In Contention

Tag: festival

  • Venice awards make a stand

    To judge from the press reaction to yesterday’s Venice Film Festival awards, you could be forgiven for thinking that Michael Fassbender won every single one of them, plus an extra certificate for full attendance.

    That’d hardly be surprising in any circumstances, given Fassbender’s growing celebrity and the media’s reliable aversion to world cinema. Best Actor was the only major prize handed to an English-language film, after all — prompting cries of “Boring!” in many a comment board, for what in cinema is more boring than subtitles and faces you don’t immediately recognize?

    But I’m being unfair. Surely one reason for Fassbender hogging last night’s Lido headlines — with Golden Lion winner “Faust” generally relegated to a grudging postscript — is that his was one choice made by the jury that nearly everyone could agree upon, and had indeed agreed upon since “Shame”‘s first screening a week before. I’d have been equally happy with an award for quick-witted “Carnage” savior Christoph Waltz, but I’m pleased the more exciting film got indirectly honored.

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  • SANTA BARBARA: ‘The Cove’ honored

    (from left) Louie Psihoyos and Ric O'BarryI didn’t realize it had been fully six months since I saw “The Cove” beginning to end until I sat down to watch it again this evening at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara.  The screening was in honor of the film’s receiving the Sir David Attenborough Award, given annually to a film exhibiting excellence in nature filmmaking.  Roger Durling and his staff couldn’t have tapped a more worthy recipient this year.

    The film remains a rock solid punch to the stomach, bringing tears at least two or three times throughout.  It is indeed one of the best films of 2009, but looking back at my top 10 list, I feel like it could have been higher.  There was a time when I considered it the best film of the year, period, and there are still times that I think it deserves that consideration.

    It went over like gangbusters with a crowd that definitely didn’t know what kind of an emotional experience it was in for.  One woman jumped up and hustled to the back, crying, during one pivotal sequence.  And the applause hit, just as it should, during activist Ric O’Barry’s final act of heroism seen in the film, a television strapped to his chest exposing to the International Whaling Commission the dark truths going down in a little harbor village in Japan.

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