Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

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domino harvey
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Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#1 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 14, 2015 3:57 pm


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Dylan
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#2 Post by Dylan » Thu May 14, 2015 4:33 pm

Wow. Absolutely beautiful filmmaking. Todd Haynes said in an interview early on that the style for this film was inspired by period fashion magazines and street photography, and that really comes through in these clips. It's a very different look from Haynes' other period pieces (or, really, any other semi-contemporary period piece I can think of). Love what we can hear of Carter Burwell's score, too (sounds like Elmer Bernstein by the way of Michael Nyman, if that makes any sense - it matches the visuals and rhythm perfectly). I'm extremely excited about this.

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Dylan
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Re: Cannes 2015

#3 Post by Dylan » Thu May 14, 2015 9:01 pm

And that fucking Michael Nyman score for the Haynes makes me feel like I'm drowning in cement. What the hell happened to Haynes normally impeccable taste for detail? Has he turned straight?
It's hard to really tell just from these two clips, but Carter Burwell's score does seem (like Mildred Pierce) very woodwind-forward but yes, the sound also seems informed by Michael Nyman. Not a bad thing in my book. Orchestration aside, the actual theme being performed in the clips strikes me as very much like an Elmer Bernstein composition (which is delightful if not surprising).

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Dylan
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Re: Cannes 2015

#4 Post by Dylan » Thu May 14, 2015 11:27 pm

Yeah, I guess if you hate Michael Nyman the minimalism-informed orchestration for these Carol cues wouldn't be to your taste. However, the music being very woodwind-forward reminds me a lot of the Mildred Pierce music (but again, the theme here is very Elmer Bernstein to my very Bernstein-adoring ears, even if the orchestration suggests minimalism), so much so that this sounds like - in many ways - the direct continuation of what Haynes and Burwell were onto with Mildred Pierce. But to each their own - and really, the score as a whole might create a very different impression than the respective cues in these clips give.

For the record, I too loved Mildred Pierce, a spectacular achievement. And Far From Heaven is one of my favorite films period.

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Dylan
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#5 Post by Dylan » Sat May 16, 2015 2:14 pm

It's being reported on various websites that the US release date is set for December 18th.

Carol premieres at Cannes tomorrow, but critic David Ehrenstein - who has made contributions to this board over the years - has written on Facebook that he's already seen the film and considers it a masterpiece.

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John Cope
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#6 Post by John Cope » Sat May 16, 2015 2:30 pm

Yeah, but it should be kept in mind that he always thinks that about Haynes.

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Jeff
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#7 Post by Jeff » Sat May 16, 2015 4:31 pm

Ehrenstein isn't the only one tossing around the m-word though, and I've seen a few tweets that indicate it might be Haynes' best film, which is no faint praise.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#8 Post by Lost Highway » Thu May 28, 2015 3:30 pm

Apart from some of his short films (Superstar, Dottie Gets Spanked) I only really love Safe and Mildred Pierce by Haynes, but this looks like it might be up there. He's good with "women's films" as long as he doesn't go for total pastiche, as with Far From Heaven, which as a Sirk fan left me totally cold.

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Luke M
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#9 Post by Luke M » Thu May 28, 2015 3:43 pm

Dylan wrote:It's being reported on various websites that the US release date is set for December 18th.

Carol premieres at Cannes tomorrow, but critic David Ehrenstein - who has made contributions to this board over the years - has written on Facebook that he's already seen the film and considers it a masterpiece.
Incredibly disappointing to have to wait that long for this one.

