Latest news with #WernerHerzog
Khaleej Times
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
US actor Kim Novak to receive Venice film festival career award
Kim Novak, a Hollywood diva from the 1950s and 1960s who starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, will be honoured with a lifetime achievement award at this year's Venice Film Festival, organisers said on Monday. Best known for her starring role in the 1958 psychological thriller, Novak also held notable roles in classics such as Kiss Me, Stupid by Billy Wilder, as well as Picnic and The Man with the Golden Arm. The 92-year-old actor will be given the so-called Golden Lion for "inadvertently becoming a screen legend", the festival's Artistic Director Alberto Barbera said in a statement. "Kim Novak was one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films, from her auspicious debut during the mid-1950s until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles a short while later," Barbera said, calling her independent and nonconformist. The documentary Kim Novak's Vertigo by Swiss-American film director Alexandre Philippe, made in cooperation with the actor, will be premiered at the festival to accompany the award, organizers said. "I am deeply, deeply touched to receive the prestigious Golden Lion Award from such an enormously respected film festival. To be recognised for my body of work at this time in my life is a dream come true," Novak said in the statement. The 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival will run from August 27 to September 6, 2025. Werner Herzog, the veteran German director of "Fitzcarraldo", will also receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement this year. The line-up of films in competition is due to be revealed in July.
Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Burden of Dreams (1982) review — the engrossing Fitzcarraldo backstory
The opening titles of Les Blank's behind-the-scenes documentary boast that it's 'starring' the director Werner Herzog. A documentary? Starring? And yet that's exactly what you get in this gruelling and engrossing Fitzcarraldo backstory. The production is a litany of disasters. Jason Robards, the lead actor, exits with dysentery, followed by his co-star Mick Jagger. The Robards replacement Klaus Kinski is furious with the remote Peruvian location, hissing, 'You can't escape this f***ing stinking camp!' Bulldozers break down. Ships don't work. City sex workers are bizarrely bussed in for the male crew to neutralise the possibility of intimate, and thus culturally sensitive, relations with local indigenous women. Throughout all this there's Herzog, captain of the ship (he remains on the film's steamship when it runs aground),
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Burden of Dreams review – on-location account of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is a gruelling delight
In 1982, film-maker Les Blank released this sombre, thoughtful, quietly awestruck documentary account of Werner Herzog's crazy sisyphean struggle in a remote and dangerous Peruvian jungle location, making his extraordinary drama Fitzcarraldo, which came out the same year. Fitzcarraldo was Herzog's own bizarre and brilliant story idea, crazily amplifying and exaggerating a case from real life. Early 20th-century opera enthusiast Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, played with straw-hair and mad blue eyes by Klaus Kinski, goes into the rubber trade to make enough money to realise his dream of building an opera house in the Peruvian port town of Iquito; he works out that the steamship needed to transport materials can only be brought into the required stretch of water by dragging it across land between two tributaries. This is a crazy, magnificent and operatic obsession, more grandiose than anything that could be presented on stage, for which he will need Indigenous peoples as slave labour to haul the ship. By playing these tribes his Caruso records on an old gramophone player, he persuades them he is a white god who must be obeyed. In the original case, an entrepreneur (called Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald) reportedly transported a 300-ton ship across land by disassembling it into a couple of dozen pieces; Herzog insisted on shifting the ship whole, and moreover insisted on filming these scenes in the remote interior, not near Iquito itself – which would have been far easier and probably would have looked the same. In the jungle, the cast and crew suffered the agonies of early settlers and colonial adventurers: illness, discomfort, poison-arrow attacks and, above all, mind-bending boredom as the weather meant that nothing could be done for months at a time. Perhaps no other period movie in history has so closely duplicated the subject matter in its gruelling shoot. Herzog's original lead casting, Jason Robards, dropped out with amoebic dysentery and Mick Jagger, who was to play the innocent sidekick, evidently saw what an ordeal he was in for and dropped out as well, citing the need to record the album Tattoo You. Herzog surrendered to the inevitable and cast his old frenemy-slash-muse Kinski; but the mercurial hothead-genius was naturally hurt at not being first choice and made everyone's life hell with arguments and complaints. And it is difficult to get your head around the thought of what it must have been like for the cast and crew just waiting, waiting, waiting for Herzog to decree that, yes, we can shoot. This is a strangely subdued documentary, recorded as it was more or less contemporaneously with the film itself but which doesn't fully show the nightmarish things which were soon to become legendary. (Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper's 1991 film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, about the horror of making Coppola's Apocalypse Now in the late 70s, had the advantage of time and gave us far more juicy and scary material.) Herzog himself is shown talking mournfully about his disasters: the light-plane crashes that are supposed to have critically injured some people and paralysed another. (But these people are not named. What actually happened?) We do however see the darkness and intensity of Herzog himself as he descants on how much he loves but also hates the jungle in that unmistakable voice of his. 'The birds don't sing … they just screech in pain. Theirs is the harmony of overwhelming collective murder … I love it against my better judgment.' Amazingly, Herzog always looks in pretty good shape, considering what he's gone through, and put others through. His burden of dreams is borne with some style. It's a good curtain-raiser to the film itself. Burden of Dreams is in UK cinemas from 23 May.
