Welcome back to Movieline’s new industry feature Biz Break. Monday morning’s newsy highlights include a big-time opening for Jack Black’s Bernie , the film talent leading Cannes’ 2012 Master Classes, the end of Sundance’s first London foray, the latest word on the Cuban actors who ditched their Tribeca premiere for U.S. asylum, and more… 1st Sundance London Fest Comes to a Close The first Sundance London film and music festival closed out Sunday night with a performance by Rufus and Martha Wainwright following the world premiere of Sing Me the Songs that Say I Love You – A Concert for Kate McGarrigle , Lian Lunson’s film about the music of their folk singer mother. Making their UK premieres at Sundance London were 14 fiction and documentary features as well as eight short films from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Three Master Classes Added to Cannes American film director Philip Kaufman, composer Alexandre Desplat and actor, producer, director Norman Lloyd will take part in Master Classes at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. Chiefly focusing on directing (previous directors have included Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-wai, etc.), from time to time the Master Classes explore other aspects of filmmaking. Additionally this morning, Cannes added seven more titles to its slate. Saint Aire Productions Nabs Film Rights to NY Times Bestselling Novel The Noticer Saint Aire, which produced The Kids Are All Right as well as the upcoming June release The Love Guide with Parker Posey, plans to go into production immediately on The Noticer with principle photography slated for Winter 2013 in Alabama. The story revolves around a mysterious man named Jones who has been given a gift of noticing things about life that others miss. From around the ‘net… Specialty Box Office: Bernie Bows Hot; Others Not So Much Millennium Entertainment scored one of the highest limited release debuts of 2012 over the weekend with director Richard Linklater‘s latest feature. Starring Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey and Shirley MacLaine, Bernie bowed with a spectacular $30K average from three locations in New York, Los Angeles and Austin in the final weekend of April. Deadline reports . Cuban Actors Who Vanished En Route to Tribeca Seek Asylum in Miami: Reuters Anailin de la Rua and Javier Nuñez, cast members of Una Noche (One Night), appeared on TV Friday night on the Miami-based Spanish language channel America TeVe. De la Rua and Nunez said their real-life experience was not as dramatic as the harrowing story depicted in the movie, Deadline reports . Jimmy Kimmel Plays it Safe with White House Correspondents Dinner Speech (Video) Obama’s re-election chances and New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s weight were among the topics Kimmel took on over the weekend, which received “consistent laughter,” THR reports . Tom Jones: “I was up for James Bond” In an interview with the UK’s Radio Times, Tom Jones revealed he almost landed the role of James Bond until a producer said he was “too famous” and audiences wouldn’t believe it. The Guardian reports . China Plans $1.27 billion Production Hub Chinawood is on the horizon, thanks to Chinese entrepreneur Bruno West and his Harvest Seven Stars Entertainment and the city government of Tianjin. Plans are for 8.6 million square feet, providing a space for co-productions exempt from Chinese import restrictions. Variety reports . Warner Bros Launch Film Scripts as e-books Ben Hur and Casablanca are among the film scripts to be released as e-books for the first time by Warner Bros. Other movies in the Inside the Script series will include An American in Paris and North by Northwest . The e-books include items such as the shooting script, production notes, storyboards and on-set photographs. BBC reports .
