Sometimes the movie world is a strange place. After its 2013 Venice Film Festival debut Xavier Dolan’s LGBT-themed Tom At The Farm got plenty of praise, including winning the FIPRESCI Prize, being screened in competition at all sorts of prestigious festivals and getting released in various countries all around the world (indeed, we reviewed it for its UK release in August 2014).
However for some strange reason it never reached the US, despite the fact Canadian filmmaker Dolan has a large international following thanks to movies like Heartbeats and I Killed My Mother. It didn’t even get picked up after Xavier won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year for his follow-up film, Mommy (which is also yet to be released in America).
Now though American audiences will finally get to watch Tom At The Farm, as Amplify Releasing has acquired all US rights to the movie and will release it on August 14th, 2015.
Dolan comments, “It’s hard to say it in a fully modest way, but I was truly puzzled as to how exactly Tom At The Farm had never landed distribution in the US. “To me, it was by far my most accessible film; I mean, it’s a 90-minute psychological thriller, and it’s sort of gory but then very conventional too. I’m obviously psyched that Amplify Releasing has taken Tom under their wing. But the topic remains truly relevant – can intolerance and psychological violence ever be dull? – and I’m proud to know the American public will be able to see it. And hopefully, like it.”
In Tom At The Farm, after the sudden death of his lover, Guillaume (Caleb Landry Jones, Heaven Knows What), Tom (Dolan) travels from his home in the city to Guillaume’s family’s remote country farm for the funeral. Upon arriving, he’s shocked to find that the family knows nothing of him- and was expecting a woman in his place. Tom keeps his identity a secret but soon finds himself increasingly drawn into a twisted, sexually charged game by Guillaume’s aggressive brother (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), who suspects the truth.
To many people Larry Kramer is just the guy who wrote The Normal Heart (if they’ve heard of him at all), but many don’t realise that the play and recent film were largely based on real life and Kramer’s own experiences on the frontline of the battle against AIDS in the 1980s.
The story of the 1998 movie movie 54 has passed into movie lore, with the movies finished by director Mark Christopher, but then hacked up by the studio, who removed, among other things, all reference to Ryan Philippe’s character being bisexual.
Last year Pixar very rudely didn’t release a movie at all, but they’re making up for it with two in 2015 – Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur. The latter was actually supposed to have a 2014 release but a major reworking saw the release date shoved back to this November.
Now here’s a remake that makes sense. While Big Trouble In Little China has a big cult following and a lot of people love it, it’s always been a slightly messy movie where the idea behind it always seemed better than the film itself.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, Katniss and co. aren’t suddenly going to become massive fans of President Snow, so seeing the statue of him above smashed to pieces isn’t a shock.
With Avengers: Age Of Ultron having already grossed $1.3 billion, Marvel/Disney is already having a great year, and they’ll be hoping for another hit in a couple of months with Ant-Man. Now a new poster has arrived, which you can take a look at above.
Channing Tatum is certainly keen to be master of his own destiny, having produced several of his recent movies and putting several more into development. Now he’s added a new one, Two Kisses for Maddy, which he will produce and which is being put together as a possible starring vehicle.
Although many of us will remember Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, there have actually been a couple of other films based on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley in the past decade or so, including Ripley’s Game, starring John Malkovich, and Ripley Under Ground, with Barry Pepper.
I think we need to start a petition, as with his numerous LGBT roles James Franco is taking work away from good, honest, real gay people. Straight people coming over here and taking our jobs, it’s just not right!