Bardem's 'Biutiful' To Be Released in December

Biutiful has been on my radar for quite a while. Whenever an actor like Javier Bardem teams with a director like Alejandro González Iñárritu, it's worth paying attention to. Then Bardem shared the Best Actor award at Cannes and suddenly, this was a movie to watch even more closely. An international trailer debuted this summer, at which time we wondered where the US distributors were. Shortly after that, Roadside Attractions stepped up and announced it would release the film, but we didn't know when. And now we do: Roadside is putting this thing right in the heart of awards season, as you can read in the company's press release below. Bardem, you'd have to think, has just been catapulted into the Best Actor race for the Oscars. He's been nominated for that prize before, won the Supporting Actor Oscar for No Country for Old Men and the Cannes thing doesn't hurt. Iñárritu, for his part, has seen every one of his three films nominated for Academy Awards in the past, so I can't see how this will avoid the same consideration if it's on par with those. Here's the official word:

Roadside Attractions and Liddell Entertainment have acquired U.S. rights to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s BIUTIFUL, which world premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where star Javier Bardem captured the Best Actor Award for his tour de force performance of a conflicted man struggling to reconcile fatherhood, family, love, remorse, spirituality, crime, seduction, guilt and mortality amidst the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona. BIUTIFUL will have its North American bow at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. The domestic deal was announced jointly by Howard Cohen, Co-President of Roadside Attractions and Mickey Liddell of Liddell Entertainment. Roadside Attractions plans a December, 2010 release. BIUTIFUL is a classic tragedy set in modern times, based on a story by González Iñárritu and written by him, Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone. The film stars Academy Award winner Javier Bardem and newcomers Marciel Alvarez and Diaryatou Daff. Producers are González Iñárritu, Jon Kilik and Fernando Bovaira; Executive producer is David Linde; associate producers are Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo Del Toro; co-producers are Sandra Hermida and Ann Ruark. Music by Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla; Edited by Academy Award winner Stephen Mirrione; Production design by Academy Award winner Brigitte Broch; Director of Photography is Academy Award nominee Rodrigo Prieto. “BIUTIFUL joins the growing pantheon of tremendous, groundbreaking work by Alejandro González Iñárritu,” said Cohen. “It’s a deeply felt film, guaranteed to rock audiences to their core, and that’s due to the amazing reciprocity between filmmaker and actor. Alejandro and Javier are two halves of the same whole.” Liddell added, “BIUTIFUL pairs the decade’s most exciting director with its most talented actor. Simply hearing Alejandro’s and Javier’s names in the same sentence excited me – seeing the result of their collaboration on screen blew me away.”

Comments

[Nick Capertina]

Its funny because I was actually looking at this film on IMDB before Bed. I started following it when you posted the first trailer. I'm beyond excited to see this film. Javier Bardem is proof that there is a new generation of great actors ahead of us, and film is far from dead. There will always be people willing to put there all into their art.

Can't wait for the December 17th release =)

[J.Bradley]

What's going to be most interesting is seeing one of his movies take maybe a different direction than his past efforts. So far his movies have been these multi-character/multi-storyline, almost anthological type stories and there've been many imitators, most notably "Crash". This is the story of one man but I'm curious to see how, just like his other movies, he takes you into another country and culture and it's foreign and strange and yet you still relate to the common humanity of the character.

[Get real]

Alejandro González Iñárritu takes us to a real world instead of seeing people flying, action heroes, computer animation and special effects in Hollywood movies. The movie shows a personal story mixed with actual problems happening in our world now. Why avoid them? The time for fantasy where everything is fine and everybody lived happily ever after is over. It is time to get real.

I admire Alejandro!!!