the stoning of soraya m. Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's like Oscar night all over again! We have one loser and one winner: which is which?

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
The film snatched two Oscars, one expected (Mo'Nique for best supporting actress), one not (best screenplay adaptation, which was assumed to belong to Up in the Air). Our own Eric D. Snider identified the challenge and held out a hope: "The premise of Precious is so unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn't want to see it. ... That feeling of hopefulness, not the awfulness that precedes it, is what you'll take with you when the film is over." Rent it.

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Up in the Air
Jason Reitman's character drama walked away empty-handed after earning nominations for George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, and Reitman himself. Clooney plays a frequent-flying 'termination agent,' firing flocks of people from corporations that don't want to do the dirty deeds themselves. Kendrick is the new kid on the firing block, proposing to save money by inhuman means, and Farmiga is the fellow foxy frequent flyer who appears to share Clooney's commitment-phobic allergies.

While not without its moments, it leans heavily on portraying single, childless people as lonely, hollow bastards, while celebrating the joys of marriage and family. Trouble is, none of the families or relationships portrayed are anything close to joyful, so the argument falls flat on its self-righteous face. And it manages to smugly trivialize the consequences of the Great Recession along the way. Rent it if you're single, unemployed and masochistic, or married, currently employed and sadistic.

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After the jump: saints, dogs, cartoons, capitalists, and a stoning.

There are a few good reasons to hate on the Satellite Awards. First of all, we really don't need any more end of the year movie and television honors. Second of all, the Satellites seem to be little more than a knock-off of the Golden Globes, which are already pretty unnecessary. Third, they happen way too early, missing out on seeing and thereby qualifying perhaps the biggest film of the year (Avatar).

But over the years I've come to appreciate the Satellites and their bestowing organization, the International Press Academy, for their constant surprises when it comes to nominating and awarding unlikely films and talent. Just look at some of last year's acting winners: Richard Jenkins; Rosemarie DeWitt; Ricky Gervais; Michael Shannon.

Now check out this year's nominees, which continue to prove that IPA voters like to go at least slightly against the grain. Okay, so there are a lot of predictable titles in the lot, including Up in the Air and Nine, which leads with 11 nominations. Yet there are some films I don't expect to be recognized by the Golden Globes, let alone the Oscars, such as The Maid and The Stoning of Soraya M., both of which feature in the Best Actress (Drama) category.

Click image below to view the full poster

Cinematical has just received this new, exclusive poster for Cyrus Nowrasteh's The Stoning of Soraya M . Based on a best-selling book by the late French / Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, the film dramatizes a real-life incident in Iran in which a woman was stoned to death.

Jim Cavieziel (The Passion of the Christ) plays Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote Iranian village in 1986, during the time that Ayatollah Khomeini was in power. Sahebjam is approached by Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo, House of Sand and Fog) who tells him of a horror story that began when her niece Soraya (Mozhan Marnò) entered into an arranged marriage with a man who proved to be an abusive tyrant and ended with an innocent woman killed by a hail of stones. Director Nowrasteh co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, and the filmmakers' intentions are clear from the official synopsis: "The women, stripped of all rights and without recourse, nobly confront the overwhelming desires of corrupt men who use and abuse their authority to condemn Soraya, an innocent but inconvenient wife, to an unjust and torturous death. A shocking and true drama, it exposes the dark power of mob rule, uncivil law, and the utter lack of human rights for women."

The film had its debut last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival and will hit theaters via a platform release, starting on June 26. The poster can be seen in its full, uncut, subtle beauty in the gallery below. More information about the film is available at the official site.