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Juno 2? ;) ;) lol, j/k - i keeeeed, i keeeeeed....

awesome, congrats! can't wait to see it. good catch, a-head.

he's lurked but who knows if/when he'll "come back".

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http://www.variety.com/article/VR111798 ... =1246&cs=1
Cannes embraces Brit outsiders

Smaller films picked to represent U.K.
By ADAM DAWTREY

Francois Truffaut famously dismissed British cinema as an oxymoron. Thierry Fremaux doesn't exactly share that Gallic disdain for his cousins across la Manche. But his selection for this year's Cannes displays a perverse, almost mischievous disregard for the mainstream of U.K. filmmaking in favor of renegade auteurs working at its obscurest margins.

Fremaux ignored all the most obvious and hotly tipped contenders (Michael Winterbottom's "Genova," John Maybury's "Edge of Love," etc.) and instead picked two tiny movies that hardly anyone in the U.K. biz had heard of -- "Of Time and the City" by veteran auteur Terence Davies, and "Soi Cowboy" by enfant terrible Thomas Clay.

"Of Time and the City," chosen for a Special Screening, is a microbudget documentary about Liverpool, where Davies was born, funded by Northwest Vision as part of the celebrations for Liverpool's status as 2008 European Capital of Culture.

It's his first film since "House of Mirth" in 2000, and a very small one at that. Movies such as "Distant Voices, Still Lives" in 1988 and "The Long Day Closes" in 1992, both of which premiered at Cannes, made Davies one of Brit art cinema's biggest names -- in that distant, half-forgotten era before "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and the Polygramization of the U.K. film industry.

Since then, however, he has struggled to make his voice heard and get his scripts made, occasionally surfacing in the press to rail against the philistines of the U.K. Film Council (which, ironically, co-funded "Of Time and the City").

He has become a cause celebre for critics such as former Edinburgh fest topper Shane Danielsen, who recently described him as "the greatest living English filmmaker," and condemned his neglect as "a national disgrace." Fremaux clearly agrees.

"Soi Cowboy," the sophomore pic by controversial Brighton-based filmmaker Thomas Clay, will screen in Un Certain Regard. Its selection was greeted around Soho with a collective, "Huh?"

The Cannes announcement was the first anyone seemed to know of the film's existence. A quick search around the Internet provided no enlightenment. Remarkably, in this age of Google's omniscience, the film somehow managed to shoot without leaving a trace on the Web.

In fact, the 29-year-old Clay is in Rome completing post-production. He shot "Soi Cowboy" in Thailand last fall. The pic was privately financed -- "the quickest, most efficient way to make a film in Thailand," Clay explains. Sales are being handled by Paris-based Coproduction Office.

The film stars Danish actor Nicolas Bro as a corpulent European living in Bangkok with his pregnant Thai girlfriend, whom he met in the notorious nightclub district Soi Cowboy. She seeks commitment from him to avoid falling back into the red-light life, while a parallel plotline involves her gangster brother, employed to deliver their older brother's head.

"Although we qualify as British, it is predominantly a Thai film, therefore I suppose it's inevitable that the U.K. industry has been mostly unaware of the film until now," Clay says. "I try to take a global outlook in my work and believe that Antonioni set the example for what is possible as both a filmmaker and a world citizen -- a great artist and an enduring inspiration."

Despite its heady brew of sex tourism and mafia bloodshed, the pic isn't expected to be as shocking as Clay's debut, "The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael," with a combination of high art styling and a graphic gang-rape scene that prompted walkouts when it premiered in the Critics Week at Cannes 2005. "It's not going to get people running out of the cinema," says a source close to the "Soi Cowboy" production.

The French lavished "Great Ecstasy" with praise -- Liberation declared it "a thunderbolt in British cinema." British critics, however, largely viewed it with disgust.

