Day: December 13, 2017

Director Sebastian Lelio feels that A Fantastic Woman has gone beyond the cinematic experience with its social message, to a great extent thanks to the performance of its star, Daniela Vega.

The film follows Marina, a transgender woman who, after the passing of her older lover, is mistreated by his family and the police officers investigating his death. It is Chile’s selection for the Academy Awards and on Monday was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the best foreign film category.

“I am very proud of Daniela, of how she faced the challenge of a movie that not only meant an absolute leading role … that goes through an emotional spectrum, but that in addition flies, faces windstorms, sings two operatic arias. In short, it’s a polytonal role of great complexity and she … didn’t have much experience, so it was an all-or-nothing betting,” Lelio told The Associated Press in a phone interview shortly after the Globes nominations were announced.

“It was very beautiful to see how she gave herself completely and played this character with such complexity and beauty,” he added about Vega, whose performance has received Oscars buzz. If she is nominated next month, it would be the first Oscar nomination for a transgender actress.

“Somehow Daniela’s presence and the power that her body brings are the heart of the movie and it has been very nice and exciting to witness how she has become a voice not only of the movie but a sort of symbol of everything that is fragile, cornered,” said Lelio. “In some ways this is when cinema surpasses cinema and gets in the social fabric, and that is very powerful.”

​A winner in Berlin

A Fantastic Woman debuted last February at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for best feature film as well as the Silver Bear for its screenplay, written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza. Among other honors, it has also been nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Lelio is in Los Angeles filming an English version of his acclaimed 2013 film Gloria, starring Oscar-winner Julianne Moore.

“It has been very exciting to be able to revisit what’s universal in the story and see a performer as powerful as Julianne Moore playing this role,” he said.

For now, he is savoring the Globes nomination, where A Fantastic Woman will compete against Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father (Cambodia), In the Fade (Germany/France), Loveless (Russia) and The Square (Sweden/Germany/France).

“It’s a joy for the team, for everyone who made this movie, to be among this select group of such powerful movies that have been selected,” the director said.

As for Vega, he said: “I spoke to her this morning and she was very happy with the news. She is already getting her dress.”
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Seven-year-old Brooklynn Prince is sitting in a darkened TV studio with lights, cameras and control panels all around her. “Mission to Mars, mission to Mars,” she says. “This is Apollo.”

Brooklynn, the cheerful star of “The Florida Project,” has indeed lifted off. Her performance as Moonee, a brash, trouble-making pipsqueak living with her mom (Bria Vinaite) in a low-rent Orlando motel, may be the most spirited thing of 2017. Brooklynn is the exuberant energy at the center of one the year’s most acclaimed films, and some believe she should be the youngest Oscar nominee ever. Brooklynn included.

“I really want to be nominated,” she says. “Even if I get close to nominated, that’s a real honor.”

But she’d also — maybe even more so — really like to meet Emma Watson and Elle Fanning.

“They have been my girls for years,” she says.

None of the year’s breakthrough performers has enjoyed their moment more than Brooklyn. She has shot a selfie with Gary Oldman, shaken hands with Adam Sandler and met Margot Robbie, whom she confirms was “super-duper nice.”

“I never thought I would have this chance,” Brooklynn says. “It’s this crazy little movie that’s everywhere.”

She has Instagramed, Snapchatted and tweeted her adventures, from the Cannes Film Festival to the recent Gotham Awards, by borrowing her parents’ phones. She carries pins for homeless awareness with her to give away as a way to magnify the message of “The Florida Project.”

“I’ve always said: It doesn’t matter how small you are or what age you are to change the world. You can get into the business anytime. I was two when I got into the business,” says Brooklynn, the veteran. “Now I know that this is really what I want. My mom and dad aren’t pushing me for this. It’s what I want. Acting is, like, my life and I want to keep doing it forever.”
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“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” won warm reviews from most critics on Tuesday, a day before the latest installment in the sci-fi saga begins hitting movie theaters worldwide in what is projected to be the biggest-grossing movie of 2017.

The Walt Disney Co. movie received four or five stars from most reviewers, along with praise for its energy and emotion. “The Last Jedi” scored a 94 percent “fresh” rating on aggregator site RottenTomatoes.com.

The film, arriving in movie theaters from Dec. 13, picks up from 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which took in more than $2 billion at the global box office to become the third-biggest-grossing movie of all time.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, “The Last Jedi” kicks off with the Resistance fighting Supreme Leader Snoke’s First Order, which is trying to take control of the galaxy.

