In Contention

Tag: Great Directors

  • VENICE: ‘The Road,’ ‘Life During Wartime,’ ‘Great Directors’

    Ciaran Hinds in Life During WartimeSorry to duck out there for the whole morning — a combination of wireless misbehavior and delayed screenings has played havoc with my planned writing time. As a festival, Venice has multiple charms, but smooth organization is not among them.

    This morning’s glitch-bedeviled  screening of Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” is a case in point: after starting 20 minutes late (leaving journalists waiting outside in sunstroke-inducing heat), the projector broke down during the opening credits. A second quarter-hour delay followed,  only for the film to restart with severely mistimed Italian subtitles — the vocal protests from Italian audience members drowning out the dialogue in the film’s opening scenes. Oh, well.

    Anyway, enough kvetching and on to the movies.

    Kris will have a more detailed take on “The Road” (**1/2) up later today, but given that it’s one of the Lido’s biggest drawcards, I feel it necessary to take a moment to discuss the film, which seems to have left several journalists I’ve spoken to disappointed, or at least mildly befuddled — and with good reason.

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  • Touchdown in Venice

    VeniceGreetings from the cavernous, marble-clad press room of the Venice Film Festival. After a more-frenzied-than-average day’s travelling (thanks to a domino set of transport delays resulting in the kind of mad airport dash usually reserved for rom-com heroes only), I have arrived in Venice in more or less one piece — and if ever a city was designed to melt away the stresses of a rough transit, it’s this one.

    Even in sticky September heat, it’s as unremittingly, broodingly lovely as every postcard, photograph or film scene has ever suggested — as I navigated the shady labyrinth of criss-crossing bridges and canals to my hotel, it was hard not to expect a ghostly tyke in red to pop up a few paces ahead. Or Dirk Bogarde in a Panama hat. At least Helena Bonham-Carter in a carnival mask. But no. Such are the mild letdowns of initially meeting cities through the movies.

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  • The five Venice titles I’m most curious to see

    Jared Leto in Mr. NobodyAt the crack of dawn, I board a flight to Italy — so this time tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll be writing to you from the water-riven city of Venice after having attended a festival screening of John Hillcoat’s “The Road.” It’s both my first visit to the city and my first taste of one of the major film festivals, so it should be an exciting few days all round.

    Venice may lag slightly behind Cannes in terms of glamor and auteur attractions, but it’s arguably the European festival that feeds most into the awards season to come: as recent Cannes winners have remained largely arthouse-bound, Venice has birthed several crossover successes that went on to factor to varying degrees in the race: in recent years, “Brokeback Mountain,” “The Queen,” “Atonement” and “The Wrestler,” among others, saw their buzz begin on the Lido.

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  • Dante, Bahrani added to Venice lineup

    The Movie OrgyEarlier this morning, Kris pointed you to the news that four features have been added to the Venice lineup: Joe Dante’s “The Movie Orgy: Ultimate Version,” Angela Ismailos’s “Great Directors,” Hana Makhmalbaf’s “Green Days” and Peter Greenaway’s “The Marriage.” Under the radar (and out of competition) they may be, but all of them further my anticipation for my trip to the Lido next week.

    The former two are intriguing American cinema-themed documentaries: Ismailos’s film, her debut, lives up to its rather blunt title by examining the work of ten contemporary helmers, including Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, John Sayles and David Lynch. Dante’s film, meanwhile, is a slightly (and, at 280 minutes, I mean only slightly) more disciplined cut of his mammoth 1968 film, a 7-hour valentine to B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s.

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