Sunday, February 21, 2010

Red Carpet Lineup, Foxy Julianne and Berlinale Winners

With Berlinale wrapped, let's take one last looksie at random celebs working the premieres and photo ops. Part of our irregular red carpet lineup tradition. And then the awardage.

From left to right
: I didn't know what Michael Winterbottom looked like, so I've included him here. He's a boyish 48. I think his career is pretty fascinating because it covers so much global ground and differing genre terrain. He's so prolific while still making intelligent films. I'm impatient so prolific works for me. That said, his new noir The Killer Inside Me might be one I'll have to skip. If festival types are so horrified by the violence I'm sure it's more than I can take.

Julianne Moore looking foxy on her way to fifty. She's gone a bit goth here with smoky eyes, black dress and black fingernails. More on her in a bit.


Two-time Oscar nominee Isabelle Adjani, who hasn't been working much, came out for the premiere of the comedy Mammuth in which she costars with another 80s French superstar Gérard Depardieu. The title refers to his motorcycle.

Tall Rebecca Hall was on hand to promote Please Give (my review). Nobody told her that premieres require evening gowns.

Renée Zellweger
, juror, wore big black puffy sleeves for awards night. But apparently she isn't willing to get puffy again herself for Bridget Jones 3. This might be totally unfounded gossip... but is it really true that Zeéeeee blames a failed relationship on the weight she gained for Bridget Jones Diary? That's... uh... disturbing. It took her like two days to lose the weight. We have photographic proof from awards shows. Say what you will about her -- and I've said plenty about 'she who must not be named' over the years -- she can often work a red carpet. That's an eye grabber.

Finally in that lineup above we have Danish actress Lene Maria Christensen who was there to support her new picture En Familie. I included her because I never wrote about Frygtelig Lykkelig, Denmark's failed Oscar submission -- soon to be remade by the same filmmaker for audiences who are too dumb to read subtitles -- and I thought she was pretty interesting within it. I don't know how to put this exactly without sounding hideously insensitive but her face seems like a comedic one and yet she was playing the dramatic / sexual femme fatale of the piece. And it worked. Strange little film but she was highly watchable and now I'm curious. The film is in theaters now so if you like quirkly film noir, you should see it.

AWARDS
No festival is compete without the honors and prizes. We'll kick off with German born 70s icon Hanna Schygulla who was honored for her whole career. She's pictured here with her recent The Edge of Heaven director Fatih Akin. Congrats Hanna! I keep meaning to educate myself on the Rainer Werner Fassbinder years but it's slow going. Why can't time stop for a a couple of years and allow me to catch up on a century of cinema? At least the highlights.

The Prizes
Golden Bear Bal (Honey) directed by Semih Kaplanoglu is about a boy searching for his missing beekeeper father. Will this be Turkey's Oscar submission next year?
Silver Bear Eu Cand Vreau Sa Fluier, Fluier (If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle), directed by Florin Serban. Romanian film is still roaring. This film also won the Alfred Bauer prize which is meant to reward innovative filmmaking.
Director Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer. In theaters now.
Screenplay Tuan Yuan (Apart Together) about reunited lovers separated by war was written by Wang Quan’an and Na Jin
Best First Feature Sebbe directed by Babak Najafi (Sweden)

Actress Shinobu Terajima in Caterpillar
Actor This prize was shared between the leads of the Russian film Kak Ya Provel Etim Letom (How I Ended This Summer) Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis, pictured right, who play co-workers at a polar station in the Arctic. They're the only two people in the picture. The film also won a prize for its cinematography.

Since this is an A list festival there are a lot of prizes from other juries, audiences as well. Other films that were honored in some way include:

Son Of Babylon directed by Mohamed Al-Daradji which won two prizes
Waste Land directed by Lucy Walker, Joao Jardim & Karen Harley
Budrus
directed by Julia Bacha
Daniel Schmid - Le chat qui pense directed by Pascal Hofmann, Benny Jaberg
Kawasakiho ruze
(Kawasaki’s Rose) directed by Jan Hrebejk
Aisheen [Still Alive in Gaza]
directed by Nicolas Wadimoff
En Familie (A Family)
directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen
Parade
directed by Isao Yukisada
El vuelco del cangrejo (Crab Trap)
directed by Oscar Ruiz Navia
and Die Fremde (When We Leave) directed by Feo Aladag

TEDDY
Berlinale also has a queer tradition, honoring gay and lesbian films in their "Teddy" section. This is where Julianne comes back in. Lisa Cholodenko's lesbian family dramedy The Kids Are All Right (my review) took the top prize.

Writer Director Lisa Cholodenko gets a red carpet kiss from her star
Julianne Moore, 'the foxiest bitch in the world' (thx, Boogie Nights)

Other Teddy honors went to the documentary La bocca del lupo (The Mouth of the Wolf) directed by Pietro Marcello (read more about it), James Franco's directorial debut, a short film called The Feast Of Stephen (read more about it) and Open directed by Jake Yuzna which sounds rather outre and difficult to describe (you can read more about it but *NSFW*)

Congratulations to all the winners. One day we'll get to Berlin for the festival. If you've ever been, speak up in the comments.
*

8 comments:

Philip said...

I know this is irrelevant and off-topic, but when are you going to do the whole "How'd they get nominated?" thing for the Oscar nominees? I've been anxiously awaiting it. Haha. Just wondering.

Emma said...

Julianne looks stunning. <3

MrW said...

Educating yourself on Fassbinder (with or without Schygulla, because Irm Hermann, Margit Carstensen, Brigitte Mira, Barbara Valentin, Ingrid Caven and just about any other actress or actor he worked with were always stunning under his direction) is definitely worthwhile. (Although I'm slightly biased, he is my hands-down favorite director of all time, after all.)

And since one of his most fascinating outputs 'Welt am Draht' finally got its DVD release here in Germany last week (and the rest of the world should follow soon), now is a good time as any to start...

anna said...

I watched the awards show last night and really enjoyed it. It had some great moments.

re Schygulla/Fassbinder:
I saw this documentary about German cinema the other night (the English title is "Eye to Eye: All About German Film") and among other things it had cinematographer Michael Ballhaus talk about "The Marriage of Maria Braun". Pretty interesting.
It also had quite a few nice montages (No idea why I like those so much...).
Two of them are on YouTube (thought you might enjoy them):
"The Eyes Of Men":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8n27dF7aI

"The Gazes Of Women":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHO-C3Y5m54

Anonymous said...

I'd like to echo Philip's question - that was always such a great read in previous years.

Guy Lodge said...

From where I'm standing, the violence in "The Killer Inside Me" has been wildly exaggerated by the press -- there are some very rough sequences, no doubt, but hardly unprecedented in their brutality. I'm sure you can handle it, Nathaniel.

Had a wonderful time at the festival myself, but the Panorama and Forum strands of the programme were so much more interesting than the Competition films, I'm now in the embarrassing position of not having seen several of the winners. People keep asking me what "Honey" is like ... I have no idea.

Y Kant Goran Rite said...

I always find Berlinale entries - and especially Golden Bear winners - annoyingly underappreciated.

But the main thing that needs to be said here is Hanna Schygulla is God.

Beyond her Fassbinder stuff, check out what she did for Volker Schlondorff in 1981's riveting Circle of Deceit. It's an unshowy, practically supporting role. But every frame she is in is infused with tenderness, wisdom and genius.

Alexis said...

I hate to say this but I think Renee is kinda winning me back...I liked her in My one and only