Plus ca change ... When it comes to movies, there's more that divides the French and the Brits than the English Channel. Davies and Clay are just part of that great tradition of U.K. auteurs better appreciated on the Croisette than in their homeland. On the other hand, mainstream Brit pics have proved in recent years that they don't need a Cannes launchpad to reach a far greater worldwide audience than the French could ever dream of.

With this year's official selection, Fremaux has simply provided a refreshing reminder that British cinema has more to offer than just Harry Potter, "The Queen" and Keira Knightley.
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I believe it was that person who came around here some time back slagging off on the movie and called those of us who liked it "bootlickers" or something to that effect. He didn't last long.
This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.

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O-dot wrote:I believe it was that person who came around here some time back slagging off on the movie and called those of us who liked it "bootlickers" or something to that effect. He didn't last long.
Sure it wasn't Kilmov himself calling us bootleggers? :)
Just cut them up like regular chickens

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i believe he left shortly after he discovered who he was talking to. he only wanted to slander the film with so-called "fanboys", not have to answer to the creator and actually back up his baseless claims.

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TC wrote:i believe he left shortly after he discovered who he was talking to. he only wanted to slander the film with so-called "fanboys", not have to answer to the creator and actually back up his baseless claims.
He claims that wasn't the reason if you read his multiple entries on the imdb page for G.E.R.C. To quote a few:
by lilysum7 (Thu Nov 23 2006 22:41:43)

I have found the site that Thomas Clay and his friends all post on.
If anyone wants to read their sycophantic drivel it's quite amusing...

viewtopic.php?p=17014#17014

And yes Thomas Clay has even posted reviews of his own film on this site under the name tiarings...kind of pathetic really.
Well Dan, I don't have any personal association with the film other than from having a seriously funny correspondence with the director Thomas Clay who got very upset by my film critique and who was unable to defend his repulsive and exploitative little flick when I wrote to him on his film forum Gore last year...in the end his little boyfriends/fan club asked me to leave him alone as he was so upset, so I did, poor wee lad.
I'm not a bully and he couldn't defend himself or his motives for making the film, so no match really and I get bored.
This is probably the most telling piece of info, though:
Well I am not a liberal Siany so cannot step back like you.
He literally hijacked those threads too.
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Sounds like someone who posts on AICN. He certainly does seem full of himself ot take the time to rant about it here and then all over the imdb. Either a christian nut job or a 13 year old kid. Maybe both.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

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reminds me of one of howard stern's fun factoids he liked to say when i listened to him:

daily listening time of the average stern fan: 20 minutes
daily listening time of the average stern detractor: 3 hours

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Well Dan, I don't have any personal association with the film other than from having a seriously funny correspondence with the director Thomas Clay who got very upset by my film critique and who was unable to defend his repulsive and exploitative little flick when I wrote to him on his film forum Gore last year...in the end his little boyfriends/fan club asked me to leave him alone as he was so upset, so I did, poor wee lad.
I'm not a bully and he couldn't defend himself or his motives for making the film, so no match really and I get bored.
ahahahaha kill yourself.

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Haha, I knew this was gonna be auto-biographical and the poster (on the site) does actually make it look like a comedy, of sorts.
A Thai film in Cannes?

Directed by a Brit, but unmistakably Thai in almost every other regard, 'Soi Cowboy' will feature at the world's most exclusive film festival

KONG RITHDEE

Last year there were a record three Thai films at the Cannes Film Festival. Usually one is a reason enough for our nation to cheer. And when Cannes unveiled its line-up last week for the upcoming festival on May 14, no works by Siamese directors appeared on the elite list. But look closely: there's one title that bears a strong Thai DNA - literally impregnated with thick Thai blood - and once again images from this land will be splashed across the screens at the world's most revered cinefest.

The film is called Soi Cowboy, and has been picked into the Un Certain Regard section of the 61st Festival de Cannes. Set in Bangkok and a small village in Chaiyaphum, the movie was directed by Thomas Clay, a British filmmaker who's married to a Thai woman from the Northeast, and largely tells the semi-autobiographical story of a farang who hooks up with a Soi Cowboy bargirl who later gets pregnant with his child.

