RobertoBenigni Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Some Juicy Nuggets of Forgotten Oscar Lore
Filed under: Oscar Watch »
With all the presenters' banter heavily scripted and a lot of the winners easy to guess beforehand, the only truly unpredictable part of the Academy Awards is the acceptance speeches. Those Hollywood types -- especially actors, who love being the center of attention and looove the sound of their own voices -- might say anything in a rush of excitement and emotion. Over at Esquire, they've compiled an amusing list of the various types of Oscar speeches: the Crusading Blowhard, the Weepy Babbler, the Short-and-Sweet, and so forth. Then, for added fun, they've dug up historical precedents for each of them. For example, Rita Moreno was the "Adorably" Bombastic Foreigner, cha-chaing up to the podium and shrieking into the microphone, long before Roberto Benigni embarrassed everyone with his antics. And while Juila Roberts was definitely a Meddling Presenter when she gave Denzel Washington his trophy, she was nothing compared to the way Frank Sinatra hogged Cary Grant's spotlight when he gave him his lifetime achievement award.
It's a fun list, presented in the ever-popular slide-show-with-occasional-ad-interruptions format. As a bonus, consider that each of the labels they've come up with for the types of speeches could also serve as the name of an obscure sexual maneuver. The Meddling Presenter indeed!
Bullets Fly at Roberto Benigni Recital
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy », Exhibition », Cinematical Indie »
You know, you go to a spoken word performance and you don't expect gunshots to be a worry unless the guy you're going to see is some big gansta or rabble rouser. I don't think Roberto Benigni, the man behind the Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful, is either of those -- especially when he's touring Italy with Tutto Dante (All Dante). It's a performance where he mixes Dante's writing with political satire. The CBC is reporting that while he was onstage and reciting a passage from The Divine Comedy, a man fired 6 shots at a young, 22-year-old security guard -- hitting him a number of times in the legs. Those classics, they're so incendiary! You have to give Benigni credit -- it seems that after this happened he said: "What, is hell here, too?" Ah, classic! No big details have been released, other than that the suspect, a 45-year-old man, had been trying to get into the performance without a ticket. After the shooting, he was arrested for attempted murder and the show eventually resumed. (How's that for dedication to your craft?!) As for the security guard, police say he will be in the hospital for the next month or so. Lesson be learned -- maniacal gunmen can turn up anywhere, even if Life is Beautiful.
Berlin Film Festival bears "morbid" offerings
Filed under: Berlin »
I loved this article's description of this year's entries at the Berlin Film
Festival as having no consistent theme except "a prevailing mood of harsh reality". Apparently, this year's
lineup at the Fest is marked by " brutal murder, drug addiction, political corruption, exorcism and rape". In
other words, it's a lot like the news - except that it stars Alan Rickman and Heath Ledger. Movies set to screen at
Berlin include Candy, starring Ledger as a heroin addict; Snow Cake, starring Alan "Yes, My Voice is Delicious and No,
I Won't Be Wearing a Freaking Cape in This One" Rickman, alongside co-star Sigourney Weaver; A Prairie Home Companion (which, unless I missed something, sports
neither rape nor exorcism); and new flicks from Terence Malick and Roberto Benigni. But, of course, audiences are flocking to the festival mostly for their dose of brutal murder. Sorry, Roberto. Perhaps if the concentration camp in Life is Beautiful hadn't looked so damn clean, you'd be allowed to hang out with the cool kids.
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