La La Land Razzle Dazzles Venice

Classic musicals from Singing in the Rain to An American in Paris to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are being invoked to praise La La Land. There are comparisons to golden age stars like Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly and Gene Kelly. The Damien Chazelle film, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, has critics at Venice falling in love and believing in the magic of cinema again. La La Land just topped our most anticipated fall film list and it looks like the excited anticipation was proven correct just a day later.

Here is an assortment of what is being said...

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Team Experience's Most Anticipated Fall Festival Films

Oscar season is upon the horizon, dear readers. And the (un)official starting siren for the race ahead is the fall festivals. Venice kicks off tomorrow, overlapping with Telluride and Toronto in September, the comes New York and Chicago before the AFI Fest in November.

Our host Nathaniel will be heading out to Toronto in a few short days, so expect to see his responses during those days. While we can't all take in the glut of a major film festival, the fun of watching from home is hearing how the films on your radar are being received. So to let you know what we'll be waiting for, Team Experience has rallied our:

Top 15 Most Anticipated Films of the Fall Festivals

Films narrowly missing the list included Una, Voyage of Time, Loving, American Pastoral, and The Salesman. On our list you'll find five films directed by women and nine from non-US directors. We weren't at Cannes or Sundance, so not everything on our list is a world premiere (and we know you're still looking forward to those as well). Let's just say our #1 made like Katie Ledecky at the Olympics or Mo'Nique at the Oscars, but the list is still bursting with enticements. You can see previous posts on the festival lineups here and here. Chicago is just beginning to announce and Telluride doesn't announce their lineup until the start of the festival.

See what made our list and the festivals they will play after the jump...

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Elisabeth Moss Rocks The Bleeder

by Murtada

A clip should give us a small taste that makes us want to see the movie it’s from. Unlike trailers, clips can’t be manipulated with mood and music, which is why sometimes they are jarring and don’t work out of context. But not this clip.

This clip from The Bleeder has it all. It’s like a short film with a complete story. Even if you knew nothing about the movie, you’d still get a full portrait of two of its character. One is a philandering husband (Liev Schreiber), the other is his wife (Elisabeth Moss) catching him in flirting with another woman in a diner. We know the setting because of the spot on accent from Moss. And watching Moss talk we understand a lot about this marriage.

The Bleeder is a biopic of boxer Chuck Wepner who is the real life  inspiration behind Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa. Schreiber is Wepner, Moss is one of his wives, Naomi Watts is another. The director is Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar). The film will be playing both Venice and Toronto film festivals in the coming few weeks. However before this clip it was very low on my radar of upcoming movies. Now I really want to see it. If only to spend more time with that intriguing character Moss plays. Let's hope there's much more of Moss insulting Schreiber and telling it like like it is in that fabulous accent.

This clip rocks, and it did its job well selling the movie. Are you now sold on The Bleeder as well?

Venice Film Festival Lineup Announced

What do Spotlight and Birdman have in common? Apart from being Oscar Best Picture winners starring Michael Keaton that is. They both debuted at the Venice Film Festival, that's what. The 73rd annual Venice Film Festival line-up has been announced, with the potential of another Best Picture winner in its midst.  As was previously announced, La La Land is opening the festival, and if you've  been watching the trailer on loop like us, it’s hard to get excited about anything else. But let’s take a shot...

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TIFF: Berlin and Venice Winners, "Taxi" and "Desde Allá"

Amir continues our coverage of TIFF '15 with reviews of this year's Golden Bear and Golden Lion winners.

The studio Celluloid Dreams recorded a remarkable success this year by winning the top prize at all of Europe’s big three festivals. The journey started in Berlin with the Golden Bear for Taxi, continued into Cannes with the Palme d'or for Dheepan (review) and ended just last week with Venice's Golden Lion for Venezuela’s Desde Allá. Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is the film that piqued my interest most, both as an Iranian, and as a fan of the auteur’s complex career, which I have followed in real time since his first film—a children’s movie—back in 1995.

Taxi is filmed digitally with incredibly modest means, borne of the director’s complicated situation with government authorities...

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