Glamorous Venice Film Festival courts controversy

ROME -- Global superstars Lady Gaga, Ryan Gosling and Vanessa Redgrave descend on Venice this week as the annual film festival kicks off Wednesday to controversy over the inclusion of Netflix productions and there being just one female director in competition.

Some 21 features will be locking horns for the prized Golden Lion, which will be awarded on September 8 at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Venice Lido, the iconic setting for Luchino Visconti's masterpiece "Death in Venice."

The festival jury is chaired by Guillermo Del Toro, last year's winner with "The Shape of Water."

Australian Jennifer Kent is the only woman gunning for the Golden Lion this year, with "The Nightingale."

The lack of female directors was blasted by feminist associations in an open letter sent on August 11 to the festival's artistic director Alberto Barbera.

The letter was a reaction not just to the festival's male-centric selection but also to statements by Barbera, who in a recent press conference explained that he made his choices based on "the quality of the film and not the sex of the director."

"If we impose quotas, I resign," he said, defending a selection criticized as "politically incorrect," especially compared to the latest edition of Cannes, which saw a call for gender equality in cinema.

A number of films being shown in Venice have been picked up by streaming service Netflix, including the the Coen Brothers' "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs."

Starring Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco and Liam Neeson, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" features six tales about the Wild West narrated by Joel and Ethan Coen.

The inclusion of Netflix films and their contemporaneous release in theatres and online has drawn the wrath of Italy's two major cinema associations Anec and Anem, who feel people will stay at home rather go out to watch the movies.

"I can't see any reason why a film by (director of Golden Lion contender "Roma" Alfonso) Cuaron or the Coens should be excluded just because they're produced by Netflix," Berbera said during the press conference presenting the festival to reporters last month.

'FIRST MAN' 

The star-studded festival kicks off with "First Man", the new film from the Oscar-winning director of "La La Land" Damien Chazelle.

The film, which stars Canadian Ryan Gosling, follows the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong in the years leading up to 1969, when he became the first man to walk on the moon.

However the most eagerly awaited appearance on the red carpet will undoubtedly be that of provocative pop superstar Lady Gaga, who stars in the out-of-competition "A Star is Born."

Bradley Cooper plays a hard-drinking country artist who discovers a young singer played by Gaga and is also making his directorial debut with the film.

The pair also wrote and recorded new songs for the film, the third remake of the entertainment industry romance classic.

Among the major names expected on the lagoon are Frenchman Jacques Audiard -- who this time is taking on the Western genre with "The Sisters Brothers" -- and his countryman Olivier Assayas, in competition with the comedy "Non-Fiction," starring his favorite actress Juliette Binoche.

Grand Prix winner at Cannes in 2015 and Oscar winner for best foreign film the following year with his first feature film "The Son of Saul," the Hungarian Laszlo Nemes will return to big competition with "Sunset."

Big things are also expected from "The Favourite," a period drama by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos that plunges viewers into the court of Queen Anne at the beginning of the 18th century and stars Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.

As every year, the festivfal will award two Golden Lions for their career to 2 film giants, in this case the 81-year-old British actress Vanessa Redgrave and Canadian director David Cronenberg.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Star-studded lineup unveiled for 73rd Venice Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival revealed a star-filled line-up for its 73rd annual edition on Thursday, featuring top Hollywood names and auteur directors in a wide selection of US and international movies.

The world's oldest film festival will open with Damien Chazelle's "La La Land", starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in a musical romantic comedy-drama about a jazz pianist who falls in love with an aspiring actress in Los Angeles.

In competition for the top prize are 20 films, including Ana Lily Amirpour's "The Bad Batch", a black comedy about cannibals in a Texas wasteland, and fashion designer Tom Ford's thriller "Nocturnal Animals", featuring Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams.

Serbian director Emir Kusturica will be also be vying for the Golden Lion award with his "Na Mlijecnom Putu" (On the Milky Road), featuring himself and Monica Bellucci in a story that stretches through war, love and living as a reclusive monk.

Other films in the main line-up include German director Wim Wenders' "Les Beaux Jours d'Aranjuez", Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival", Dutch director Martin Koolhoven's "Brimstone" and Russia's Andrei Konchalovsky with "Rai" (Paradise).

Pablo Larrain's biopic "Jackie" starring Natalie Portman as first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the aftermath of her husband's assassination was added to the competition at the last minute.