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Dylan
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#10 Post by Dylan » Thu May 28, 2015 4:16 pm

Incredibly disappointing to have to wait that long for this one.
If the rest of Carol's scenes are only half as good as the two clips we've seen, it will be worth the wait.
Far From Heaven, which as a Sirk fan left me totally cold.
To each his own. Sirk is definitely a top ten director for me, but I love Far From Heaven even more than Sirk's masterpieces. Carol does look like something else entirely, though, just as Mildred Pierce was also something quite different.
Last edited by Dylan on Fri May 29, 2015 3:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#11 Post by hearthesilence » Thu May 28, 2015 8:39 pm

Dylan wrote:To each his own. Sirk is definitely a top ten director for me, but I love Far From Heaven even more than Sirk's masterpieces. Carol does look like something else entirely, though, just as Mildred Pierce was also something quite different.
Far From Heaven and Safe are easily my two favorite Haynes features. Pastiche doesn't really come close to describing the accomplishments of the former - without resorting to camp or mockery, not only does it say something new within the language of '50s color melodrama, but it dug deeper under my skin than any of Sirk's films (and I am huge fan of Sirk). And formally, the meticulous and elegant construction is simply breathtaking - everything from the costumes to the scenery to the lighting and cinematography works together in a way that suggests a director's hand in every single detail. (That wasn't quite the case, which makes it all the miraculous.)

Regardless, it's to his credit that his approach to period pieces hasn't been formulaic, but Mildred Pierce (and hopefully Carol) isn't just different but arguably a masterpiece in its own right. All the more reason why I'm looking forward to this more than anything else, maybe even The Assassin.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#12 Post by Lost Highway » Fri May 29, 2015 2:11 am

The reason why I find Sirk's best films far more moving than Far From Heaven has to do with the the period they were made. Within the context of the 50s and their genre they were more subversive than Far From Heaven which I felt went for issue overload, turning what often is subtext in classic Hollywood melodramas to text. You could tick off its themes of racism, homophobia, the role of women in 50s society, like on an equal opportunity questionaire. I can see Haynes thinking "Sirk couldn't deal with this in his day, but I sure can !".

And I thought visually, trying to attempt a 50s Technicolor look with gels and modern film stock, didn't convince me, it felt awfully self-conscious. The look simply never archives the distinctive Technicolor glow of an All That Heaven Allows or Magnificent Obsession (the second one is thematically goofy, but it's Sirk's most breathtakingly beautiful looking color film). Aesthetically Far From Heaven's Technicolor pastiche doesn't give me the thrill of a vintage Sirk film.

Fassbinder's own homage to All That Heaven Allows, Fear Eats the Soul, was both politically and stylistically so much more successful (and to me at least, far more heartbreaking and daring) than Far From Heaven. He achieves a comparable effect just via compositions which isolate characters from each other within the frame, without being slavish about copying Sirk's look and style.

By the time Haynes made Mildred Pierce I felt he was reworking the classic melodrama without being quite so thuddingly literal about homaging its sources and I find that one far more successful. The art direction is stunning yet subtle, I'm not sure I've ever seen the 1930s brought to life that successfully.

And as I said, I think Safe is a masterpiece, I wrote a longish post about it on the Criterion thread.
Last edited by Lost Highway on Fri May 29, 2015 4:33 am, edited 3 times in total.

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John Cope
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#13 Post by John Cope » Fri May 29, 2015 4:04 am

Poison remains easily my favorite feature by Haynes. I think it's the one film of his that most successfully measures up to his intellectual approach without being suffocated by it, managing an extraordinarily accomplished layering of transitions and associations that gives rise to profound insights. As I've mentioned on here many times in the past I abhor Far From Heaven for many of the reasons its biggest advocates seem to adore it. There is no bridging that gap. [Safe] meanwhile I used to love and thought was a brilliant masterpiece but I don't anymore and, in fact, like it less every time I see it (thought that maybe screening the new Criterion Blu could change that but it did not). For me it's superficially brilliant but is undone by theory (whereas Poison is saved by poetry). It invites, even demands, the closest possible scrutiny but cannot actually withstand it when applied. I did love Mildred Pierce, however, for some of the same reasons listed by Lost Highway above. That piece, far more so than FFH, is where Haynes manages to develop melodrama by sublimating his theorizing to a scrupulous and nuanced, sensitively attentive treatment of familiar themes and ideas. In doing so he showed what could be done by taking a mature gaze to what is dismissed by too many as an outmoded form. He also developed that form by respecting the direct emotional terrain of classic melodrama without the need to blatantly deconstruct or stand at arm's length. If Carol can build on his accomplishment there I am happy to be back on board as a more committed fan.

