Damien Chazelle, director of Whiplash, is set to make his return to the big screen with his new feature, La La Land. The film is scheduled to open the 73rd Venice Film Festival in Italy, where it will have its world premiere on August 31. The Venetian screening will also mark the film’s world premiere.
La La Land is a musical romance set in Los Angeles. It tells the love story between Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a dedicated jazz musician who scrapes by playing piano gigs in dingy bars.
Chazelle’s new film re-unites him with Whiplash composer Justin Hurwitz, who co-wrote the score of songs in La La Land along with the Tony-nominated team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
La La Land’s U.S. theatrical release is set for December 2.
Joan could not conceive.
For several years, she and her husband tried unsuccessfully to have children. Then, they took up the offer to repatriate to the Shashemane district in Ethiopia, as part of an imperial decree granting land for resettlement - primarily as a reward for material and moral support given by the African Diaspora during the pre-WWII occupation of the country by Italy.
The move proved fortuitous, and not only in terms of her fertility. Today, some 26 years after crossing from West to East, Joan is the mother of six, the younger ones still teenagers. Moreover, the couple are successful entrepreneurs in the community and are at the forefront of securing ongoing development (the region already boasts an upscale resort and an expanded and upgraded secondary school.
Then there's the regal- looking Gladstone Robinson, NYC-born, but no stranger to either Jamaica (where he befriended Mortimmo Planno among others) nor to Ethiopia, where was among the original "pathfinders" who started the Shashemane settlement. Hispioneering ways extended to his chosen vocation, pharmacy, and he opened the the first Black-owned pharmacy in the city of Asmara, thriving among no less than eight Italian-owned establishments.
Those remarkable folks, among others,were part of a revealing and marvelous documentary, the final in a series printed by Dr Anta and Shiva Merritt, a series aptly titled Visions of Ethiopia. The series also focussed on the human/spiritual wonders that the monolithic churches of Lalibela, the holy city(see URL). Carved out of the bedrock sometime around the 11th Century, the churches, themselves amazing, also hold an amazing collection of unique Ethiopian crosses ( including one with the now dreaded swastika design co- opted by Der Furher himself.)
Part travelogue, part social and religious history, part development activism, Visions of Ethiopia is a much-needed antidote to the misinformation and myth about the only unconquered African territory.
Within the first 10 minutes of this movie, star (and producer) George Clooney has had sex and killed three persons (one them the sex partner he enjoyed the night before) before calmly heading to Rome, Italy.
Who were they? why did he kill them? Why did he feel threatened by them? Helmed by Anton Corbijn, this movie seems more skilled at raising questions, although that's not altogether a bad thing.
Of course, by the time Clooney's character links with his contact Larry (Bruce Altman of this fall’s Peter and Vandy), we've gathered that he is a contract killer. What then ensues is bit of a "working holiday" as Jack holes up in a small Italian town and relishes being away from death - but not far from weaponry - for a spell. For Jack is hard at work (and quietly too), fabricating a special rifle for an assignment in which he is personally not invovled, as specified by a Belgian woman, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten of Focus’ award-winning In Bruges). Uncountable minutes pass in silence as Jack applies himself to the craft. The reverie is broken only by his surprising friendship with the local priest, Father Benedetto (Italian screen and stage veteran Paolo Bonacelli) and sex with local prostitute Clara (Italian leading lady Violante Placido). Corbijn, hitherto known as the creative force behind videos for the likes of U2 and Depeche Mode, puts his prior photographic background to good use, giving us cobblestone lanes, and red-roof villas jumbled against hillside backdrops.
His deliberate pacing will faze many a local Jamaican viewer, weaned on thrill-a-minute action schlock (A Facebook discussion prior to this screening saw a youngster flat-out stating that "Clooney is for old people"). There is a chase (Clooney on Vespa, bad guy in compact), there is gunfire, and there is graphic nudity and some sex, but overall the film retains the coiled tension of the classic Euro-thrillers of the 70s and 80s.
In the words of Depeche Mode: enjoy the silence - and the spaces in between
