Brad Pitt and George Clooney hit the red carpet on Wednesday with their latest movie Burn After Reading, a satirical comedy by Oscar winners the Coen brothers, which opens this year’s Venice film festival.
The actors lead the list of A-list star power to the 11-day event which features everything from obscure Asian art house cinema to Hollywood heavyweights.
Although there are five US films in the main competition lineup of 21, they all represent lower-budget, “independent” cinema as opposed to the big studios, which are not in Venice this time around.
Festival director Marco Mueller brushed aside concerns that Venice, which faces stiff competition from the Toronto film festival starting next month and the Rome film festival in October, was struggling to secure top titles and talent.
Mueller, who with his team saw around 3,000 films, which were whittled down to 55 in the official selection, said the lighter Hollywood studio presence was partly down to the 14-week writers’ strike that ended in February, and added: “American cinema is very much at the center of the program.”
The US lineup includes Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, starring Anne Hathaway and Debra Winger. The other US films in the main contest are all by lesser-known or first-time directors, including The Burning Plain with Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron and The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke in the lead role.
Italy and Japan loom large over the rest of the 21-film competition, with four and three movies respectively. Two of the Japanese offerings are animation films, including Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea by cult director Hayao Miyazaki.
Hollywood’s Warner Bros, which owns the rights to the Harry Potter movies, is suing an Indian production company whose new film is called Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors, the studio said on Wednesday.
The studio had started proceedings against the makers of Hari Puttar over similarities to the international film and literary phenomenon, said Warner Bros spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln.
The producers of Hari Puttar said they had registered the title more than two years ago and the film bore no resemblance to the Harry Potter franchise.
“All I can say is that the title is not at all similar to Harry Potter and nor is our story line,” said Munish Purii, chief operating officer of the film’s producers, Mirchi Movies.
Hari Puttar, slated to open in cinemas on Sept. 12, is the story of a young boy fighting two criminals who are trying to steal a secret formula devised by the boy’s scientist father.
In China, Warner is planning to release Connected, a remake of the 2004 New Line Cinema thriller Cellular starring Kim Basinger, on Sept. 25. The film is being made in conjunction with Chinese partners. Cellular is about a kidnapped woman who makes a random mobile phone call for help.
Connected changes the setting to Hong Kong and switches the cast to Chinese-speaking actors — Hong Kong’s Louis Koo (古天樂), China’s Liu Ye (劉燁) and Taiwan’s Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛).
While Hollywood has remade Asian movies for years — Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and the horror films The Ring and The Grudge are based on Asian movies — Connected is billed as the first Chinese remake of a Hollywood movie.
Hong Kong’s Benny Chan (陳木勝), who directed New Police Story (新警察故事) and Rob-B-Hood (寶貝計劃), says Connected improves on Cellular by injecting Hong Kong-style action sequences.
“In my movie, I added many elements that Hong Kong action movies do best — human combat, action, flying cars,’’ Chan said.
Chan added that he had no problems doing a remake.
“What the world lacks most is good stories. If there’s a story that investors think will work in the market and that I like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with remaking it,’’ Chan said.
Twelve movie extras are seeking US$11 million in damages from Tom Cruise and his production company after suffering broken bones, cuts and bruises in the filming of World War II picture Valkyrie in Berlin last year.
The extras were injured on Aug. 19, 2007, when the side panel of a period German army truck burst open as it drove around a corner in central Berlin.
A lawyer for the extras said on Tuesday that witness statements indicated the truck’s side panel had not been properly secured. Cruise was not on the set at the time.
Valkyrie is named after the codename for a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler concocted by senior German military officers during World War II. Cruise plays ringleader Claus von Stauffenberg.
The film’s original release date has been postponed to Dec. 26 from July 4 this year.
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
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