The movie features the final appearance of Carrie Fisher, who plays the franchise’s Princess Leia. The actress died at age 60 last December, weeks after completing filming.

Numerous critics including The Hollywood Reporter felt that at 2-1/2 hours, the movie’s run time was a little too long. But the Hollywood Reporter added, “there’s a pervasive freshness and enthusiasm to Johnson’s approach that keeps the film, and with it the franchise, alive, and that is no doubt what matters most.”

The London Times newspaper deemed it the best “Star Wars” movie yet, calling it a “film of wit and wonder, of eye-gouging visual spectacle, and one that is buttressed by entirely unexpected, and frequently devastating, emotional power.”

Entertainment Weekly said “The Last Jedi” was a “triumph with flaws,” while USA Today said it was “a stellar entry” in the “Star Wars” franchise.

The Washington Post praised the film’s “irreverent humor and worshipful love for the original text.”

Variety was among a handful of less enthusiastic reviews, calling the film “ultimately a disappointment.” CNN said “Last Jedi” felt “like a significant letdown, one that does far less than its predecessor to stoke enthusiasm for the next leg in the trilogy.”

Before the reviews were out, Boxoffice.com projected that “Last Jedi” would haul in $185 million to $215 million in North America in its first weekend, which would rank as one of the biggest film debuts in history.

Disney said in November that Johnson will oversee a new trilogy of “Star Wars” films that will not follow the Skywalker saga, which George Lucas kicked off in 1977.

 
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Russia’s Olympic Committee agreed on Tuesday to support its athletes who choose to compete in next year’s Winter Games in South Korea as neutrals following a ban on the Russian national team.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last week banned Russia from the Games, due to take place in Pyeongchang in February, for what it called “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of the anti-doping system.

But it left the door open for Russian athletes with a clean history of non-doping to be invited to compete as neutrals under an Olympic flag, not a Russian one.

President Vladimir Putin said last week Russia would not prevent its athletes from competing, dismissing calls by some for a boycott, and a Russian Olympic official said on Monday most Russian athletes still wanted to attend.

The Russian committee (ROC) agreed on its position at a meeting on Tuesday attended by sporting figures including the national men’s hockey team, figure skaters, speed skaters and the presidents of winter sports federations.

“All the participants were of the same opinion — our sportsmen need to go to Korea, need to compete, achieve victory for the glory of Russia, for the glory of our motherland,” ROC President Alexander Zhukov said.

Zhukov said Russia would do its best to support Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag and hold serious talks with the IOC in the near future to discuss the problems and practicalities of the arrangement.

He did not say what form this support would take.

“Russian sportsmen have stated their readiness to take part in the Olympic Games, despite the difficult conditions and decision of the IOC, which is undoubtedly unfair in many ways,” he said.

Zhukov added that Russia would also support the athletes who had decided not to compete in Pyeongchang.

Senior Russian Olympic official Vitaly Smirnov, who heads Russia’s state-backed anti-doping commission, said the country had made the “right decision” not to boycott.

“A boycott is not a solution,” Smirnov said. “That [would mean] new sanctions and problems for our athletes.”

In recent weeks, more than 30 Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Sochi Games have been banned for life from the Olympics for allegedly breaching anti-doping rules.

And the IOC slapped lifetime bans on six Russian female ice hockey players a few hours after the Russian announcement Tuesday.

Russian authorities have vehemently denied any state support for doping and have pledged to cooperate with international sports bodies to counter the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Russia’s athletics federation, paralympic committee and anti-doping agency RUSADA remain suspended over doping scandals.

‘Olympic Athlete from Russia’

Sitting in the front row of the Russian Olympic Committee auditorium ahead of the meeting, hockey star Ilya Kovalchuk said he would not mind competing at the Games as an “Olympic Athlete from Russia,” the term the IOC uses to designate the Russians who will go to Pyeongchang.

“We are athletes from Russia, after all,” Kovalchuk told reporters. “They took the flag away but they can’t take away our honor and our conscience.”

Kovalchuk, one of the first to call for athletes to compete in Pyeongchang after the IOC ban, thanked authorities for taking the opinions of athletes into consideration.

“Thank you for having heard us, for having believed us,” Kovalchuk said. “I think that every athlete who takes part in the Olympic Games in Pyeonchang will do everything possible.”

Olympic fencer Sofya Velikaya, chair of the ROC’s athletes commission, called on the Russian public to respect athletes’ decisions to go to Pyeongchang amid concerns that some could be branded traitors for agreeing to compete without the country’s flag.

“The athletes will show their love for their motherland and their patriotism through their results, through their accomplishments and medals,” Velikaya said.
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