Finally, god bless him, a Brit asks about Pugh. Wilde half dodges, and now the MC has officially banned anyone from asking any more questions that don’t involve ass kissing. Am leaving. This is shocking shite.
The room is just full of festival plants who are asking Harry Styles idiotic questions about his work life balance. No one is allowed say the P word. Pugh.
Chris Pine. As bored as me at the Don’t Worry Darling press conference. NOBODY is asking THE question. Bunch of kiss-ass BS. “Entertainment Journalists” are such a joke.
The room is just full of festival plants who are asking Harry Styles idiotic questions about his work life balance. No one is allowed say the P word. Pugh.
Chris Pine. As bored as me at the Don’t Worry Darling press conference. NOBODY is asking THE question. Bunch of kiss-ass BS. “Entertainment Journalists” are such a joke.
Just seen The Secrets of Dumbledore. Not allowed discuss it until tomorrow. All I can say is that Mads Mikkelsen and Jude Law are the screen couple that you never knew you needed. Until now.
I spoke to Mads Mikkelsen about Johnny Depp, Indiana Jones and his indecently good performance in Another Round. As that film's director Thomas Vinterberg says, "He gave us his finest." Really, he did. And we didn't deserve it.
Genuinely don’t think I can watch
@BBCNews
anymore. In the nicest possible way, I just don’t care about what Colin and his son from the Coffee n Grill have to say. Where have all the experts gone?
I loved Belfast. It had me at the opening Wizard of Oz colour transition (in reverse). It had me with the Liberty Valance nod. And it floored me at the end, with the devastating, heart-breaking, sign-off.
Campion, Cumberbatch and Dunst. My festival heroes so far. What a film. All other entrants should back away humbly now. Golden Lion, Oscars, Baftas. The game is over. The winner is here. A stunner.
I also love it, deeply, when filmmaking surprises you. When you sit down before a movie thinking, "I'm probably going to hate this" and it sneaks up on you, pokes you in the heart and claims you completely.
Greta Thunberg, at Venice press conference, via zoom (from school) after the deeply brilliant doc “Greta”. Fabulously, she leaves after 25 mins, saying, “I’ll answer this last question but then I have to get back to class.” Surely a first for Venice.
Forget about all the Cruise hype, I spoke to the real 80s Top Gun, Morten Harket, about being in A-ha, a band that hates itself and yet respects itself deeply at one and the same time.
Maestro is extraordinary. Deeply moving. Cooper and Mulligan mind-blowingly good. Neck n neck with Poor Things as the film of the fest. I've even written a review. It'll materialise from Times Towers at some point.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. A mediocre franchise finally redeemed by Rowling, Kloves and some simmering chemistry between Law and Mikkelsen.
Ravish Kumar is a giant. Makes you feel like such a shill. "No, Ravish, I review films! I'm making a difference too!" I know. It's not about me. But sometimes you talk to someone so committed and principled that it's almost alarming.
Venice note: The Killer, still under review embargo, is, soundtrack-wise, exclusively, wall-to-wall The Smiths. While the Lily James flick Finally The Sunrise features a mid-movie rendition of Morrissey’s Dear God Please Help Me. A trend?
I spoke to George MacKay. Such a breath of fresh air. Doesn't do this at all. Social media, that is. He's like a different species. So clear, so uncluttered. My role model for 2022.
To all the kind folk who are STILL trolling me, a full 24 after my Johnny Depp piece - Jesus! Is there not some sort of support group you can join, where you get together and slather yourselves in litres of Sauvage before a giant rubber effigy of Captain Jack Sparrow?
I normally dread it when I get an actual letter from a Times reader - often knee-jerk reactions to my column that have missed the tongue'n'cheek factor, and begin with, "Who do you think you are...." This one, however, was very, very, sweet. I will reply.
I don’t believe there is any correlation whatsoever between Venice ovations and movie quality (just wait for the one they give Don’t Bother Darling). But, in this case, alone, it deserves it.