The festival's artistic direct Alberto Barbera said that this year's films spoke about universal themes but took a more subtle and less graphic approach to depict day-to-day life, violence and poverty than in previous editions.

"The great themes, philosophical and existential questions...this time are approached with film-makers taking a distance from the brutality of reality," he told a press conference announcing the line-up.

"So there are no more scenes of everyday life or footage of today's wars, but the great themes are still there. It is not an escape from the contemporary world, it is used as a way to reflect on today's world in a different way."

The first two episodes of Paolo Sorrentino's hotly anticipated mini TV series "The Young Pope", featuring Jude Law as a cigarette-smoking American pontiff Pius XIII, will screen in an out-of-competition section.

Mel Gibson's "Hacksaw Ridge", based on the true story of a World War II army medic who refused to bear arms, but later received the Medal of Honor for saving many of his comrades, will also screen out of competition, alongside Philippe Falardeau's boxer movie "The Bleeder" with Naomi Watts.

The festival will close with Antoine Fuqua's "The Magnificent Seven", showing Denzel Washington in a modern remake of the classic about hired guns in the Old West protecting a town from thieves.

British director Sam Mendes, known for James Bond movies "Skyfall" and "Spectre" heads this year's jury. The festival runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 10.

(Writing by Agnieszka Flak Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Review: 'The Big Short' explains 2007 financial crisis

The cast of "The Big Short" is so star-studded, you will certainly get drawn in by its smart poster, even if you had no idea what that puzzling title was all about. This film is now very high-profile because of the awards buzz surrounding it. In fact, just last week, "The Big Short" had just been named one of the nine nominees for the Oscar for Best Picture. It has also picked up nominations for Best Director (Adam McKay), Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing.

"The Big Short" followed the interconnecting individual stories of a few maverick financial gamblers as they made unusual, high risk yet critical investments in the housing sector which would eventually lead to the US financial crisis of 2007.

Asperger's Syndrome and fake left eye notwithstanding, quirky hedge fund manager Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), unearthed faults in the mortgage derivatives market and put multimillion dollar bets against it via a credit default swap market. (I still do not really understand what this huge deal was all about. I do not even know what a hedge fund manager is.)

Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), an enterprising employee at Deutsche Bank, got wind of Burry's investment and discovered a goldmine in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). He began selling this idea behind his bank's back. (His presentation using Jenga bars was illustrative, but I did not completely get what those AAAs and BBBs meant.)

Because of a wrong number, Vennett got to pitch for and convince Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his company to invest in his CDOs. Baum got interested with the big payback potentials, but later his moral conscience realized its far-reaching tragic implications. (I liked the Baum character but frankly I did not fully grasp why he was delaying the "swaps" that was he was delaying or what he hoped to achieve or prevent by delaying it.)

Greenhorn investors Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) also get wind of Vennett's deal from a proposal they incidentally picked up at a bank lobby. They sought the help of retired Wall Street veteran Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to help them get into the action. (They brought up another concept called an ISDA, which totally eluded me.)

I have to give credit to screenwriter/director Adam McKay for trying his best to explain all the financial gobbledygook involved in this technically complex story. He had some actors break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience. He had some pop icons like top celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and teen idol Selena Gomez to take part in explanatory side videos to discuss about concepts like CDOs, or even more abstract concepts like synthetic CDOs.

Frankly it was difficult for me to get through a huge part of the film precisely because those finance jargon was too alien to me. The bank for me is just for my savings and checking accounts and probably time deposits. But I am totally lost when the discussion goes deeper into loans, stock market, mortgages and the like. I literally tune out when my bank's manager talks to me about these things (but don't tell her about it). I had to look up what the "short" in the title meant, yet I still cannot explain it in my own words and comprehension. I guess there are just those topics that fail to connect with me, and Finance is one of them.

I guess this upbeat chipper tone in the first two acts of this film gave the Hollywood Foreign Press Association the idea to nominate "The Big Short" under the category of Best Comedy or Musical. Sure, Gosling gets to deliver some witty zingers, but this film is really hardly a comedy at all.

My favorite character was Carell's who seemed to see himself as some advocate for morality. For me, it was his Mark Baum who gave this cold and calculating film warmth and accessibility. Carell was this film's heart. Too bad he was not recognized for his performance on the Oscar list. In fact, for me it was these dramatic moments of moral dilemma with Mark Baum that turned my initial opinion around and made me actually like this film by the final act. 7/10

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com