Monthly Archives: August 2009

Moore’s movie hits Venice

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Capitalism the villain as Moore movie hits Venice

mooreThe Venice film festival has capitalism in its sights this year, with premieres of Michael Moore’s documentary on the U.S. economic meltdown and a drama starring Matt Damon as a corrupt corporate whistleblower.

“Capitalism: A Love Story,” in competition at the annual cinema showcase, sees Moore take on the corporate bosses with his trademark combative style, bringing the hot topic of recession to the picturesque Lido waterfront. And “The Informant!,” directed by Steven Soderbergh and featuring Damon as a real-life crooked executive who exposed his company’s price-fixing tactics, will be screened out of competition. The festival runs from September 2-12.

Damon is one of several Hollywood A-listers due to grace the red carpet in 2009, as studios appear prepared to foot the substantial bill and come to Venice in order to generate buzz for their pictures as the awards season kicks off.

Hundreds of fans waiting outside the main cinema where gala premieres are held each day will be hoping to catch a glimpse of Nicolas Cage, George Clooney, Oliver Stone, Charlize Theron, Eva Mendes, Richard Gere and Sylvester Stallone among others.

The 2009 edition of the world’s oldest film festival looks set to eclipse 2008, which, despite awarding Mickey Rourke’s acclaimed comeback “The Wrestler” with the Golden Lion for best film, was seen as lackluster and lacking star power.

“On paper it looks good, and these people will be doing the red carpet giving the festival the glamour I think it needs,” said Lee Marshall, film critic for Screen International and a Venice regular.

“That was lacking last year, considered by many to be a limp festival from that point of view. Many media representatives canceled pretty much after the program was announced.”

LOCAL FAVORITE CLOONEY

Clooney, who has a home in Italy and is a local favorite, appears in “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” about a reporter who stumbles across a U.S. military unit in Iraq which employs paranormal powers on its missions.

Author Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic vision of the world in “The Road” makes it to the big screen, with Viggo Mortensen starring with Theron.

Cage appears in Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” a remake of the 1992 movie directed by Abel Ferrara, who has publicly criticized the new version.

U.S. director Todd Solondz is in competition with “Life During Wartime,” while horror master George Romero presents “Survival of the Dead,” one of several horror movies at the festival this year.

Films touching on the 1982 war in Lebanon, the Tamil Tiger rebellion in Sri Lanka, recent Iranian protests and China’s violent past promise to make the headlines, as does Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border” about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Two very different cinema heavyweights will be honored, with animation king John Lasseter receiving a lifetime achievement award and “Rambo” and “Rocky” star Stallone receiving an award outside the main festival.

As usual Venice promises a global line-up, with Egypt’s “The Traveler,” featuring Omar Sharif, in competition alongside pictures from China, Austria, Israel, Japan, France, Hong Kong, Germany and Italy.

Not for the first time fashion is in focus, with designer Tom Ford bringing his directorial debut “A Single Man” starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.

by: www.reuters.com

Luxury travel tips for 2009′s Biennale

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Luxury travel tips for the Venice Film Festival 2009

basilicaIn early September, Hollywood will descend on Venice, Italy for the 66th Venice Film Festival September 2 – 12. If you are heading to Venice for the festival, consider this your luxury tip sheet for things to do and see in one of Italy’s most charming and romantic cities.

- According to Luxury Travel Magazine, you can rent a red Ferrari and drive to nearby Palladium Villas – “former countryside residences of the Venetian noble families.” You will also see lots of local wineries and historic vineyards in this area.

- Appassionato di casino on line? Qui trovi tutto su roulette online e sugli altri giochi da tavolo.

- For post-festival, after-dinner drinks,  Bar Dandolo, a 007 Bond bar, as well as Harry’s Bar and  Bar Longhi’s Bellinis are recommended as hot spots to see celebrities and movie directors alike.

- Another tip from Luxury Travel Magazine is to book  ”private visits of Venice’s cultural jewels,” including the Basilica San Marco and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

- Rent a boat and travel along all the canals and hidden waterways of Venice.  Luxury Travel Magazine also recommends visiting “the monasteries on the lesser known islands of San Lazzarro and San Francesco del Deserto.” Be sure to have dinner at Locanda Cipriani – a local favorite.

- For golfers, there is the 18-hole Venice Alberoni Golf Club –  a short boat ride from the Venice historical center, and as Luxury Travel Magazine described it:  ”….hidden between the ruins of a 17th century fortress, the Malamocco canal, and the Mediterranean woodland.”

