Showing posts with label Rossy de Palma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rossy de Palma. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Cannes Tweets & Treats #3: Ring Bearing, Butt Patting, and Web Brawling

more miscellania from the South of France

On a scale of one to ten, exactly how jealous is director Alejandro González Iñárritu trying to make you with his touchy feely ways?


Eleven?

He's in Cannes with his Babel follow up Biutiful starring Javier Bardem. Gael García Bernal (also being manhandled above) is not in that forthcoming motion picture but he's a jury president this year. He'll be influential in deciding which director wins the Camera D'Or which is given for first features. (Here's a pic of Gael with his jury.)

<-- Meg Ryan hits the parties & premieres with producer Lawrence Bender

But on to the tweeting. Before you read these you should read this humorous USA Today article that stars many of these critics -- Jeffrey Wells gets a lot of play because he likes to rumble -- in the rarified atmosphere of this world event fest. It's a shame that Wells has to resort to calling IndieWire writers "effete" though when he is usually so talented at creative descriptives like "hot dog eating humans". heh.

@mattnoller "BIUTIFUL sucks, but I'm not gonna punch anyone to get that point across. Weak arms, is the thing."
@ICSFilm Buitiful makes Precious look like a Disney princess movie. Unrelenting misery porn, to be sure, but committed brutal performances by all.
@AwardsDaily "
The five hour CARLOS looms. Not sure I can deal."
@Laremy "My festival is a wrap. Final rankings: 1. Another Year 2. Certified Copy 3. The Housemaid"
@ebertchicago "
Werner Herzog: 'For me Godard is like intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film.' "
@benkenisberg "I bet Godard is a fiend for magnet poetry."
@jamesrocchi "I'm less interested in seeing Godard 2010 than finding Godard's 2010 equivalent."
@phillipstribune "At Cannes, you go from the new Godard to writing about Jennifer Hudson in a controversial biopic she hasn't made yet." [link]

Other than the catfights over Biutiful and the Godard business it's Abbas Kiarostami's enigmatic Certified Copy starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell that seems to be stimulating the most excitable pronouncements since Mike Leigh's new picture hit the croissette.

William Shimell, Abbas Kiarostami, and the divine Juliette Binoche

@benkenisberg "Never thought Kiarostami would be the one to defibrillate the competition. Breathed a huge sigh of relief when the actors got out of the car"
@gemko "Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY is the first film I've seen get booed this year. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's the best film so far"
@awardsdaily "The Kiarostami was enjoyable enough - laughs here and there. But surreal - you see what you want to see, as deep as u want it 2 be. I would have loved it twenty years ago. Now it feels a bit like a waste of time, something I am running out of fast."
@guylodge "Juliette Binoche just walked past. Now THAT, as they say, is a star."

Let's end with fashion. Here are four fab foreign ladies we like to look at.


from left to right: Sandrine Bonnaire (France) I don't think I've seen Bonnaire headlining a movie since the Oscar nominated Est - Ouest (which I recommend if you like epic sweep to your woman-as-survivor dramas) and that was a decade back. She's always good; Do-yeon Jeon (South Korea) who I fell so hard for in Secret Sunshine (still unreleased in the USA). I'm eager to see her Cannes entry The Housemaid... even though people didn't love it; Rossy de Palma (Spain) is blessed with one of cinema's most impossible-to-believe faces; and superstar/jury member Aishwarya Rai (India) is blessed with... everything.

I frequent Zimbio for many of the red carpet photos I use and one of the things I find hilarious about paparazzi coverage is the random insert shots that focus on someone's body parts (look at Meg Ryan's calf!) or hands (jewelry alert!). Aishwarya, for example, is much bejewelled but I'm not sure why this is a big zero-in-on-it detail since she married fellow Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan three years ago.

Do we really need to focus on a three year old ring when Fan Bingbing is holding her own wedding on the red carpet of the Biutiful premiere?


It's unclear who Bingbing plans on marrying. The world?

'Shut up about this sound effect woman I've never heard of' you say. But I cannot, testy reader. Even actresses with whom I am largely unfamiliar can sometimes bewitch me into transitory super fandom obsessiveness. I shall recover... for all Cannes-induced fevers break on May 23rd.

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Sunday, November 1, 2009

Can You Feel The Link Tonight? (It is where we are)

Disney Madness
Antagony & Ecstasy a great piece on Disney's ever charming Dumbo (1942)
<--- Sociological Images considers the social messaging of the princes and princess of Disney. Deflating but a smart/funny overview.
Disney Blog interviews the supervising animator on The Princess and the Frog (audio)

News
Toronto Star a second sequel to The Blair Witch Project? Er...
Coming Soon I missed this news in the crush of Halloween stuffage but Anthony Hopkins will play Odin in Thor. The way Hollywood casts you know it was either going to be him or Liam Neeson (they're the only two who do mythic father figures now, right?).
Slash Films Gattaca to spawn TV series? Hmmm, that could actually be good... as long as its psychologically / politically focused a la Battlestar Galactica

Oscar & Miscellania
StinkyLulu and gang discuss Oscar's Supporting Actress Nominees of 1956. Dorothy Malone won the Oscar. Will she win the "Smackdown"?
In Contention more best original song drama. That music branch is as looney as the makeup branch, if you ask me
David Bordwell "Between you, me, and the bedpost" on phallic symbols in the movies
USA Today people are still upset about the 10-wide best picture field. Interesting comments from Academy member's themselves.
Butt Magazine fun photo shoot with Rossy de Palma (of Almodovarian fame). Yes! [thx]

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Women on the Verge of a Bad TV Show?

