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      Venice Film Festival: Tim Blake Nelson Gets the Lead. Someone Send Him a Tux.

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      The veteran character may have been featured in Coen brothers movies, but for a small western, he’s the one who is working hard to get it seen.VENICE — The first time Tim Blake Nelson went to the Venice Film Festival was three years ago, as one of the featured players in the western anthology “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. As Nelson soon learned, trailing those filmmakers around Venice can open an endless number of doors.“Traveling to a film festival with the Coens is a completely different experience than traveling with any other movie,” said Nelson, whose breakout role came in “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” also directed by the Coen brothers. “It’s like being associated with Picasso or Matisse.”This year, Nelson is at Venice to support “Old Henry,” a western he’s starring in. It’s a much smaller movie than “Buster Scruggs” — Nelson has even described “Old Henry” as a “micro western” — and it comes from Potsy Ponciroli, a young filmmaker who’s still earning his spurs. That means Nelson is shouldering a lot more responsibility than he did during his first trip to the festival.“We’re on a completely different stratum,” Nelson said. “I think this might be one of the lowest-budget movies ever to premiere in Venice! This is a very small movie, and it’s kind of extraordinary that we’re here next to ‘Dune.’”But modesty works in the movie’s favor: “Old Henry” is a solid-as-a-rock western that, as it goes on, gently suggests it’s about more than you’d anticipated. In a rare leading role, Nelson plays Henry, a widowed farmer living on a small patch of land in the Oklahoma territory. It’s 1906, and Henry’s teenage son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis), is anxious to seek adventure, leave the farm, and wrest himself from the grip of his overprotective father.But adventure finds them instead when Henry and Wyatt happen upon a nearly dead cowboy and his pouch full of cash. When Henry brings both back to his farm, it isn’t long before a sinister gunslinger (Stephen Dorff) comes sniffing around for that bounty. And in the standoff that follows, maybe father and son will come to learn more about each other than either was expecting.“As an actor who’s 57 years old and has been doing this a long time, there’s something incredibly exciting about being associated with a younger filmmaker who’s created something very special,” Nelson said Monday night at da Ivo, a Venice restaurant that had been recommended to him by his “O Brother” co-star George Clooney, who held his bachelor party there.For a supporting player like Nelson, who recently appeared in HBO’s “Watchmen,” leading roles like the one in “Old Henry” are few and far between. Still, Nelson is humble about the promotion. If anything, it just means he’s taking on more responsibility to get the film seen.“It’s tricky because when you’re a character actor who’s been in a lot of movies, people tend to inflate your value,” said Nelson. “They think, ‘Oh, if he’s in my movie, then I can get financing or critical attention.’ They’re actually wrong, because there are a lot of character actors out there. I always say that I’m not some sort of magic bullet.”And though the films at Venice are dominated by stars like Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and Penélope Cruz, who can earn headlines simply for what they wear on the red carpet, Nelson harbors no such illusions.“I’m wearing an outfit picked out by my wife,” Nelson told me, tugging at the lapel of his black jacket. “Because I forgot to pack two blazers, we actually bought this jacket today, two blocks away from here.”So, yes, Tim Blake Nelson is headlining a movie at one of the most glamorous film festivals on earth, but no, he does not return to his room at the Hotel Excelsior to find a free Tom Ford tuxedo sent over by a stylist.“I wish!” he said, laughing. “That’d be great. But you know, I don’t say this disingenuously: Nobody’s ever sent me any suits. And there were no offers for this. None.”Nelson grinned. “I’m not complaining,” he said. “It’s just, we’re a bit of a minnow.” More

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      Venice Film Festival: Elena Ferrante, Olivia Colman and Resort Horror

