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Here is a good collection of reviews from the Cannes screening. Man, this sounds like an incredible film(s) but I have a feeling that this version will never see the light of day.

A clip from the film.

It seems a good bet that Che (in some version) will play at the New York Film Festival since Film Comment's Sept/Oct issue is to contain a NYFF preview and Soderbergh's film has been announced (scroll down) for the cover.

I really hope this isn't just more "let's put Che on our t-shirt" b.s.

Of course, I'm personally biased being friends with two people who had family members murdered because of Che and his policies.

Lou Lumenick somwhat confirms that this will showing at the NYFF and speculates that the film may end up going straight to cable.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Lou Lumenick somwhat confirms that this will showing at the NYFF and speculates that the film may end up going straight to cable.

Not really confirmed at all. Lumenick is simply "reporting" a blog post on Spout from July 9 with the exact same info that I posted a week ago in this thread.

souvenir wrote:

Antoine Doinel wrote:Lou Lumenick somwhat confirms that this will showing at the NYFF and speculates that the film may end up going straight to cable.

Not really confirmed at all. Lumenick is simply "reporting" a blog post on Spout from July 9 with the exact same info that I posted a week ago in this thread.

I'm betting that Karina Longworth came to that conclusion after reading Souvenir's hypothesis here. This is how film journalism works now: forum speculation begets blog postings which are co-opted by the mainstream media. Souvenir is at the center of the cinematic universe.

Blogging ethics aside, is no one else concerned that the film may end up being dumped on cable?

Antoine Doinel wrote:Blogging ethics aside, is no one else concerned that the film may end up being dumped on cable?

Del Toro is going to be angled for an Oscar nomination, they'll show it theatrically somewhere first.

Well, it will need to get picked for US distribution first. And nobody seems in a rush to grab it.

The Argentine Spanish trailer.

Unfortunately, I cannot dissociate this film from that crappy Medellin storyline on Entourage. Still excited to see it though.

Wow, that looks beautiful.

chaddoli wrote:Wow, that looks beautiful.

It sure does. An Benicio del Toro looks really good as Che. Very cool.

Do distributors realize that there's a hipster culture in this country that would flock to this film, length and insane amounts of boredom be damned?

mfunk9786 wrote:Do distributors realize that there's a hipster culture in this country that would flock to this film, length and insane amounts of boredom be damned?

Even though it feels like pop-culture has been infested with hipsters, they probably aren't actually a big enough demographic to warrant taking that much of a financial risk. Plus, knowing hipsters, once it becomes obvious that the film is being targeted to hipsters, it will no longer hold the same appeal.

swo17 wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot dissociate this film from that crappy Medellin storyline on Entourage. Still excited to see it though.

Phew! I'm not the only one.

Was Malick ultimately involved with this? His influence seems to hang heavily over that trailer. Lots of visual similarities to The Thin Red Line. Looks beautiful.

I heard he did some writing initially.

Hipsters don't know the first thing about good films. Most will tell you that Eternal Sunshine or The Science of Sleep is the greatest film ever made. When you try to talk to them about Fritz Lang or Mizoguchi Kenji they look dumbfounded at you with their soulless eyes.

I think you're forgetting their obsession with Buffalo '66. (as this, or Gummo, are oft cited as best-ever material... at least among those I encounter)

Lucky filmgoers at the this year's Toronto Film Festival:

Both Toronto and New York fests will screen Steven Soderbergh's ``Che'' (starring Benicio del Toro as the Latin American revolutionary), which divided audiences at Cannes.

Pic will unspool at its full four-hour-plus length.

``We get to have our cake and eat it too,'' said Bailey, who replaced Noah Cowan as fest co-director this year. ``We'll show it the first time as two separate films on two separate nights. People also will get to see it as one back-to-back epic with a 15-minute intermission. You can choose your `Che.'''

Official int'l site

Brief interview with Benicio Del Toro

A U.S. distribution deal is apparently very close to being done, though how it will roll out is still being decided:

It now looks likely that the long version of Che that screened in Cannes will initially be road-showed in the US, although it remains to be seen how wide this release will be. "My position is to do two cities maximum. The position of the distributor and Steven is to do many more cities."

Peter Howell of the Toronto Star goes into alarmist mode and dubs the film "Havana's Gate". I dunno, every negative review of this film I read makes me want to see it more. Also, all the pans seem to contain the same criticism that the film lacks some kind of obvious dramatic arc or core, which to continues to make me think that Soderbergh, thankfully, isn't delivering a standard, time plotted, emotionally didactic biopic. I see that as a huge positive.

It's always entertaining when a critic thinks up a pseudo-clever title and writes a review to fit under it.

Tele 5, rubbish Spanish tv channel and film producer of this and other blockbusters such as El orfanato, Alatriste, Pan's laberynth or The other side of the bed, is bombing us with ads of the film anywhere.

Lucky you... How exactly is it being distributed in Spain?

1st part, El Argentino opens this 5th of september.

I can't believe it's spoken in Spanish, in this banana republic they are able to dub anything into Castilian.

Polybius wrote:It's always entertaining when a critic thinks up a pseudo-clever title and writes a review to fit under it.

Indeed. I imagine that Howell has been sitting on "Havana's Gate" since he heard that Soderbergh was working on an epic Che biopic.