Venice at Home: Day 9 – Best Actors of Festivals Past

by Cláudio Alves

Neither Vahid Jalilvand nor Andrew Dominik is a newbie when it comes to the Venice Film Festival. Though the Iranian director never before competed for the Golden Lion, his films have won many prizes at the Lido, screening within the festival's parallel sections. Maybe Beyond the Wall can repeat the feat and nab some trophy from Julianne Moore's jury. As for Andrew Dominik, his adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde is already the topic of much controversy. Critics are divided regarding the movie's depiction of sexual exploitation – some see it as a ruthless dissection of celebrity culture, and others lament another voyeuristic desecration of Marilyn Monroe's personhood, intimacy, her legacy. 

For the Venice at Home program, let's remember two instances when these cineastes directed their leading men towards acting prizes. No Date, No Signature won Navis Mohammadzadeh the Venice Horizons Award in 2017. Ten years before that, Brad Pitt earned the Volpi Cup for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford…

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Thoughts I Had... while staring at the first images from "Babylon"

by Nathaniel R

Damien Chazelle photographed by Scott Garfield on the set

Damien Chazelle's Hollywood opus (of some sort or another), Babylon, wasn't ready for the fall festivals so we had no clue when we'd get our first taste. Thankfully today Vanity Fair ended our long drought of information, visual and otherwise, with several lux images from the film. Naturally then it's time to discuss our thoughts, yours and mine (as they come to me). Yours go in the comments. Please don't be shy. The team misses socializing with you in this way. Okay, lots of images to get through so here we go as fast as can, thoughts in the order they came to us...

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I'll Link To That

• Vox wonderful must-read piece by Alissa Wilkinson on the new fad of intertitles in movies and why and how they're deployed artistically.
• GQ Euphoria's Jacob Elordi profiled. Stunning photos with buzzy interview
• Pajiba Very interesting take on what "Jean Jacket" symbolizes in Jordan Peele's Nope (tons of spoilers)

More Anne Heche, Brad Pitt, Eminem/Hitchcock, Only Murders costumes, and Broadway stuff  after the jump...

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To link, perchance to read...

• Defector "The money is in all the wrong places" fascinating piece in response to Euphoria's Sydney Sweeney and her lack of financial security despite being rich
• British GQ The Sandman and the return of the emo leading man
• Variety Keanu Reeves set to star in Devil in the White City (originally a film project for Leonardo DiCaprio) which will now be a Hulu series.

Brad Pitt's "shit list", Pac-Man, the red state/blue state prestige TV divide, Johnny Depp's (French) return and more after the jump...

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Box Office: "Bullet Train" off to slow-ish start, "Bodies Bodies Bodies" big in limited release

by Nathaniel R

With no major competition, the action flick Bullet Train (reviewed) easily won the weekend but the results were mixed. $30 million is a good opening but is it good for this sort of film? That's debatable. Brad Pitt titles sometimes develop good legs so the second weekend hold (or lack thereof) will tell us more...

Weekend Box Office  August 5th-7th 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	PLATFORM RELEASES
BULLET TRAIN	BODIES BODIES BODIES
1 🔺 BULLET TRAIN  $30 *NEW*	1  MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON $345k (cum. $4.9)

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