Last night, Vanessa Redgrave accepted a career achievement award during the Hamptons International Film Festival. Of course, if you know anything about the actress besides her work, you know that she doesn't bite her lip in awards situations. In the seventies, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting performance in Julia. Members of the Jewish Defense League protested the ceremony, the Academy got death threats, but Redgrave still won the Oscar, and in her speech, she said she wouldn't be influenced by "a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums - whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world, and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression."

The JDL continues to be less than a fan 30 years later, regardless of the actress supporting Israel's right to exist and fighting against Anti-Semitism. Chairman Shelley Rubin said before the appearance: "Even though many in the motion picture industry happen to be Jewish, any and all of them responsible for giving her work or honoring her as the Hamptons International Film Festival has done evidently suffer from either self-hatred or idol-worship." Meanwhile, festival chairman Stuart Match Suna said: "I'm a Jew who's visited Israel twice, and it's a very complex geographical, religious, and political situation there. Vanessa is a true artist who cares about humanity, and artists need to be provocative and provoke thought." I guess he's not one of the fans of summer fluff that rule the box office.

Anyhow, the night included a talk with fellow actor Alec Baldwin, and Redgrave discussed California spending more on prisons than schools, to which he said: "You're not going political on me now? Because you know I have no tolerance for that bullshit." She continued with: "We're losing all our human and democratic rights in all countries all over the world. If every politician devoted their entire attention to the well-being of children, they'd change everything in 10 years." That's not so incendiary, right? Then again, I don't think her acceptance speech was enough to label her a terrorist, like some have.

A weepie examination of female and sexual identity whose worth is roughly equal to that of a used Kleenex, Evening is a schmaltzy nostalgic fusion of clichéd melodrama and carpe-diem lessons about regret, love and courage. Based on Susan Minot's novel from a screenplay by the author and The Hours scribe Michael Cunningham, director Lajos Koltai's (Fateless) feature is a golden-hued eye-roller, full of gorgeous seaside locales, beautiful people, and oh-so-profound issues of life and death, not a one believable thanks to Koltai's insistent sappiness and a story that's familiar, goofy and unbearably corny. A bifurcated affair, Evening begins at the bedside vigil of dying Ann (Vanessa Redgrave), where her two daughters Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) argue over their differing life paths -- Constance is a suburban wife and mom of two, Nina is an aimless mess unable to commit to the boyfriend with whom she's expecting a child -- while listening to mom enigmatically prattle on about a man named Harris.

Commence flashbacks and the piano-and-flute score, because this soggy mystery is the film's meat-and-potatoes, as Minot's tale goes on to detail the momentous romance between young Ann (Claire Danes) and Dr. Harris (Patrick Wilson) at the 1950s Newport wedding of Ann's best friend Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer, who plays -- and in real life is -- the daughter of Meryl Streep). A Greenwich Village bohemian who pays her way singing in skuzzy nightclubs while dreaming of stardom, Ann arrives at Lila's cliffside mansion with Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy), a cheery fellow who drowns feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy about his writing talents (he dreams of being the next Hemingway) with alcohol. Koltai shoots this swanky setting like he's working on the latest J. Crew catalog spread, his overly sentimental images of the outstretched twilight ocean nicely meshing with dying Ann's faux-wondrous hallucinations about fireflies, butterflies, and a night nurse dressed in a sparkly evening gown. Every moment and aspect of Evening is suffocatingly twee and self-satisfied -- except, that is, for those brief occasions when it's just pitifully conventional.

We reported back in March that Keira Knightley had agreed to join her fellow Pride & Prejudice alums Joe Wright (director) and Paul Webster (producer) in the screen version of Ian McEwan's Booker-nominated novel, Atonement. After lying dormant for several month, the movie is once again in the news, and its cast is growing. According to Variety, Knightley will be sharing the screen with some pretty impressive talent: In addition to James McAvoy, already cast as the male lead, the cast now included British screen queens Brenda Blethyn and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as Romola Garai (you remember her, I'm sure, from Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights).

Currently shooting in the UK, the film "tells a series of interconnected stories, all of which hinge loosely on the childhood actions of Briony Tallis [to be played by Saoirse Ronan as a child, and Knightley as an adult], a privileged young girl with an overactive imagination." Among other things, young Briony imagines that her sister's boyfriend is a criminal, an erroneous accusation that causes problems for a whole lot of people.

Atonement will be released in the US by Focus some time next year.

Edit: Though Knightley was originally (erroneously, it appears) reported to be playing the adult Briony, she in fact plays Cecilia, the sister whose boyfriend is the victim of Briony's accusation. Thanks to Gerry for providing the correct casting information.

This gallery of production stills from Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow-up is so good, I couldn't pick just one image. So, above, model Veruschka lounges whilst David Hemmings, ever the picture of jaded post-Swinging London restraint, looks on. After the jump, Hemmings seems quite a bit more engaged to be working with Vanessa Redgrave. [via News of the Dead]