BrazilianCinema Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In case you don't read Entertainment Weekly and didn't see this week's double issue on "The New Classics," or you didn't see my post last week about their list of the best movies from the last 25 years, here's a sad fact: only six foreign-language films made the list. They are: Wings of Desire (#28); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (#49); The Lives of Others (#56); All About My Mother (#69); Y Tu Mamá También (#86); and In the Mood for Love (#95). OK, so 6% is not terrible for a mainstream entertainment magazine, but EW had to add insult to injury with an accompanying map labeled "Movies: Breaking Down the List," which points to a number of locations around the globe in which some of these new classics are set. The only continent on the map without any love is South America (Antarctica was not included in the visual aid).

Now, before I get into my love letter to new Latin American cinema, I have to note that no film produced in Africa made the list either. However, on the map the continent was at least given some minuscule bit of love via the filming locations for Casino Royale and Gladiator. Yet despite the fact that South America was definitely used as a location in a few of the 100 films, it's shown no respect. And on top of that, Central America isn't even included on the map. For some strange reason there's just a gap between Mexico and South America. Meanwhile, Latin America's sole representative on EW's list, Mexico's Y Tu Mamá También, is left off the map so that no location from this area of the world, from the Mexican-U.S. border to Cape Horn, receives any recognition.

Another Brazilian filmmaker leaves the favelas behind and moves to Hollywood: The Hollywood Reporter reports that acclaimed yet controversial writer-director José Padilha will make an action movie, appropriately set in South America, for Warner Bros. Hardly a stranger to the genre, Padilha recently picked up the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for his critically divisive Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad), a semi-fictional action thriller about police corruption in Rio de Janeiro. Our own Scott Weinberg, reviewing from Tribeca, called the film "powerfully gritty, slyly engrossing and unapologetically brutal." Prior to that film, Padilha made the brilliantly kinetic documentary Bus 174, which was one of my favorite releases of 2003.

The new project is currently without a name, but the original title was A Willing Patriot. Scripted by Jason Keller (who wrote the 2002 fX TV-movie Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie), the movie will be about an American federal agent who goes undercover in South America's "Triple Frontier" (the dangerous tri-border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) to break up a terrorist-funding network. Producer Gianni Nunnari (The Departed, 300), who did the hiring of Padilha, apparently referred to the film's setting as "a modern-day Dodge City." The next step for Nunnari and fellow producers Darin Friedman and Guymon Casady (The Final Cut) is to cast a major Hollywood actor and a major Latino actor.

Fernando Meirelles' City of God was so phenomenal that when the director's follow-up, The Constant Gardener, was released, I hated it simply because it just didn't compare. Well, I've since gotten over my initial disappointment with Gardener and have even developed a love for it -- still not as big as my love for City of God, however -- and so I continue to look forward to whatever Meirelles gives us in the future. Turns out, he may be giving us more than we could have imagined, thanks to a new three-year, five-picture deal with Universal/Focus. The deal isn't for films that Meirelles will direct himself, but is instead for the development of films by young Brazilian filmmakers.

This is incredible news considering most of the time Hollywood wants to remake foreign films, not produce them. Sure indie divisions like Universal's Focus Features pick them up for distribution, and Brazil is often represented in America thanks to the great actress Fernanda Monenegro, but in my opinion, we can never have too many foreign films released in this country. The one Brazilian film that Meirelles produced before this deal, Contra Todos, wasn't given a proper release in the States, which is too bad, because I'd bet it's far better than that awful film that won the best foreign language Oscar this year.