How Had I Never Seen... "Monsoon Wedding"?

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, Chloé Zhao won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Nomadland. Unlike Cannes, which only awarded one woman (Jane Campion for The Piano) with the Palme d'Or in its history, Venice has named five female directors as the grand victors of its main competition. One of them, Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, I hadn't seen.  Since the Criterion Channel has just added Mira Nair's 2001 Venice-winner, it seems like a good time to correct this lacuna. Without further ado, let's delve into the rainy festivities of this Monsoon Wedding…

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On "Nomadland" and other Venice winners

Please welcome guest contributor Elisa Giudici. She saw all the Venice competition films and she brings us this special report!

By Elisa Giudici

The oldest Film Festival of the world was the first to roar back from the pandemic. Venice International Film Festival president Francesco Ciccutto and artistic director Alberto Barbera worked hard to organize this year's edition. At first, it played like a fever dream: an international film festival in one of the nations that lived through the most severe lockdowns and highest death count just a few months ago?

Hollywood majors and newer realities like Netflix, which in the recent past Venice would coddle with attention, betrayed the Venetian Mostra, and didn't send a single movie. Old friends rallied, though.  Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Ann Hui, and Abel Ferrara wanted to be in Venice to help the Mostra. They were supported by European festivals early on in their filmmaking and didn't forget them in their time of need... 

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Red Carpet Lineup: 30 Looks from Venice 2020

The 77th Venice Film Festival wrapped today with the Golden Lion going to Chloe Zhao's Nomadland (which we'd predicted as far back as our annual April Foolish Predictions to be in the forthcoming Best Picture and Best Director lineups (we'll update all those charts this week). Venice wasn't the star-studded affair it usually is due to the shortage of travel and the ongoing troubles of the pandemic but they shouldered on. Cate Blanchett was in town for the whole festival as the President of the Jury and she made the all too rare decision to be sustainably fashionable by wearing only red carpet looks she'd worn before at other glitzy events. But her superpower, well one of them at any rate, is to make any year's fashions look utterly timeless.

29 other looks after the jump from the small batch of stars who went to Venice...

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Venice Begins with Tilda's Mantra

by Nathaniel R

Cinema, simply, is my happy place. Its my true motherland. And its fellowship is my heart's family tree.
- Tilda Swinton

The Venice Film Festival has begun its annual journey. Venice's 77th opening night film was the Italian marital drama Lacci. The day's festivities also included the arrival of the glamorous jury (Jury presiden Cate Blanchett is only wearing gowns she's previously worn at other events!) and a Golden Lion lifetime tribute to the alien icon punk actress Tilda Swinton.

Tilda's full speech is below... it's a true beauty. I want to type it all up and use it as a daily mantra but first let's join together in listening to Tilda's elegant commanding voice and passion.

Tilda Swinton Leone d’Oro alla carriera a #Venezia77 #biennalecinema2020 #tildaswinton #leonedoro@la_Biennale pic.twitter.com/GCgrRDUhZX

— Rai Movie (@raimovie) September 2, 2020

Showbiz History: Richard Farnsworth, The Women, Shirley Maclaine's daughter and more

8 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

1920 Richard Farnsworth, the very talented actor (Comes a Horseman, The Grey Fox), who started in film as a stuntman, was born on this day 100 years ago in Los Angeles. Happy Farnsworth Centennial.  Sadly he died 20 years ago, shortly after delivering his tremendously moving Oscar-nominated performancee in The Straight Story...

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