Newsflash: Iran has invaded the sleepy Canadian city of Winnipeg. Correction: Iranian cinema has actually invaded Winnipeg. Precision: Two Iranian movies that launched the nation onto the international film scene, Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) and Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (1995), have somehow found their way into the capital of Manitoba.
What exactly they’re doing there is never explained. Nor is it really the point of director Matthew Rankin’s bizarre and enchanting experimental comedy Universal Language, which picked up the first-ever audience award in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. Starring the director himself alongside a cast of Farsi-speaking locals both young and old, the film is rather hard to describe on paper, but let’s give it a shot.
We’re in snow-covered Winnipeg, which half-resembles the drab, midsized Canadian city, and half looks like a neigborhood somewhere in Tehran — not present-day Tehran, but Tehran circa the 1980s and 90s.
What exactly they’re doing there is never explained. Nor is it really the point of director Matthew Rankin’s bizarre and enchanting experimental comedy Universal Language, which picked up the first-ever audience award in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. Starring the director himself alongside a cast of Farsi-speaking locals both young and old, the film is rather hard to describe on paper, but let’s give it a shot.
We’re in snow-covered Winnipeg, which half-resembles the drab, midsized Canadian city, and half looks like a neigborhood somewhere in Tehran — not present-day Tehran, but Tehran circa the 1980s and 90s.
- 5/27/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Despite being set in a parallel-universe Winnipeg where the people talk in Farsi and the world around them seems as if it’s been frozen in time since the mid-1980s, the haunted but hopeful “Universal Language” is an unmistakably modern film at heart.
Described by writer-director Matthew Rankin as a piece of “autobiographical hallucination,” this wonderfully deadpan whatsit is the work of a white 43-year-old Canadian man who fell in love with the movies a time when “foreign” cinema was becoming more available to people outside major cultural hubs. He found that Kanoon-style fables like “Where Is the Friend’s House?” and “The White Balloon” spoke to him in a way that few English-language films ever had. That discovery sparked a cross-cultural dialogue that eventually compelled Rankin to visit Tehran in an effort to locate the auteurs who had inspired him and learn why their films had whispered in his ear.
Described by writer-director Matthew Rankin as a piece of “autobiographical hallucination,” this wonderfully deadpan whatsit is the work of a white 43-year-old Canadian man who fell in love with the movies a time when “foreign” cinema was becoming more available to people outside major cultural hubs. He found that Kanoon-style fables like “Where Is the Friend’s House?” and “The White Balloon” spoke to him in a way that few English-language films ever had. That discovery sparked a cross-cultural dialogue that eventually compelled Rankin to visit Tehran in an effort to locate the auteurs who had inspired him and learn why their films had whispered in his ear.
- 5/24/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.
There are two types of channels in the top five of this week’s Global Top 50: The stalwarts and the upstarts.
The former group includes three channels that regularly rank among the most-watched hubs on YouTube. The two other channels that earned top five distinctions did so by riding significant week-over-week traffic increases.
Chart Toppers
When it comes to our Global Top 50, MrBeast is becoming the biggest stalwart of them all. Thus far in October, Jimmy Donaldson‘s primary YouTube channel has led every iteration of our Top 50 charts. Donaldson continued his hot streak by picking up 617.1 million...
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.
There are two types of channels in the top five of this week’s Global Top 50: The stalwarts and the upstarts.
The former group includes three channels that regularly rank among the most-watched hubs on YouTube. The two other channels that earned top five distinctions did so by riding significant week-over-week traffic increases.
Chart Toppers
When it comes to our Global Top 50, MrBeast is becoming the biggest stalwart of them all. Thus far in October, Jimmy Donaldson‘s primary YouTube channel has led every iteration of our Top 50 charts. Donaldson continued his hot streak by picking up 617.1 million...
- 10/23/2023
- by Sam Gutelle
- Tubefilter.com
Veteran executive Dan Cohen will be on the ground in Toronto this year in a new position, as the head of the recently revived Paramount studio label Republic Pictures. Republic, which was shuttered in 1967 after releasing films from John Wayne and Orson Welles, has been brought back as an acquisitions play already picking up action thriller Air Force One Down.
Ahead of heading to Canada, Cohen told THR about a run-in with native son Drake, his least favorite elevator bank in the city, and his go-to Tim Horton’s order.
My “only in Toronto” moment is…
Clearing U.S. Customs in Toronto before boarding the plane for home and running into Drake randomly about town.
My “Canadians are so nice” moment is…
Seeing how enthusiastic and helpful the volunteers are for every screening. I also now say “no worries” about 100 times per day!
The one place I have to visit when in Toronto is…...
Ahead of heading to Canada, Cohen told THR about a run-in with native son Drake, his least favorite elevator bank in the city, and his go-to Tim Horton’s order.
My “only in Toronto” moment is…
Clearing U.S. Customs in Toronto before boarding the plane for home and running into Drake randomly about town.
My “Canadians are so nice” moment is…
Seeing how enthusiastic and helpful the volunteers are for every screening. I also now say “no worries” about 100 times per day!
The one place I have to visit when in Toronto is…...
- 9/8/2023
- by Mia Galuppo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Simu Liu celebrated the long weekend in true Canadian fashion — at the lake.
The actor, who’s gearing up for his role in the anticipated “Barbie” movie, headed to cottage country in Muskoka with his girlfriend Allison Hsu to spend time with friends he considers family before resuming the film’s global press tour.
Liu took to Instagram on Tuesday to share some highlights from his weekend at the lake to celebrate Kenada Day, including jet skiing with Hsu, boating with loved ones and tackling waves on a water ski.
Read More: Simu Liu Picks Ryan Reynolds As Another Canadian Ken: ‘Let’s Get The Ryans’
“Goshulak island has been my safe haven for over a decade. i’ve lived a lot of life and seen many things in those years, but nothing quite compares the to majesty of the lake,” Liu captioned his Instagram post Tuesday.
He shared some...
The actor, who’s gearing up for his role in the anticipated “Barbie” movie, headed to cottage country in Muskoka with his girlfriend Allison Hsu to spend time with friends he considers family before resuming the film’s global press tour.
Liu took to Instagram on Tuesday to share some highlights from his weekend at the lake to celebrate Kenada Day, including jet skiing with Hsu, boating with loved ones and tackling waves on a water ski.
Read More: Simu Liu Picks Ryan Reynolds As Another Canadian Ken: ‘Let’s Get The Ryans’
“Goshulak island has been my safe haven for over a decade. i’ve lived a lot of life and seen many things in those years, but nothing quite compares the to majesty of the lake,” Liu captioned his Instagram post Tuesday.
He shared some...
- 7/4/2023
- by Melissa Romualdi
- ET Canada
TORONTO -- Averting a legal flap with the Canadian Curling Assn., the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday agreed to return to sharing TV coverage of top curling tournaments with the Sports Network, the private cable sports channel. The CCA, which this summer pulled a four-year rights deal with the CBC after only only tournament season, has negotiated a new three-year deal with the CBC that gives the public broadcaster the rights to show semifinals and finals on the closing weekends of three key championship events through 2008. As part of a separate deal that runs through 2007, the CCA has given TSN the rights to the preceding weekday coverage of the Scott Tournament of Hearts, the Tim Horton's Brier and the Tim Horton's Curling Trials (Olympics), as well as the Ford World Championships.
- 10/20/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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