Showing posts with label Gael García Bernal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gael García Bernal. Show all posts

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Foreign Film Oscars: International Beauty Pageant.

If you'd like to read about the now official Oscar submissions for Best Foreign Language Film,  click away. But because you -- make that we -- can't see most of the films, due to the hideous state of international distribution, let us use this Academy press release as an excuse to take a different view, a sexytime view... a Beauty Break if you will. Let's gawk at the actors and actresses who are in the submitted films. We'll pretend it's like a Miss Universe pageant (how do you say "shallow" in Finnish?). Randomly selected hotties follow (it's not easy to find info/photos.) whether you're into the men, the women or other. Don't judge!


Beauty Knows No Borders
I presume you'll let me know your very favorites in the comments. Do I presume too much?

Handsome Guys...

Left:  Bill Skarsgård a.k.a. Alexander's lil brö (20) for Sweden's Simple Simon.
Right: Oscar Guerrero (age unknown) for Puerto Rico's Miente / Lie.
Oh the imperfections of the web: Guerrero is obviously famous having been in several films and soap operas and yet he has neither a wikipedia page nor any personal information on the IMDb. Weirder still, the IMDb does not even list him as appearing in Miente, a film in which he plays the lead role!


Left: Mark Chao -- or Zhao depending on your info source -- (26) for Taiwan's Monga (see previous post). He also sings.
Right: George Pistereanu (19) for Romania. Some people think he looks like...


Left: Gael García Bernal (31) for Spain in Even the Rain. He's from Mexico and the most familiar face in this year's submission list outside of Javier Bardem, who is from Spain representing Mexico with Biutiful. They've flip-flopped countries, submission-wise. I sat two rows behind them -- they were together so I assume they're friends -- in Toronto for The Sea Inside premiere back in 2004. Memories
Right: Boris Ler (25) for Bosnia Hersegovina in Danis Tanovic's Cirkus Columbia.


Left: Coco Martin (26) who stars in Noy for The Philippines. (see previous post)
Right: Santiago Cabrera (32), who you'll remember from the TV show Heroes (first season only -- the tortured artist) who is the romantic lead of Chile's The Life of Fish. The Chilean actor was born in Venezuela, speaks four languages and lives in London. International!


Left: Pablo Derqui (34) for Costa Rica's Of Love and Other Demons. He was born in Barcelona and is a TV star in Spain.
Right: Asser Yassin (29) for Egypt in Messages From the Sea.


Left: Aarif Lee (23) for Hong Kong's Echoes of the Rainbow. He won the Best Newcomer Award in the Hong Kong Film Awards for this role. He's starring in a Bruce Lee biopic next. Here's more info on the Lee picture.
Right: Mateusz Kościukiewicz (24) for Poland. He stars in the punk rock drama All That I Love. At least one website names him the Polish Robert Pattison !

Gorg' Ladies...


Left: Maria Bonnevie (37) for Norway in Engelen (Angel). See previous post for more on Maria.
Right: Lubna Azabal (age unknown) for Canada in Incendies (it's one to watch for the finalist list, I think). She's from Belgium and of Moroccan descent.


Left: Sibel Kekilli (30) for Germany's award winning When We Leave. We are fond of her.
Right: Blanca Lewin (36) for Chile in the romantic drama The Life of Fish. She's a television star there.


Left: Takako Matsu (33) for Japan in Confessions (see previous post for exciting trailer). She won several best actress awards recently for the melodrama Villon's Wife.
Right: Micaela Ramazzotti (31) for Italy in The First Beautiful Thing. She plays the young mother of two kids in this nostalgic memoir. (The role is shared with award-winning Stefania Sandrelli when the mother gets older). Lotsa photos of Micaela... she currently has darker hair.


Left: Jana Zupančič (age unknown) for Slovenia's 9:06. Like Guerrero up top she's also not listed on the IMDb as part of her submitted film, but she's one of only three actors on the poster. You may remember her from last year's submission Landscape No. 2 (previously reviewed right here).
Right: Mariana Santángelo (34) for Puerto Rico's Miente / Lie. She's from Argentina.