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      “The Lost Daughter,” like “The White Lotus” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” takes its characters on vacation but they’re hardly getting away.VENICE — Are we our best or worst selves when we go on vacation? Sure, these trips are taken with good intentions, but when you’re determined to relax, that determination can look an awful lot like work. Throw in bad weather, a crying child or downed hotel Wi-Fi, and sometimes you arrive back home in a more bedraggled state than when you left.When it comes to chronicling just how easily a vacation can push people to the edge, Hollywood has been racking up a lot of frequent-flier miles lately. The recent spate of film and TV projects about good trips gone bad even led the Vulture film critic Alison Willmore to coin the phrase “resort horror,” a term that could apply not just to M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” an actual horror film about rapidly aging beachgoers, but also to HBO’s “The White Lotus” and Hulu’s “Nine Perfect Strangers,” two limited series about punctured privilege in some of the most beautiful getaways on earth.Isn’t that just the way: We’ve been so anxious to leave our homes over the last year and a half, and now Hollywood is telling us that escapism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.This has all been on my mind after spending the last several days at the Venice Film Festival, a place so gorgeous and glamorous that to lodge even a single complaint (about the festival’s obtuse ticketing system, perhaps) makes you feel something like the whining, entitled bro played by Jake Lacy in “The White Lotus.” But many of the high-profile films here have been dabbling in resort horror, too, like “Sundown,” with Tim Roth vacationing in Acapulco — a colleague dubbed it “The Even-Whiter Lotus” — and especially “The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut and the beneficiary of plenty of Oscar chatter.Olivia Colman, left, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Venice for “The Lost Daughter.”Yara Nardi/ReutersAdapted from the novel by Elena Ferrante, “The Lost Daughter” casts Olivia Colman as Leda, a British professor who’s decided to take a solo trip to Greece. Upon her arrival, Leda is presented with two potential love interests: Ed Harris, the wiry caretaker for her Airbnb, and “Normal People” breakout Paul Mescal as a flirty cabana boy in short shorts. All that, and she’s staying right by a nice, quiet beach. Sounds ideal!And it is, as the setup for resort horror. Fairly soon, things both big and small start to go wrong: The fruit bowl in Leda’s apartment spoils dramatically, a huge, screeching bug appears on the pillow next to her, and a pine cone is hurled at Leda from the heavens as though the Greek gods had finally found a worthy target for their abuse. Even worse, her quiet beach is invaded by a sprawling, squawking family from Queens that will not leave Leda alone.That brood includes young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson, by now a resort-horror veteran thanks to “A Bigger Splash”) and nosy Callie (Dagmara Dominczyk), who can’t understand why Leda, a mother in her 40s, would want to vacation alone. “Children are a crushing responsibility,” replies Leda, and you can tell she wants to say something even worse. By the time she flees the beach with a doll impulsively stolen from Nina’s daughter, it’s clear that Leda has some issues about motherhood that even a solo trip can’t help but trigger.This, too, has been a recurring theme at Venice: In “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” starring Kate Hudson as a stripper mom, and Pedro Almodóvar’s switched-at-birth drama “Parallel Mothers,” female characters get honest about their lack of maternal instincts in a way that still feels all too rare in Hollywood. But none of those films burrow into it quite like “The Lost Daughter,” where we get flashbacks to a young Leda (played by Jessie Buckley) at wits’ end with her two shrieking daughters. Can the film earn a best-sound Oscar nomination simply for making children’s screams sound so torturous?As I watched Colman come undone on the beach, I wondered what’s behind the recent surge in these bad-trip projects, since they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. (This Ferrante adaptation even arrives not long after we saw a “White Lotus” character reading her books.) Willmore posited that resort horror, with its wide open beaches and exclusive clientele, is easier to shoot in the Covid era; I also just think that rich people in Hollywood go on lots of vacations. They write what they know!And maybe vacation just presents an irresistible collision of expectations vs. reality, or a crucible where days of self-reflection can take a haunting turn. You know that Leda won’t get out of Greece before she confronts her buried back story, and perhaps that’s the true moral of all these resort-horror entries: It’s natural to want to get away from it all, but don’t forget that a vacation requires you to bring your own baggage. More

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      Venice, Day 1: See the Almodóvar, Free the Nipple

