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SHANGHAI (Hollywood Reporter) - Action hero Jet Li gives a respectable turn as a terminally ill father grooming his autistic son to survive on his own in "Ocean Heaven" -- a decent, if orthodox job by Xue Xiaolu. Film Xue off-sets some of the wholesome soppiness of this genre by keeping the tone light, the story simple and steered clear of grueling ordeals. Compared with another father-son story "Together," which she co-scripted and Chen Kaige directed, it is less melodramatic and artificial. Set mostly in a marine park in Qingtao province, its interpretation of autism owes less to "Rain Man"...

A monk in "Of Gods and Men" and the film's director Xavier Beauvois. Cannes, France, May 25, 2010 / 01:12 am (CNA).- At the end the prestigious 12-day Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, a film on a group of French monks who were martyred in Africa during the 1990s won the event's second highest honor.“Of Gods and Men,” a film by the French director Xavier Beauvois, centers around the true story of seven Cistercian monks who were taken hostage and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists in 1996. Though the monks were told to return to their native France, the group...

Serious film directors shooting ads for fashion brands is nothing new, but Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut for Dior is worth mentioning, as it’s her first commercial ever. As it was rumored, Sofia Coppola’s ad, featuring Maryna Linchuk for Miss Dior Cherie fragrance debuted last night on American TV.

NEW YORK -- Through cinema history, audacious, lengthy tracking shots have captivated filmmakers and movie buffs who marvel at their grace and choreography. In the middle of Joe Wright's critically acclaimed ''Atonement,'' a 5½-minute shot unfolds as Robbie, a British World War II soldier (James McAvoy), comes upon France's Dunkirk beach, where the final point in the British retreat from the Germans is portrayed as a grim circus of defeat and chaos. In the Ian McEwan novel from which the movie was adapted, the scene is described in just a few pages. McEwan writes: ''It was a rout and this...