Monday
(0)Perhaps it is just sloppy editing or slipshod reporting that turns what is supposed to be a serious news article into an exercise in bladder-evacuation. Or perhaps it is meant to be funny?
Who knows? Just enjoy the results:
The leading showbiz lights of the anti-globalisation movement descended on Venice this weekend, amid complaints that the world's oldest film festival has sold out to the Hollywood glamour industry.
Surely, if they wanted to oppose globalisation they would be better off staying put?
Actor Tim Robbins and author Naomi Klein will tomorrow launch the Global Beach, an alternative "festival" down the road from the main event, which is expected to get the backing of actor-director Spike Lee and gay indie-punk star Gregg Araki.
Oh, that Gregg Araki. Illustrious star of such notable films as...er, give me a minute here...
Both Robbins and Klein are noted critics of Hollywood mores and of the failure of actors to criticise their corporate bosses.
That may have something to do with the lear jets and limos provided by those corporate bosses.
Naomi Klein flew in yesterday morning to promote her film The Take, an account of a co-operative business set up by Argentine workers after the 2001 economic collapse, directed by radical Canadian journalist Avi Lewis.
With action, adventure, thrills, spills, ingenious plot twists, dazzling special effects and a stellar cast, 'The Take' is set to be the blockbuster hit of 2004. A total sell-out everywhere. Queues of film-lovers round the block. Get your tickets now!
Supporters of the Global Beach project caused disturbances at the premiere of The Terminal, directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, which opened the festival on Wednesday. Members of the group parked a car disguised as a pirate ship near the red carpet, a protest, one of them claimed, against "ostentatious show of Hollywood wealth and power".
Wow! A car disguised as a pirate ship. That is so...significant: a devastating critique of crass commercialism that will really force people to sit up and take notice.
They are not actors, they are clowns.
Oh David, that was funny!
Where would 'the world's oldest film festival' be except creaking around with draughty knees, had not Hollywood careened forward madly, giving the public what it would pay for, for a hundred years?
Without Hollywood, badly lit sets, plotless movies starring quietly deranged people discussing angst would be what 'movies' means. Aaaargh! Give me heat! Give me light! Give me sets that aren't your grandmother's kitchen! Give me drama! Give me funny lines and people who can deliver them!
Posted by Verity at September 6, 2004 02:27 AM
One of the reasons why Hollywood achieved global supremacy in the movie industry was a little thing called World War II. Europe had a fine movie thing going there for awhile. Unfortunately, a great many of their seminal movie people were Jewish, the luckiest of whom decamped for Hollywood.
The great Billy Wilder, director of some of the greatest American classic films of all time, like "Stalag 17," "Double Indemnity", and "Some Like It Hot," lost his entire family at Auschwitz.
It is hardly "Hollywood's" fault that Europe lost its footing in the film industry by either killing or chasing out its most talented film-making lights.
I doubt if Naomi Klein or Tim Robbins will bring THAT up, however.
Posted by Susan at September 6, 2004 02:47 AM
As to the "Hollywood wealth", I'm sure Tim Robbins returned all those paychecks to the Hollywood studios that they sent him for acting in "Bull Durham" and for directing "Dead Man Walking". Right? RIGHT???
Posted by David Crawford at September 6, 2004 03:35 AM
Robbins makes his millions from the very Hollywood he criticises.
Klein's books sell as well as they do because of the globalisation she despises.
Posted by Shawn at September 6, 2004 04:26 AM
Robbins makes his millions from the very Hollywood he criticises. Klein's books sell as well as they do because of the globalisation she despises.
True for Robbins.
Klein *doesn't* despise globalisation; she despises what she sees as the developed world using its stronger negotiating position to trade 'unfairly' with the developing world. She approves of globalisation in the wider sense of everyone in the world becoming more aware and in contact with each other (and also approves of global trade in theory).
Her economics are't the soundest, and she often makes the mistake (common on left and right) of not realising that moving people from the 'very poor' to the 'fairly poor' category is far more life-enhancing than moving from 'fairly poor' to middle-class. But she's not a hypocrite (or an idiot) like the Hollywoodites.
Posted by john b at September 6, 2004 01:33 PM
Naomi Klein only likes people who are like her, and has that smug middle class disdain for working class Americans that is so common in the US Left.
Posted by Zevilyn at September 6, 2004 06:29 PM
It looks like the globophobes are turning more and more into leftist puritans. It's not even about the environement, or poverty, or war, or people dying or anything relevant anymore. The "ostentatious show of Hollywood wealth and power". Since when is that a crime ? If you don't like it, don't watch it.
I'll make them a deal. We shall forbid all shows of "wealth and power" and the ignorant public display of obsolete ideological garbage by noisy spoiled brats who think wearing crappy clothes and not showering makes them "real".
Dweebs.
Posted by Sylvain Galineau at September 6, 2004 08:21 PM
Hmmmph. Typical bilge from the Hollywierd left. I am thoroughly convinced that little if anything that I would consider worth my time and money comes from that place any more.
Posted by Coydog at September 7, 2004 09:11 PM