Extra.ie
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Domhnall Gleeson joins star-studded cast in upcoming Werner Herzog film
Domhnall Gleeson has joined a star-studded cast for a new production which was largely shot in Dublin. The About Time actor stars alongside sisters Kate and Rooney Mara in the cast of the upcoming Werner Herzog film Bucking Fastard. The production, which completed filming last weekend, was shot in Dublin, Sligo, and Slovenia and is expected to be shown to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival this month. Domhnall Gleeson has joined a star studded cast for a new production currently shooting in Dublin. Pic: John Phillips/BAFTA/Getty Images for BAFTA The film, which is written and directed by Werner Herzog, is being produced by Ariel Leon Isacovitch and Agnes Chu along with Andrea Bucko and Emanuele Moretti of Cobalt Sky Motion Picture Group, and Clara Wu Tsai. Bucking Fastard marks the first time the sisters have worked together, with the film being based on the true story of inseparable twin sisters Joan and Jean, who live on the fringes of society. The film also stars actor Orlando Bloom who plays their rowdy ex-lover Gareth Mulroney, while Gleeson will portray Timothy, their government-issued social worker who is trying to help them adapt to modern life after the two become tabloid sensations. The About Time actor stars alongside sisters Kate and Rooney Mara in the cast of the upcoming Werner Herzog film Bucking Fastard. Pic: Getty Images Speaking about the film, Herzog said: 'Bucking Fastard is a film that, for me, completes a circle in an operatic triptych with my previous films, Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man. 'We cannot see the world as Jean and Joan Holbrooke see it, but we do see how the world reacts to them – through the courts and the press, through those that want to help and those who want to use them, through the eyes of beasts both tame and wild, and even through their own echoes in the core of the earth.' Two-time Oscar nominee Rooney has previously filmed in Ireland, having starred in The Secret Scripture directed by Jim Sheridan. The film also stars actor Orlando Bloom who plays their rowdy ex-lover Gareth Mulroney, while Gleeson will portrays Timothy, their government-issued social worker who is trying to help them adapt to modern life after the two become tabloid sensations. Pic: Matt Winkelmeyer/FilmMagic Speaking on her time shooting here, she remarked to the Times: 'I felt completely at home in Ireland. Except that doing the Irish accent was hard. It's a hard accent to master and one that – even I can hear – often ends up being done horribly. Doing it was terrifying. Especially being on set with real Irish people.' Rooney most recently featured in the Orion Pictures drama Women Talking from writer-director Sarah Polley, while Kate is best known for starring in the FX series Class of '09 and is up next in the sci-fi thriller The Astronaut. Eagle eyed fans had previously spotted the sisters shooting on Dublin's Capel Street.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Werner Herzog to receive Venice Int'l Film Festival's Lifetime Golden Lion
April 8 (UPI) -- German filmmaker Werner Herzog was announced as the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. The festival, scheduled for Aug. 27-Sept. 6 as part of La Biennale di Venezia, will see Herzog officially presented with the award, after the board of directors accepted the recommendation of Alberto Barbera, the festival's artistic director. Herzog is known for directing films including Signs of Life; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Grizzly Man. His acting credits include The Mandalorian, Parks & Recreation and the film Jack Reacher. "I feel deeply honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Golden Lion by the Venice Biennale," Herzog said in a statement. "I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work. Thank you. However, I have not gone into retirement. I work as always." #BiennaleCinema2025 The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of #Venezia82 goes to the great German director #WernerHerzog. "I feel deeply honoured to receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by #LaBiennaleDiVenezia. I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and... La Biennale di Venezia (@la_Biennale) April 8, 2025 Herzog has just completed a documentary called Ghost Elephants in Africa and is starting filming for his next feature film, Bucking Fastard, in Ireland. "I am developing an animated film, based on my novel, The Twilight World, and I am acting the voice of a creature in Bong Joon Ho's upcoming animated film. I am not done yet," Herzog said. Barbera praised Herzog as "a physical filmmaker and indefatigable hiker." "Herzog constantly crosses the planet Earth pursuing hitherto unseen images, testing our ability to look, challenging us to grasp what lies beyond the appearance of reality and probing the limits of filmic representation in an unflagging search for a higher, ecstatic truth and new sensorial experiences," the artistic director said.
