Redford digs into Lincoln assassination plot

TORONTO | Sun Sep 12, 2010 11:46am EDT

TORONTO (Reuters) - In his new film "The Conspirator," director Robert Redford digs into a little-known angle of one of the best-known moments in American history: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Instead of dealing with the shooting in the Ford's Theater in Washington, already a movie subject, Redford takes aim at a back story to the 1865 assassination of the U.S. president -- a complex plot that resulted in seven men and one woman being arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state.

Redford's independent film centers around that woman, Mary Surratt, played by Robin Wright, and the defense mounted by young lawyer Frederick Aiken, played by James McAvoy.

Surratt owned a boarding house where assassin John Wilkes Booth and others planned the multiple attacks. She was the first woman executed by the U.S. government.

It "is a story that very few, if any, know," Redford, whose film awards include an Oscar for directing "Ordinary People," told a news conference ahead of Saturday's gala screening of "The Conspirator" at the Toronto International Film Festival.

He said he was drawn to the "story that sits inside of a story that everybody knows -- the Lincoln assassination."

The nation wanted justice, and while the young lawyer Aiken realizes his client may be innocent, he understands that she is being used as bait to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt -- her own son, John.

Lincoln's assassination, as the U.S. Civil War was drawing to an end, threw the nation into disarray. Redford said present day America is not much different, in that it is a nation that is deeply divided on its opinions of its president, and of the president that went before.

Speaking on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, he added: "History is a series of loops. We keep repeating ourselves. Now we're living in a condition of confusion and anxiety and fear and that was the same thing 150 years ago."

The period drama's cast also includes Kevin Kline, Tom Wilkinson, Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood, and Alexis Bledel. The film arrived at the Toronto festival without a distributor.

(Reporting by Ka Yan Ng; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Gaga leads VMA nominees with 13, but Kanye looms (AP)

Music's wildest party � on television at least � convenes Sunday night at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles and the guest list couldn't be any more outrageous.

There's Lady Gaga, who will compete for top honors. She's nominated for 13 moonman trophies, setting a VMA record, and her nominations include two for video of the year � "Telephone," featuring Beyonce, and "Bad Romance."

Also on the invite list is Eminem, who is nominated eight times and is also up for video of the year for "Not Afraid." Then there's the ever-rowdy "Jersey Shore" gang, the ever-sassy Katy Perry, party girl Ke$ha, the cast of "Jackass" and Kim Kardashian.

And bad-girl comedian Chelsea Handler is the show's host.

But they might all be upstaged by Kanye West and Taylor Swift.

West is due to perform, but people aren't as interested in his performance as his potential antics. The rapper-producer has still not recovered from his actions at last year's VMAs in New York, when he took to the stage as Swift won the award for female video and declared it should have gone to Beyonce.

West endured intense backlash after that, despite an apology, and stepped away from the spotlight. He recounted it all last weekend in a Twitter rant, again apologizing to Swift and detailing the pain he endured.

West also said he has a song for her to sing, but Swift has other ideas: A person close to the singer says Swift will perform her own song about last year's incident on Sunday night's show, virtually assuring a continuation of the VMAs' trademark craziness.

___

Online:

http://www.mtv.com

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French New Wave film director Chabrol dies aged 80

By Daniel Flynn

PARIS | Sun Sep 12, 2010 10:24am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - Claude Chabrol, one of France's most eminent film directors and a pioneer of the influential New Wave style that revolutionized French cinema, died on Sunday at the age of 80.

Chabrol, a close friend of legendary New Wave directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard who broke with French cinematic tradition, was a prolific film-maker with some 60 movies to his name, including "Hell" and "The Butcher."

News of Chabrol's death, just a year after he released his last feature film "Bellamy" with actor Gerard Depardieu, was greeted with outpourings of sorrow from France's cultural and political elite.

"The whole of French cinema and France has lost one of its giants," said Martine Aubry, leader of the opposition Socialist party. "Claude Chabrol's cinema was one of the works which constructed our society's vision of itself."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, describing Chabrol as a "great author and great film-maker," said: "I am sure that we are all going to miss him."

Born on 24 June 1930 in Paris where his parents owned a prosperous pharmacy, Chabrol enjoyed a comfortable middle-class childhood. He studied a bachelors of art at the Sorbonne and spent time discussing film with the young Godard and Truffaut.

The three young men later became film critics for the hugely influential Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s, before launching careers as directors. They broke with French cinema's focus on historical costume dramas to introduce contemporary themes, ordinary protagonists and fragmented narrative structures.

INFLUENCED HOLLYWOOD

Le Beau Serge, Chabrol's 1959 breakthrough film produced with his wife's inheritance, is often cited as the first feature film of the New Wave. The film tackled existential themes including the isolation and absurdity of modern life and the middle-class obsession with appearances.

"We have too often the tendency to emphasize the tragic side of life, but I look at the funny side. I believe strongly in human nature," Chabrol said in a 2005 interview.

New Wave films, which met with major international critical and commercial success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, exerted a major influence on Hollywood works, such as Arthur Penn's taboo-busting "Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967.

