Latest Silvio Berlusconi controversy: Italian taxpayers financing ‘personal friend’ Michelle Bonev and entourage at Venice Festival?
First there were questions about Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere Golden Lion win at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, whose jury was headed by Coppola’s former boyfriend Quentin Tarantino. Now, Ben Child reports in The Guardian that an investigation is under way to find out whether Italian taxpayers financed a €400,000 (approx. US$530,000) trip for Bulgarian actress-turned-filmmaker Michelle Bonev, whose 40-strong entourage was invited to the Venice festival so Bonev could be handed an award for her movie Goodbye Mama.
Described as a “personal friend” of beleaguered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Bonev was given the Action for Women Award, “dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the European convention for protection of human rights.”
If that weren’t all, according to the Italian media the Berlusconi government-controlled state broadcaster RAI – one of the film’s financiers – has allegedly paid €1 million (approx. US$1.32 million) for the rights to broadcast Goodbye Mama.
In its press release, Michelle Bonev’s drama is characterized as “an intense female family drama which describes at the same time the transformation of one of the great countries of the East, Bulgaria.”
The release adds that Bonev is a “Goodwill Ambassador for Bulgarian Culture to the World” and that she has been featured in a handful of RAI miniseries, besides having had a previous big-screen role – an uncredited bit – in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
One vote per scandal?
In 2008, Silvio Berlusconi was reelected prime minister – for the third time – by millions of Italian voters despite having found himself enmeshed in a series of scandals in the last couple of decades.
Recently, in addition to the Michelle Bonev to-do, Wikileaks has revealed that the 74-year-old businessman-politician may enjoy a “financially enriching relationship” with Russia’s former president Vladimir Putin.
Lacking any financially enriching relationships with any powerful politicians or oligarchs, Italian artists and sympathizers are planning a rally tomorrow in Rome to protest drastic government cuts to the arts.
Michelle Bonev
Born Dragomira Boneva Janeva on Oct. 1, 1971, in Burgas, Bulgaria, Michelle Bonev began her acting career on Italian television in 2004, with a minor role in Giorgio Capitani and Fabio Jephcott’s miniseries Mai storie d’amore in cucina.
A handful of other parts followed, including the lead in Umberto Marino’s TV movie Operazione pilota and the title character in the miniseries Artemisia Sanchez, both in 2007.
Goodbye Mama marked Bonev’s directorial debut. She also wrote and co-produced the semi-autobiographical family drama set in Bulgaria in winter 2005.
Wikileaks cables reveal Bush administration targeted Michael Moore
Ready for the holiday season’s prime-time, comes Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker Michael Moore vs. the George W. Bush administration. Or rather, the George W. Bush administration vs. Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker Michael Moore, courtesy of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks cables.
Just recently, Moore wrote a lengthy post on his website in which he discusses a WikiLeaks cable focusing on his polemical documentary blockbuster. Below are segments from Moore’s post:
Titled “Another WikiLeaks Cable from the Bush Administration About My Movies,” Michael Moore’s post is dated Dec. 22.
“Twice within four days, my name has popped up in the Bush-era secret cables uncovered by WikiLeaks. Lucky me. Though nowhere near as earth-shattering as the uncovering of American misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, these classified cables provide a stunning and bizarre peek into the paranoid minds of the Bush White House when it came to the subject of one Michael Francis Moore.
“And considering how WikiLeaks has released only 1,826 cables of its planned drop of 251,287 – and I’ve already played a starring role twice – I can only say I await with bemused anticipation how the moi-storyline will play itself out.
“The most recent secret cable revelation is in today’s Guardian newspaper of London. It’s entitled, ‘US Intervened in Michael Moore NZ Screening.’ Oh yeah, baby! New Zealand! That’s where we’ll stop Moore and his band of evildoers!
“The date was July 30 2004. Fahrenheit 9/11 was already a huge hit in the United States. …
“But it was no easy path to get there. Disney (which owned [initial Fahrenheit 9/11 distributor] Miramax) was apoplectic when they saw the final cut. So they pulled the film from its theatrical schedule. Then they put a permanent block on its release, insuring no one would see it. But then the New York Times, in a front page story, reported that the real reason Disney hated Fahrenheit was they were worried about the tax breaks it got in Jeb Bush’s Florida for Disney World. This caused some embarrassment, so Disney then sold Fahrenheit to the Weinstein Bros., who said they’d spend their own money to distribute it.
“The release of the film caused concern at the White House, as this was the re-election year. They hired a pollster who told them the film might tip the election. That was enough for them to swing into action. Much of July was a nonstop barrage of attacks on me and the movie. But that just resulted in more tickets being sold.
“Which brings us to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. There are few nations on earth further away from us. A local chapter of the ruling Labor Party apparently had decided to do a fundraising screening of Fahrenheit 9/11. It was to be hosted by the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Secretary for the Environment. …”
What follows is the Bush administration taking the time to interfere with that one New Zealand screening.
