World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
La Bola Negra wins the LFF Audience Award, Resident Evil’s director heads to space, Nicolas Cage’s Lord of War sequel & Tinto Brass is mourned.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot! Good morning, all. It’s the 5th November, and here is your dose of movie news for the day, leading with the London Film Festival which has finally handed out its Audience Awards. Also, the film world is mourning an Italian director whose name was famous, and infamous, around the world.
La Bola Negra wins the LFF Audience Award: The BFI London Film Festival’s Audience Award has gone to Netflix’s La Bola Negra, from the Spanish directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known as Los Javis. This has also won the Best Narrative Feature prize at the Hamptons International Film Festival and the People’s Choice Award at Toronto as well as getting 5 big fat stars from me when I saw it at the LFF. A strong awards season contender. As the HUGE Spanish social media campaign seems to be stating, “The plan is working”. The documentary Dependence won the LFF Audience Award for Best British Discovery, which I must admit I never got to see.
Resident Evil’s director heads to space: Paul W.S. Anderson, who directed six Resident Evil films, is set to direct Nether Station and Nether Vortex, film adaptations of Kevin J. Anderson’s science-fiction horror novels, according to Deadline. The latest Resident Evil, which has just passed $400 million worldwide, was directed by Zach Cregger, so it’s a reminder that the franchise Anderson built is doing very nicely without him.
Nicolas Cage’s Lord of War sequel: Vertical has released the first teaser trailer for Lords of War, the sequel to Andrew Niccol’s 2005 arms-dealer drama Lord of War, which starred Nicolas Cage.
Switzerland’s Oscar entry: As an adjunct to the devastating NAZA, that I saw yesterday, Watermelon Pictures has set a US cinema release for 27 November for Who Is Still Alive, Switzerland’s entry for the 2027 Oscars, and has released the North American trailer. Conceived and directed by Nicolas Wadimoff, the documentary follows nine former residents of Gaza.
Tinto Brass, 1933–2026: The Italian director died in Rome on Wednesday, aged 93, his family announced to the Italian news agency ANSA. Born in Milan and raised in Venice, he gave up a career in law to become a film archivist at the Cinémathèque Française and an assistant to Roberto Rossellini and Alberto Cavalcanti, before making his debut with the Venice-set Chi lavora è perduto in 1963, which was well received at the Venice Film Festival. After a period of making avant-garde films, he became associated with provocative erotic cinema, including Salon Kitty (1976), The Key (1983), Miranda (1985) and Paprika (1991). He’s best known outside Italy for Caligula (1979), the notorious historical epic starring Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud, which was funded by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, and with a script by Gore Vidal. Brass and Vidal both fell out with the production, and Brass was ultimately credited only for principal photography. A controversial figure who always insisted that he celebrated eroticism rather than pornography, he is survived by his wife, Caterina Varzi, and their children, Bonifacio and Beatrice. No cause of death has been given. Rest in peace.
Birthdays: Tilda Swinton, star of Michael Clayton, for which she won an Oscar, turns 66 today, and the brilliant Sam Rockwell, who won an Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and is currently showing opposite John Malkovich in Wild Horse Nine, turns 58.
That’s all for today.
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