TV Guide: Wim Wenders

Video: Wings of Desire - (Original trailer)

TCM — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:49:41 -0400

An angel of death (Bruno Ganz) gives up his wings for love. Co-starring Peter Falk and directed by Wim Wenders.

Video: Don't Come Knocking Unscripted - Wim Wenders and Gabriel Mann

AOL Moviefone — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:24:33 -0400

Director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard, who collaborated on the award-winning film Paris, Texas, once again join forces for this dark drama of a man trying to turn over a new leaf late in life. Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a veteran actor who has been a popular Western star since the mid-'70s. Spence's onscreen image as a strong, principled lawman is a severe contrast to his life off the set, which has been dominated by drinking, drugs, and promiscuous womanizing. However, Spence has begun to find his hedonistic life a shallow existence, and one day, in the midst of filming his latest movie, he simply hops on his horse and rides away, eventually making his way to the small Nevada town where his mother lives. Mother (Eva Marie Saint) has little interest in seeing her wayward son after so many years, but she does share a recently discovered bit of information with him -- one of Spence's former girlfriends stopped by with word that she had given birth to his son years before. Spence borrows his father's o

Video: Don't Come Knocking - Trailer

AOL Moviefone — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:24:32 -0400

Video: La Torcedura

iTunes — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:29:43 -0400

Jose (Wilmer Valderrama - That 70s Show, Unaccompanied Minors, Columbus Day, Days of Wrath) is a young working-class man. Yet he finds himself buying a million dollar engagement ring from the town's finest jeweler. On leaving the store he is abducted and wakes up bound and gagged in a dark room. Next thing he knows, a cop interrogates him about money laundering, sticks a gun in his hands and makes Jose aim the gun at him. A SWAT team is on the way, but will they save Jose? And why is the cop wearing a Velcro shirt? Cameo appearance by Wim Wenders. Directed by Pascal Leister.

Video: Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:30:19 -0400

Compared frequently to Wim Wenders's Buena Vista Social Club (1998), the thoughtful and heartfelt documentary Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars (2005) combines the musical elements of that earlier work with a distinctly uplifting and optimistic sociopolitical undercurrent. The story begins in the early '90s with the eruption of the civil war that plagued the beleaguered West African nation of Sierra Leone -- displacing thousands in its wake. Among the dispossessed came six young indigenous musicians who decided to form a band and use music to heal the scars of their homeland. Those artists -- Francis Franco Lagba, Alhadji Black Nature Kamara, Reuben Koroma, Efuah Grace, Abdul Rahim Arahim Kamara, and Mohammed Bangura -- form the basis of an extraordinary story told by directors Banker White and Zach Niles in this film. The filmmakers follow the musicians on a heart-rending tour of the Leonean refugee camps, observe the recording session for their debut album, and unflinchingly witness the group's homecoming, s

Video: Lumiere And Company

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:21:28 -0400

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Lumi re brothers' first films, filmmakers Sarah Moon and Philippe Poulet challenged 39 renowned international directors to each complete a 52-second film using the original Cinematographe camera under the conditions endured by the brothers. The result of the project was this film, Lumi re et Compagnie. The film stock used was homemade from a slightly altered version of the Lumi res' recipe. No synchronized sound was allowed and only natural lighting was permitted. The participating directors included John Boorman, Costa-Gavras, Peter Greenaway, Lasse Hallstr m, Spike Lee, David Lynch, Liv Ullmann, and Wim Wenders. Among the actors who performed in the films were Liam Neeson, Lena Olin, Aidan Quinn, and Alan Rickman. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide.

Video: Don't Come Knocking

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:49:09 -0400

Video: Million Dollar Hotel, The

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:01:16 -0400

Legendary filmmaker Wim Wenders returns to the screen with this loosely structured murder mystery. The Million Dollar Hotel unites Wender's obsession with cool music, lost souls, and American trash culture. Set in 2001, the film opens with Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies) taking a flying leap off the roof of the Million Dollar Hotel, an ironically titled dive in the seedy section of L.A. Told in an extended flashback, Tom Tom recounts the murder investigation of a down-and-out artist and son of a media mogul, Izzy Goldkiss (Tim Roth), who also fell off the hotel. FBI special agent Skinner (none other than Mel Gibson), sporting a neck brace, looks into the death only to discover that the building is teeming with weirdos and losers. There is Vivien (Amanda Plummer), who claims to be the fianc e of the rock star; Geronimo (Jimmy Smits), a huckster trying to make a buck by selling Izzy's abstract painting; Eloise (Milla Jovovich), a burned out prostitute with a passion for intellectual literature; and Dixie (Peter Storma

Video: Until The End Of The World

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:44:36 -0400

Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to see visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refug

Video: City Of Angels

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:10:46 -0400

An angel must decide if love is more important than eternal peace in this Americanized adaptation of Wim Wenders' modern classic Wings of Desire. Seth (Nicholas Cage) is an angel who hovers over the city of Los Angeles, listening to people's thoughts, observing their lives, and guiding them to the next world when they die. While Seth and his fellow angels try to offer comfort to people as they can, they are discouraged from direct contact with humans and are usually invisible to them. While at a hospital, Seth sees Maggie (Meg Ryan), a dedicated heart surgeon who attempts to save the life of a patient Seth was to call upon. Maggie is distraught after the patient passes, and her agony touches something inside the reserved Seth; he finds himself falling in love with her, and he decides to make himself visible so he can communicate with her. As Maggie gets to know the strange visitor in black who has suddenly appeared in her life, she finds herself torn between her new feelings for Seth and her attachment to her

