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Tate Taylor got his start in his home state of Mississippi as a Hollywood production assistant alongside actor Octavia Spencer. Now, as a director and producer of big budget projects, Taylor is on a mission to bring big screen business back home.
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Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a comic but devastating Brooklyn odyssey about a sex worker who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or.
Baker accepted the prize with his movie’s star, Mikey Madison, watching in the audience at the Cannes closing ceremony Saturday. The win for “Anora” marks a new high point for Baker, the director of “The Florida Project.” It’s also, remarkably, the fifth straight Palme d’Or won by indie distributor Neon, following “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness” and last year’s winner, “Anatomy of a Fall.”
“This, literally, has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life,” said Baker, laughing.
LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images
But Baker, the first American filmmaker to win the Palme since Terrence Mallick in 2012 with “The Tree of Life,” quickly answered that his ambition would remain to “fight to keep cinema alive.” The 53-year-old director said the world needed reminding that “watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone, answering emails and half paying attention is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so.”
“So I say the future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater,” said Baker.
While “Anora” was arguably the most acclaimed film of the festival, its win was a slight surprise. Many expected either the gentle Indian drama “All We Imagine As Light” or the Iranian film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” to win. Both of those films also took home prizes.
It wasn’t the only jolt of the closing ceremony, though. Before George Lucas was given an honorary Palme d’Or, his old friend and sometimes collaborator Francis Ford Coppola appeared to present it to him, reuniting two of the most pivotal figures of the last half-century of American moviemaking.
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
“All We Imagine As Light,” about sisterhood in modern Mumbai, won the Grand Prix, Cannes’ second-highest honor. Payal Kapadia’s second feature was the first Indian in competition at Cannes in 30 years.
The jury awarded a special prize to Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a drama made secretly in Iran. Days ahead of the film’s premiere, Rasoulof, facing an eight-year prison sentence, fled Iran on foot. His film, which includes real footage from the 2022-2023 demonstrations in Iran, channels Iranian oppression into a family drama. The Cannes crowd met an emotional Rasoulof with a lengthy standing ovation.
Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore as a Hollywood actress who goes to gory extremes to remain youthful, won for best screenplay.
“I really believe that movies can change the world, so I hope this movie will be a little stone to build new foundations,” said Fargeat. “I really think we need a revolution and I don’t think it has really started yet.”
Some thought Moore might take best actress but that award instead went to an ensemble of actors: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz for Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug lord who transitions to a woman. Gascón, who accepted the award, is the first trans actor to win a major prize at Cannes.
SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images
“Emilia Perez” also won Cannes’ jury prize, giving a rare two awards at a festival where prizes are usually spread around.
Best actor went to Jesse Plemons for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness.” In the film, three stories are told with largely the same company of actors. Plemons, a standout in several chapters, didn’t attend the closing ceremony.
Portuguese director Miguel Gomes won best director for his “Grand Tour,” an Asian odyssey in which a man flees his fiancée from Rangoon in 1917.
“Sometimes I get lucky,” shrugged Gomes.
The Camera d’Or, the prize for best first feature across all of Cannes official selections, went to Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel for “Armand,” starring “The Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve. Tøndel is the grandson of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actor Liv Ullman.
During the brief awards ceremony, Lucas was to be given an honorary Palme d’Or. During the festival, Cannes gave the same tribute to Meryl Streep and the Japanese anime factory Studio Ghibli.
Twenty years after her elimination from “American Idol,” Jennifer Hudson is reaching new heights in her ever-evolving career. Her talk show “The Jennifer Hudson Show”, which premiered in 2022, was renewed for a third season earlier this year.
Hudson said she has come a long way since her Idol days, but the passion she had when she first started remains.
“I’ve been so blessed to do so many things because I do it for the love, the passion,” she said on “CBS Mornings” on Monday. “When I was eliminated from ‘American Idol,’ I’m like, ‘Well, you still have your talent and as long as you keep at it, it has no choice but to give in.”
That talent led her to receive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards —making her one of the few EGOT award winners in Hollywood.
Her talk show has been recognized with four Daytime Emmy nominations. It also received other awards, including this year’s NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Talk Series and a GLAAD Excellence in Media Award.
As her third season kicks off, Hudson is incorporating her talented voice in an upcoming segment with country music singer Chris Stapleton.
“I love blending my roles with music, and you know, just being a host and having artists that I love and admire come on the show, and Chris Stapleton is one of my favorites,” she said.
Aside from singing and hosting, Hudson is starring in the new post-apocalyptic thriller “Breathe.”
The 42-year-old actress said her new role challenges her as an actress, as it was her first action film, and she got to do some of her own stunts.
Amid all of this, Hudson is balancing raising her son, David, who gave her a touching Mother’s Day surprise with a heartfelt letter.
“I had no idea that he was, you know, writing me a Mother’s Day letter. I could barely read through the tears. I thought it was the sweetest,” she said.
Analisa Novak is a content producer for CBS News and the Emmy-award-winning “CBS Mornings.” Based in Chicago, she specializes in covering live events and exclusive interviews for the show. Beyond her media work, Analisa is a United States Army veteran and holds a master’s degree in strategic communication from Quinnipiac University.
Bertolucci
It’s a bit like Little Italy in Kathmandu these days. Even the waiters of Yak and Yeti, the hotel the enigmatic director Bernardo Bertolucci and hisLittle Buddhafilm unit have made home for the last two months, have addedarrivedericis andgracias to their vocabulary.
