By Nicole Winfield
VENICE, Italy (AP) --Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz brought some laughs to the Venice Film Festival on Saturday with a comedy that skewers their own craft, and apparently was as funny to make as it was to watch.
Audiences chuckled throughout "Official Competition," by Argentine directors Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn, bringing some levity to the world's oldest film festival that is still vying with the coronavirus pandemic. The film is in the main competition at Venice, which ends Sept. 11.
"Official Competition" is about the pre-production of a film and the exaggerated rituals, tics and exercises that the director (Cruz) and actors (Banderas and Argentine actor Oscar Martinez) go through to prepare for their roles. Egos, envy and competition between leads naturally come into play in this naval-gazing look at the art of making, directing and producing movies.
"We laughed a LOT," said Cruz, who was also at Venice to present the festival-opening "Parallel Mothers" by Pedro Almodovar.
The directors and actors alike insisted theirs was a respectful parody of the things actors do to get into character, though Banderas didn't hold back when asked to give an example of an unusual ritual he had experienced.
"I'm going to scream a little bit," he warned reporters before belting out a deep "Maaaah" several times.
"That was real," he said. "I worked with an actor that did that every time that we were going to do a scene. The first time he did that I thought he was a cow. And it was very annoying."
As he looked out into the room full of entertainment reporters covering his press conference and the film festival, Bandera mused that it seemed that life was imitating art.
"Don't you guys have the feeling that we're in the movie? If we were in the movie I would be asking why I am in the corner of the table, and I am not in the center," he said. "We should do a continuation that should include the press," he said, laughing. "That would be awesome."
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More