The university city of Thessaloniki is full of students in casual garb, but at the film festival, actors and filmmakers wear a range of looks.
11-15-09: Jane Birkin, star of Jacques Rivette’s Around a Small Mountain said her luggage was lost, so she borrowed a dress off the back of young festival staffer Chloé, and boots from director Despina Mouzaki. Birkin is known in fashion circles for the Hermès bag named for her.
11-16-09: Actress Gi-Youn Kim and director Seo Lee from the Korean thriller, Missing Person were a contrast in styles.
11-17-09: Sporting a Ramones t-shirt, Romanian director Radu Jude discussed his film, The Happiest Girl in the World (in which a cinematographer sports a Ramones t-shirt).
11-18-09: Director Rigoberto Perezcano wore black from head to toe, along with star Harold Torres, who in no way resembled his character in the Mexican border-crossing drama, Norteado.
When I arrived in Greece earlier this week for the 50th Thessaloniki Int’l Film Festival, I was greeted with a big surprise. In past years, this was a smoker’s paradise. Now, in line with the rest of the EU, public smoking is banned in Greece (except for designated areas in eating/drinking establishments), including all of Thessaloniki’s festival venues. To illustrate the rule, clever shots of actors smoking feature the “banned” symbol. Here are some examples:
That’s quite a comment thread on Anne Thompson’s Scott Foundas story.
Fantastical (fantastic + whimsical) is the best word I can come up with to describe the output of Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Tim Burton, and sometimes Sophia Coppola.
Their playful, artful films mine the world of daydreams and childhood. I’ve noticed that the fans of these filmmakers are on average decades younger than the usual art-house crowd.
Anderson has been out in full-throttle Fox publicity-tour-mode for “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” I caught him with his regular star, Jason Schwartzman yesterday evening at the cool café/performance space, 92Y Tribeca, where the two were so hilarious I didn’t mind that the film was not screened at the event. I can’t wait to see it, though— it looks like a barrel of monkeys.
Here’s a tiny glimpse of the audience Q&A, my favorite questions and answers, paraphrased from memory:
Q: What movie would you like to remake?
A: Schwartzman- I’d love to see many filmmakers make the same film, like musicians covering the same song.
Q: Could you talk about the use of Futura in all your films?
A: Anderson- A font question! Stanley Kubrick used it, too, and it’s very possible I may have noticed that.
The pair seemed comfortable riffing with each other and giving odd and surprising answers to the usual boilerplate questions asked at these events.
10-18-09: Looks like someone had fun painting the mural on the construction site adjacent to the IFC Center.
As Brian Brooks wrote in indieWIRE, “New York’s IFC Center is expanding its venue from three to five auditoriums, augmenting the arthouse theater’s capacity by 25%. Construction is underway, in the space once used as a bar and restaurant, and the new theaters are expected to open to the public in early 2010.”
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