Big 6 – Telluride & Venice Film Fests

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Watch Out, Oscar: Here Come the Film Festivals

Venice has booked a few films that aren’t making it to Toronto, most notably Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” Tomas Alfredson’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and Soderbergh’s “Contagion,” plus a lot that will screen in Italy and then immediately head for Canada (perhaps with a detour through Telluride along the way): “The Ides of March,” “A Dangerous Method,” “Coriolanus” and Madonna’s take on the Wallis Simpson story, “W.E.”  Read the full Reuters article

Clooney, Swinton and Étaix to be honored at Telluride film fest

Also screening is Alexander Payne’s The Descendants starring George Clooney. The actor will receive one of Telluride’s Silver Medallion awards. Actress Tilda Swinton and French filmmaker/actor Pierre Étaix will also be honored with this award for their contributions to the world of cinema. Read the full Independent article

Telluride film fest serves up a TIFF appetizer

Among the features unspooling at the Rocky Mountain jamboree over the weekend that will appear shortly at TIFF: David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, Rodrigo Garcia’s Albert Nobbs, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life, Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness, Steve McQueen’s Shame and Pinaby Wim Wenders.  Read the Globe and Mail article

Buzz (good and bad) for Keira Knightley

Xan Brooks, in a negative review for the Guardian, says that, nevertheless, “Knightley provides the Oscar bait,” while David Gritten, writing for Britain’s Telegraph, says Cronenberg “has coaxed a performance from Knightley so ferocious in these early scenes that it seems likely to become the film’s main talking point. It’s also a risky strategy, as Sabina’s behaviour is extreme to the point of being alienating.” Read the full LA Times article

Madonna’s lucky star Andrea Riseborough shines bright at the Venice Film Festival

Yet Riseborough’s success is due, in part, to a chameleon-like ability to transform herself that she has always possessed.Watching an early screening of the film the other day I had the strangest sensation that I was seeing the real Mrs Simpson mixing cocktails. Andrea can crawl under the skin of the person she’s portraying.  Read the full Daily Mail article

Early thumbs up for Polanski’s Carnage

“The gloves come off early and the social graces disintegrate on cue in Carnage, which spends 79 minutes observing, and encouraging, the steady erosion of niceties between two married couples. But the real battle in Roman Polanski’s brisk, fitfully amusing adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s popular play is a more formal clash between stage minimalism and screen naturalism, as this acid-drenched four-hander never shakes off a mannered, hermetic feel that consistently betrays its theatrical origins.”  Read the full LA Times article

THE BIG 6 is a daily collection of film stories and features from around the web. If you have a something to add, leave a comment below.