Venice: A Second Take on "Carnage"

[Editor's Note: Ferdi, pictured left, is one of our two correspondents in Venice this year. Which affords us the rare pleasure of reading two pieces on the same movie back to back. I hope you're feeling appropriately spoiled since we're getting original photography and everything! Here's another opinion on Carnage. -Nathaniel R.]

Carnage (2011)

80 acid minutes of poison, screams, metaphorical scratches, literal vomits and memorable laughs. God, this movie rocks. Maybe it’s the original stage material which is so funny, clever and so well translated to the screen. Maybe it’s the eye of European mega-auteur Roman Polanski, who has rarely taken a misstep in his career. Maybe it’s just me: I love movies where all the focus is on the actors branch. The fact is I can’t stop thinking of Carnage since this early morning press screening.

What else can I say? You have to sit and watch and have fun. You're taken by the tension of the story without even taking a breath from start to finish. It’s a pitch-perfect arthouse movie, a little, subversive masterpiece about verbal violence and adult hypocrisies; a complex, powerful, crazy kammerspiel that begins, as many of you already know, as a polished comedy of manners and ends as a cruel psychological massacre. 

Christoph and Kate are "best in show" says Ferdi

The pleasure of seeing these incredible actors going so over the top has no price. John C Reilly is surprisingly right for the part, hilarious and totally convincing. Christoph Waltz is once again genius and effortless as in Inglorious Basterds. Maybe the weak link is Jodie Foster who has some great moments that prove she can be very funny but she is too tight and anxious from the very beginning. (She is a great straight-forward physical actress but the part required something more subtle.) In fact, Foster doesn’t really seem to catch the satirical tone of the pochade; she goes more and more hysterical from one scene to the next instead of being multi-dimensional. This is were Kate Winslet excels. She’s the real standout, absolutely exhilarating without even doing too much.

All that said, I don’t see any Oscar play for anyone (Winslet aside, maybe, as supporting actress, but it would be a category fraud, because they all are leads), neither for the movie, which is possible too cynical, dark, weird and beautiful by Academy standards.

Kate Winslet in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Reunion

EEEEEeeeEEEeeeeeEEEE !!!

Bonus points to anyone who can find me a good photo of this historic moment. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon's fantastic four Chang Chen, Michelle Yeoh, Chow Yun Fat and Zhang Ziyi posed for this photo- op at China's Huabiao Awards a few days ago. But all the Asian websites I peruse have apparently stopped believing in hi-res photos, just fuzzy small ones. Nooooo!

WITHOUT HI-RES PHOTO I MAY DDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Click to read more ...

Venice: "Ides" and Oscar, Winslet in "Carnage", Madonna for "W.E."

[Editor's Note: I told you we'd have two correspondents in Venice this year. Doubleplusgood. You've already heard from Ferdi from Italy. Now we have Manolis from Greece. We're very happy to have them both covering the fest this year. Show them comment love. -Nathaniel R.]

Hello Film Experience fans. I’ve been a reader myself for many years and i am happy that this year i have the chance to cover the festival for Nathaniel and for the Greek site Cinema News. English is not my native language but I hope you'll enjoy my coverage. 

DAY 1: Venice at this time of the year is at its finest and busiest. The festival is of course the main attraction but there are many unaware tourists that are wondering what all these people with the badges around their necks are here for.  The event of the day was the opening ceremony of the Festival with the premiere of George Clooney’s The Ides of March. Even though The Ides of March is a political film the atmosphere at the press conference was not heavy at all. Most of the questions were aimed at George Clooney who once more ‘played’ the room as he answered questions with wit and humor. What else could he do when the questions varied from "Is this movie a comment about Dominique Strauss Kahn?" to "Have you ever thought of running for president?". He also joked about the amount of research he did for his character in Ocean’s 11 -- "I spent years researching for this role in Las Vegas" -- and he joked that the right side of the movie's poster was better looking than the left.  

Which side do you prefer?

He also said that Gosling was his first choice for the role and that the production of the film was postponed because after Barack Obama’s win everybody was very hopeful about the future of polictics in the U.S. and the timing wasn’t right for it. 

Of Day One's three other press conferences, the most compelling was the Jury of the Competition Section. This year's president Darren Aronofsky and his jury members were here to discuss how they will pick their winners. Todd Haynes got the most interesting question when asked how partial he could be in judging Kate Winslet’s performance in Carnage so soon after working with her in Mildred Pierce (which is also showing at the festival).

He answered politely and predictably and persuaded nobody. 