The New Hollywood directors -- including Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and Brian de Palma -- were inspired by Chabrol and his contemporaries, while Oscar-winner Quentin Tarantino dedicated his 1992 movie "Reservoir Dogs" to Godard.

In the second half of the 1960s, Chabrol turned to a more conventional style of film-making, producing commercially successful films in France, many of them detective thrillers.

"I have at last come to appreciate that the public is always right .... Henceforth, my sole ambition is to satisfy the public," he said in an interview at this time.

However, throughout his career Chabrol's best films -- often working with well-known actresses like Emmanuelle Beart and Isabelle Huppert -- often peered behind the veneer of bourgeois respectability to discuss themes of jealousy, passion and betrayal with corruscating dark humor.

In 2005, he was awarded the Rene Clair prize for his body of work by the Academie Francaise.

"Each time that a director disappears, a particular way of looking at the world and an expression of our humanity is lost forever," France's Association of Film Directors said in a statement on Chabrol's passing.

(Additional reporting by Thierry Leveque; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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French filmmaker Claude Chabrol dies at 80 (AP)

PARIS � French director Claude Chabrol, one of the founders of the New Wave movement that revolutionized filmmaking in the late 1950s and '60s, died Sunday. He was 80.

Christophe Girard, who is responsible for cultural matters at Paris City Hall, announced the death on his blog. Other City Hall officials confirmed that Chabrol passed away, but declined to provide any details, including the cause of death.

A prolific director, Chabrol made more than 70 films and TV productions during his more than 50-year career. His first movie, 1958's "Le Beau Serge" won him considerable critical acclaim and was widely considered a sort of manifesto for the New Wave, or "Nouvelle Vague" movement, which also included directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

His movies looked critically at the French bourgeoisie, focusing on the foibles and hypocrisy of human nature. Often suspenseful, his work drew comparisons with that of Alfred Hitchcock.

His top films included "Les Biches," or "Bad Girls," from 1968 and 1970's "The Breach," as well as the 2000 mystery "Merci pour le chocolat."

Chabrol's last feature film, "Bellamy," came out last year.

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Favoritism charges follow Tarantino Venice awards

By Mike Collett-White and Silvia Aloisi

VENICE | Sun Sep 12, 2010 6:29am EDT

VENICE (Reuters) - Jury president Quentin Tarantino faced charges of favoritism Sunday after he handed out two major awards at Venice film festival to his friends, including best picture to his ex partner Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere."

Another friend and mentor Monte Hellman landed a special career award, and Spanish entry "Balada Triste de Trompeta," which picked up the director and screenplay prizes for Alex de la Iglesia, was widely panned by critics on the Lido waterfront.

Add to that a best actor award for Vincent Gallo in "Essential Killing," during which he uttered not a single word, and no prizes for Italian films, and Saturday's closing ceremony was one of the most unpredictable in years.

"The (jury) presidency of Quentin Tarantino runs the risk of being the most obvious conflict of interest, given that Somewhere and (Hellman's) Road to Nowhere seemed charming and intriguing but nothing more," wrote Paolo Mereghetti, veteran film critic for Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Sunday.

Tarantino was quick to reject suggestions of favoritism.

"I wasn't going to let anything like that affect me at all," he told reporters after the awards were announced at the end of the September 1-11 festival. "I was just going to literally respond to the film. There was no me steering any direction."

Somewhere, which won the prestigious Golden Lion best picture award, is an insider's look at the life of a Hollywood actor who becomes numb to life through drink, drugs and a string of one-night stands, and stars Stephen Dorff as Johnny Marco.

His days are divided between five-stars hotels, Ferraris and blonde pin-ups, but also loneliness, tiresome media attention and boredom, and he is finally faced with the question of where a life so enviable on the surface is ultimately heading.

The daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola partly based the film on her own experiences as a young girl following her famous father from one hotel to another.

Coppola's victory at least guarantees a high-profile end to a festival which many experts feel has been overshadowed this year by up-and-coming rival Toronto, which overlaps with Venice and is attracting many of the industry's biggest names.

VANISHING VINCENT

Balada Triste de Trompeta (The Last Circus) was ranked 17th out of 24 competition films in an informal critics' poll published for journalists in Venice.

The ultra-violent horror movie, which doubles as a metaphor for fascist Spain, was described in reviews as "the demented Spanish circus movie" and "loud, tedious and unattractive in every sense," although it had a handful of avid supporters.

A prize for Gallo's speechless turn as a suspected Taliban fighter on the run from U.S. troops came as less of a surprise, although it highlighted his bizarre behavior at the festival.

The actor and director shunned all publicity, arriving in Venice in a balaclava and refusing to hold a press conference for his own competition movie "Promises Written in Water." He did not take the stage to accept his award.

Some of the competition's best liked films and performances were overlooked, including that of Natalie Portman, who won praise for her powerful turn as a disturbed dancer in "Black Swan."

Also popular with critics were "Venus Noire," the true story of a woman brought from South Africa to Europe in 1810 and turned into a freak show, and Chile's "Post Mortem," which looks at the 1973 military coup through the eyes of a morgue employee.

"Potiche," a 1970s comedy starring Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, left empty-handed as well.

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