Have you heard the news that Pedro Almodóvar's comedic 1988 classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the film that first won him a major following in the US and his first trip to the Oscars, is going to become an English language TV series for Fox?

Pass the gazpacho!


When I read the headlines I felt like I had downed a pitcher of glee. Smashing news, especially since Almodóvar himself is producing. But ... then I read the fine print. There's always fine print.

Apparently it's NOT a comedy but a "suburban drama" (huh?) AND it's about women who've known each other a long time (what? no complex comedic interweaving of strangers?) AND it's being written by a Grey's Anatomy writer? (oy!) This doesn't sound anything like the movie and it sounds way too much like a soapy redux of Desperate Housewives. Next thing you know we'll be hearing that they've cast generic TV actresses without any of the absurdist deadpan force of Carmen Maura and Julieta Serrano or the wacky presence of Rossy de Palma or the nervous comedic energy of Maria Barranco.


Pass the doctored gazpacho please. I need a heavy sedative. Don't wake me until the show goes off the air. (Do you share my admittedly horribilizing despair or do you think it'll all work out just fine?)

Spanish beauty: Check out this NYT 2004 portfolio of Pedro's women. Mmmm.
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

We Can't Wait #19 Broken Embraces

Directed by ALMODOVAR
Starring Penélope Cruz, Lola Dueñas, Chus Lampreave and Blanca Portillo from Volver. Plus: José Luis Gómez, Rossy de Palma (yay!) and Rubén Ochandiano
Synopsis The plot details of this contemporary thriller are being kept secret so the official synopsis is bare bones: "Fourteen years after having an accident that left him blind, a writer and filmmaker remembers the circumstances that surrounded him and the woman that he loved".
Brought to you by El Deseo & Sony Pictures Classics
Expected Release Date November (that's the Almodóvar slot)


Nathaniel: Pedro (also known as "The Greatest Living Film Director") makes sensational cinema and I love that he's been on this Hitchcock groove lately -- think of that great score for Volver or the threatening underlay of Bad Education. He promises this one is funny, too.

Whitney: The first Almodóvar I saw was Talk to Her, and I've felt uncomfortable with him ever since. There was something about that rape-a-coma-victim thing that stuck with me in a bad way. That's not to say that his films aren't pretty amazing, I just look forward to them in the same way you look forward to going to the gynecologist: you're glad you're going to get some substantial - perhaps needed - treatment, but you're trying to put it off for as long as possible.

Nathaniel: A ringing endorsement!

Joe: I'm fairly certain I can't top the Almodóvar-as-gyno-appointment metaphor, and I'm tempted to just leave it at that. As it stands, it feel weird to be merely a casual appreciator of Almodóvar's movies as opposed to a rabid fan, because it seems like that's just now how it's done. But I've been a huge fan of the Hitchcockian touches as of late, too, and as long as clever, artful comedies remain a rarity, I'll treasure weird old Pedro.

JA: Yeah, I've been racking my brain all day, trying to figure out if that makes Penny Cruz the stirrups, the forceps, the... other things (it's terrible when the first reference one comes up with for gynecology is Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, no?). Speaking of auteurs with wacko fascinations! I've thoroughly enjoyed Pedro's recent renaissance, and all the associated Hitchcockian accoutrements, too. I hope he dials it up to 11 and pulls a De Palma type Hitch "homage"... if Penny doesn't wear a blonde wig at some point, I might find myself very disappointed.

Joe: So it's come to referring to her as "Penny" now, in some "we love your newfound discovery of talent so much we want to be on not only first-name but nickname basis" stab at familiarity now? What happened to the good old days when she gleefully sucked in mainstream Hollywood fare and we could all be content in the knowledge that she would be the worst thing in any given movie? Simpler times, man. Post-Volver America freaks me out.

Fox: First, Nathaniel got the "Greatest Living Film Director" wrong,.. that would be Brian De Palma. But to not take anything away from Almodóvar - a director I really admire -- I'll steer this away from any possible "my daddy is bigger than your daddy" bickering -- I hope it's funny. I prefer the more absurd comedies of his to the more recent serious turns. True, Talk to Her and Bad Education could be considered dark comedies, but before Volver, the last film of his I liked was Live Flesh. I think Pedro came off as bitter in his 00's work prior to Volver, and I don't think that suits him, or, at least he hasn't figured out how to wrangle that in yet.


Oh, and yay to Penélope. Remember the above the kitchen sink shot in Volver? Talk about your Psycho-sexual imagery with that phallic knife that she's give a scrub to.

Nathaniel: How about you, reader? Anxious for another round with "P & P"?

In case you missed any entries they went like so...
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We Can't Wait:
#1 Inglourious Basterds, #2 Where the Wild Things Are, #3 Fantastic Mr. Fox,
#4 Avatar, #5 Bright Star, #6 Shutter Island, #7 Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
#8 Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, #9 Nailed,
#10 Taking Woodstock,
#11 Watchmen, #12 The Hurt Locker, #13 The Road, #14 The Tree of Life
#15 Away We Go, #16 500 Days of Summer, #17 Drag Me To Hell,
#18 Whatever Works, #19 Broken Embraces, #20 Nine (the musical)
intro (orphans -didn't make group list)

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