Sony Pictures Classics Buys Rights to New Almodóvar: Life is Better En Espanol.

"You're amazing." "No, YOU'RE amazing."

Get ready, North America; SPC has once again graciously bought the rights to Pedro Almodóvar's new film, The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito), and I could not be more thrilled.  A lot me being thrilled is due to the fact that Almodóvar is a stone-cold genius, but a lot is also due to the joy of getting to see Antonio Banderas not voicing a cartoon character (I could mean Puss-In-Boots or the Nasonex Bee, you decide). 

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Movie Review - 'Broken Embraces'

Broken Embraces Starring Lluís Homar and Penelope Cruz Directed by Pedro Almodóvar Rated R

Almodóvar's Broken Embraces is a bit like a restaurant you've heard great things about that proves to be a little underwhelming. "The atmosphere's great and I loved the music they played," you'd tell your friends the next day, "but the main course was a little cold and the service wasn't very good." It could be an absorbing character story, the kind of thing we expect from Pedro Almodóvar after all these years, but its concerns are elsewhere. Honestly, I felt a little cheated by an underexplored plot and perhaps too strong a presence of authorship. The shame of it is that the nuts and bolts of this is a fantastic, original idea, but why Almodovar chose this style is hard to figure out. The story doesn't need to be served another way, and the style fits a different kind of story. Harry Caine is Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar), and the distinction between them is this: Blanco is a film director who used Caine, his alter ego, to write his screenplays. In 1994, Blanco was riding high and married to the love of his life, Lena (Penelope Cruz). But one night, an accident took his Lena and his eyesight, so Blanco became Harry Caine, the blind screenwriter. Some 14 years later, Caine is commissioned by another writer named Ray X to help him with a script about his deceased father, a film producer named Martel. Even sprawling narratives like this usually have some efficiency, and here's what Broken Embraces...uh...embraces. The film producer, Martel, once made a film with Mateo, who, of course, was a director. So now Mateo (as Caine) is writing a movie about someone he knew but in the interest of protecting his identity can't admit it. Oh, and while Mateo and Martel worked together, Mateo had an affair with Martel's girlfriend, who again to keep things somewhat simpler was Lena.

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Tarantino, Almodóvar to Present Academy Awards

We don't have a whole lot to go on here but Thompson on Hollywood (or, if you prefer, Anne Thompson) writes that Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodóvar will be among the presenters at the 144th annual Academy Awards in March. Thompson reports that Bill Mechanic, the Oscar telecast producer, confirmed the iconoclastic filmmakers' duties during that other Oscar show, Saturday night's Governors Awards.

As it happens, QT introduced Roger Corman, long overdue for some kind of official industry merit. Corman joined Lauren Bacall and cinematographer Gordon Willis as this year's recipients of honorary Academy Awards. Having Tarantino on hand for Corman's honorarium is a natural fit, and bringing him into the fold for the big show in March is at least something the producers can promote, even if Inglourious Basterds comes up empty in the nominations scramble.

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Trailer - Pedro Almodóvar's 'Broken Embraces'

They often go overlooked in the discussion of the great director-star pairings, but there's very little doubt that Pedro Almodóvar gets the best out of Penélope Cruz or that she raises the level of his films. True, he's great as it is and Cruz has been better in general in recent years (if you thought she was good winning the gold in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, you should see Elegy), but together, it's just one of those magical combinations that really doesn't come along all that often.

Their latest collaboration is Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos), and once again, Cruz is building a case for Academy Award consideration. If she does get a nomination, it would be her third in four years, following Vicky Cristina and Almodóvar's Volver. She sure has left Sahara sufficiently behind her, hasn't she? From the trailer, featured below, you don't get much of a story to work from, but the director-star tandem has a core base of fans and this one is squarely preaching to that choir. So here's the synopsis for Broken Embraces: "A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car rash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost the love of his life."

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