Video: Faraway So Close

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 04:08:44 -0400

Wim Wenders revisits his masterpiece Der Himmel Uber Berlin in this film which picks up several years after the original left off. Cassiel (Otto Sander) is an angel who watches over the lives of the people of recently reunified Berlin with Raphaella (Nastassja Kinski). Damiel (Bruno Ganz), Cassiel's former partner who opted to return to the land of the living in the first film, now lives happily as a pizza chef with the woman he loved and married, circus performer Marion (Solveig Dommartin). While angels are forbidden to directly intervene in the lives of humans, Cassiel impulsively breaks this rule when a little girl falls from the balcony of an apartment block, and he swoops down to catch her. Suddenly made flesh and blood, Cassiel has earned the enmity of Emit Flesti (Willem Dafoe), a sort of overseer of the angels on the physical plane. Emit makes it his business to make things difficult for Cassiel now that he's living among the humans, and after a period of alcoholism and imprisonment, Cassiel finds him

Video: End Of Violence, The

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:34:38 -0400

Wim Wenders directed this allegorical drama about the emotional impact of violence in our culture, set against the backdrop of California's entertainment business. Mike Max (Bill Pullman) is a Hollywood producer who has earned a great deal of money and power in the film industry through his success with a series of brutally violent action pictures. While Max can juggle any number of tasks while working, he can't find time for his wife Paige (Andie MacDowell), and when she announces that she's divorcing him, he admits to himself (but not to her) that he deliberately put her through emotional trauma; Paige leaves to do volunteer work in the Third World, hoping to bring new meaning to her life. Very little reaches Max on an emotional level until Cat (Traci Lind), a stunt performer, is seriously injured on the set of Max's latest project. Not long after, Max is first car-jacked, then kidnapped by a pair of desperate thugs. He escapes and is given shelter by a group of Mexican-American gardeners. Wanting to retrea

Video: Shadows And Fog

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:50:36 -0400

Woody Allen's black-and-white curiosity piece is a mixture of influences -- from German silent film expressionism to Franz Kafka's nightmare worlds to the contemporary fables of Wim Wenders. Woody Allen plays the nebbish clerk Kleinman (in a throwback to his characters from Sleeper and Love and Death), who is awakened in the middle of the night by a vigilante group who want him to help capture a serial killer on the loose. Kleinman reluctantly agrees, but when he gets to the street, the vigilantes are gone and Kleinmen spends most of the film wandering the shadowy back alleys in search of the citizen's brigade. Meanwhile, a circus is in town. When sword-swallower Irmy (Mia Farrow) catches her creepy clown husband (John Malkovich) getting familiar with trapeze artist Marie (Madonna), she packs her bags and heads for town, where she meets up with Kleinman. This meeting sets up a number of plot lines that has Irmy befriending a trio of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin and Kathy Bates) at the local brothel

Video: Buena Vista Social Club

Video Detective — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:01:18 -0400

Wim Wenders' documentary Buena Vista Social Club is about the adventures of Ry Cooder in Cuba. Cooder, best remembered by film fans for the wailing slide guitar theme of Wenders' Paris, Texas, went to Cuba in 1996 to meet with some legendary 'soneros' musicians of the '30s, '40s and '50s. The result was the album Buena Vista Social Club, recorded with such colorful characters as the 90-year-old singer/guitarist Compay Segundo, guitarist Eliades Ochoa, baritone Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, the Cuban Edith Piaf. The album won a Grammy, and in this refreshing documentary, Wim Wenders shows these exceptional musicians in their hometown, following them into their usual hang-outs -- the cafes, clubs and even living rooms -- as well as to concerts in Amsterdam and New York's Carnegie Hall, capturing their incredible vitality. In Cuba, music flows like a river, according to Ry Cooder, who adds Music is like a treasure hunt; you dig and dig and sometimes find something. Pursuing this metaphor, Wenders wanted to

Video: 'Don't Come Knocking'

NY Times — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:16:09 -0400

Stephen Holden reviews "Don't Come Knocking," a surreal epic-manque that reunites the playwright and screenwriter Sam Shepard with the great German director Wim Wenders.

Video: Cubanissimo

CinemaNow — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:18:55 -0400

Although well documented through films such as Wim Wenders' BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, there is still much musical life left to expose in the thriving Cuban scene.

Video: Cubanissimo

CinemaNow — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:11:26 -0400

Although well documented through films such as Wim Wenders' BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, there is still much musical life left to expose in the thriving Cuban scene.

Video: Land of Plenty

iTunes — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:19:47 -0400

In renowned German director Wim Wenders' darkly humorous and poignant essay on post-9/11 America, a young social worker returns to Los Angeles from the West Bank. She is seeking her Vietnam vet uncle who is now a vigilante security cop, keeping his eye out for terrorists. Michelle Williams is a 2007 Spirit Award nominee for Best Female Lead in this IFC film.

Video: Don't Come Knocking

CinemaNow — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:14:12 -0400

Writer/actor Sam Shepard and director Wim Wenders reunite since the critically acclaimed Paris, Texas in this tale of a washed up Hollywood star who finds a ray of hope when he discovers that he might have a grown-up child in Montana.

Photo: The Blues - Wim Wenders, director

courtesy Donata Wenders/PBS

The Blues, Wim Wenders