I am happy to say that The Ides of March is a very good film, directed with passion and care for detail. However it's the kind of film that everyone likes and respects but nobody is really passionate about. Ryan Gosling is excellent in the lead role and has the audience on his side even when he makes the wrong decisions; he could very well be nominated. One of the difficult things to judge is whether the supporting players will feature in the Oscar race. I would say that Clooney has the best chance in the Supporting Actor category, as he portrays a charismatic character (not an acting stretch, I know) that has faults and is vulnerable. Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are marvelous actors but they don’t do anything we haven’t seen them do before. (Giamatti and Marisa Tomei are in very little of the movie.) Evan Rachel Wood on the other hand has an important role and a lot of screen time and has a good shot at a nomination. If I had to pick the surest nomination that would be in the Adapted Screenplay category since the dialogue is excellent and the the scipt (Written by Clooney and his creative partner Grant Henslov) is the strongest element of the movie.

W.E. and Carnage after the jump

Click to read more ...

Vote on the Euro Film Awards (Plus: Oscar Submits)

While I normally approve not of "people's choice" awards -- that's what box office is for -- I do find the European Film Awards a curious beast worth noting each year. They have variety by way of scattershot film culture, there being no unifying "Hollywood" to control them. This year their People's Choice Awards -- which you can vote on and enter for a chance to win a trip to the awards in Berlin -- offers up an odd collection of Camp Comedy (France's star-laden Potiche), Royalty Porn (The UK's Oscar winner The King's Speech), Meta History (Spain's Even The Rain), Message Movie (Denmark's Oscar Winner In a Better World), Neeson-y Thriller (the international Unknown), Fish Out of Water Comedy (Italy's Welcome to the South), Ensemble Drama (France's star-laden Little White Lies), and even Animated Family Film (Germany's Animals United).

And the Nominees Are...

Go and vote...
...as long as you're not planning to help The King's Speech win yet more statues. Cinema-Gods help us all.

Meanwhile the Oscar Foreign Film submissions continue...

NORWAY
Anne Sewitsky’s debut Happy, Happy (Sykt lykkelig) which we've previously discussed (I heart the trailer) will represent the land of the midnight sun in this year's Oscar race. Previous awards under its belt include the Sundance Festival's World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic which, if you'll recall, is the same prize that the great Australian feature Animal Kingdom got its first big boost from in 2010. Joachim Trier's Oslo August 31st is the loser in this Oscar scenario but here's hoping that both films get stateside distribution. 

HUNGARY
Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse will represent daring Hungary in this year's Oscar race. Hungary nearly always competes for Most Atypical Submitted Film which is bad for their nominatability but great for proof of variety in that odd annual Oscar survey of what's happening in international cinema. This one will need a helping hand from that special committee that Oscar dreamt up to basically force critical darlings on to the nominated shortlist. The new system obviously paid off last year for Greece's Dogtooth. Cinema Underground tells it like so...

Not since Alexander Sokurov’s The Second Circle have I watched a movie that felt so much more like physical endurance than an active intellectual and emotional experience... The Turin Horse is a punishing film.  The people in it are ugly and often cruel.  Their lives are repetitive and arduous.  There is little plot, little action, little change of scenery, but there are plenty of long, long takes in which no words are spoken.   

And that's from a somewhat positive review.

Oscar Foreign Film Pages

August. It's a Wrap

This long hot summer is finally over. If you were at the beach for most of it, you're smart. So get caught up with the best of what we typed up these past 31 days with our excessively sweaty hands.

Blondes have more fun angst: Captain America and The Driver

Drive "People Will Love it Ten Years From Now!"
Unsung Heroes: Once Upon a Time in the West Michael C looks at the cinematography of this classic 
Academy Mixer bury this in a time capsule please: Liz, Natalie, Audrey! 
Complete The Sentence sure was fun to read about your favorite scenes in current movies 
Disney Princesses as Fashionistas an illustrated set 
5 Thoughts on Kaboom Gregg Araki needs to shake things up  
and...
5 Frames That Accurately Describe Ridley Scott's Bladerunner Sequel Plans

Topic O' Month: The Help kept selling tickets & sparking conversation 
Most Eyeballs: The Cast of Magic Mike (NSFW gallery of Steven Soderbergh's strippers)
Hot Conversations: Q&A: Julianne Pfeiffer, Musicals, Director Ressurections (the new series Q&A got y'all talking each time) 

Coming in September:
The Film Experience will be on a less frequent or possibly erratic posting schedule for the next week or so, a pre-season catnap if you will. The brand new and improved (or at least refreshed) season of The Film Experience begins on Tuesday, September 13th. Be here for prestige film season, Oscar mania, the return of many of your favorite weekly series, and the debut of "Actress Land"!