Of note, other revelations from the first batch of WikiLeaks cables include:
The Barack Obama White House working in tandem with Republicans to kill a Spanish investigation into the George W. Bush’s administration’s use of torture.
Bush’s ambassador to France planning to “retaliate” against that country for standing up to Monsanto.
Pfizer hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on the Attorney General of Nigeria.
Grant McCune working on Star Wars’ R2D2.
Oscar-winning Star Wars visual effects artist Grant McCune has died
Visual effects artist Grant McCune, who won an Academy Award for his work on George Lucas’ 1977 futuristic actioner Star Wars, died at age 67 on Dec. 27 at his home in Hidden Hills, 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
McCune (born on March 27, 1943, in Los Angeles) shared his Oscar with fellow visual effects artists John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, and Robert Blalack. Two years later, McCune would receive a second nomination for Robert Wise’s sci-fier Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Besides, McCune, along with William Shourt, designed a giant white shark model for Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster Jaws, though neither one of them received screen credit.
More Grant McCune movies
Other Grant McCune big-screen efforts include Jan de Bont’s Speed (1994), and Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever (1995).
Additionally, while a partner at Apogee Productions, his work was featured in the Bruce Willis actioner Die Hard. McCune’s own company, Grant McCune Design, would later collaborate on other projects, among them Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2.
About his work with miniatures, McCune told Popular Mechanics in 2008: “I’ve always told people to get a good background in photography first. The most important thing is what you see with your eye. … All the best people who ever worked for me were first good with the eye.”
Mark Zuckerberg: Time Person of the Year.
Mark Zuckerberg named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, indirectly providing The Social Network with an Oscar push
For all it’s worth (in terms of journalism [or lack thereof]), Time magazine has chosen Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as Person of the Year. Two questions immediately come to mind: a) Have Time editors never heard of Wikileaks? b) Is The Social Network a Warner Bros. release?
Answers: a) Considering the current state of the American media, that wouldn’t be at all surprising. b) No. David Fincher’s U.S. critics favorite about the troubled birth of Facebook is a Sony Pictures release.
Of note, as Steve Pond remarks at TheWrap, “in its introductory essay explaining the choice, Time never once mentions The Social Network.
“Instead, the magazine’s Richard Stengel quotes Virginia Woolf, talks about transitions in the way we connect with each other, gives Facebook statistics, and explores ‘a correlation between the size of the cerebral neocortex and the number of social relationships a primate species can have.’”
The Social Network
The Social Network was adapted by Aaron Sorkin from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, The Social Network. Besides Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the cast includes Armie Hammer as the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker, and Andrew Garfield as former Mark Zuckerberg friend Eduardo Saverin.
In addition to Rooney Mara, Joseph Mazzello, Max Minghella, Dakota Johnson, Brenda Song, and Rashida Jones. Plus guest star of sorts Josh Pence, as the body of Tyler Winklevoss (topped by Armie Hammer’s digitally inserted face).
Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof sentenced to jail
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi – whose credits include The White Balloon (1996), The Mirror (1997), and Offside (2006) – has been condemned by the powers-that-be in Iran’s theocratic government for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Panahi has been sentenced to six years in prison.
Additionally, Panahi has been banned from making movies, writing screenplays, leaving the country, or talking to the media for the next 20 years.
That is, if Iran’s Muslim fanatics are still in power two decades from now.
Along with Jafar Panahi, filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof was sentenced to six years in prison. Rasoulof’s The White Meadows is found on the 2010 LA Weekly/Village Voice critics poll’s list of Best Undistributed Films in the United States.
“A specter is haunting the Islamic Republic of Iran,” writes Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi in The Guardian, “the specter of freedom.”
Just don’t expect any Wikileaks cables revealing dirt about the upper echelons of the Iranian government. Julian Assange appears to care what make some governments look bad – but not others.
REDCAT to showcase experimental lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer
Lastly, the West Coast premiere of avant-garde lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s Generations (2010), co-directed with Gina Carducci, along with the Los Angeles premiere of Hammer’s A Horse Is Not a Metaphor (2009) will take place at 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 24, at the REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles.
Hammer will be present at the event titled “Barbara Hammer: Experimenting in Life and Art.”
The 30-minute Generations is described as “a film about the ongoing tradition of personal filmmaking, the last days of Coney Island’s legendary Astroland, and the aging of the film medium itself.”
Also 30 minutes long, A Horse Is Not A Metaphor – the 2009 Berlin Film Festival’s Teddy Award winner for Best LGBT-themed Short – chronicles the filmmaker’s “drive to change illness into recovery through travels and pilgrimages in New Mexico, Wyoming and Woodstock.” Music by Meredith Monk.
In the last four decades, Hammer (no relation to The Social Network’s Armie Hammer) has directed over 80 films – the vast majority of them shorts. Her book of memoirs, HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life, was published in spring 2010 and earlier this fall she was honored with a career retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.
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Grant McCune working on Star Wars’ R2D2.
Grant McCune working on Star Wars’ R2D2.