Showing posts with label Aishwarya Rai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aishwarya Rai. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Cannes Tweets & Treats #3: Ring Bearing, Butt Patting, and Web Brawling

more miscellania from the South of France

On a scale of one to ten, exactly how jealous is director Alejandro González Iñárritu trying to make you with his touchy feely ways?


Eleven?

He's in Cannes with his Babel follow up Biutiful starring Javier Bardem. Gael García Bernal (also being manhandled above) is not in that forthcoming motion picture but he's a jury president this year. He'll be influential in deciding which director wins the Camera D'Or which is given for first features. (Here's a pic of Gael with his jury.)

<-- Meg Ryan hits the parties & premieres with producer Lawrence Bender

But on to the tweeting. Before you read these you should read this humorous USA Today article that stars many of these critics -- Jeffrey Wells gets a lot of play because he likes to rumble -- in the rarified atmosphere of this world event fest. It's a shame that Wells has to resort to calling IndieWire writers "effete" though when he is usually so talented at creative descriptives like "hot dog eating humans". heh.

@mattnoller "BIUTIFUL sucks, but I'm not gonna punch anyone to get that point across. Weak arms, is the thing."
@ICSFilm Buitiful makes Precious look like a Disney princess movie. Unrelenting misery porn, to be sure, but committed brutal performances by all.
@AwardsDaily "
The five hour CARLOS looms. Not sure I can deal."
@Laremy "My festival is a wrap. Final rankings: 1. Another Year 2. Certified Copy 3. The Housemaid"
@ebertchicago "
Werner Herzog: 'For me Godard is like intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film.' "
@benkenisberg "I bet Godard is a fiend for magnet poetry."
@jamesrocchi "I'm less interested in seeing Godard 2010 than finding Godard's 2010 equivalent."
@phillipstribune "At Cannes, you go from the new Godard to writing about Jennifer Hudson in a controversial biopic she hasn't made yet." [link]

Other than the catfights over Biutiful and the Godard business it's Abbas Kiarostami's enigmatic Certified Copy starring Juliette Binoche and William Shimell that seems to be stimulating the most excitable pronouncements since Mike Leigh's new picture hit the croissette.

William Shimell, Abbas Kiarostami, and the divine Juliette Binoche

@benkenisberg "Never thought Kiarostami would be the one to defibrillate the competition. Breathed a huge sigh of relief when the actors got out of the car"
@gemko "Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY is the first film I've seen get booed this year. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's the best film so far"
@awardsdaily "The Kiarostami was enjoyable enough - laughs here and there. But surreal - you see what you want to see, as deep as u want it 2 be. I would have loved it twenty years ago. Now it feels a bit like a waste of time, something I am running out of fast."
@guylodge "Juliette Binoche just walked past. Now THAT, as they say, is a star."

Let's end with fashion. Here are four fab foreign ladies we like to look at.


from left to right: Sandrine Bonnaire (France) I don't think I've seen Bonnaire headlining a movie since the Oscar nominated Est - Ouest (which I recommend if you like epic sweep to your woman-as-survivor dramas) and that was a decade back. She's always good; Do-yeon Jeon (South Korea) who I fell so hard for in Secret Sunshine (still unreleased in the USA). I'm eager to see her Cannes entry The Housemaid... even though people didn't love it; Rossy de Palma (Spain) is blessed with one of cinema's most impossible-to-believe faces; and superstar/jury member Aishwarya Rai (India) is blessed with... everything.

I frequent Zimbio for many of the red carpet photos I use and one of the things I find hilarious about paparazzi coverage is the random insert shots that focus on someone's body parts (look at Meg Ryan's calf!) or hands (jewelry alert!). Aishwarya, for example, is much bejewelled but I'm not sure why this is a big zero-in-on-it detail since she married fellow Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan three years ago.

Do we really need to focus on a three year old ring when Fan Bingbing is holding her own wedding on the red carpet of the Biutiful premiere?


It's unclear who Bingbing plans on marrying. The world?

