The main event on day five of the fest Monday, was a staged conversation with actor Ben Affleck, 37, held at the Grammy Museum a short walk away from the Regal Cineplex 14 main festival venue. This was introduced by long term Newsweek film critic David Ansen who is the artistic director of the festival this year. The moderator --i.e., leading question asker -- was a Mr. Sean Smith, who prudently allowed Mr. Affleck to do most of the talking. Clips from some of his films were shown including the ...
The 11th Annual Hollywood Film Festival's Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony, will take place on October 22, 2007, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.Oscar(r)-winner Ben Affleck will be honored with the "Hollywood Breakthrough Director of the Year Award," Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Connelly will receive the "Hollywood Supporting Actress of the Year Award," and producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan will receive the "Hollywood Producers of the Year Award."The "Hollywood Awards" wi...
Tonight, February 25, the world will watch in baited breath to see if one of their cinematic favorites walks away with the industry's highest honor – the Oscar. Every year presents its fair share of surprises, triumphs, heartaches and snubs. What makes this Academy Award ceremony particularly exciting is the monumental year of quality films that it represents. 2006 was a sensational year at the movies, highlighted by an unprecedented number of fine roles for women. With so much great work...
On Sunday, February 25, the world will watch in baited breath to see if one of their cinematic favorites walks away with the industry's highest honor – the Oscar. Every year presents its fair share of surprises, triumphs, heartaches and snubs. What makes this Academy Award ceremony particularly exciting is the monumental year of quality films that it represents. 2006 was a sensational year at the movies, highlighted by an unprecedented number of fine roles for women. With so much...
Is there a more hotly-contested or perplexing director alive than Brian de Palma? Film fans, and certainly film critics, are just about equally divided on the merits of this prominent director, who came up in the early seventies and has long been shafted outside of the system for not playing by the rules. Like Scorsese, he is a master of using the camera as an additional character in a scene. But Scorsese's best whirling dervish camera moves express an animalistic hostility. When De Palma tak...
The surprise winner of the Golden Lion (Grand Prix for Best Film) was the untouted Chinese entry "Sanxia Haoren" (Still Life) by youthful director Jia Zhang-ke, immediately styled "a perplexing verdict" by dean of Italian film critics, Tullio Kezich. The general reaction to the jury's off-the-wall decision was something like "they must be kidding!" Although residing in the competition section, the pic was projected mostly at late night red-eye screenings, when most of the press had either packe...
With a couple of hours still left to go until the official kick-off of this "Mother of all Film Festivals" activity is feverish along the short stretch of the Lido known as Viale Marconi, the actual location of this oldest of all world film festivals --Now that was rather a mouthful, calling for a bit of elucidation. The first Venice film festival took place way back in 1932 when the Fascist government under Benito Mussolini, taking a page from Lenin, realized that film was a powerful propaganda...
The 63rd edition of the Venice film festival has opened with a salvo of noir or noirish films during which the 'dark horse' "Hollywoodland" has upstaged the odds-on favorite "Black Dahlia" which arrived with far more ballyhoo. While Dahlia, with its high-powered cast, name director Brian De Palma, and big time writer James Ellroy all on hand, was rather tepidly received at various screenings, "Hollywoodland” or 'the Death of Superman’ as the press has dubbed the film, was roundly applauded...
The Italian press on the morning after Opening Night was was, as expected, politely dismissive of De Palma's "Black Dahlia" and seemed to be much more concerned with the late arrival on the red carpet of the film's heroine, new American Diva -- (or should we say "Divette") -- Scarlett Johansson. For whatever reason, La Scarlett was more than half an hour unfashionably late for the opening ceremony which had to start without her. Nevertheless, all the papers, including the two largest national d...