- Other restaurant recommendations include:  Enoteca al Volto (one of Elton John’s favorites), Missoni, and,  Da Fiore.

by: www.examiner.com

Venice Lido to rediscover

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Venice Lido launches €430m bid to rediscover its glory days

venice_lidoOne hundred years on from its heyday as Europe’s most glamorous playground for royals and starlets, the Venice Lido is set for a €430m facelift aimed at creating a 21st-century version of the belle époque.

This 11-mile strip of land dividing the Venice lagoon from the Adriatic comes alive once a year in September for the Venice Film Festival, when it is besieged by actors, journalists and paparazzi. But for the rest of the year it lapses into a genteel slumber. Elegant beachfront hotels such as the Excelsior, which once hosted Joan Crawford and Errol Flynn, have seen business fade, while tourists flock in ever greater numbers to the main island of Venice, just a short vaporetto (ferry) ride away.

“The Lido has slowly turned residential and gone to sleep, covered in dust,” said Giovanni Gusso, president of the Lido’s municipal council.

Hundreds of millions of euros in private funding have been lined up to restore the Lido’s art nouveau and art deco gems and the wide expanse of beach where servants once set out silver cutlery in beach huts, while government cash is being spent on a new vaporetto terminal and a vast new cinema to serve the festival and double as a year-round conference centre for 6,000 visitors.

One of the most famous films in the history of Italian cinema is at the heart of the battle for the Lido’s future. More than 2,000 people have signed up to protest against plans to demolish the turn-of-the-century Alberoni beach pavilion at the south end and the beach huts featured in the closing scene of Luigi Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde.

The Hotel des Bains, in which Thomas Mann wrote the masterpiece on which the film is based, and which appears in Death in Venice as well as in The English Patient, will also be spruced up.

The bar at the Excelsior is still the preferred hangout for stars at the film festival but the slow trade during the rest of the year means the hotel will also be closed next year for restoration. “In 40 years, the previous owners of these hotels invested zero and people just stopped coming,” said Gianfranco Mossetto, a spokesman for Italian fund manager EstCapital, which is behind the investment plan.

“We aim to increase the hotel staff head count on the Lido from 400 for six months of the year to 1,100 all year round,” said Gusso, adding that a tendering process was also under way for the conversion of a former hospital on the island to residential usage.

Until then, the Lido remains “ghostly and sad, frozen in time”, said Renata Codello, the Italian government’s architecture and environment officer for Venice and the Lagoon.

Apart from the hotels, Codello has catalogued 150 fine specimens of art nouveau and art deco villas on the Lido, giving it Italy’s largest concentration of architecture from the era.

Mossetto said he was not fooling himself that Europe’s aristocrats would reappear like magic when the hotels reopen.

“I am not asking for the King of Bulgaria to come back, but we do want to offer the very best accommodation, with a cultural accent, to people who appreciate the history,” he said.

by: www.guardian.co.uk

Tom Ford’s first film in Biennale

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Designer Tom Ford’s first film gets into the Venice Film Festival

tom_fordDesigner-turned-director Tom Ford’s very first movie will premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Not too shabby.

Ford’s movie, “A Single Man,” starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult, will premiere on Sept. 11.

It will be the final film. Ford’s first directorial effort will be screened in the main competition.

He also co-produced and co-wrote the adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood novel.

The film is set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the peak of the Cuban missile crisis, and tells the tale of a British professor struggling after the death of his longtime partner.

According to Ford’s production company, ““The story is a romantic tale of love interrupted, the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition, and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life.”

Ford has said the selection by the prestigious festival was “a great honor.”

Wonder how many people he had to dress to get in?  Just saying…

“A Single Man,” the directorial debut of fashion designer Tom Ford, will head a record 14 films in the third edition of the Queer Lion awards at the Venice Film Festival.

The Queer Lion prize selects the best film with a gay plot or subplot screening at the festival or in one of its sidebars. Ford’s story of an academic struggling with the loss of his partner is the only Queer Lion candidate that’s also in the main 24-film lineup.

Other selections include “Io sono l’amore” (I Am Love), a drama from Luca Guadagnino screening in the Horizons sidebar; Stefani Consiglio’s “L’amore e basta” (Love Is Enough) from the Venice Days sidebar; and Claudio Noce’s “Good Morning Aman,” from the Critics’ Week sidebar.

Queer Lion organizers also announced the jury that will evaluate the 14 films in the running for the prize. It will be headed by film directors Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi, with participation from journalist Mark Smith, film critic Roberto Schinardi and director Peter Marcias.

The sidebar will be held concurrently with the 66th edition of the Venice festival, which runs September 2-12. The winner will be announced on the fest’s second-to-last day.

by: latimesblogs.latimes.com; www.reuters.com