Look, this journal is dead. Euthanased. Preventively pogrommed like Romanian poultry. There won't be any entries here no more. No, not even if istoo made me burst into tears after I finally turned my PC on yesterday, and got an e-mail saying that istoo treated me to two more months of paid account. (I owe you candy for this -- LOTS of candy.)

As I did ( Read more... )

Hi, checking in. Been alive, but not doing that well. Work is coming from all sides, payments not as much; I think I finally ended the saga with our Croatian IRS about my tax return, which should materialise later this month, and enable me to go to this film festival in the Czech Republic, where I've been invited as a guest. And it's going to be ( Read more... )

I have the list of the winners in front of me and I can hardly believe it.

Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture: cool, I hoped Ang would get it. Good Night, and Good Luck for Best Screenplay and Best Actor (David Strathairn): cool, richly deserved. But the rest? Giovanna Mezzogiorno for Best Actress in the Italian movie The Beast in the Heart? Even ( Read more... )

Everybody's leaving! I've just said my goodbyes to most of the Croatian film critic contingent here, and even my roommate is leaving today, which means that I'll finally be able to sleep next to an open window. Cinematic joys are getting fewer by the day, also, as the Mostra is visibly running out of steam. The one highlight of today will be Hayao ( Read more... )

And speaking of them, my old Norwegian friend Niels asked Tim Burton at the press conference today how come that every stop-motion movie of his features a dead dog. (Corpse Bride does too, and it's v. funny.) Burton answered, "You know, dogs have a shorter lifespan than people. So it's only natural that over time you'll outlive several of them. I, ( Read more... )

I'm immensely relieved to be able to say that Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is an unqualified SUCCESS. At today's screening, which was probably the first public presentation of the movie ever, people laughed and often clapped at many jokes, and the applause at the end was the loudest of the entire festival so far. As was only deserved, as everything ( Read more... )

And, well, I got his autograph too. The wee thing basically dozed his way through the "Everything Is Illuminated" press conference, letting his director Liev Schreiber do most of the talking, but suddenly sprang to life when people rushed in to get autographs. And later on, he seemed very kind to the bunch of femfans who waited outside the Palazzo ( Read more... )

You run into Bjork, pushing Baby Bjork in a pram along the promenade. They both have the same Amidala hairdos. You run into Alek Wek, looking superhuman -- or, more precisely, like one of the supermechas from the end of AI. You run into Clooney. Park. Gilliam and Damon. You run into Monica Belucci, as usual. But somehow you hardly run into any ( Read more... )

But not by much! I cornered him as he was doing the Elizabethtown roundtables and asked him for his autograph, which he illegibly gave using his Tengwared arm (his "nine" tattoo is on his right inner forearm), and his Elf brain was sent to "Kind to Random Strangers / Wistful about LOTR", so I can't complain. I only wonder if he'll still be here in ( Read more... )

I walked out of Lasse Hallstrom's Casanova to finally do a proper update. The movie felt so incredibly trite that my squirming in the seat began making people around me uncomfortable; and I can't do that. These Venetians, after all, always enjoy a major American production that has been filmed in their city. Of course. It's just that I've been ( Read more... )