KITTY and ANDREW’s Saturday Night Double Bill: WE’RE on holiday in the trees Venice Film Festival. Drive-in Tree Tops.
Speaking of Italy: YUMMMMMY. Stanley Tucci: Searching for Volcanos! Well, kinda, in a very unusual way. [Werner Herzog’s your crazy volcanic taster. Isn’t he awarded some honor rock this Venice Fest.? Like Werner needs an award friend.] Guess vegans are a bit left-salivating in Italy: but there’s mozzarella, Balsamic vinegar, zucchini, and pasta for vegans?…watch the series, anything is possible. We all eat heavenly in diverse ways. Some just more heavenly than others…Oh my blessed carrots and beans, one learns an awful lot about food in a short space of time: leaving you, just wanting more and more. As any Broadway affectionado [sic] knows, there’s a deus ex maximus: a being, long beard, tiny tail. Four legs. Really? Are you the kid who ate all that Prosciutto? So Woody Allen and the Vegans blacklisted I.m for all retirement time. Legumes succored me an afterlife!
Anyone for the truth of Michelangelo? The great Konchalovsky. Scenes in the marble quarries do kinda beat The Brutalist.
Watching the Venice Film Fest 2025 press conference this morning and almost concurrent the horrific shootings of children in a Minneapolis church. And many questions in Venice centered around what is the role of film today in our troubled world. There’s more and more streaming violence than any The Bachelor or Love Island trauma. Those contestants are folk we recognize. How can we relate to any of these so-called monsters in movies unless they’ve become zombies? Then you wonder, what would Truman Capote be doing today? Amazing how celebrated was he for In Cold Blood? Giving cold-blooded murderers a voice! Is normality not ‘ab’? And when we start owning that idea we all may be in a better place to help influence things. Even change.
And you ask, well, my kids grew up normal and were allowed watch killing and explosions x, y, z. For me, never enjoyed watching horrible movies. Fascinating was the psychology. Bertolucci’s 1900, The Conformist. Stanley Kubrick self-imposed a ban on A Clockwork Orange in the U.K. until his death in 1999. Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. Twisted Nerve [Roy Boulting, 1968], Peeping Tom [Michael Powell, 1960]. Psycho [Hitchcock, 1960] -look what happened to Anthony Perkins’ career after that! Such a great actor. The Dardenne Brothers [milder psychosis, same reality]. The Silence of the Lambs. Room. Michael Haneke’s films. And the almost unwatchable yet unerringly vice-like Nocturnal Animals [Tom Ford]. Why? [the title song from La Piscine!]
These films provoke debate. And this is just me riffing from memory not researching a New Yorker article. Who reads that anymore? When you start the questions never cease….
Just wanted to throw all that against a wall and see what sticks;)(! Haven’t even mentioned Japanese, Korean, Asian…
After the Hunt: ”We are challenging people to have conversation and to be excited by that or to be infuriated by that, it's up to you." "It's not so much that we're making a statement, we're just sharing these lives for this moment, and then want everyone to go away and talk to each other." -Julia Roberts.
No real bees for Emma Stone on the Bugonia Venice Red Carpet but a ‘Bee-cam’. Surely a bee invention! Why go to all that trouble after a hard slog Spring when in the Fall you can hang your 6 little legs over a tiny flowery sofa supping YouTube and donuts. How good does it get for an actor when your Venetian fans chant your name and sport banners: Emily We Slept Here For You and Emily You’re My “Pocketful of Sunshine”. I’ll drink to that! [Emily’s her original name made famous by a Kazakhstan journalist at Cannes].
Wonder what Guillermo del Toro thought of The Swarm?;) A chance to buy later next month from the director’s collection of the wondrous and weird.
Frankenstein debuts tonight [Aug 30] at the Venice Film Festival. Such beautiful ideas and words from Guillermo Del Toro [2h 3min in]. “How do you live with a broken heart, and what do you do with a broken heart. Often cruelty happens out of broken hearts.” [Victor: Oscar Isaac]. The greatest quote surely of the Festival: “I’m afraid of natural stupidity.”-Del Toro.
There’s a wonderful/heartbreaking Danny Boyle Frankenstein online from London’s National Theatre.
Weird but true: always imagined The Creature/ Victor singing this. Surely couldn’t have not been so for Mozart.
So many inspiring films over the next 6months to sooth if not heal our beleaguered hearts. Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother [ 3h in] is a Christmas present [released Dec 24 by Indy streamer Mubi]. Prompted by a question to Jarmusch, actress Indya Moore gave one of the most eloquent, understanding, if not quietly damning responses to the film community’s relationship to the Gaza invasion. I totally feel as Emma Stone’s red carpet fans, only, I’m waiting to cheer those special movies comin’ my way. I know they won’t change the world, nor my life, nor those who for some reason known only to themselves enjoy consuming ill-will. Those films allow one feel less alone. Ever so slightly more empowered. FILM our most underrated ChatGPT. In the meanwhile, see Jarmusch’s Paterson [2016]: mundanity in a pocketful of happiness, though there’s an unseen hole.
And guess who won the Golden Lion pussycats….! [3h 5min into stream]
Couldn’t helped but wonder as Kim Novak stroked her Golden Lion [ess] [15min in] what if one had that and an Oscar on the shelf? Surely Oscar must be supine! No, no, not on a pyre, play nice everyone. All in the same leaky boat. Also a physics lesson there. If anyone deserves the song I’m Still Here it’s Kim Novak!
Wherefor/from all these beautiful woman on In the Hand of Dante red carpet?! Never seen so many, well this Festival. Having a ‘Guido Contini’ moment! Oh my beating heart! Clearly hangin’ out with the wrong tribe ‘bro Julian! There’s a lovely ‘paparazzi’ moment early on…
“You can lie and go to hell, or tell the truth and be crucified.” Therein the poet’s eternal beating heart? “Why do you paint? To stop thinking.”
Allora: Leonardo Di Costanzo’s film Elisa. Variety’s review: Contrary to the idea, prevalent in true-crime narratives and even in intricate fictions like “Anatomy of a Fall,” that killing is by nature fascinating, and committing such a crime might somehow expand your sense of self because you’ve done something most people would never countenance, the subdued, snowed-in logic of “Elisa” reminds us that, incarcerated, paroled or even still at large, a murderer’s world is very, very small. Arguably precisely the heart of human violence fed by such ‘isolation’/ ‘brainwashing’ in a so-called ‘normal’ world.
Public Media Enables Americans To Trust One Another And Make Decisions Together. Isn’t that called cafe/food culture/family in Italy?
But some people want magic. I think you are one of those people.
Je suis in chat. Un chat. Un.
The Emmys 2025: Neko no te mo karitai.
The Electric Horseman [Robert Redford 1936-2025]