For Specialized Tastes...


Left: Jenny Larrue & Cindy Scrash who play rival transsexual cabaret stars in Portugal's To Die Like a Man.
Right: Various for Hungary in what must be the oddest Oscar submission this side of Uncle Boonmee. It's called Bibliotheque Pascal.
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If you'd like to read more uh... professional and totally official info on the Best Foreign Language Film Submissions, click for whichever country you're interested in. On the charts you'll see posters, official site links for further exploration, distribution status (US based only, sorry) and basic trivia. As always the best way to see any of them is to pay close attention to festival schedules in cities closest to you.
  • Albania to France
    23 films: East West East, Outside the Law, Carancho, La Pivellina, The Precinct, Third Person Singular Number, Illégal, Cirkus Columbia, Lula the Son of Brazil, Eastern Plays, Incendies, The Life of Fish, Aftershock, Crab Trap, Of Love and Other Demons, The Blacks, Kawasaki's Rose, In a Better World, Messages From the Sea, The Temptation of St Tony, The Athlete, Steam of Life, and Of Gods and Men.
  • Georgia to Nicaragua
    21 films: Street Days, When We Leave, Dogtooth, Nuummioq, Echoes of the Rainbow, Bibliotheque Pascal, Mamma Gogo, Peepli Live, How Funny This Country Is, Farewell Baghdad, Son of Babylon, The Human Resources Manager, The First Beautiful Thing, Confessions, Strayed, The Light Thief, Hong Kong Confidential, Mothers, Biutiful, Tirza and La Yuma.
  • Norway to Venezuela
    21 films: Angel, Undertow, Noy, All That I Love, To Die Like a Man, Lie, If I Want to Whistle I Whistle, The Edge, Besa, The Border, 9:06, Life Above All, A Barefoot Dream, Even the Rain, Simple Simon, La Petit Chambre, Monga, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Honey, A Useful Life, and Hermano.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Cannes Tweets & Treats #3: Ring Bearing, Butt Patting, and Web Brawling

more miscellania from the South of France

On a scale of one to ten, exactly how jealous is director Alejandro González Iñárritu trying to make you with his touchy feely ways?


Eleven?

He's in Cannes with his Babel follow up Biutiful starring Javier Bardem. Gael García Bernal (also being manhandled above) is not in that forthcoming motion picture but he's a jury president this year. He'll be influential in deciding which director wins the Camera D'Or which is given for first features. (Here's a pic of Gael with his jury.)

<-- Meg Ryan hits the parties & premieres with producer Lawrence Bender

But on to the tweeting. Before you read these you should read this humorous USA Today article that stars many of these critics -- Jeffrey Wells gets a lot of play because he likes to rumble -- in the rarified atmosphere of this world event fest. It's a shame that Wells has to resort to calling IndieWire writers "effete" though when he is usually so talented at creative descriptives like "hot dog eating humans". heh.

@mattnoller "BIUTIFUL sucks, but I'm not gonna punch anyone to get that point across. Weak arms, is the thing."
@ICSFilm Buitiful makes Precious look like a Disney princess movie. Unrelenting misery porn, to be sure, but committed brutal performances by all.
@AwardsDaily "
The five hour CARLOS looms. Not sure I can deal."
@Laremy "My festival is a wrap. Final rankings: 1. Another Year 2. Certified Copy 3. The Housemaid"
@ebertchicago "
Werner Herzog: 'For me Godard is like intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film.' "
@benkenisberg "I bet Godard is a fiend for magnet poetry."
@jamesrocchi "I'm less interested in seeing Godard 2010 than finding Godard's 2010 equivalent."
@phillipstribune "At Cannes, you go from the new Godard to writing about Jennifer Hudson in a controversial biopic she hasn't made yet." [link]

Other than the catfights over Biutiful and the Godard business it's Abbas Kiarostami's enigmatic Certified Copy starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell that seems to be stimulating the most excitable pronouncements since Mike Leigh's new picture hit the croissette.

