Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
AICN’s favorite overexcitable sugar junkie is currently bouncing off the walls in Venice, no doubt terrorizing the world press in his own special way. Here’s his first almost-completely-coherent report from the festival, which he warned me might be “the worst thing ever written.”
That’s our Rav... always aiming for excellence...
Hey Moriarty,
Well I must say, my first day in Venice was quite chaotic, Time change, language differences, Press Room closed, Press limitations, and a whole lot of language differences. My first day, I didnt do all too much, I only watched a couple of movies and attended one press conference. Although the films were Frida and The Magdalene Sisters. Let me apologize in advance for the horrid article as I am trying to use an Italian keyboard to write this and it has almost none of the punctuation I need.
Frida was the one film I was going to go out of my way to see, I had missed the morning press screening because of my flight so I was worried I was not going to be able to see it as they dont let us press into the premiere here (as there are over 6,000 accreditted press here, probably only three of them speak english). So I was very happy to find out they added a midnight screening that I made. I didnt really know what the hell to expect out of Frida, Julie Taymor's first film Titus was a visual phenomenon of its own kind, probably one of the most ambitious takes on shakespeare ever. Frida from what I had heard seemed to be just a personal portrait of Frida Kahlo's life which seemed like it really didnt have much room for the vast visuals that Taymor came up with for Titus.....Well somehow she did, and thats one great achievement I must say. Salma Hayek will undoubtedly be remembered come awards season, as she basically carries this film. Salma spent seven years trying to get the film made, and it shows she has isnt acting here she has been absorbed by Frida's spirit somehow. Alfred Molina is at a career high playing Diego Rivera\King Kong, his performance displays a passion nearly as much as Salma herself. The five star supporting cast is comprised of just about a who's who of the best talent working in cinema today, sadly none of them are able to take center stage. I would have killed to see more of Edward Norton Rockefeller or Geoffrey Rush Trotsky. Especially Trotsky, it took me about 10 minutes to even figure out it was Rush under that make-up playing him. I wouldnt be suprised if people that come to the cinema expecting Rush in the film dont realize its him and think he was cut out or something. Frida is a great film, hopefully Miramax'll give it the release it deserves.
Honestly I am not writing this report to tell you about Frida, I just cant wait to get this one film off my chest called The Magdalene Sisters, this is the second film I saw here and it knocked my socks off and more. I didnt know anything about this movie going in, the title and all that I knew led me to suspect that this was some long Britishy period piece about a family throughout the ages doing absolutely nothing but reciting Jane Austen novels over and over again. Boy was I suprised, its kind of hard to describe the film...think a women in prison flick, except at a nunnery and you almost halfway get the film. The film is based on a true story, in 1960's england the Magdalene Aslyums existed, these were places that incarcerated "sinful" women forcing them to do labor 364 days a year, they were sentenced indefinitely they had no real chance of being released ever unless one of their loved ones bravely rescued them...even then it was still hard. The Magdalene Asylums were exactly like prisons, the girls were beaten, humiliated, raped, and forced to do hard labor. Well The Magdalene sisters follows three girls through the asylum, Margaret a rape victim who "shamed" her family by admitting to being raped, Bernadette is basically put in there for just being really attractive, and Rose is put in for having a child out of wedlock. (note...right here is where I lost ninety percent of the article after a power failure in the press room, it was kind of beautiful really sixty press members all yelling their own sort of curse word for their language). The Warden of this women's prison is Sister Bridget who tortures them pretty much exactly how the warden of an evil 70's women's prison would.
The real standout thing about The Magdalene Sisters is that the cast is comprised of mostly virtual unknowns, Margaret was in a few small roles before, Rose has only had one uncreditted part previous to it, and Nora-Jane Noone is a newcomer. An unbelievable new talent that Nora is, this girl is beautiful and she can act better than 95% of the American Actresses on screen today, I keep comparing her performance in Magdalene to that of Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted, except here the amazing thing is that this girl has not acted before. Nora-Jane is going to bring us much more in the future, just keep a look out for this black-haired beauty because she is going very far.
Now I am off to get back to the festival, keep a look out for Magdalene guys, I am not quite sure if it has an American distributer yet, but it will surely have one soon as this is a film that could easily do amazingly well on an arthouse run.
I love Italian food! And Italian people! And I’d love to put them both in my pants... at the same time!! If you want to help, write me!!
I understand Rav’s been doing interviews, including one with Beat Takeshi, and we’ll have more updates from him as soon as they come in.
"Moriarty" out.
