“Rust and Bone,” Jacques Audiard’s soaring story of love, loss and killer whales, was named best picture at the London Film Festival on Saturday.
The movie is a thriller-cum-melodrama about the unlikely relationship between a bare-knuckle boxer (Matthias Schoenaerts) and a whale trainer, played by Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard, who suffers a tragic workplace accident.
The president of the award jury, British playwright David Hare, praised it as “a film full of heart, violence and love.”
French filmmaker Audiard won the same award at the London festival in 2009 for his prison drama “A Prophet.”
American director Benh Zeitlin took the best debut feature prize with his atmospheric bayou saga “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Juror Hannah McGill praised the “daringly vast, richly detailed” film, which has won wide praise since its Sundance Film Festival debut earlier this year.
The trophy for best British newcomer went to Sally El Hosaini for “My Brother the Devil,” the story of British-Egyptian brothers struggling with conflicting loyalties and identities in modern-day London. The best documentary prize went to Alex Gibney’s “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” an investigation of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church.
Director Tim Burton and actress Helena Bonham Carter — real-life partners as well as creative collaborators — received career honors known as British Film Institute Fellowships during an awards ceremony at London’s Banqueting House.
Founded in 1957 to show the best of the world’s cinema to a British audience, the London festival has in recent years tried to carve out a place on the international movie calendar with bigger pictures, more glittering stars and more high-profile awards.
Highlights of the 12-day festival included Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama “Argo,” Michael Haneke’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Amour,” Rolling Stones documentary “Crossfire Hurricane” and Roger Michell’s “Hyde Park on Hudson,” a comedy-drama with Bill Murray as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More