Venice, Chapter II: Clooney's 'magnificent' recovery. After arriving from Lago Como with his fellow Jay Kelly cast members, George Clooney was brought slightly low by a sinus infection but bounced back well enough to join his colleagues Riley Keogh, pictured right joining the group, and Adam Sandler, left, facing the audience with their colleagues, for their red-carpet moment at the film's premiere.
This Ernesto Ruscio photograph is one of those splendid red-carpet casuals that capture Clooney doing what he does best, namely, horsing around with the giant gallery of paparazzi by projecting his genetically coded send-up of Sinatra's middle-aged Chairman-of-the-Board epoch -- down to and including the fabulous Sinatra street-Italian threatening/welcoming "I'm-gonna-grapple-with-you-Olympic-wrestling-style" hand gesture while simultaneously projecting a laser-gun blast of the trademark Clooney wattage. So, is he joking? You bet. But he's also showing the paparazzi what is possible to turn on.
Photographer Ruscio was clearly wired awake and met the nanosecond perfectly. That very much includes the walk-on of Keogh, who, descended from the Tupelo, Mississippi-born "King" of rock-and-roll, bears a finely-tuned game face as well. It's all good sport, this back-and-forth with the legions of paparazzi. This group of subjects know their game.
The photograph transmits the breadth and mechanism of the Festival's assembled in the way of a fine Titian oil -- speaking of art works central to Venice -- in which every human in the image is captured doing something vastly different from his or her neighbor. Over Clooney’s left shoulder, elegant in her gold-green gown, producer and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas Nicole Avant is clearly no stranger to the Venetian, nor to any, red carpet. Jay Kelly is Ambassador Avant’s husband Ted Sarandos’ film, but that’s no matter; she’s exquisitely comfortable and in command all on her own. Over Clooney’s right shoulder, Sandler and Clooney’s fellow cast members ready themselves for the shot. Clooney is at home in Venice and on red carpets of all sorts, but he specializes in horsing around with the Italian paparazzi, who generally love him for last year’s Venice red-carpet walk, during which a photographer tripped and Clooney rushed over to help raise the fellow, dusting him off, holding his camera, firing off a few frames. On his August 28 Jay Kelly walk, Clooney did grab a camera to shoot.
There are 21 films in competition this year and 35 out-of-competition, which is to say, the Lido's two main venues, the 1938 Palazzo del Casinò and the larger Palazzo del Cinema, with six halls and smaller screening rooms between them, will get some work.
At the Palazzo del Casinò on August 28, the edgy, accomplished Swedish actress Noomi Rapace -- aka, Lisbeth Salander, the defiantly original girl with the dragon tattoo -- stratospherically upped the ante for geometric black-tie dress with her splendid opera cape/grosgrain-striped tux pants/diaphanous-white-halterneck ensemble as she strode into the premiere of director Yorgos Lanthimos' hotly-anticipated Bugonia. Rapace’s kit -- with that long thoroughbred stride somehow made greater by the black grosgrain stripes, the velocity of it all filling that billow in the cape -- cut a blistering path down the Bugonia carpet. Pity those who followed her, having to pick their way through the smouldering embers of what theoretically had been glamorous entryway. Rapace burned it down to the ground.
The white dinner jacket is that oddly delicate man-thing demanding devil-may-care levels of insouciance and surety beyond most wearers' reach, and it's not an accident that ur-producer and Ian Fleming fan Cubby Broccoli had Sean Connery in a blaze-white, peak-lapeled number in the opening scene of Goldfinger in 1964, pictured below. How apt is it then, that three gentlemen, including the gentleman actor playing Dr. Frankenstein, appeared at the August 30 Frankenstein premiere in white dinner jackets. Above, the British actor most heavily touted and betted upon in the UK as "being" the very next Bond, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Naturally, sixty-one years after the Goldfinger premiere, Taylor Johnson is rocking a sadly un-Bond-like giant shawl collar and a double-breasted, not to mention the recently-rescued Robinson Crusoe mop-and-beard. Nothing understated about Taylor-Johnson’s shawl collar. Laid flat, those lapels could mark out a landing zone for a chopper under automatic ground fire. The outsized tie is giving us a bit of Beggars Banquet-era Mick; although Jagger’s tie on the album cover was under a discreet wing collar.
Coming quite a bit closer to the classic, chiseled, clean-shaven Bond is actor Callum Turner, pictured below en route into the Frankenstein premier in a no-nonsense single-breasted with, thank God, peaked lapels. The funereal ...wait, what’s that on his lapel? Faux carnation? But if so, why would the stem of the thing be visible? Can it be a tailoring fashion fail, a peaked lapel with no buttonhole? God forbid. Do you see the stem of the bougainvillea bloom on Connery? No! Hey, Callum! What, do you have like a safety pin holding that thing in place? Thanks, man, for ruining an almost-letter-perfect red-carpet walk.
Pictured below, Oscar Isaac—the gifted actor who played Dr. Frankenstein for Guillermo del Toro—took his largely-white dinner jacket in a decidedly un-Bondish direction. Yes, it has peaked lapels; but the triangular swatches of black fabric that form the low-lying peaks create the illusion that the lapels might actually have been lifted from a Tirolean jacket a few hundred clicks north of Venice, in the Alps. A tinge of off-duty rock-and-roll musician is brought by the polka-dotted shirt. The transmission is: sharp, but ultra-relaxed. Hey, it’s the 21st-century Dr. Frankenstein. He can do what he wants.
By all accounts, Jacob Elordi has turned in a fantastic performance as the "Monster" for director del Toro. Pictured below, he's the epitome of balletic elegance in his double-breasted over a pair of very Fred Astaire stovepipe trousers. The trouser is key. So is the heavy peak to the lapels. Kudos to the Monster man.
Finally, somebody who figured out that the best way to get kitted out for the Frankenstein premiere was to go Goth/biker—but since it’s the voraciously fashion-forward front-row denizen Paris Jackson, pictured below it has to be a very tailored Goth/biker look, not just, you know, all over the place with everything loose. Was not Mary Shelley a “gothic” novelist? Didn’t Guillermo del Toro thoughtfully credit her as a co-writer? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Mary Shelley might have had reservations about Ms. Hilton’s decollete, but—as a very, very well-mannered lady—we can freely assume that she would have only applauded Ms. Jackson’s remembering to wear the ring outside the long black glove.
The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Frankenstein author Mary Shelley might have had reservations about Ms. Hilton’s decollete, but—as a very, very well-mannered lady—we can freely assume that she would have only applauded Ms. Jackson’s remembering to wear the ring outside the long black glove.