Actor Willem Dafoe, a frequent red-carpet visitor to the Venice Film Festival, was named artistic director Monday of the Venice Biennale's theater department.
Dafoe, who lives near Rome with his Italian wife, said the appointment came as a surprise but that he was "born in the theater" and trained initially as a stage actor.
In a statement released by the Biennale, he said the program of his two-year 2025-2026 term would follow his own development, "a sort of exploration of the essence of the body."
Dafoe co-founded The Wooster Group theatre company in 1977 in New York and performed with it for some 20 years. He is more widely known for his film career, including as the scientist opposite Emma Stone's Bella in Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things," which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last year.
He is expected on the Lido this summer with the cast of Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice," which is opening the film festival.
The Biennale Teatro is an independent department of La Biennale, founded in 1934.
Google is blasted by UK watchdog for what it calls anti-competitive behavior through digital ads
Google was slammed Friday by U.K. regulators who say it's taking advantage of its dominance in digital advertising to thwart competition in Britain, ratcheting up pressure that the tech giant is facing on both sides of the Atlantic over its "ad tech" business practices.
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority said that the U.S. company gives preference to its own services to the detriment of online publishers and advertisers in Britain's 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) digital ad market. The watchdog leveled its accusations after an investigation, and the findings could potentially lead to a fine worth billions of dollars or an order to change its behavior.
Google is a major player throughout the digital ad ecosystem, providing servers for publishers to manage ad space on their websites and apps, tools for advertisers and media agencies to buy display ads, and an exchange where both sides come together to buy and sell ads in real time at auctions.
"We've provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites," the watchdog's interim executive director of enforcement, Juliette Enser, said in a press release.
The watchdog's charges, known as a statement of objections, arrive two years after it opened its investigation. Google's digital ad business is also the focus of a European Union antitrust investigation and a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit that's set to go to trial this month.
The CMA said that Google's "anti-competitive" conduct is ongoing, but the company disputed the allegations Friday.
"Google remains committed to creating value for our publisher and advertiser partners in this highly competitive sector," the company said in a prepared... Read More