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      The director was the toast of a glamorous dinner with Penélope Cruz, Isabelle Huppert and Denis Villeneuve, who talked about “Dune” as if he were a proud parent.VENICE — Denis Villeneuve, the director of “Dune,” wanted to apologize in advance.“This will be a long answer,” he said, “because of the Champagne.”We were at the Hotel Excelsior on Wednesday night for the lavish opening-night dinner of the Venice Film Festival, where the bubbly flowed freely, guests like Isabelle Huppert and Jane Campion supped on pink prawn tartare, and a wide array of major films — including “Dune,” Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel,” the Princess Diana drama “Spencer” and Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” — all waited to make splashy debuts on the Lido over the next week and a half.Jane Campion x Isabelle Huppert pic.twitter.com/HOsnH9qng0— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) September 1, 2021
      Though Venice was one of the few major film festivals to mount an in-person edition in 2020, this year’s program is significantly more robust. Many consider Venice to be the kickoff to awards season, an expectation goosed even further by the presence on the Venice jury of the last two auteurs to direct best-picture winners: Chloé Zhao, whose “Nomadland” premiered here last year, and the “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, the jury president.Will Villeneuve’s “Dune” be that kind of contender? The sci-fi drama, adapted from the Frank Herbert novel, has loftier aspirations and a more refined eye than most would-be blockbusters. Villeneuve (whose credits include “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049”) will debut “Dune” on Friday with a starry cast expected to show up to the premiere, including the lead Timothée Chalamet, who arrived in Venice via speedboat on Wednesday.At dinner, Villeneuve told me Venice is “the perfect way to launch the movie and it’s the first time that I’ve had time to really finish — usually, I’m finishing movies and then releasing them three days later.”Instead, the French Canadian director has had the better part of a year to tinker, as “Dune” was supposed to come out in November 2020 before a pandemic-induced delay. Now, on the verge of its Venice premiere (and with a release date rescheduled for Oct. 22), Villeneuve talked about “Dune” almost as if he were a proud, anxious parent about to send his young child off to school.“I think it has a soul,” he said. “I recognize myself in it. It’s my biggest project and still, I have the most intimate relationship with it. I know it can walk by itself, but what will other people think?”Villeneuve paused. “How do I say it in English?” he wondered, before finding the words: “I just have to let it go.”Denis Villeneuve said of “Dune”: “I have the most intimate relationship with it. I know it can walk by itself, but what will other people think?”Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockThough Venice is limiting audiences in each theater and requiring moviegoers to wear masks (and to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test), the festival still offers the most glamorous launchpad for movies since Cannes in July. Still, even in ideal circumstances (or especially because of them), it can be daunting to show your film to an expectant international crowd ready to gauge its award prospects.That goes double when you’re first in line. “You are more vulnerable if it’s the opening,” said Pedro Almodóvar, whose “Parallel Mothers” was selected as the opening-night entry of the festival. How did he feel in the hours before the premiere? Not nervous, he told me. Just a little exposed.Fortunately, reviews were strong. This intimate, precisely judged drama stars Penélope Cruz as a Madrid photographer who suspects her newborn baby was switched at birth with the child of an unwed teenage mother (Milena Smit). Though that logline is outrageous, the film is surprisingly down to earth and accessible, even as Cruz’s character is driven to increasingly desperate decisions.“I didn’t want to ask myself what I would have done in that situation until I had finished the movie,” Cruz said at dinner. “She and I are very different, but when I look back now, I feel I would have done something similar. The way Pedro wrote these imperfect mothers, it makes it impossible for you to judge them.”“Parallel Mothers” is Cruz’s seventh film with the director. “I look at him and feel like he could give his life for the film,” she said. Because of that, Cruz was determined to show the camera her most vulnerable depths as an actor: “The standard is really high and he gives me a character that is a treasure, so I don’t want to disappoint him. I try every day to give him a hundred percent.”Speaking of matters of exposure, Almodóvar was amused at the recent reaction to the poster for “Parallel Mothers,” which crops a lactating nipple as if it were the pupil in an eye shedding a single milk-tear. Upon the poster’s release last month, Instagram banned the image for nudity and then, after an online uproar, promptly unbanned it.“It’s not erotic at all!” Almodóvar protested. “You have to be very dirty to think there’s something sexual about it.”The 71-year-old director doesn’t use Instagram himself, but he knows what he’s up against. “What is very dangerous for all of us is that it’s a machine that decides to reject the poster,” he said. “It’s an algorithm, there is nobody in charge that I can talk to.”But for the time being, at least, Almodóvar has conquered the algorithm. As I left the director, other guests at the dinner swooped in to take selfies with him. You’ll never guess where they posted them. More

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      Cartier Joins the Sponsors of the Venice Film Festival

