Angelina Jolie in Telluride, Queer Guadagnino’s Best Film, Joker Surprising and Dark

Rebecca Ford gets the deets on all the Venice happenings from Alberto Barbera at the end of this month, starting with Joker Folie a Deux:

Yes, I think so. If you expect just a second part of the previous one, exactly the same kind of narrative and situation and so on, you are wrong, because the theme is much darker. It is much more inventive from every point of view. It’s completely unexpected. I think it is very bold, and brave, and creative, and an incredibly original film.

High praise for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, a film that looks strong for Picture, Director, Actor. Calling it now, the film gets a ten-minute standing ovation at a minimum. This is the first thing I’ve read that makes me really excited to see it. He reconstructed Mexico City…wow.

There were three versions of the film. The first one was more than three hours long. The second one was two and one half. The final version is two hours and 15 minutes. I haven’t seen the last one, but the two versions I saw were really, really amazing. Luca reconstructed Mexico City in Cinecittá, in Rome, so the visual is completely abstract, is not realistic. Again, it’s very personal, very original, beautiful from the visual point of view. And all the performances are absolutely outstanding.

He might not have meant to tip us off to Maria heading to Telluride, but indeed, Angelia Jolie will be there. I’m a little worried about the mob scene at the Patron’s Brunch. That’s going to be like seagulls after someone drops a bag of chips on the beach — no, she isn’t a bag of chips. Just trying to draw an analogy. Don’t stop inviting me to screenings. Oh wait, too late.

He says:

Yes, of course. Angelina will be on the first day, on Thursday the 29, and she will leave right after with [Maria director] Pablo Larraín to go to Telluride. So Brad will arrive only on Saturday, to Venice. There is no way that they can cross each other at the Lido.

He doesn’t talk about Maria, though, otherwise.

This also intrigued me. The Oscar Expert and Brother Bro on YouTube had The Brutalist in their top ten. I thought that was interesting. And now I see why:

There will be, of course. For example, in the main competition, we have only 12 filmmakers that were already in competition with Venice. All the others are newcomers for the main competition, and there will be young filmmakers as well. One film that I think will be a big surprise is The Brutalist by Brady Corbet, which is an incredible film. It is a very long film: it is three hours and 35 minutes long. It was shot in 70mm. It’s an incredible film. Very brave, very ambitious, very personal.

And finally, he tells us what he thinks about Elon Musk, which is not different from what everyone in Hollywood thinks:

I was really upset when he decided to change the name from Twitter, to X, which I didn’t like it at all. And then recently, all the positions that Musk took, they’re not only embarrassing, they’re really dangerous. Twitter is becoming a tool for political agenda that I don’t like it at all. It was a free space before for discussion, debates, and whatever. Now it’s becoming something else, so I don’t like the idea of being part of it anymore.

This is a perfect illustration of how divided our country is because we’re not really a country – we’re an ideologically divergent world. I don’t know where it ends up but the open hostility by the side that makes movies for everyone is a problem for the industry, that’s all I know.

Anyway, looking forward to these films.