Accepting his award for director of the year for Jarhead at the Hollywood Film Festival last week, Sam Mendes quipped: "I'm very fond of giving awards to movies you've never seen. To those of you who've seen the movie, thank you very much. To those of you who haven't - it's perfect."
Although the voters had seen Jarhead, several other prize-winning films had not been seen by the 15-member jury, among them The Producers, Memoirs of a Geisha and King Kong. Asked how those films were deemed winners, considering they were unfinished at the time of voting, organiser Carlos de Abreu said his committee had received "intelligence" from people who had seen footage of the films as they were being edited.
Meanwhile, the four front-runners in the nominations for this year's British Independent Film Awards are all movies that have yet to open in Britain: Mrs Henderson Presents and The Libertine, with eight nominations each, The Constant Gardener (seven) and A Cock and Bull Story (five).
Older, not wiser
Interviewed in the new issue of Vanity Fair, Woody Allen gives himself just a B grade for his body of work and laments never having made as great a movie as 8 1/2 or The Seventh Seal. He also says he has learned little or nothing with age.
"All the crap that they tell you about getting joy and having a kind of wisdom in your golden years, it's all tripe," says Allen, who will turn 70 next month. "I've gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again today."
Allen's new movie, Match Point, his best in years, opens here on January 6th.
Foreigners rule US take
Unusually, the majority of movies on the US box-office top 10 this week are the work of non-American directors. There are two films by New Zealanders, Martin Campbell's The Legend of Zorro and Niki Caro's North Country; two by English directors, Nick Park and Steve Box's Wallace & Gromit and Rupert Wainwright's The Fog; one by a German, Robert Schwentke's Flightplan; and one by a Polish director, Andrzej Bartkowiak's Doom. The only Americans on the chart are Darren Lynn Bousman (with Saw II), Ben Younger (Prime), Gore Verbinski (The Weather Man) and John Gatins (Dreamer).
Gérard can't take it anymore
Gérard Depardieu, one of the busiest actors in world cinema, has told Le Parisien that he's quitting movies as soon as he finishes work on Michou d'Auber, a drama set during the Algerian war of independence. "I have nothing to lose," says Depardieu, who turns 57 next month. "I've made 170 films. I have nothing left to prove."
However, Depardieu's agent, Claude Davy, says he has been hearing such declarations for "at least a decade", although he admitted it was true that the actor was "increasingly tired of the movie business". He may do "one movie every three years rather than three every year", Davy said.
What Chloë said next
Last week Chloë Sevigny was declaring her immunity from avian flu. Now she says The Brown Bunny, in which she has a graphic oral sex scene with Vincent Gallo, is "an art film" that "should be playing in museums". She also said that she wants to be married before she has children.
"That's one thing I hate about celebrities in America, this lack of respect for the institution of marriage. You know - Renée Zellweger, she's married for, what, 30 days? I mean, come on! I just get really angry."
Sevigny added: "I can't make a single decision myself. My mom's in town today. I need to buy window shades. But there are a thousand different kinds. Really - there are too many options in the world. Can't we just have two different kinds of shades, and that's it?
"I'm a 30-year-old woman. You'd think I'd be able to make a decision on my own. But it's just overwhelming."