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      As part of the agreement, the Paris high jewelry house will present an annual award, with the first going to the director Ridley Scott.Along with lavish screenings of new films starring Oscar winners like Penélope Cruz and Olivia Colman, the 2021 Venice Film Festival will feature a different type of premiere: the debut of Cartier as a new main sponsor.The festival “has elegance. It has exclusivity. It has glamour,” said Arnaud Carrez, Cartier’s chief marketing officer. “And that’s exactly what we want to build on.”As part of a three-year agreement, the festival, scheduled to begin on Sept. 1, will present the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award annually. This year’s recipient, chosen by the festival director Alberto Barbera, will be Ridley Scott, whose new film, “The Last Duel,” is scheduled to be shown at the festival on Sept. 10. (The award is to be presented immediately before the film’s screening.)The trophy — which will feature a panther, one of the house’s recurring motifs — is being made at the Cartier Creation Studio in Paris.Neither Cartier nor the festival would detail the financial aspects of the relationship, but film festivals can generate millions of dollars from sponsorships, which are typically offered on a variety of levels. There are two other new festival sponsors this year, both in less prominent tiers than Cartier: Repower, a Swiss energy company, and the Chinese electronics brand Xiaomi.For luxury brands like Cartier, choosing events and companies for partnerships can take some care. “The brand values need to be in line with the kind of art or the kind of activity they are sponsoring,” said Federica Levato, a Milan-based partner for Bain & Company.And, she said, consumers expect synergy in sponsorships. “If a brand is sponsoring an event with no link between the brand and the event, the customer will find it strange,” she said. (Last year, the festival had four main sponsors; three returning are Armani beauty, Campari and Mastercard.)Roberto Cicutto, president of La Biennale di Venezia, which oversees the festival and other cultural events in the city, wrote in an email that Cartier fit well as a sponsor because it had “the ability to best interpret a collaboration with a cultural institution.”Cartier has partnered with cinema-focused events before — like the Deauville American Film Festival, the French event it sponsored from 2005 through 2014 — as well as numerous art exhibitions through the Fondation Cartier, including current shows in Milan and Paris. “Art and culture have always been intimately intertwined with the history of Cartier,” Mr. Carrez said. More

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      ‘Dune’ and Princess Diana Biopic to Debut at a Starry Venice Film Festival

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      Hollywood blockbusters are back on the program after a less celebrity-driven edition last year, but the event will still be far from business as usual.“Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated science-fiction epic starring Timothée Chalamet, and Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer,” which dramatizes Princess Diana’s decision to divorce Prince Charles, are among the movies that will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival.The festival, scheduled to run from Sept. 1-11, will also see the presentation of new films by Pedro Almodóvar (“Madres Paralelas,” starring Penélope Cruz), Ridley Scott (“The Last Duel,” with Matt Damon) and Jane Campion (the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring “The Power of the Dog”), as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter,” based on a novel by Elena Ferrante and starring Olivia Colman.The star-studded lineup, announced at a news conference on Monday, suggests that this year’s festival will be a more glamorous affair after last year’s scaled-down pandemic edition, which featured few celebrity names.The presence of some Hollywood blockbusters on the program shows that “Americans have emerged from the lockdown and they are ready to restart,” Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, said at the news conference.Some of the most anticipated U.S.-funded movies will appear out of competition, including “Dune,” the latest attempt to adapt that Frank Herbert novel following efforts by David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Scott’s “The Last Duel,” starring Damon as a knight who challenges his squire, played by Adam Driver, to a duel after his wife (Jodie Comer) accuses the sidekick of rape.“Halloween Kills,” the latest movie in the “Halloween” horror franchise, will also premiere out of competition. It stars Jamie Lee Curtis, who will receive the festival’s lifetime achievement award.In the competition, Almodóvar’s “Madres Paralelas” (“Parallel Mothers”), about two women who meet in a hospital where they are about to give birth, is one of 21 films that will compete for the Golden Lion, the festival’s main prize.It will be up against Larraín’s “Spencer,” starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana; Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” about a sadistic ranch owner; and Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” about a gambler caught in a revenge plot.Five of the 21 competition films are directed by women, Barbera said — down from eight last year. “It might seem a step backward, but that is just a partial point of view,” he added. Female directors appeared to have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic more than their male counterparts, he said, adding, “I really hope they will have a comeback.”Bong Joon Ho, the director of “Parasite,” will chair the competition jury that also includes the British actress Cynthia Erivo and Chloé Zhao, the director of “Nomadland,” which won last year’s Golden Lion and went on to win the Academy Award for best film.This year’s festival may see the return of blockbusters to Venice, but it will still be far from business as usual. Roberto Cicutto, the festival’s president, said at the news conference that rules introduced last year to limit the spread of the coronavirus, such as compulsory seat reservations and masks for indoor screenings, would likely continue.In line with Italian government regulations coming into force Aug. 6, anyone attending screenings, or even eating indoors at the festival site, will be required to show proof of having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, a recent negative test result or a certificate showing proof of having recovered from the illness in the past six months.Italy’s government announced the requirements this month as virus numbers rose across the country. On Sunday, the public health authorities reported new 4,742 cases. That is far down from this year’s peak of over 25,000 new daily cases in March, but the rise in cases has caused concern in a country that the pandemic hit hard last year.“This year, we hoped we could be more relaxed,” Cicutto said. “For the time being, it isn’t so. But we continue to hope.” More