A few are also trying their hand at being casting scouts – looking for two little “Brahmin boys with bright eyes” to play lamas in the film. And the pasta dishes have a nice zing these days.
As for Bertolucci himself, the tall and rugged-looking director sent the censor’s eyebrows skywards with provocative films like The Last Tango in Paris and La Luna, and made celluloid history with 1900 and The Last Emperor.
But he’s probably the most invisible VVIP in Kathmandu, leaving the hotel after dawn or staying holed up alone in the penthouse suite with his notes and faxes from Europe.
That is if he’s not disappearing into Bhutan on a location-hunting recce, as he did last fortnight. Part of the film may be shot in some Chinese monasteries. And the film unit was even considering shooting part of it in India.
the shrine at Bouddha
As for the stars and the story ofLittle Buddha, they must be the best-kept secrets in this little Hindu kingdom nestling in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Government of Nepal has not even asked for the script of the film.
A precedent. The hotel only lists “actor, actress…” in its reservations charts – and the buzz around town is that Kevin Costner is expected. Mystery surrounds the two young children coming from Seattle, Washington.
There is an impenetrable curtain of silence drawn across the Little Buddha. Yet, Bertolucci’s men work long days re-creating Kapilavastu in corners of Kathmandu and throughout Nepal. They are fanning out to the various Buddhist shrines and even erecting a set in Lumbini, 170 km south of Kathmandu, the birth place of the Buddha.
With Bertolucci like an ominous guild master from the days of the Renaissance, old worlds are conjured up in Patan, Bhaktapur, Gokurna Park, Bouddha and Lumbini, even in monasteries – as far away as Jomson.
Nearly 30 carpenters and craftsmen from Italy are working closely with Nepalese carpenters in the master workshop in Patan’s industrial estate, where entire palaces are being constructed to be shipped elsewhere. For example, Hanuman Dhoka in the heart of Kathmandu is being re-created here because it would be impossible to film in the busy square.
So while the workers chip away at the wood and bamboo – with an architect from London faxing detailed blueprints of the palaces to be re-created – the Nepalese Government is watching from a distance.
With great expectations. And with an unheard of carte blanche for Bertolucci. The director has had an audience with the King and Queen, and met the prime minister too. The ministeries concerned have waived cumbersome and costly procedures for importing film and certain duties.
Why is he being treated like an emperor? Vijay Kumar Gachchadar, the minister of state for communications, explains that the film will do wonders for tourism in Nepal. And also inject a significant amount of money into the economy: “They will spend about $44 million here. Almost 400 people will be employed by them and they have even set up a temporary film laboratory here.”
The minister, however, may be a little over-enthusiastic: the stars’ salaries could be included in the figure quoted, and some 20 Indians will also to be working in the film.
A senior bureaucrat is more candid: “The Little Buddha will do for Nepal what The Last Emperor did for China and what the Department of Tourism has never done for Nepal.” Certainly, the cash flow has begun.
The Yak and Yeti alone will have registered 9,000 tourists by the time the film shooting is over in mid-December. And when Bertolucci’s whole unit – nearly 500 from Europe – arrives in the third week of September, the cash registers won’t stop ringing.
The Nepalese expect a windfall, for they have implicit faith in the director’s ability to put Nepal on the international film-making map, and are impressed by the proven track record of the dynamic producer Jeremy Thomas, amajor galvanising figure behind The Last Emperor.
Sets being erected in Bhaktapur
Bertolucci has also been careful not to tread on any toes. The film unit made generous contributions to old Buddhist centres like Bouddha.
Gyan Bahadur Nyachain, mayor of Bhaktapur where a summer palace will be erected in the Darbar Square, told India Today that he was given an assurance that the film makers would respect their temple complex and sentiments. The Archaeological Survey of Nepal has insisted that the walls of temples and monasteries should not be touched – hence the plywood and fibreglass replicas.
The big mystery, of course, remains the story-line of the film. It is obviously not the life of the Buddha – no retreading Herman Hesse territory. In fact, only about a quarter of the film relates to the Buddha’s life, according to a Nepalese cineaste who has seen the synopsis.
And that too as part of a monk’s explanation of Buddhism to an American. Rather, the film is about Buddhism, a currently hot topic in the West with matinee idols like Richard Gere and Harrison Ford choosing the eightfold path and the number of occidental Buddhists growing rapidly.
Bertolucci’s certainly chosen a subject of wide and widening international appeal. And by bringing Americans into the picture, he has a ready-made international audience and Oscar possibilities. Apparently, the film revolves around an American who comes to the subcontinent and is fascinated by the lives of Buddhist monks.
But the real gist of the film may be something entirely different. The Nepalese grape-vine has it that the film is about an American child who is a reincarnated lama. The film’s title would certainly indicate so. In fact, brochures of the film show two of those startlingly blue eyes from the Bouddha shrine floating over the skyscrapers of New York. Little Buddha’s watching.
According to the reputed Italian newsmagazine, L’Espresso, the film is about an American child believed to be the reincarnation of an important lama. A Buddhist monk traces him to New York, brings him back and tutors him about his past and Buddhism.
The article claims Bertolucci was inspired by the story of the Spanish child who was taken to Dharamsala in the mid ’80s, supposedly because he was a reincarnated lama.
Whatever be the story, the irony is that Bertolucci chose the world’s only Hindu state to make a film on Buddhism.
Published By:
AtMigration
Published On:
Dec 31, 2012
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