Venice Film Festival Winners

GOLDEN LION 
Sacro Gra (Italy)- directed by Gianfranco Rosi

GRAND JURY PRIZE 
Stray Dogs (Taiwan)- directed by Ming-Liang Tsai

SILVER LION FOR DIRECTOR
Alexandros Avranas, Miss Violence (Greece)

BEST ACTOR
Themis Panou, Miss Violence (Greece)

BEST ACTRESS
Elena Cotta, Via Castellana Bandiera (Italy)

BEST SCREENPLAY
Philomena (UK)- Steve Coogan & Jeff Pope

MARCELO MASTROIANNI AWARD FOR BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Tye Sherdian, Joe (US)

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
The Police Officer's Wife (Italy)- directed by Philip Groning 

Things I Learned On My Summer Vacation

The summer movie season came and assaulted the senses and poof, it's gone.  The Labor Day weekend signals the end of that special parcel of time when Hollywood throws all its bombast in our faces, but the sign posts have been there for a few weeks now, evident by the dominance of Lee Daniels' The Butler solid box office play and three week straight strangle hold as the number one film of the nation.  It's not so much that the Forest Whitaker-Oprah Winfrey Civil Rights drama has posted the most significant numbers in the stratosphere (they certainly are impressive, especially given the subject matter) but more so because the dog days of August are when Hollywood typically gives up and regroups for fall.  It may be too early to tell how the cinematic offerings of the past few months will hold up and where there legacy lies, but first impressions are typically all that matters (especially in today's climate where a film lives or dies based on opening night grosses), but there's always takeaways, residual damages and lessons to be learned.  Here's Musings and Stuff's rundown of the good, bad and ugly of the 2013 Summer Movie Season.

First off, seventeen of Hollywood's offerings raked in over $100 million at the box office, which is a healthy sign that the theater-going habit isn't quite dead yet.  The top of the charts, unsurprisingly is Iron Man 3, which joined the worldwide billion dollar club and started summer 2013 with a bang, thanks to The Avengers afterglow.  The Marvel machine is healthy enough it hardly matters the film, strangely critically accepted, wasn't all that.  The real test, however, should be found in the grosses and the critical impact made by lesser Marvel standalone vehicles Thor and Captain America as each will have individual offerings in the next 365 days.  The remaining sixteen films tell a startlingly different story.

BFI London Film Festival Announces Slate

The London Film Festival is celebrating its 57th Anniversary this year.  The slate has been announced.

OPENING NIGHT GALA
Captain Phillips (US)- directed by Paul Greengrass

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Abuse of Weakness (France)- directed by Catherine Breillat
The Double (UK)- directed by Richard Ayoade
Ida (Poland)- directed by Pawel Pawlikowski
Like Father, Like Son (Japan)- directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
The Lunchbox (India)- directed by Ritesh Batra
Of Good Report (South Africa)- directed by Jahmil X.T. Qubeka
Parkland (US)- directed by Peter Landesman
Rags & Tatters (Canada)- directed by Ahmad Abdalla
The Selfish Giant (UK)- directed by Clio Barnard
Starred Up (UK)- directed by David Mackenzie
Tom at the Farm (Canada)- directed by Xavier Dolan
Tracks (UK)- directed by John Curran
Under the Skin (UK/USA)- directed by Jonathon Glazer

FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION (Contending for the Sutherland Award)
B for Boy (Nigeria)- directed by Chika Anadu
Hide Your Smiling Faces (US)- directed by Daniel Patrick Carbone
Ilo Ilo (Singapore)- directed by Anthony Chen
Kill Your Darlings (US)- directed by John Krokidas
The Long Way Home (Turkey)- directed by Alphan Eseli
Luton (Greece)- directed by Michalie Konstantatos
Salvo (Italy)- directed by Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza
Sarah Prefers to Run (Canada)- directed by Chloé Robihaud
Sixteen (UK)- directed by Rob Brown
Trap Street (Italy)- directed by Vivian Qu
Wounded- directed by Fernando Franco
Youth (Israel)- directed by Tom Shoval

The Lifeguard

"I'm not 30...I'm 29," Leigh (Kristen Bell) defensively chimes more than once in the listless and all-together dull quarter-life-crisis drama The Lifeguard.  As if a desperate cling to a youth-- one that's well beyond her-- acts for some kind of excuse for the selfish and overly entitled, bratty behavior she exhibits throughout writer/director Liz W. Garcia's wan,  irritating and smugly self-conscious debut film.   That may read as harsh, but this drippy, overly fussed and under-nourished melodrama feels akin to mediocre soap opera, a melodramatic hotbed that infuses nearly every cliché in the independent film rule book but has neither the wit nor invention to overcome its overly simplistic and familiar narrative.  The Lifeguard is a jarringly self-pitying film, one labeled as a comedy-drama, but lacking in humor or lightness of any sort and devoid of striking or original characters to maneuver through it's increasingly labored and dark twists and turns.  The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past January.

Burned from her seemingly cushy Manhattan lifestyle, anguished by that strange and enigmatic only-in-the-cinema ennui that seems only to afflict pretty people in Sundance-approved movies (see also Garden State.)  The opening, obliquely scattered shots that tentatively present a fragmented young woman imply that Leigh is a lost child.  She works as a reporter for the Associated Press and clings to a man whom she will never actually have.  Her woes are externalized from the start as she relates to a story she's writing about a captive tiger chained against its will in an apartment who died from malnutrition and dehydration.  She's trapped you see, just like that tiger.

Who's On First?

The summer movie season is officially over and cinematic mindset quickly shifts over to a different kind of bloodbath.  The superheroes and their ilk will return next year, as they always do, and game turns, not so much to quality as we might be persuaded into thinking, but into eventual awards possibilities.  It's September, so really, nobody knows anything quite yet, but the fall festival season in full gear and the yesterday's concluding of the Telluride Film Festival raises hopes, piques interest and cements points to bludgeon our senses for the next few months.  Forget about the revolution being televised, it's being tweeted, as critics, journalists and bloggers headed to Colorado-- others are in Venice, which is ongoing and Toronto, which starts shortly.  All in hopes of being the first the tout this years "one." The king of the castle and the bragging rights that those entail.  Oy the hyperbole.

It's not for nothing-- Telluride, with its idyllic mountain-side surroundings, has played a hand in playing host to a plethora of recent Best Picture winners-- including, but not limited to last years king Argo.  But let's not forget that the narrative from Telluride to box office hit to Oscar winner was an especially bumpy one for Ben Affleck's baby last year, and not without its own bloodshed. 

This year, a bunch of titles appear to very much be in play, but Musings and Stuff is always leery when it comes to festival reviews.  Here are some of notables to be screened so far:

12 Year a Slave- The hyperbole went into hyper drive after a special Telluride sneak preview of Steve McQueen's latest-- the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man whose sold into slavery in the height of the Civil War-- and the the buzz was deafening.  Scary so, for fans of McQueen's past work (Hunger, Shame) as the level of expectation morphed into overdrive for those unlucky to be glimpsing the film for the first time-- it even trended on Twitter, a crazy accomplishment for a violent art film about slavery.  Chiwetel Ejiofor, a radiant talent who needs better roles, was instantly signaled as an Oscar frontrunner.  Variety said, "This epic account of an unbreakable soul makes even Scarlett O'Hara's struggles seem petty by comparison." The film will next try to replicate it's wow factor in Toronto before heading to theaters this October.