Russel Crowe. PHOTO: FILE
LOS ANGELES:
The Taormina film festival is an esteemed film festival which is held every year in Italy. It is said to be Italy’s oldest and most prestigious film festival since 1955.
Each year, the festival takes the responsibility to honour various film-makers and actors for their contribution to cinema.
Past recipients of the Taormina nod include Michael Douglas, Oliver Stone, Robert De Niro, Liam Neeson and Tom Cruise. In 2000, Cruise stood on the Greek amphitheater stage, greeted by hundreds of lit candles and a standing ovation, to celebrate his 38th birthday whilst he was promoting Mission: Impossible 2.
This year, Russell Crowe is set to attend the 59th Taormina Film Festival where he will be honoured with the ongoing fest’s Taormina Arte Award.
But Crowe’s presence this year at the Italo fest takes on special significance. It coincides with a radical reboot of the esteemed event by artistic director Mario Sesti, who is turning Taormina into a mainstream showcase focused on genre pictures, along with auteur movies.
From A Beautiful Mind to Gladiator, from Master and Commander to Man of Steel, Russell Crowe has proved to everyone, spectators and critics alike, that to be a great actor, you need to have both a great physical presence and a great mind: “Sort of like Taormina, which loves the belly of the moviemaking art — comedies and horror films — and also the high-mindedness of auteur cinema,” Sesti says.
Crowe and the cast of Man of Steel at Taormina. PHOTO: FILE
The Les’ Miserables’ actor’s Taormina career nod comes as he plays Jor-El, Superman’s biological father in Man of Steel, the role that was famously undertaken by Marlon Brando in Richard Donner’s 1978 rendition of Superman.
The eight day fest started June 15. Man of Steel has been directed by Zack Snyder and stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams and Antje Traue, all three of, who are also present at the prestigious event. Warner Bros. and other US studios are glad about the fact that the film was planned for a summer release.
Man of Steel is slated for a June 21 release.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 19th, 2013.
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