‘The Listener’ Review: Steve Buscemi’s Latest Directorial Effort With Tessa Thompson Lacks Emotional Depth [Venice]

Victoria Beckham has cheekily promised fans she will let them know how her husband David’s “sticky stuff” tastes on a scale of 10. The 48-year-old fashion designer made the gag as she narrated a video of ex-footballer David, 47, collecting honey from bee hives at their £6 million Cotswolds estate. Victoria told her followers in a clip shared on her social media: “So, I’m here with David while he collects his sticky stuff.

Victoria Beckham just can’t wait to try husband David Beckham’s “sticky stuff!”

The list of narrators for the audio version of Bob Dylan’s new book has been revealed. Because, after spending twelve years writing his examination of modern songwriting, he’s fucked if he’s going to spend hours in a studio reading it himself.So, instead, the 66 essays that make up ‘The Philosophy Of Modern Song’ will be read aloud by the likes of Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren, Sissy Spacek, John Goodman, Renée Zellweger and Jeff Bridges.Dylan – who won the Nobel Prize For Literature for his own lyrics in 2016 – started work on the book in 2010, giving his own critiques of a wide range of songs and culminating in what publisher Simon & Schuster calls “his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music”.Before you get all excited about getting insight into what Bob Dylan thinks of modern musicians like Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran (which I know you were), you should probably know that his definition of ‘modern’ pop music is a bit different to yours.

Jessica Kiang If ever you’ve glanced into lit-up living rooms while driving down a suburban street at dusk, or glimpsed a neighbor’s apartment over their shoulder when you drop off a package, and found yourself idly wondering not just what the inhabitants’ lives are like, but what maybe your life would be like if you occupied those exotic domestic spaces — well, has mischievous Korean miniaturist Hong Sangsoo made a movie for you. “Walk Up,” the festival darling’s latest benignly sozzled, black-and-white delight, daydreams around that idea, its gentle profundity smuggled in under cover of multilevel playfulness. The movie is a play on time, on imaginative shoestring filmmaking, and on Hong’s own persona. It’s even a play on words, with its three stories sprouting out from each other over three separate stories of the same Seoul walk-up. 

David Beckham couldn't hide his emotions as he finally filed past the Queen's coffin to pay his respects to the late monarch. The former Manchester United and England star joined the hundreds of thousands of other mourners who have queued to pay their last tributes to Queen Elizabeth II.

Guy Lodge Film Critic At the 1987 Conservative Party Conference in Britain, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher issued one of the most grimly memorable quotes of her career: “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.” For many of us, it’s a line that now sounds so archaically out of step with contemporary life as to be comical — that “inalienable right” wording ironically appropriated by many a queer-rights cause — though you need only look at Florida’s recent Don’t Say Gay bill to know that Thatcher’s sentiments live among us still. A frank, piercing debut from British writer-director Georgia Oakley, “Blue Jean” is a Thatcher-era period piece that crisply evokes that climate of politically propagated homophobia without preserving it in amber: It effectively puts the past in tacit dialogue with the present.

In his acting life, Steve Buscemi has certainly mixed things up, finding time for Bruckheimer/Simpson blockbusters, Pixar animation and even Adam Sandler movies in a bid to avoid typecasting as the definitive New York indie guy. In his directing career, however, he tends to stick to a certain genre: small, intimate, personal films like his excellent 1996 debut Trees Lounge, which told the story of a melancholic underachiever whose life revolves around a seedy dive bar where the crowd of misfit regulars become his bizarre de facto family. Loneliness is a familiar motif in Buscemi’s work, and he excelled himself with that in 2005’s Lonesome Jim, starring Casey Affleck as a young man who’s failed in the big city and now has to move in with his parents.

Tessa Thompson rocked a new look at the latest premiere during the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern devastated the Venice Film Festival with the world premiere of Florian Zeller’s “The Son,” which earned a 10-minute standing ovation. Jackman appeared visibly moved during the  film’s reception, as did the audience. Jackman hugged his young co-star Zen McGrath amid the ovation. The film, which centers on a gut-wrenching family tragedy, led to audible gasps from viewers during one dramatic scene. Based on this rapturous reception, Zeller might be back for more Oscar glory with “The Son.”“The Son” centers on “a family as it falls apart and tries to come back together again,” according to Sony Pictures Classics’ official synopsis. Jackman stars as a father whose 17-year-old son comes to live with him after deciding he can no longer stay with his mother (Dern) years after his parents’ divorce. Jackson’s character, Peter, has a new partner, Kirby’s Beth. As Peter overextends himself to give his son a better life. 