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      Berlin Film Festival Is Delayed. Will Cannes and Venice Follow?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBerlin Film Festival Is Delayed. Will Cannes and Venice Follow?The postponement of the first major international movie event of 2021 raises the specter of another difficult year for the industry.The cast and crew of “There Is No Evil,” which won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 2019.Credit…Michele Tantussi/ReutersDec. 18, 2020, 11:54 a.m. ETThe Berlin Film Festival, which was scheduled to start Feb. 11, has been postponed because of the coronavirus, its organizers said on Friday in a news release, making it the first — but probably not the last — major cultural event of 2021 to be affected by the pandemic.With coronavirus cases soaring in Germany, the Berlinale, as the festival is known, will now occur in a digital form for movie industry professionals in March, the festival said.The festival’s competition will take place as part of the March event, and a jury in Berlin will select prize winners, the release added. Berlin’s film fans will get to watch entrants at a separate event in June, involving open-air screenings as well as presentations in movie theaters.“There is a great desire to meet face to face,” Mariette Rissenbeek, the festival’s executive director, said in a statement, but “the current situation does not allow a physical festival in February.” On Sunday, Germany announced a lockdown as coronavirus cases surged, banning most cultural activities until at least Jan. 10.The delay to the first major international movie event of 2021 is likely to cause concern that other festivals might need to be pushed back, even as Europe prepares to roll out a Covid-19 vaccine.The Cannes Film Festival is scheduled to start on May 11, just weeks after the delayed Academy Awards, on April 25. Cannes organizers intend the event to occur as scheduled, Aida Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, said in an email, but are “waiting until the beginning of next year to evaluate the pandemic evolution.”“Then, if we consider May won’t be possible, we will work on new dates, from end of June to end of July,” she added. Whatever date the festival occurs, it will be “a ‘classic’ Cannes,” with a full program and stars on the Croisette, Ms. Belloulid said.Earlier this year, Cannes was postponed at the last minute because of the pandemic. The organizers ended up staging a “special” edition in October, with just a handful of films and little of the festival’s usual glamour. That event received barely any media attention.In contrast to Cannes, the Venice Film Festival has yet to make contingency plans and its organizers intend to go ahead as normal, in September. “Of course we don’t know what the situation will be,” Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, said in a telephone interview, “but we were lucky enough to go ahead with the festival this year without any problems, so next year should be even better.”This year’s Venice Film Festival featured mandatory masks and a distinct lack of blockbusters, but it was still widely seen as a success, given that it was one of the few major international cultural events to actually happen in 2020.There was no reported transmission of the coronavirus during the 11-day event, Mr. Barbera said, which suggested the measures had been a success. Some element of social distancing might still be in place in 2021, he added, but that would depend on the state of the pandemic.Mr. Barbera said any changes to the film festival calendars, following the Berlinale’s move, were unlikely to affect movie release dates. The major studios and distributors will start releasing films only when movie theaters reopen, he said.“I feel the majority of big films will wait until the fall,” he said, “so that could be a huge chance for the few festivals, like us, Toronto, New York.”The Berlin Film Festival said in its news release that it was still in talks with its sponsors, including the German government, about the budget for its new events. It said it had no choice but to delay. “The Berlinale would like to emphasize once again that the health and the well-being of all guests and employees come first in all aspects of the planning,” the news release said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More