin and Ellen Page. This is the second time Allen has directed Penelope Cruz – the first time being Vicky Christina Barcelona in 1998, for which Cruz won an Oscar. Allen has also casted real life members of Rome’s paparazzi.
Pinocchio (2014), Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro will direct a new version of Pinocchio in 2014, an exciting prospect after his mesmerising dark fairy-tale Pan’s Labyrinth, which was set in facist Spain.
A follow-up to The Five Obstructions, Martin Scorsese and Lars von Trier
Scorsese and Lars von Trier have confirmed that they will collaborate to make a follow-up to The Five Obstructions– von Trier’s 2003 documentary about filmmaking. In 1967 Danish film director Jorgen Leth made a short film about human behaviour. The Five Obstructions was based on von Trier’s challenge to Leth to make five remakes of his film under certain constraints, such as to shoot the film in the “most miserable place” Leth could think of. It is rumoured that in this follow-up von Trier will challenge Scorsese to remake the Taxi Driver.
Silence, Martin Scorsese
Scorsese’s next feature film, Silence, is set to begin production in early 2012 and will have an impressive cast, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael García Bernal.
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