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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#14 Post by copen » Fri May 29, 2015 3:11 pm

i admire haynes, but i don't like any of his films. i find them boring for various reasons. poison seems to be more of an experimental film than a real feature film, velvet goldmine - subject matter - too much rock music, safe - nothing much happens, Mildred Pierce same as previous complaint. but they all look great.
i haven't seen I'm Not There.
i've been hoping that he'll make movies that i'll enjoy, maybe it'll start now.

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Dylan
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#15 Post by Dylan » Fri May 29, 2015 5:33 pm

And I thought visually, trying to attempt a 50s Technicolor look with gels and modern film stock, didn't convince me, it felt awfully self-conscious. The look simply never archives the distinctive Technicolor glow of an All That Heaven Allows or Magnificent Obsession (the second one is thematically goofy, but it's Sirk's most breathtakingly beautiful looking color film). Aesthetically Far From Heaven's Technicolor pastiche doesn't give me the thrill of a vintage Sirk film.
They don't look like Technicolor, but Kodak Vision and Eastmancolor are nothing to sneeze at. The look of the stock is 2002 contemporary (which in 2015 is considered vintage) and the shooting style is obviously strongly informed by a 1950s aesthetic - but to me this creates a "vintage-inspired" look, not something that looks exactly like 1955. I don't see a problem with this. It's the same with the score - composer Elmer Bernstein wrote a score in his own 1950s scoring style to be played by an orchestra of contemporary musicians who don't regularly play music that sounds like it came out of an Old Hollywood movie, and the music is marvelous (arguably Elmer Bernstein's best score) but it still doesn't sound like 1955 because recording technology was different in 2002. I never once got the impression while watching Far From Heaven that the film was supposed to look and sound exactly like an old movie - that would be impossible. It's a vintage-inspired movie, not unlike Coppola's Tetro (shot digitally in 2009). The mix of vintage inspiration and new technology creates a different look and style, however strongly informed by the past it may be. Now, whether you think what was achieved is just inferior and merely "Far From Technicolor" depends on personal preference, but I felt very differently about it. And again, I adore Sirk to no end, as well as Ross Hunter's post-Imitation of Life productions that copy the Sirk aesthetic (Portrait in Black, Back Street, Midnight Lace, Madame X, the "Tammy" series, etc. - these are all worth a look if you love Sirk and many are shot by Russell Metty and scored by Frank Skinner).

As an aside, I'm not sure if there is any lab/equipment supply anywhere that provide 3-strip cameras & stock or monopack stock that could be dye printed. I'd love to find out if it would be possible to have authentic Technicolor stock in 2015 but I imagine it isn't.

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domino harvey
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#16 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 29, 2015 7:19 pm

david hare wrote:Carol remains to be seen but I am getting a bit over (a BIT!) La Blanchette.
Image

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hearthesilence
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#17 Post by hearthesilence » Fri May 29, 2015 9:49 pm

Lost Highway wrote:I thought visually, trying to attempt a 50s Technicolor look with gels and modern film stock, didn't convince me, it felt awfully self-conscious. The look simply never archives the distinctive Technicolor glow of an All That Heaven Allows or Magnificent Obsession (the second one is thematically goofy, but it's Sirk's most breathtakingly beautiful looking color film). Aesthetically Far From Heaven's Technicolor pastiche doesn't give me the thrill of a vintage Sirk film.
I don't believe the film was ever trying to perfectly clone the look of those films - if all he wanted to do was simply mimic an anachronistic style, I wouldn't have cared. He did want to recall those films, which I believe he strongly does - just looking at stills, you're not going to mistake it for a lost Sirk film, but one can immediately trace the aesthetic back to that era and that genre of films.

Second, what impressed me wasn't the general look of the film (I have no particular weakness for '50s nostalgia), it's what he actually did with those visual elements, and in scene after scene, they are orchestrated marvelously, especially when color is involved.

The best is in that extended sequence when Cathy goes to visit Raymond for the first time. She visits in a purple dress that isolates her in her own world, separating herself from the autumn colors around her. Then later when they wind up in the bar and dance together, they throw the right light on her, and those two colors from the light and her dress blend in a way that actually visually unites her with Raymond - in long shot, she's basically blended into her new surrounding world. She's no longer isolated and it fits the mood and what happens perfectly.