With a massive 13-minute standing ovation, Colin Farrell and Martin McDonagh's
#TheBansheesOfInisherin
just scored the biggest reaction of the Venice Film Festival so far.
So I wrote about Johnny Depp. I didn't say that he was evil. I didn't say he that was bad. I said that his (often cartoonish) acting style had fallen out of fashion. That's all. And it's the truth. He can still be a lovely person.
Before your New Year's Eve splurge (in whatever form that takes!), watch The Lost Daughter on Netflix. You won't regret it. I spoke to Maggie Gyllenhaal about it.
So weird. It's now a full three days since it was released, and I'm STILL reading about how the "mainstream media" all got together to deliberately slam Don't Look Up. Guess I must've missed that internal memo.
Critics, including me, in fact mostly me, often bandy about the word "essential" to describe a particularly timely, watch-worthy, flick. Navalny puts all those other essentials in the shade. It is the ne plus ultra of essential movies. See it.
Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue is real. Marvel fatigue
LFF Day 12. Sunday 7:30am. I call this look Massive Sense of Humour Failure. Martin Scorses and the corpse of Alfred Hitchcock could come out and do 5 hours of Gangnam Style around the stalls of the Odeon Luxe and I wouldn’t care. I just want it to end!
Social media is so weird. The hype and hysteria around the Pugh/Garfield Oscar double-act has been so immense that, fearing I had missed something on the night, I went back, found their slot, watched it, and am now like, "F***ing hell, internet! You need to get out more often!!"
I know that everyone says you're supposed to go to Wild Rose this weekend. But if you want to see a film about real performance, real heartache, and the personal toll of talent, this is the one. Astounding.
Had the most amazing dog walk this morning because of the O2 crash. No emails, WhatsApp or twitter. No phone use at all. Just walking. This is me using my phone to take a picture of how nice it is to not use my phone on a dog walk.
Not sure if this even bears restating but, as a rule, poster-quoting Sue from St Albans, Teresa from Tunbridge Wells and Claire from Epping is another, very conspicuous, way of saying. "Hi everyone. This film is shit." And it is.
And this is the trailer for the film that blew my mind (For Sama - showing on Channel Four later this year). One of the poster quotes, from Film Threat, has called it, “One of the most important films you will ever see in your life.” I kind of agree.
Hotel last night. Shattered. Waiting for my lift. Bill Murray arrives and slips in before me. He went up to a party on the 5th floor. I went to bed. This is him at the press conference this morning. Ledge.
Just listened to John Humphrys-Rupert Everett on Today. Oh dear. So, you've done this film. It's taken 12 years. But enough of that, what's it really like to be gay? Yeeesh. For an alternative Everett chat, you could try this.
Just heard that this film will be getting a UK cinema release in Sept/October. Am thrilled for Waad and everyone involved. See it. No excuses. It's filmmaking, unlike so much out there, that really, REALLY, matters.
This is Lara the dog. For the first four seconds of the clip I’m staring at my phone. Then I look up from the screen and into her eyes. And this happens. There’s a lesson in there, perhaps? There is for me.
So, Doctor Strange sucks. We need soon to talk about the emotional emptiness of movies made under covid-safe conditions (robotic blocking, too much green screen, not enough extras). We will look back at this period of filmmaking as the Red Notice Era.
So, you know the way when you go on a late night dog walk, through a field, and you hear footsteps behind you, and you suddenly turn around and press the flash? I'm not going to say I was scared. However...
Best actor losers Farrell and Butler at yesterday's SAG awards. Farrell clearly saying, "I know! The Whale! The fecking Whale! Beaten by a dude in a latex fat suit in one of the worst movies of the year!! Hilarious!"
Tried to watch Squid Games over the weekend. What an utterly embarrassing piece of shit! The entire world of telly continues, for me, to be a baffling, overhyped, joke designed to fill some aching global emptiness.
For all those who were left slack-jawed with awe when Tom Cruise included footage of a failed building jump in Mission Impossible: Fallout.... I give you, Buster Keaton in Three Ages, 1923.