William Shimell, Abbas Kiarostami, and the divine Juliette Binoche

@benkenisberg "Never thought Kiarostami would be the one to defibrillate the competition. Breathed a huge sigh of relief when the actors got out of the car"
@gemko "Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY is the first film I've seen get booed this year. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's the best film so far"
@awardsdaily "The Kiarostami was enjoyable enough - laughs here and there. But surreal - you see what you want to see, as deep as u want it 2 be. I would have loved it twenty years ago. Now it feels a bit like a waste of time, something I am running out of fast."
@guylodge "Juliette Binoche just walked past. Now THAT, as they say, is a star."

Let's end with fashion. Here are four fab foreign ladies we like to look at.


from left to right: Sandrine Bonnaire (France) I don't think I've seen Bonnaire headlining a movie since the Oscar nominated Est - Ouest (which I recommend if you like epic sweep to your woman-as-survivor dramas) and that was a decade back. She's always good; Do-yeon Jeon (South Korea) who I fell so hard for in Secret Sunshine (still unreleased in the USA). I'm eager to see her Cannes entry The Housemaid... even though people didn't love it; Rossy de Palma (Spain) is blessed with one of cinema's most impossible-to-believe faces; and superstar/jury member Aishwarya Rai (India) is blessed with... everything.

I frequent Zimbio for many of the red carpet photos I use and one of the things I find hilarious about paparazzi coverage is the random insert shots that focus on someone's body parts (look at Meg Ryan's calf!) or hands (jewelry alert!). Aishwarya, for example, is much bejewelled but I'm not sure why this is a big zero-in-on-it detail since she married fellow Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan three years ago.

Do we really need to focus on a three year old ring when Fan Bingbing is holding her own wedding on the red carpet of the Biutiful premiere?


It's unclear who Bingbing plans on marrying. The world?

'Shut up about this sound effect woman I've never heard of' you say. But I cannot, testy reader. Even actresses with whom I am largely unfamiliar can sometimes bewitch me into transitory super fandom obsessiveness. I shall recover... for all Cannes-induced fevers break on May 23rd.

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Saturday, May 15, 2010

Cannes Tweets & Treats: Bernal, Bingbing and Brolin

I woke up with a serious case of Cannes Envy this morning. There's no way around unwanted feelings so you plunge in them to get to the other side. That's the way to do it, right? Or that's the way Nathaniel (c'est moi) does it. Maybe that's the masochist's way? So herewith... random thoughts on Cannes photos, fashions, and tweets from people I was exceptionally jealous of all day. Cuz they're... you know... there. In the thick of it.

Please note: If y'all don't start commenting soon, we're likely to take a long summer hiatus and see you ungrateful beyootches in October when Oscar buzz heats up. Comments are like food. Feed the insatiable Film Experience Beast!

We begin with two questions starring Gael García Bernal.


1. Is he, like, inviting us to pose with him here? Won't he be crushed in the mass forward rush of crazed lustful exhibitionist fans?

2. Wouldn't he be super easy to lose at a black tie party?
He's so tiny.
You'd never find him again.


And now some funny or interesting movie tweeting...

on Mike Leigh's Another Year which is garnering awards buzz for both the film and Leigh regular Lesley Manville

@erickohn "Finally, a top-notch competition film. Mike Leigh's ANOTHER YEAR is a startlingly honest and understated character study."
@ebertchicago "Imbecilic Cannes question of the day (to Mike Leigh): "Why did you make Sally so sad?"
@totalfilm Mike Leigh's Another Year: kind of a greatest hits movie; pleasure to watch scene to scene if a little familiar.
@guylodge "Mike Leigh's "Another Year" is the best thing I've seen at Cannes so far: and Lesley Manville is stunning

on You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Woody Allen's annual sweet and sour cinematic dish. Sweet and sour because well... you know. You never know if it's going to be a Vicky Cristina Barcelona or a Hollywood Ending.