At several points, green is used it to break up the visual and behavioral status quo. At another, Cathy is frozen in a tiny sheet of blue. And later, when she hangs on to a marriage that can only slip away, bursts of autumnal warmth scurry through a shot cast in deep, cold blue. The use of color is on par with Vittorio Storaro's best work.

And again, the costumes rise up to the same level. The clothing Cathy and Raymond's daughter wear during the exhibit hint at an inner kinship between them. The way Cathy's wardrobe hides her in further anonymity when she meets Raymond in secret in front of that building with a speckled black and white look, etc. It's an incredible production all around.
The reason why I find Sirk's best films far more moving than Far From Heaven has to do with the the period they were made. Within the context of the 50s and their genre they were more subversive than Far From Heaven which I felt went for issue overload, turning what often is subtext in classic Hollywood melodramas to text. You could tick off its themes of racism, homophobia, the role of women in 50s society, like on an equal opportunity questionaire. I can see Haynes thinking "Sirk couldn't deal with this in his day, but I sure can !".
david hare wrote:I don't care for it that much at all and I find the literalness of the reductively "replacement" societal deviations unmoving - Cross race love, hubby in the closet with the melodramatically sleazy younger man to over emphasize the guilt etc. - one dimensional. And this literally reductive rather than deconstructive, or whatever the hell it was Haynes was trying to be in those days.
Going into the film, I suspected the same. The story is a classic portrayal of 1950s suburbia: societal rules suffocate true passions, and it covers them in alluring, manufactured surfaces. Everyone knows their place, to the point that they’re accessories to their own clothes. It would have been easy to peg this to a bygone era, but as devoted as the film is to the period’s detail, everything is relevant today. Laws and societal conventions may have changed, but the feelings of conformity, the importance given to appearances, and the cost of living in self-denial behind such pretenses have not gone away. It's not simply about racism, homophobia or women's place in society, they may be overt specifics of the plot but I think the film is tapping into a much bigger context and making that the real subtext. I came away thinking this film was taking something deceptively anachronistic to explore something that's still very much contemporary.

And the film is all the more tragic by how much is self-inflicted. As tormented as Frank is about his homosexuality, he becomes far more furious when Cathy’s seen around town with Raymond. Believing her innocence is not enough, it’s how they’re perceived that really matters. I found that stuff excruciating and all the more powerful.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#18 Post by Lost Highway » Sat May 30, 2015 4:49 am

It makes no difference to me whether Haynes went for an exact replica of the dye transfer Technicolor look or a loose approximation. I still don't like the literalness of pastiche of Far From Heaven. It was one of several aspects which hindered my emotional engagement with the film. Nothing about its academic approach touched me in the way a real Sirk film does. With Imitation of Life my flood works come on 20 minutes before the end (during the mother & daughter farewell in the burlesque dressing room) and they just don't stop. That film gets me every time unlike any other film I can think of. I can't relate to the claims by people who say that they are fans of Sirk and yet they found Far From Heaven more moving than the real thing, when I was so resolutely unmoved by it.

I'm not as clued in about technical processes as others here are but I far prefer Frederick Elmes work on Blue Velvet, another attempt at a classic Technicolor look but one which I found far more satisfying. I concede this is purely a matter of taste but sometimes you just have go by what tickles your aesthetics and what moves your heart.

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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#19 Post by John Cope » Sat May 30, 2015 11:36 am

david hare wrote:Far from Heaven is a collection of ideas.
Realized often with a sledgehammer.

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GaryC
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#20 Post by GaryC » Sun May 31, 2015 5:16 am

Going by the IMDB, Carol was shot in Super 16mm, which Haynes and Lachman also made Mildred Pierce in. I've no doubt that when I get to see this in the UK I will be watching a DCP though...

