Taormina Film Festival Winners

The Italian movie "From the Waist Up" (Dalla vita in Poi) not only won the Taormina Film Festival top prize, the "Golden Tauro", but also got the awards for "Best actress" (Cristina Capotondi) and "Best Actor" (Filippo Nigro).

Best Actress winner Cristina Capotondi and Cast of Golden Tauro winner "From the Waist Up"

The only other prize awarded by the international jury went to Spanish director Jorge Coira for "Best Director" of the movie "18 Meals".

The German movie "Friendship" was awarded the top prize by the audience jury, and the student jury awarded the film Brazilian film "Besouro" as well as "53 Dias de Invierno" from Spain.

The Sicilian short film award went to "Rec Stop and Play".

Robert De Niro Master Class

In a master class at the 2010 Taormina Film Festival, the cinema "ueber"-icon Robert De Niro talks about his work as a Director, his recent successes in comedies and how working with Michael Mann turned him into a potential bank robber.

We just saw the movie “The Good Shepherd” which you directed - what attracted you to this story about the CIA?

Robert De Niro: Intelligence - any intelligence service - is interesting to me. That whole world is fascinating. It's fascinating stuff - great stuff for a movie.

How could the story develop? What would be the sequel?

Robert De Niro: The first sequel would be from 61 to 89 – covering the building of the wall to the falling of the wall. That's what the intention is. The next one if I ever did it would be to the present.

Mainstream American cinema is not providing the same pleasures as when I was young. Enteraining and smart cinema seems to go away. Do you feel that you arrivedat exactly the right moment to do your career?

Robert De Niro: There are more independent films being made than when I started out. There was de palma and others but today it seems there's a whole lot more. Now there is a swing to spectacle cartoon type situations - they are all fine, but I don't know how I fit in that kind of stuff. Then again, you do see more movies that are made independantly than in the 60s and 70s.

You produced over forty films - How do you select the film you will produce?

Robert De Niro: We do all kinds of things - personally the kind of movies that I like are the ones that have a real story characters and so on. Making movies is so hard - making “The Good Shepherd” was such an uphill struggle because it was a big budget. So you have to get the actors that can support the movie from a business perspective. I don't know if in the end I will be able to do second part. Getting the script, right, getting the actors then getting the money - it's a long haul.

Now that you have done all three things that an actor can do – acting, directing, producing - which gives you the most pleasure?

Robert De Niro: Acting and then directing. When you're directing you have to do so many things at the same time – that takes a lot more of you . So I have to really want to direct the movies. It takes years to do all these things.

As an actor you can prepare but you still have days off even if your in most of the movie. Being Director is more satisfying because you make a lot of decisions that an actor cannot do. But it can be a nightmare.

It seems to me that the really fruitful collaborations between actor and director happen if they have the same passion but not the same vision. I read that you and Scorcese come from the same neighborhood but didn't know eachother very well.

Robert De Niro: We have a very sympathetic working relationship. We don't hang out together, but have great working relationship. He might be doing the movie for his reasons and me for mine. He has religious overtones, I'm not thinking in that direction.We do I think complement each other. He's very responsive to any kind of idea. If it doesn't work out he directs you in another direction towards compromise.

This makes me think of working with Michael Man on "Heat". It seems you do your best work when you work with somebody who is professional in all areas.

Robert De Niro: Michael Man really cares about what he's doing. There's a certain intensity to what he's doing. He creates that through the rehearsal process, so you get a sense that this is going to be special. In the case of “Heat”, we did all this training with guys who know how to do this - the heast and all that.

You could probably rob a bank now?

Robert De Niro: Probably that too

We shouldn't forget the comedies. You had enormous success in recent years with those. How do you feel about doing comedy?

Robert De Niro: I enjoy it. They are fun to do. Because they are not serious you can try things you normally wouldn't do from my sense. In that sense, its' fun. Even the big set pieces - that's fun too. It may be a relief. They're not that easy, you gotta think about what you're doing.

Robert De Niro Returns to Sicily for first time since Godfather and is not exciting

An either bored, seriously jetlagged or both Robert de Niro was met today by an enthusiastic Sicilian audience in the packed grand meeting hall of the Taormina conference center.
This was only de Niro's fourth visit to an island that seems to have determined so much of his "mafioso" roles, and his first since he made "Godfather", which was - yeah - now a long time ago.
The start of de Niro's "Master Class" was delayed by the fifteen minutes it took to clear out the alleys and front of the stage of worrysome-for-the-firemen audience members.
Once things got started off, de Niro chose to keep it bland - intelligence movies (like "The Good Shepherd") are "fascinating" to him as well as "great stuff" and directing is a "nightmare" - who would have thought?
The more interesting stuff came near the end - de Niro and Scorcese are working on what he described as "Goodfellas" like project based on a book called "I heard you paint Houses". Half of the script is done, the other one is still in development, and IMDB gives a release date of 2011. So another gangster based story. De Niro described the project as "ambitious" so it seems there's still a lot of work to do.
De Niro also half-way admitted that the comedies he did in recent years require a little less work for him than his usual character-acting-based dramatic personae, although he was quick to catching himself by saying that "they are not that easy".
(check out the transcript)

Disney Toy Story 3 World Premiere before 4000 People

Allegedly (and I guess everything in Sicily is "allegedly") 90.000 Dollars (or was it Euros?) went into making the 2000-year-old Greek theater 3D- ready for the World premiere of Disney's "Toy Story 3". The open-air screening in front of again allegedly 4000 people was allegedly the movie's world premiere - it was allegedly shown before the premiere screening in L.A.

The movie itself lived up to the high expectations one has for Pixar films - very entertaining, and always surprisingly engaging for a "toy story". The only potential criticism is that the 3D really didn't add much to the picture - the movie would have worked just as well in 2D.

So what's new in toy land? Well, things aren't looking so great - the toy owner has grown up and reached the ripe age of seventeen - so time to go to college, clean out the room at home, which also means: an uncertain future for his toys. Donation? Attic? Or even trash? These are the toy options.

Turns out all options become true one way or another, and along the way, the movie also features a traumatized strawberry-smelling bear, hilarious encounters between Ken and Barbie and to top it all off, Buzz discovers his Spanish side.

Overall, this is a movie definitely worth seeing, and a great start for this years Taormina Film Festival. Definitely not a "kids-only" movie, and it contains a level of darkness that might even be a little disturbing for more impressionable youngsters.

Ever so fashionable, in Italy, even 3D glasses come from Milano.