@JustinCChang "Odd, really, to go straight from the bracing humanity of Mike Leigh to the cardboard inhumanity of Woody Allen"
@eug "Clearly they love Woody Allen in Cannes: Serious pushing, shoving & yelling at the entrance to screening now. Survived."
@jamesrocchi "Light, slight Woody Allen with an unexpectedly vicious streak hidden beneath the farce and ruptured romances."
@awardsdaily ""Cannes - funny rapport between Woody Allen and Josh Brolin at press conference. Woody killed, of course. CANNES Woody Allen press conference - Woody says of death, 'I do not recommend it.' And of aging, 'try to avoid it if possible.'"

Josh Brolin and Woody Allen meet the press

on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which also stars Josh Brolin. He busy busy... like 2007 busy again in 2010.

@onthecroisette Wall Street moved me immensely, despite it's happy-ending. Is there something wrong with me? That's what my friends say.THEY ARE WRONG!
@cobblehillis WALL STREET: THE QUICKENING (Stone): 2.5 hrs of bullet-point speeches about $$$. Mulligan cries, Langella hams, Sheen cameos, Shia lebeoufs.
@gemko Wall Street: Let Me Be Clear This Time, Greed Is In Fact Bad ('10 Stone): 43. Not a train wreck, sadly, just didactic-bombastic.

Best Dressed!
You have to have a huge international profile to win "Best Dressed" kudos in the media so Fan Bingbing (or Bingbing Fan, whichever you'd prefer) won't get enough credit for that deep groove she wore into the Cannes carpet.


ShareThe Chinese beauty was there to promote Chongqing Blues (previous credits include: Bodyguards and Assassins and The Matrimony) and she was working way more diverse looks in the first few days of Cannes than any of the high profile American stars or oft-photographed jury beauties Kate Beckinsale or Aishwarya Rai. Well done, Bingbing!
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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Beauty Break: Cinco De Mayo

Are you celebrating Mexico today?

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

I'm eating tacos for dinner because it's the least I can do. And I'm also perusing amazing photos of Mexican film stars of yore like the deliriously sexy Lupe Vélez and one star of the right now... Señor Bernal of course. Also deliriously sexy. Especially in closeups.

So I thought we'd drool on six of the earliest crossover sensations tonight with a few films of note (for one reason or another) for each of their careers. If you'd like to investigate further, click on the links. Enjoy!


Lupe Vélez The Gaucho, 1927 | Hot Pepper, 1933 | The Girl From Mexico, 1939
Ramon Novarro Scaramouche 1923 | Ben-Hur 1925 | The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, 1927
These silent stars had volatile lives and careers, both ending with tragic deaths. Vélez career was a series of ups and downs and some say she was bipolar. She had several movie star affairs (some say her relationship with Gary Cooper drove him to a nervous breakdown) and committed suicide in the 1940s while pregnant with a younger actor's child. Novarro's career was a more typical rise and fall but began to lose its heat after the success of Mata Hari (1931). He was killed by two brothers who had been invited to his home for sexual purposes but decided to rob him.


Gilbert Roland Camille, 1927 | The Sea Hawk, 1940 | The Gay Cavalier, 1946
Dolores del Rio
Ramona, 1928 | Bird of Paradise, 1932 | Maria Candellaria, 1943
Del Rio was Hollywood's first superstar Mexican actress, world reknowned for her beauty and though her career declined with the talkies, she became involved with Orson Welles and stayed a prominent Hollywood figure. Gilbert Roland was a romantic leading man and he was one of the rare silent stars who transferred with ease to talkies. The great voice helped. He was steadily employed as a screen actor from 1923 through 1982!!! That's quite a run.


Katy Jurado Nosotros Los Pobres, 1948 | High Noon, 1952 | Broken Lance, 1954
Anthony Quinn Viva Zapata, 1952 | La Strada, 1954 | Zorba The Greek, 1964

These last two were both "first!" in terms of Oscar recognition. Quinn is the only Mexican-born actor ever nominated (still) but he achieved that four times, even winning twice.

<--- Katy and Brando... a 1950s Hollywood moment

Katy was the first Mexican actress recognized by the Academy (for the western Broken Lance) trailblazing the way for Salma Hayek (Frida) and Adriana Barazza (Babel) in our time.

Do you have a favorite Mexican actor and film? I mean other than GGB and Y Tu Mama Tambien? That goes without saying!