Universal TV has added three new actors to The Irrational, the NBC pilot starring Jesse L. Martin as Alec Baker, a professor of behavioral science who lends his expertise to an array of high-stakes cases.
20.05.2022 - 00:55 / variety.com
Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticGive an animal a name, and it becomes a lot more difficult to send it to the glue factory. But people don’t stop using paste simply because they’ve made an equine friend. Named for the animal it follows from owner to owner, through various hardships and across national borders, “EO” is a damning polemic on our relationship to other intelligent species — as free labor, food and companions — as seen through the dewy, wide eyes of a donkey whom we come to adore.“EO’s” inspiration is obvious.
In Robert Bresson’s 1966 “Au Hasard Balthazar,” two kids christened a newborn donkey in the film’s opening minutes. By the end, when Balthazar sighed his last breath, audiences wept, such was the attachment they had formed. Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski reckons Bresson’s relatively austere classic was the only time he shed a tear in the cinema.
Now, at the age of 84, he unveils a movie intended to have the same effect on others. Though many will be moved, it is manipulation more than empathy that got them there. While “EO” is not a direct remake, it’s certainly more than homage.
Bresson’s film was, among other things, a rejection of on-screen sentimentality. Five minutes in, the child who gave Balthazar his name dies, after which, the donkey repeatedly changes owners, an anonymous possession to whom only the audience (as opposed to the characters) seemed particularly attached. That same dynamic is true here, to a degree, except that Skolimowski romanticizes and partly anthropomorphizes the beast, giving him subjective shots and flashbacks, perhaps even dream sequences.
Universal TV has added three new actors to The Irrational, the NBC pilot starring Jesse L. Martin as Alec Baker, a professor of behavioral science who lends his expertise to an array of high-stakes cases.
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Manori Ravindran International EditorCannes sensation “EO,” which tells the story of a donkey’s life, has been acquired for North America by Sideshow and Janus Films. The film is the latest collaboration for the U.S.
Guy Lodge Film CriticAny number of directors could have shot Andrea Seigel’s straightforwardly moving screenplay for “The Silent Twins” and turned out a straightforwardly moving film in the process. It’s hard to imagine any of those movies looking, sounding or feeling quite like the one Agnieszka Smoczyńska has made, however.
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streaming, the limited series follows Angelyne (Emmy Rossum, “Shameless”), nee Ronia Tamar Goldberg, who, for decades, has been an iconic curiosity driving around in her pink Corvette (think a more Hollywood version of the infamous Times Square Naked Cowboy) and appearing on billboards where it wasn’t clear what she was advertising — aside from her own desire for everyone to know her face. As depicted from a nearly unrecognizable Rossum (who’s buried beneath a platinum bouffant, fake chest and Minnie Mouse voice), Angelyne’s aesthetic is part Dolly Parton, part Barbie. The show compares her to a prototype of figures who are “famous for being famous” such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
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It may be impossible for a human to truly imagine the mindset of a donkey, but veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski for the most part does a very engaging job of imagining how a beast of burden sees and senses the world in EO.
exercice de style as the French would put it, “EO” has plenty on its mind and nothing much to say, idling through a series of vignettes than more often not end with a punch-line of a forbidden kiss or a sudden act of violence, capturing them all with a flashy and urgent style of a music video or Super Bowl car commercial. One need not look far to see in this tale of a lonely beast of burden traipsing across the countryside a condemnation of modern Polish society, especially in sequences when the titular donkey first witnesses and then succumbs to a bout of skinhead hooligan violence, or when it clops across a forest bed we soon learn was once a Jewish burial site. At the same time, Skolimowski – who shot this project over a two-year period – seems more interested in simply making his camera swoop and soar and generally perform its series of stupid pet tricks. In many ways, this rather silly (if quite entertaining) trifle makes for a fitting entry for Cannes’ 75th edition. Skolimowski approaches the material with the hunger and zeal of a young film student, lifting a framework from Robert Bresson and filtering through references to recent festival provocateurs like Lars von Trier, Refn, and Michael Haneke.
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A version of this preview of this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup appeared in the Cannes edition of TheWrap magazine. As the film industry — from the mightiest moguls to the scrappiest indie-theater owners — struggles to bring movies and moviegoing back to pre-COVID standards, look to this year’s Cannes Film Festival to trumpet the cause, starting with a splashy premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick” that’s clearly meant to send out an international message: “Remember summer movies? You love those.
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