Giffoni 2009: Naomi Watts, Sofia Milos, Elio Germano, Claudio Bisio

Naomi Watts

Sofia Milos

Claudio Bisio

Elio Germano
Photos: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
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Giffoni 2009: Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Christina Ricci, Filippo Timi

The 39th annual Giffoni Film Festival, dubbed Italy’s biggest youth film festival, was held in the coastal town of Salerno between July 12-25, 2009. Thirty features and 42 shorts were screened in competition, in addition to dozens of special screenings and events.
Among this year’s award winners were Caroline Link’s A Year Ago in Winter, Breno Silveira’s Once Upon a Time in Rio, David Lee Miller’s My Suicide, and Jesper Waldvogel Rasmussen’s See You.
Photos: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
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Giffoni Film Festival artistic director Claudio Gubitosi; Naomi Watts; Liev Schreiber

Alba Rohrwacher

Christina Ricci

Filippo Timi

London Film Critics Awards 2006

2006 London Film Critics’ Circle Awards
2006 London Film Critics’ Circle Award winners: Dorchester Hotel on February 8, 2006
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams in Brokeback Mountain
 

Best Film:
* Brokeback Mountain
The Constant Gardener
Crash
A History of Violence
King Kong
The Attenborough Award for British Film:
* The Constant Gardener
The Descent
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride & Prejudice
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Best Foreign-Language Film:
Hidden
The Chorus
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
The Sea Inside
* Downfall
Best Director:
David Cronenberg (A History of Violence)
Paul Haggis (Crash)
Peter Jackson (King Kong)
* Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)
Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener)
Best British Director:
Stephen Frears (Mrs. Henderson Presents)
Terry George (Hotel Rwanda)
Neil Marshall (The Descent) [...]

KING KONG – Naomi Watts – d: Peter Jackson

King Kong (2005)
Direction: Peter Jackson
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson; from Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace’s story for the 1933 film
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Jamie Bell, Kyle Chandler, Colin Hanks, Andy Serkis, Craig Hall, Evan Parke
 

 

The biggest disappointment about Peter Jackson’s King Kong is that, despite all the p.r. regarding Jackson’s fascination with the Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack 1933 horror classic, this latest remake is considerably closer in spirit — or lack thereof — to the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis production, with (heavy) touches of Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark thrown in. In other words, the new King Kong is very much the sort of adventure [...]

Best Films – 2001

 
FILM

Gosford Park
d: Robert Altman; scr: Julian Fellowes
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
d: Ashutosh Gowariker; scr:
Mulholland Dr.
d, scr: David Lynch
 
CHECK THESE OUT
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
d: Woody Allen
Monster’s Ball)
d: Marc Forster; scr:
No Man’s Land
d: Danis Tanovic; scr:
ACTOR
Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion)
Gael García Bernal (Y tu mamá también / And Your Mother Too)
Rene Bitorajac (No Man’s Land)
Ricardo Darín (El Hijo de la novia / Son of the Bride)
Ethan Hawke (Training Day)
Diego Luna (Y tu mamá también)
Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge!)
Haley Joel Osment (A.I.: Artificial Intelligence)
Sean Penn (I Am Sam)
ACTRESS
Isabelle Huppert (La Pianiste / The Piano Teacher)
Juliane Köhler (Nirgendwo in Afrika / Nowhere in Africa)
Audrey Tautou (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain / Amelie)
Maribel [...]

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON – Sean Penn

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004)
Direction: Niels Mueller
Screenplay: Niels Mueller and Kevin Kennedy
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson, Michael Wincott, Brad William Henke
 

 

Although technically a psychosocial drama about those for whom the American Dream is nothing more than a pathological delusion, Niels Mueller’s The Assassination of Richard Nixon actually works as a suspenseful horror movie. From the very start, we know that something dreadful is about to happen. As the fact-based story inexorably progresses toward its bloody climax, the suspense keeps increasing until the violence, depicted in brutal detail, explodes on screen. That’s the stuff that nightmares are made of.
As depicted by Emmanuel Lubezki’s appropriately gritty, washed-out cinematography, it all begins in the winter of 1974, as [...]

MULHOLLAND DR. – Naomi Watts – d: David Lynch

Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Direction and screenplay: David Lynch
Cast: Naomi Watts, Justin Theroux, Laura Elena Harring, Dan Hedaya, Ann Miller, Robert Forster, Lee Grant, Chad Everett, Billy Ray Cyrus
 

 

Mulholland Dr., David Lynch’s nightmarish take on Hollywood and on the pursuit of the "American Dream," is impossible to pigeonhole as belonging to a particular genre. The film is part black comedy, part mystery thriller, part psychological drama, part horror movie — it boasts one of the most horrific endings ever filmed. The final result is a long, bizarre — and brilliant — journey through an ambitious actress’ psyche; the most haunting such journey since the one undertaken in Sunset Blvd. more than half a century earlier.
Curiously, Mulholland Dr. was to have become a [...]

21 GRAMS – Sean Penn, Naomi Watts

21 Grams (2003)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Screenplay: Guillermo Arriaga
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Danny Huston, Eddie Marsan, John Rubinstein
 

 

Shot in documentary-style, 21 Grams is a bleak, convoluted, and surprisingly powerful drama about three individuals linked to both one another and to the immediacy of death: Paul (Sean Penn) is a dying man in dire need of a heart transplant; Jack (Benicio Del Toro) is a born-again ex-con who has run over a father and his two daughters as they were crossing a street; and Cristina (Naomi Watts) is the woman whose family Jack has killed. (By the way, the film’s title refers to the alleged weight of a person’s soul. That figure came [...]

I HEART HUCKABEES – Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin

i ♥ huckabees / I Heart Huckabees (2004)
Director: David O. Russell
Screenplay: David O. Russell and Jeff Baena
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts, Tippi Hedren, Talia Shire
 

 
SPANKING THE NIETZSCHE
Beginning with Spanking the Monkey (not a film about animal abuse), David O. Russell has made a reputation as a director of quirky comedies. I Heart Huckabees is no exception. Not that the comedy works — the film is as funny as a funeral mass — but simply because in this age of formulaic filmmaking, I was flabbergasted to be watching a Hollywood movie that is so abrasively unconventional both in form and content.
The storyline — if the film’s meandering thread [...]