Clay shot Soi Cowboy with a Thai crew in Bangkok last October; the cinematographer is Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has shot Apichatpong Weerasethakul's mesmerising movies. Clay is now going through the final phase of post-production in Italy.

Finance came from both the UK and Thailand, through a production outfit called De Warrenne Pictures, which has produced other farang-directed Thai films such as Butterfly Man, Nak and The Elephant King.

"It is pretty much a Thai movie, though the director is British," says Tom Waller of De Warrenne Pictures. "The whole film was shot here. It's in English and Thai - and in the second half, in a strong Isan dialect - and the cast and crew, except the main guy, are Thai."


Soi Cowboy will be screened at Cannes. The cross-pollination of influences underlines the elusive identity of modern movies.

On the Cannes-version poster, a brief synopsis conjures both a familiar sight around Soi Cowboy and Nana, yet also evokes an intriguing back story of many bargirls: "In Bangkok, a corpulent European man and a young, pregnant Thai woman live together in near silence. His large body stands out in marked contrast to her tiny frame... She likes him, but sleeping with him is a duty. Out in the countryside, her brother, a teenage mafia enforcer, is employed to deliver their older brother's head."

De Warrenne Pictures allowed the Bangkok Post to sneak a peek at the unofficial Thai-version poster, as re-printed on this page.

"We want to release the film in Thailand," said Mr Waller. "But right now we'll have to wait and see the reaction from Cannes."

Clay's previous film, The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, played at the sidebar Critics' Week in Cannes in 2005. The film is set in a small English town where a group of disaffected teenagers commit an atrocious crime in a prolonged burst of violence in the final act, earning the movie a fair dose of controversy.

Soi Cowboy's cross-pollination of influences - culturally and financially - underlines the elusive identity of modern movies. Last year, one of the "Thai" films in Cannes was Pleasure Factory, which was directed by Ekachai Uakrongtham, a Thai, but set in the hothouse red-light district of Singapore and largely funded by Singaporean companies. Another film, Ploy, was directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang while the money came from both a Thai studio and an Amsterdam/Hong Kong distributor. Meanwhile, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's short, a documentary about an ash-scattering ceremony on the Mekong called Luminous People, which played at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight section in 2007, was commissioned by a Portuguese producer.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Realtime/02M ... eal004.php
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darkness wrote:Sounds like someone who posts on AICN. He certainly does seem full of himself ot take the time to rant about it here and then all over the imdb. Either a christian nut job or a 13 year old kid. Maybe both.
Didn't he tell us in almost Doug Henning-esque terms that he made films full of hope and light and magic and illusion for children of all ages or somesuch nonsense, and was thus far superior to the dark drivel of Clay? You didn't have to like or defend TGERC to realize that dude was a twat.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

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Alexhead wrote:
darkness wrote:Sounds like someone who posts on AICN. He certainly does seem full of himself ot take the time to rant about it here and then all over the imdb. Either a christian nut job or a 13 year old kid. Maybe both.
Didn't he tell us in almost Doug Henning-esque terms that he made films full of hope and light and magic and illusion for children of all ages or somesuch nonsense, and was thus far superior to the dark drivel of Clay? You didn't have to like or defend TGERC to realize that dude was a twat.
lol, yep. nice doug henning reference.

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lol, yep. nice doug henning reference.
I just had to look up who he was, does that make me YOUNG? :wink:

[Alexhead, did you send me a message on MySpace a while ago? I rarely login. Give me your phone no. and I'll call you... a whore! :metal: ]
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chainsaw wrote:
lol, yep. nice doug henning reference.
I just had to look up who he was, does that make me YOUNG? :wink:

[Alexhead, did you send me a message on MySpace a while ago? I rarely login. Give me your phone no. and I'll call you... a whore! :metal: ]
Yeah, that was me. You can call 1-800-EAT-SHIT any time! :flipa:
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."