Red Carpet
Venice 2008 – “The Burning Plain”
“The Burning Plain” is a drama that explores the mysterious connection between several characters separated by time and space: Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), a 16-year-old girl trying to put together the shattered lives of her parents in a Mexican border town; Sylvia (Charlize Theron), a woman in Portland who must undertake an emotional odyssey to burnish a sin from her past; Gina, Sylvia’s mother (Kim Basinger) and Nick (Joaquim de Almeida), a couple who must deal with an intense and clandestine affair; and Maria (Tessa Ia), a young girl who helps her parents find redemption, forgiveness and love.
The film is the first of five U.S. entries to appear in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival.
“The Burning Plain” is the directorial debut by acclaimed Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga who is best known for his scripts that include well received dramas “Amores perros“, “21 Grams” and “Babel“, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Arriaga also wrote “The Burning Plain.”
“I enjoyed every single moment of it. I can tell you that directing was maybe the happiest moment of my professional life. Just arriving on set I had a smile … and it hasn’t vanished until now”
he told reporters.
As well as time, the film explores the elements, each storyline represents either earth, air, fire or water. Landscape is central to the movie which Arriaga initially had titled, “The Four Elements.” Water, earth, wind and fire are present as the story moves back and forth from the searing dryness of New Mexico to the nonstop rain in Portland, Ore.
“We experienced the desert and the sun and the extreme cold in the desert to the nonstop rain in Oregon. I think the weather and the landscape also influences the character.”
“We never in real life tell stories in a linear way. We tell it always in a decomposed way. I think that cinema is a very young medium and it’s beginning to find its own language and among these languages is the deconstruction of time”
Arriaga said.
Venice 2008 After Burning
“Burn After Reading” (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand) finally had its long awaited premiere at Venice Film Festival.
The movie re-unites Joel and Ethan Coen with George Clooney, who appeared in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and actress Frances McDormand (Joel’s wife) who won an Oscar for her role in their 1996 film “Fargo“.
“I’ve done three films with them and they call it my trilogy of idiots”
Clooney told reporters after a press screening (”O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, “Intolerable Cruelty” and “Burn After Reading”).
He plays a nervous, twitchy federal marshal whose extra-marital affairs bring him into contact with a gym instructor, played by Pitt, desperately seeking to extort money from a sacked CIA analyst whose memoirs go missing.
“After reading the part, which they said was hand-written for myself, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted”
said Brad Pitt, whose character the directors describe as a “knucklehead”.
Brad was asked how the chosen ones are doing.
41 Kung Fu Pandas – Jack Black at Cannes
The animated movie Kung Fu Panda with voices of Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie had its premiere yesterday at Cannes Film Festival, out of competition, of course.
Jack Black and 40 Kung Fu Pandas kicked off the Cannes Film Festival yesterday, and here’s some photos:
‘Blindness’ Premiere – Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes film festival opens tonight with ‘Blindness‘, an apocalyptic nightmare adapted from the 1995 novel by Nobel laureate José Saramago and directed by Fernando Meirelles. The film is superbly photographed by Cesar Charlone.
In an unnamed city of the near future, a terrifying epidemic of “white blindness” – the sufferers seeing only milky white light – spreads like wildfire. The infection’s ground zero is a Japanese businessman (Yusuke Iseya) who staggers sightlessly from his luxury automobile which is promptly stolen by an opportunist thief who also goes blind.
The man finds himself in the offices of an eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who is also treating a high-class prostitute (Alice Braga) in the business of servicing clients in a hotel, with the help of a discreet barman (Gael García Bernal). All go blind and from this nexus, the disease spreads.
The city of the blind opens its inhabitants’ eyes to their former civilisation’s brutality and indifference. What is fascinating to see is how the blind prisoners are admitted to the quarantine camp in the order in which they made fleeting contact in the preceding narrative: a pharmacy clerk, a cop, a hotel maid, all connected via the fleeting and heedless contact of the modern, uncaring city, and now joined in a chain of terrible significance.
As the shuffling inmates become used to their blindness, they experience a crisis, being and being perceived: they see no one and no one sees them. Do they exist? Did they exist before? Other inmates, however, see a new equality or democracy in blindness: young and old, ugly and beautiful, all are levelled.
And all the time Julianne Moore, exiled from the community of suffering, must endure a vision of horror from which everyone else is spared.
‘Blindness’ starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura and Alice Braga.
More photos at FF Cannes Film Festival gallery HERE
Watch the third clip from ‘Blindness’ after jump Continue Reading…
‘Sex and the City’ London Premiere
The “Sex and the City” stars lit up London’s Leicester Square for the world premiere of the cinematic sequel to their New York adventures, delighting fans with glamorous – and sometimes quirky – outfits that helped make the show an international hit.
Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays columnist Carrie Bradshaw, stole the show with her soaring Philip Treacy hat. She was joined by co-stars Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, known on screen as Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. They were eager to gloss over the reported problems that delayed the film’s production – and chat instead of the boost the series has given their careers.
“Professionally it’s been the best 10 years of my life. I wouldn’t have wanted to have done it any differently with any different women or any different men,” Parker said. “So it’s been glorious.”
All were dressed in the designer clothes that made the series about sex and shopping such a huge fashion-industry hit. Parker’s hat, bearing flowers, grasses and a butterfly, was complemented by a pale green dress by Alexander McQueen – an outfit Carrie would have loved. Cattrall wore a red Vivienne Westwood dress and Nixon was in a floor length black pleated Calvin Klein gown. Davis wore a more modest vintage fuschia dress.
There had been some controversy over the decision to hold the premiere in London rather than New York, the city showcased so beautifully in the series. But Nixon said Monday’s premiere was just a build up to the main event in New York.
“We’re having a kind of smallish premiere here (and) we’re having a smallish premiere in Berlin. We’re building to the New York premiere which is enormous and happens just before the film opens worldwide,” she said.
The film opens May 30 in the United States.
‘Iron Man’ Los Angeles Premiere
Paramount Pictures and Marvel present the Los Angeles Premiere of Iron Man starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges.
Director Jon Favreau, Shaun Toub, Faran Tahir, Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, Channing Tatum, Vince Vaughn, Stan Lee, Avi Arad, Kevin Feige, Pete Wentz and many others walked down the red carpet of the Los Angeles Premiere of Iron Man.
Iron Man played at about 2,500 locations last night with the screenings starting at 8pm. The country’s largest exhibitor Regal Cinemas generated an estimated $1.3M in ticket sales for the Jon Favreau-directed superhero flick while the AMC chain is reporting $1.2M.
Robert Downey’s trainer, Brad Bose, told the IESB that he starts training with Downey just after this final premiere in LA. Downey has had a few months off in between going to work on Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. Then, he will have him ready to wear the suit again in just 5 months. This time around he wants to put an extra 10 pounds on the actor, for a little more bulk.
So most likely, fan can look for a production start in early 2009 for Iron Man 2. The first film is tracking highly and can expect a big box-office opening weekend.
Sumner Redstone and Paramount Pictures CEO Brad Grey told that if the movie does as well as expected, Paramount will greenlight a sequel for the same week in 2010.
‘Iron Man 2′ is coming…quickly!
See more photos here
‘Speed Racer’ World Premiere Photo Gallery
Warner Bros Presents the World Premiere of Speed Racer starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Christian Oliver, Susan Sarandon and Matthew Fox.Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Rain, Aimee Teegarden, Stanton Barrett, Rick Schroder, Emmy Rossum, Christian Oliver, Lisa Rinna, Dancer Karina Smirnoff and many others walked down the red carpet of the World Premiere of Speed Racer held at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, CA.
