KITTY and ANDREW’s Saturday Night Double Bill: WE’RE on holiday in the trees Venice Film Festival. Drive-in Tree Tops.
Speaking of Italy: YUMMMMMY. Stanley Tucci: Searching for Volcanos! Well, kinda, in a very unusual way. [Werner Herzog’s your crazy volcanic taster. Isn’t he awarded some honor rock this Venice Fest.? Like Werner needs an award friend.] Guess vegans are a bit left-salivating in Italy: but there’s mozzarella, Balsamic vinegar, zucchini, and pasta for vegans?…watch the series, anything is possible. We all eat heavenly in diverse ways. Some just more heavenly than others…Oh my blessed carrots and beans, one learns an awful lot about food in a short space of time: leaving you, just wanting more and more. As any Broadway affectionado [sic] knows, there’s a deus ex maximus: a being, long beard, tiny tail. Four legs. Really? Are you the kid who ate all that Prosciutto? So Woody Allen and the Vegans blacklisted I.m for all retirement time. Legumes succored me an afterlife!
Anyone for the truth of Michelangelo? The great Konchalovsky. Scenes in the marble quarries do kinda beat The Brutalist.
Watching the Venice Film Fest 2025 press conference this morning and almost concurrent the horrific shootings of children in a Minneapolis church. And many questions in Venice centered around what is the role of film today in our troubled world. There’s more and more streaming violence than any The Bachelor or Love Island trauma. Those contestants are folk we recognize. How can we relate to any of these so-called monsters in movies unless they’ve become zombies? Then you wonder, what would Truman Capote be doing today? Amazing how celebrated was he for In Cold Blood? Giving cold-blooded murderers a voice! Is normality not ‘ab’? And when we start owning that idea we all may be in a better place to help influence things. Even change.
And you ask, well, my kids grew up normal and were allowed watch killing and explosions x, y, z. For me, never enjoyed watching horrible movies. Fascinating was the psychology. Bertolucci’s 1900, The Conformist. Stanley Kubrick self-imposed a ban on A Clockwork Orange in the U.K. until his death in 1999. Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. Twisted Nerve [Roy Boulting, 1968], Peeping Tom [Michael Powell, 1960]. Psycho [Hitchcock, 1960] -look what happened to Anthony Perkins’ career after that! Such a great actor. The Dardenne Brothers [milder psychosis, same reality]. The Silence of the Lambs. Room. Michael Haneke’s films. And the almost unwatchable yet unerringly vice-like Nocturnal Animals [Tom Ford]. Why? [the title song from La Piscine!]
These films provoke debate. And this is just me riffing from memory not researching a New Yorker article. Who reads that anymore? When you start the questions never cease….
Just wanted to throw all that against a wall and see what sticks;)(! Haven’t even mentioned Japanese, Korean, Asian…
No real bees for Emma Stone on the Bugonia Venice Red Carpet but a ‘Bee-cam’. Surely a bee invention! Why go to all that trouble after a hard slog Spring when in the Fall you can hang your 6 little legs over a tiny flowery sofa supping YouTube and donuts. How good does it get for an actor when your Venetian fans chant your name and sport banners: Emily We Slept Here For You and Emily You’re My “Pocketful of Sunshine”. I’ll drink to that! [Emily’s her original name made famous by a Kazakhstan journalist at Cannes].
