The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| Oscar race underway as Phoenix, Hoffman wow Venice Posted: 03 Sep 2012 07:34 AM PDT VENICE, Sept 3 — Venice traditionally fires the starting gun in the long movie awards season, and as the world's oldest film festival reaches the halfway point three actors have set Hollywood tongues wagging with memorable performances. Michael Shannon as a serial hitman, Philip Seymour Hoffman as a cult leader modelled on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Joaquin Phoenix playing the tortured, volatile protege are already in the frame around six months before the Oscars. The buzz surrounding their portrayals has helped lift spirits in Venice, celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, although incoming director Alberto Barbera may be concerned by the lack of A-list stars on the red carpet. Celebrity wattage is almost as important to a film festival as the quality of the movies, as it attracts the world's media and reminds the showbusiness world why notoriously expensive Venice still matters in a calendar crammed with rival events. As the 11-day cinema showcase on the Lido waterfront reaches the midway point today, the heaviest hitter on all levels has been "The Master".  Joaquin Phoenix (left) and "The Master" co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman front the media, September 1, 2012. — Reuters pic The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy called it "a bold, challenging, brilliantly acted drama that is a must for serious audiences". Not every critic liked it, but most agreed the two central actors were at the peak of their powers, with Hoffman as the domineering, exploitive Lancaster Dodd and Phoenix his hard-drinking, troubled acolyte. Essentially a love story set against the background of Hubbard's founding of the Church of Scientology in the 1950s, few would be surprised to see them nominated for awards. The GoldDerby website, which previews showbusiness honours, has made "The Master" a favourite for a best picture Oscar, Anderson is frontrunner for best director, and Hoffman and Phoenix are in the top five for best actor. Too few stars? Both actors were in Venice, where Phoenix's behaviour was erratic and he was barely articulate at a press briefing. But another big title, Terrence Malick's "To the Wonder", launched without its reclusive director and most prominent stars. The impressionistic, poetic portrayal of a couple in love told with virtually no dialogue was praised and panned in equal measure, but with Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams all absent, its world premiere was low-key. Turn the clock back 15 months, and Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain all graced the red carpet in Cannes for Malick's 2011 movie, "The Tree of Life". Barbera has managed to attract rising stars such as former Disney teen idol Zac Efron, who appeared in the farming saga "At Any Price", and Selena Gomez who is expected in Venice to promote "Spring Breakers" on Wednesday. But without top names, and movies that jolted audiences in the way war dramas "Redacted" and "The Hurt Locker" or sex addiction story "Shamed" did in recent years, Venice stumbled. "So far there have been a few peaks, like 'The Master', which is brilliantly acted, and outside of competition Spike Lee's documentary on Michael Jackson," said Maria Giulia Minetti, a journalist for Italian daily La Stampa. "But overall it's a subdued festival, there's not much money around and maybe cinema right now lacks punch," added the veteran of 32 Venice festivals. Both "The Master" and "To the Wonder" are in the 18-film competition in Venice, but outside the main lineup, several movies caught the eyes of the critics. "The Iceman" is a re-telling of the true life story of American hitman Richard Kuklinski, who killed more than 100 people before his capture and imprisonment. The towering actor Shannon won warm praise for a performance that evoked sympathy as much as revulsion, and Winona Ryder also impressed as his wife. Lee's "Bad 25", a two-hour film about the making of Jackson's seminal 1987 album, may have bordered on hagiography and focused purely on the music, but it reinforced the belief of many that the late "King of Pop" fully deserved his moniker. There have been more than 20 female directors unveiling movies in Venice this year, an unusually high number, including Indian film maker Mira Nair with her out-of-competition 9/11 movie "The Reluctant Fundamentalist". Israel's Rama Burshtein brought her own ultra-Orthodox Jewish community to the big screen in "Fill the Void". And Haifaa Al Mansour, Saudi Arabia's first female director, presented "Wadjda", about a young girl seeking to break down barriers faced by females in Saudi society. The "Arab Spring" uprisings found expression in films "Witness: Libya" and "Winter of Discontent", from Egypt, while the economic crisis made its way into movies like "To the Wonder" and "At Any Price". — Reuters |
| Female Saudi film director breaks taboos in Venice Posted: 03 Sep 2012 05:05 AM PDT  Bicycle made for change: In Venice, with Haifaa al-Mansour and Waad Mohammed, who plays 10-year-old "Wadjda", who bucks the veiled society. — Reuters pic The film, which the director says is the first to have been entirely shot in Saudi Arabia, follows the everyday life of young Wadjda and her attempts to circumvent restrictions and break social barriers — both at school and at home. Constantly scolded for not wearing a veil, listening to pop music and not hiding in front of men, Wadjda uses guile to get her way. When she sees a green bicycle for sale that would allow her to race against a male friend, she concocts a plan to raise the money needed to buy it in spite of her mother's opposition — respectable girls do not cycle in Saudi Arabia. She ends up learning verses from the Quran by heart to enrol in a religious competition at school, hoping to win the cash prize that would pay for the bike, and in the process pretends to have become the model pious girl her teachers want her to be. Director Haifaa Al Mansour said "Wadjda" aimed to portray the segregation of women in Saudi Arabia, where they held a lower legal status to men, were banned from driving, and needed a male guardian's permission to work, travel or open a bank account. "It's easy to say it's a difficult, conservative place for a woman and do nothing about it, but we need to push forward and hope we can help make it a more relaxed and tolerant society," she said after her film premiered in Venice, speaking to reporters in English. She pointed to signs of change in Saudi society, and said the younger generations were challenging rigid customs and slowly pushing the boundaries of what was considered acceptable. Under King Abdullah, the Saudi government has pushed for women to have better education and work opportunities and allowed them to vote in future municipal elections, the only public polls held in the kingdom. "It's opening up, there is a huge opportunity for women now," Al Mansour said, noting that Saudi Arabia entered female athletes for the first time ever at the London Olympics this summer. "It is not like before, although I can't say it's like heaven. Society won't just accept it, people will put pressure on women to stay home, but we have to fight." Al Mansour spoke of the difficulties she faced filming in Riyadh, despite having obtained permission from authorities to do so. She occasionally had to hide in a van in some of the more conservative areas where locals disapproved of a female film-maker mixing with men on set, and at times had to direct her male actors via walkie-talkie. Her film, which is not in the main competition in Venice, may have a limited audience in her own country, where cinemas are illegal. But producers said they hoped to distribute it on DVDs and TV channels. — Reuters |
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