There seems to be a mini-trend of 16mm-shot features, not just low-budget indie directorial debuts like Beasts of the Southern Wild but also films by directors who had previously worked in 35mm, such as Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Black Swan), Cate Shortland (Lore), Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) and others. Maybe it's a way of shooting on film rather than digitally, if 35mm wasn't possible for some reason? I'll also mention Mike Leigh: Vera Drake was a bit less recent (ten years ago) but was shot in Super 16mm by Dick Pope, who shot Leigh's feature films before and since in 35mm, other than the driving-lesson scenes of Happy-Go-Lucky and all of Mr. Turner, which were digital-captured.

I don't know a UK release date for Carol yet, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it played the London Film Festival in October, so would be released after then.

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Dylan
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#21 Post by Dylan » Sun May 31, 2015 10:53 pm

Going by the IMDB, Carol was shot in Super 16mm, which Haynes and Lachman also made Mildred Pierce in. I've no doubt that when I get to see this in the UK I will be watching a DCP though...
Unfortunately, in 2015 it's extremely rare for a contemporary film to be distributed anywhere - even at international film festivals - on anything other than DCP. DCP has become the rule. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar received 35mm, 70mm, and DCP distribution, giving audiences in the bigger cities the full range of options on how to see it, but that was a movie by a director whose made a billion dollars for his studio, otherwise that wouldn't have happened. Even Inherent Vice didn't receive a wide distribution on 35mm even though there were 35mm prints struck (that probably had more to do with the extremely mixed reception than anything else, though). I personally believe that Todd Haynes is the best filmmaker of his generation (meaning, anybody making feature films now who started in the 1990s) but I highly doubt that Carol will be distributed on anything other than DCP. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#22 Post by GaryC » Mon Jun 01, 2015 1:30 am

Dylan wrote:
Going by the IMDB, Carol was shot in Super 16mm, which Haynes and Lachman also made Mildred Pierce in. I've no doubt that when I get to see this in the UK I will be watching a DCP though...
Unfortunately, in 2015 it's extremely rare for a contemporary film to be distributed anywhere - even at international film festivals - on anything other than DCP. DCP has become the rule. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar received 35mm, 70mm, and DCP distribution, giving audiences in the bigger cities the full range of options on how to see it, but that was a movie by a director whose made a billion dollars for his studio, otherwise that wouldn't have happened. Even Inherent Vice didn't receive a wide distribution on 35mm even though there were 35mm prints struck (that probably had more to do with the extremely mixed reception than anything else, though). I personally believe that Todd Haynes is the best filmmaker of his generation (meaning, anybody making feature films now who started in the 1990s) but I highly doubt that Carol will be distributed on anything other than DCP. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
Certainly in London even new releases will be DCP, apart from IMAX prints (and they're almost all IMAX Digital instead of 15/70 prints these days). Inherent Vice did get shown in two London cinemas in 35mm (Curzons Soho and Richmond) but that was on its opening weekend only, after which it was DCP. Other than IMAX prints, that was the last new release I saw projected from film and the one before that was The Master in 70mm. If you stretch the definition of "new", I did see the reissue of Scarecrow in 35mm but that was the ONLY reissue I've seen recently that wasn't DCP - I wonder if Jerry Schatzberg had anything to do with that?

Many of the main first-run cinemas in London still have their 35mm projectors though. The Prince Charles (off Leicester Square) still shows 35mm when it can and does advertise the fact when it does, but that's not a first-run cinema. Of course there's the BFI Southbank as well. With the closure of the Odeon West End, the Odeon Leicester Square is probably the only one which can still show 70mm, as it did with Interstellar. That said, the newly-opened Regent Street Cinema can show 35mm and 16mm and the Picturehouse Central (due to open in June) will have 35mm in two of its seven screens and 70mm as well in one of them.

StudioCanal are distributing Carol in the UK, but as said I doubt it will be anything but DCP. I suspect the next new film I see projected from film will be The Hateful Eight in 70mm Ultra Panavision (2.76:1), so that will be the Odeon Leicester Square, then. I've not seen a film projected in that format before, and it's the first time a film has been shot in the process since Khartoum in 1966.


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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#24 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Mon Aug 17, 2015 11:07 am


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GaryC
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Re: Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

#25 Post by GaryC » Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:31 pm

UK cinema release set for 27 November.

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