'Shut up about this sound effect woman I've never heard of' you say. But I cannot, testy reader. Even actresses with whom I am largely unfamiliar can sometimes bewitch me into transitory super fandom obsessiveness. I shall recover... for all Cannes-induced fevers break on May 23rd.

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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Beauty Break: Bollywood

It's Eye Candy Weekend

This month I've felt a burgeoning desire to start investigating Bollywood, the most popular brand of cinema with which I am least acquainted. You may have noticed. I think this has something to do with never being finished with movie glamour but being very finished with this particular Oscar season. Are you worn out on it yet? If you're a Bollywood fan, please suggest 5 must-see movies in the comments (other than Lagaan which I have seen and greatly enjoyed... but for the length). I'm not sure how quickly I'll get to them or if I'll do anything with them on the blog but I need to get schooled. Please suggest movies with a maximum amount of eye candy because I'm shallow like that. Movies with great song scores too would be ideal because I live for musicals.

And now, some of my favorite beauties of Bollywood... in still photo form at least.


Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan (pictured above) are the two Bollywood mega stars I've known the most about. And this is due to the US media's brief flirtations with caring about them. And even that was some years ago. But my point is this: Yum^2 !!!

More pretty people now...

Madhuri Dixit (supposedly a fine actress. and you know how I feel 'bout those)
Priyanka Chopra (soon to star in a film where she murders her 7 husbands. That's hot)

John Abraham (once rumored/campaigned for Jake's Prince of Persia)
Arjun Rampal (Kidman's co star in that Schweppe's commercial)

Would I enjoy any of these people as actors? Film Experience readers who double as Bollywood fans are the only ones who might know. Tell me. Or suggest alternatives. Maybe less popular actors who the hipsters like... the Tilda Swintons of Bollywood if you will? (Not that a Swinton can be grown in any region outside of Scotland.) Or suggest 5 movies I MUST watch so I can get started.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Red Rouge Carpet Lineup

More glitterati from Cannes.


No, that's not what Mariah Carey wore to the red carpet. That's her travel outfit on her flight over to attend the very successful Precious screening. This might be the first time I've ever understood one of Mariah's fashion choices. Comfort first when you're high in the sky... even if you're a diva. I included her in this red carpet lineup merely to get my bearings that somehow -- due to Precious -- I'll have to start talking about her now. There are so many singers I'd rather talk about if they'd only make movies (Gwen Stefani, Annie Lennox, Sufjan Stevens, P¡nk, Rufus Wainwright) or learn to act (Madonna).

Remember Bae Doona (waving to the camera) from that Korean monster movie The Host? -- or as the IMDB likes to call her Du-na Bae. Asian names are so confusing on that site -- she's now starring in Hirokazu Koreeda's latest called Air Doll, which is about a blow up doll who develops a soul. Great concept. How many hours until we hear about some American studio snatching up remake rights?

Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish got dolled up for the star-studded premiere of Jane Campion's Bright Star which seems to be divisive already. More on that when you scroll down. And finally American funny lady Elizabeth Banks & internationally renowned beauty Aishwarya Rai were photographed together at the Up premiere in different gowns a couple days ago. I guess they're not about to put the brakes on their red carpet chumminess. Here they in different gowns... and this event wasn't long after the other. Imagine how much luggage you'd have to bring to Cannes if you were a celebrity. Three outfits for each day... minimum.

More Cannes chatter
Manohla Dargis @ NY Times on the previously glutted art house market. Is there a silver indie lining in the economic downturn?
IFC Daily
Bright Star reactions at Cannes. Is Jane Campion (The Piano) finally making a real comeback? The movie is now scheduled to open stateside on September 18th.
Mike D'Angelo lots of tweeting from Cannes. Hates everything. Or merely tolerates. Only a 50/100 for Jane Campion's Bright Star? Boo. Or "assumed 'Boo' " rather since I haven't seen it. Still, the tweet is funny.


I do support such legislation. Or, rather, a 5 year ban. Needless to say, this ban would not go into affect until after Jane Campion is done returning to us. The cinema needs her.
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