Lightning strikes twice for filmmaker Bill Pohlad in his sophomore feature “Dreamin’ Wild.” The producer-turned-writer-director follows up the promise of his bifurcated Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy” with another moving tale of personal and artistic redemption. His recounting of Donnie and Joe Emerson’s resurgence over three decades after the release of their only album captures not just musicians but also something of the quality of the music itself.

Heavy on Loachian social realism and undergirded by the intensity and heavy stakes of a Safdie Brothers flick, Juan Diego Botto’s gritty eviction thriller “On the Fringe” — produced by Penélope Cruz, who also lends her name to the billing sheet — makes for hard-hitting stuff. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival today in the Orrizonti section, here’s a slice of agitprop that feels as timely as ever, with the energy crisis surging across Europe, the costs of living rocketing from shore to shore, and society’s most marginalized left to pick up the tab.  Anyone with half a heart and half a brain will be quickly won over by its interweaving stories, following three different people in the same Spanish city living under the cold, foreboding shadow of red-stamp eviction notices: though a little baggy in the second act, the first and final thirty-minutes are appropriately earnest and affecting.

Tessa Thompson stole the red carpet spotlight with her dramatic look at the Don’t Worry Darling during the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Monday (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Following her outstanding and irreverent directorial debut, “Booksmart,” actor-turned-filmmaker Olivia Wilde returns with a much more ambitious effort in “Don’t Worry Darling.” Taking the mystery box route, “Twilight Zone” meets “The Stepford Wives,” with a little dash of “The Matrix,” the audacious film is ultimately a misfire because of its overextending mystery conceit. But regardless, it’s a well-crafted film that shows Wilde’s debut was no fluke.

Victoria Beckham took to social media on Saturday with a message for her son Brooklyn Beckham, 23, after his latest interview with Vogue Hong Kong.MORE: Victoria Beckham wows in plunging dress for date night with David BeckhamThe fashion mogul's reaction comes just hours after her firstborn was noticeably absent from his younger brother Romeo's 20th birthday celebrations where dad David, brother Cruz, 17, and sister Harper, 11 united at Geko, a lavish restaurant in Miami.WATCH: Victoria Beckham is a fashion icon at Harper Seven's 11th birthday bashResponding to the interview, the 48-year-old shared a photo that read: "Looking good Bust, @brooklynpeltzbeckham," and added an avatar of herself shaping a heart with her hands.MORE: Victoria Beckham reveals Romeo's epic 20th birthday cake - and you won't believe itREAD:  Brooklyn Beckham talks relationship with siblings and parents David and Victoria following feud reportsIn the photo, Brooklyn wore a black top and pair of jeans as he knelt in a garden while being showered with water coming off of the sprinklers. David Beckham shared the same messageThere have been reports in recent months of a growing 'feud' between Brooklyn and his new wife Nicola Peltz with his parents, and Brooklyn hasn't been photographed with his family since his wedding April.Despite the noticeable distance from his family, talking to Variety magazine he and Nicola addressed the suspected rift, and the Tranformersstar also revealed that she didn't reject the idea of Victoria designing her wedding gown.Nicola told the publication that she initially intended to wear a dress designed by her mother-in-law.

The stars are stepping out for Il Ballo Della Luce!

Romeo Beckham reached a major milestone this week as the footballer celebrated his 20th birthday, but brother Brooklyn was absent from his party.READ: Nicola Peltz's favourite jeans style might have been influenced by Brooklyn BeckhamThe event featured the rest of the Beckhams, and a few days after the party dad David responded to the latest interview that Brooklyn had given to Vogue Hong Kong. Sharing a photo from the photoshoot, that saw the 23-year-old kneeling down while being showered with water, David simply wrote: "Looking good Bust."WATCH: Brooklyn Beckham bonds with father-in-law Nelson PeltzThe cover image featured Brooklyn wearing a black top and pair of jeans as he knelt in a garden while being showered with water coming off of the sprinklers.MORE: Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz enjoy rare family night outSEE: Nicola Peltz Beckham is a nineties dream in band T-shirt and jeansThere have been reports in recent months of a growing 'feud' between the eldest of the Beckham children and his parents, and Brooklyn hasn't been photographed with his family since his wedding to Nicola Peltz in April.Brooklyn also failed to reunite with his family during his honeymoon in the South of France.

Tessa Thompson is rocking two more looks at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

Manori Ravindran International Editor High-profile espionage cases in the post-war period often invoke the grisly fate of the Rosenbergs, the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed by electric chair for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet Union in peace time. But in the new documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” filmmaker Steve James tells the incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia — and got away with it. The Participant and Kartemquin Films-produced documentary, which has its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 2, is one of a number of films at this year’s festival that tackle the topic of nuclear disaster: Projects from Noah Baumbach’s feature adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” through to Oliver Stone’s on-the-nose documentary “Nuclear” all contemplate some aspect of our nuclear past and future.