Venice 2024: Series Better Than Movies #1 - Disclaimer

by Elisa Giudici

Alfonso Cuarón, behind the scenes of DISCLAIMER | © Apple TV+

From the moment the Venice lineup was announced, it was clear that this year, the festival was betting heavily on TV. The impression was that the quality was high enough to justify their inclusion and the commitment to watch long episodes, even at the expense of film screenings. Early viewings have confirmed this prediction. In these diaries from the Lido, I can already tell you that at least two series will make headlines. The first one is:

DISCLAIMER by Alfonso Cuarón

When it comes to TV series, Alfonso Cuarón proves to be the dream director for a platform like Apple TV+…

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Tribeca: Sigourney Weaver Sells 'The Good House'

By Abe Friedtanzer

Film protagonists struggling with alcoholism dates back to the early days of cinema. While treatments, support groups, and the drinking age may have changed over the past century, the difficulty of needing that drink has not. It's interesting to see how films choose to portray such a common subject. The Good House, premiering at Tribeca ahead of a theatrical release this fall, definitely opens with a lighthearted approach.

Sigourney Weaver plays Hildy, a small-town New England realtor who spends as much time directly addressing the camera as she does trying to sell her clients on homes...

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Glenn Close 'very gratified' by career honors

by Nathaniel R

Glenn Close, a moment before we spoke on Monday nightThe Film Experience was honored to be invited to attend the Museum of the Moving Image's tribute to the career of Glenn Close this week at the elegant 583 Park Avenue venue, just days before her Golden Globe nomination. Attending the festivities were politicians, actors, industry vets, and museum officials and honorees including a whole excited table nearby mine of teenagers from Queens, where the museum is located, who collectively gave one of the night's most amusing speeches about MoMI's community outreach programs and youth engagement.

We spoke briefly to the woman of the hour, Glenn Close upon her arrival at the gala. The story of The Wife, an arthouse success this summer, is about a woman whose genius goes unrecognized...

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Months of Meryl: Ricki & The Flash (2015)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#49 —Ricki Randazzo, a rock singer who returns home to the family she abandoned.

MATTHEW: Throughout his eclectic and gloriously unpredictable career, the late Jonathan Demme paved the way for peak performances from actresses as disparate as Mary Steenburgen, Melanie Griffith, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, Oprah Winfrey, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Debra Winger. Like George Cukor before him, Demme was devoted to telling stories about women, which comprise the bulk of his narrative output. The director committed to shaping these narratives with the same heady, inquisitive vigor and nonjudgmental consideration that electrified all of his subjects, from Anthony Hopkins’ lip-licking Hannibal Lecter to David Byrne, who indelibly bopped around the stage in a business suit at least six sizes too big during Demme’s landmark concert documentary Stop Making Sense.

Ricki and the Flash, Demme’s final narrative feature, sometimes conjures the capricious, loop-the-loop feeling of a concert documentary in its depiction of the type of story that Demme loved to tell, that of an unorthodox woman shouldering her burdens and confronting any and all perils as she forges ahead with the life she has chosen to lead...

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Showbiz History: The Manchurian Candidate, Soul Man, and B.D. Wong

8 random things that happened on this day (Oct 24th) in showbiz history

1962 The depressingly prescient classic The Manchurian Candidate involving Russian infiltration into the US government arrives in theaters, receive tswo Oscar nominations: Supporting Actress Angela Lansbury (who won the Globe but lost the Oscar -- argh!) and Film Editing. It deserved to win both races and it's so annoying that it didn't make the Best Picture list.

1969 After a few scattered premieres and openings in big cities, the Paul Newman / Robert Redford western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opens everywhere...

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