Well, not free free, but still: Hollywood superproducer Joel Silver is looking for a new studio home for his Silver Pictures operation, with which Warner Bros. will officially part ways at the end of 2012. The separation marks the close of a 25-year relationship that yielded blockbuster franchises from Lethal Weapon to The Matrix to Sherlock Holmes — and more than a few shouting matches, outstanding loans and other troubling legacies. Nikki Finke has the juicy details at Deadline, largely focusing on the ongoing battles between Silver and Warner Bros. boss Jeff Robinov: Robinov used his own surrogates to make Silver aware that the studio was about to “address the economics” of his Warner Bros. deal if — and that was a big “if” — it was renewed at the end of the year. Which Silver correctly interpreted as meaning a drastic reduction in his already greatly reduced contract terms even though the studio had not yet presented any details. Robinov counted on Silver imploding, which is exactly what happened. It’s well known in Hollywood that the lavish-living Silver has relied on a longstanding series of loans from Warner Bros. by taking advances against the money due him on his movies. Once he leaves Warner Bros., Silver must repay those loans. Will another studio be willing to let him borrow in an arrangement which Silver’s lawyer Bert Fields once described as “a running account between them”? Yikes. Finke suggests Universal as a possible fit, which is as good a guess as any with Silver pal Ron Meyer (whose daughter also works for Silver) running the ship. Or maybe not! Anyone out there need a 59-year-old terror to watch your lot and spend your money? Suggestions welcome… [ Deadline ]
The Five-Year Engagement begins where a lot of movies would end, with a proposal. Tom (Jason Segel), a chef, is driving to a New Year’s Eve party with his girlfriend of a year, Violet (Emily Blunt), a psychology postdoc. He’s so visibly nervous that she’s worried he’s unwell, questioning him until he pulls over to the side of the road, slams down a box containing a ring and confesses that he was going to ask her to marry him that night. He still does, and she still insists on going through with his plan of a surprise rooftop romantic dinner at the restaurant in which he works. That’s because Tom and Violet are in love, and they’re also nice, down-to-earth, well-intentioned people, qualities that suffuse the film as well, generally for the better but sometimes to its detriment. The Five-Year Engagement is the most recent collaboration between director Nicholas Stoller and star and co-writer Segel, who have worked together on the likes of The Muppets , Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. This film is their most ambitious not because of its long arc but because its dramatic currents are so submerged and minimal — there’s never any doubt that Tom and Violet belong together, just that they may not find the right place in which to do so. This unhurried comedy is devoted to realistic relationship issues like having to quit your job to move somewhere with your significant other, which is commendable while also posing a challenge. Tom and Violet sometimes feel like cuddly side characters in search of a main plot rather than anchors to base a film around; they’re solicitous of each other’s feelings to the point where they don’t acknowledge their own. It’s a good thing these characters are played by Segel and Blunt, who share enough dorky charisma to carry The Five-Year Engagement through a sprawling runtime to a deservedly happy ending. As Tom, Segel riffs comfortably on the beta male persona he’s honed over the years, portraying an accommodating guy who thinks he should be fine with putting his career on hold to head to Michigan when Violet gets accepted to a psych program there, even though he actually feels miserable and emasculated. And Blunt, who’s capable of being cut-glass chilly when a role calls for it, is funny and warm as the ambitious Violet, who’s torn between being uncomfortable with the sacrifice Tom’s making for her and knowing that in her chosen field, her options are limited. So Tom and Violet set up a life in Michigan and agree to postpone the wedding until the moment’s right. Meanwhile, elderly grandparents start dying off; Tom’s best friend, Alex (the always welcome Chris Pratt), becomes a success in the job Tom left behind; and Violet’s sister Suzie (Alison Brie) faces unexpected but felicitous motherhood. One reason the film’s central couple at times seem inadequate is that there’s so much comedic talent in the smaller roles. Pratt and Brie, MVPs on Parks and Recreation and Community , respectively, make a great accidental couple-turned-model pairing. Brian Posehn is very funny as Tom’s gourmet sandwich shop boss, as is Chris Parnell as a stay-at-home dad whose knitting hobby leads to some of the film’s best visual gags. And I was especially charmed by Violet’s psych department, overseen by Rhys Ifans’ Professor Childs and incidentally diversely staffed by Mindy Kaling, Randall Park and Kevin Hart; they’re genial colleagues whose interactions are lightly spiced with competition for limited academic positions. The overt theme of The Five-Year Engagement is that there’s no such thing as “the perfect moment,” but the underlying one is “for the love of God, just say what’s on your mind.” As plausible as long campaigns of passive-aggressiveness may be (Tom, for instance, suddenly declares that he doesn’t want kids during one family visit, noting that “sometimes the biggest balls are the ones left unused”), they’re not terribly fun to watch on-screen. Any investment in Tom and Violet’s endangered coupledom starts to get eroded by frustration with their lack of communication as the months tick by and they drift apart. There’s a lot of downtime between gags, though when they do arrive they’re generally good, whether involving an accidental arrow shooting or an alcohol-fueled chase down a wintry street in which Ifans’s character demonstrates some impressive parkour skills. The Five-Year Engagement is, for a movie in which a guy fakes an orgasm and (in a separate incident) stuffs a dead deer in his car’s sunroof, very grown-up. It’s grown-up in its assessment of how making sacrifices for someone else can also be a selfish act, and it’s grown-up in its consideration of how, while love is all very well and good, you also have to make practical decisions about where and how you’ll live. Sometimes, watching it, you wish it’d be a little less grown-up and a little more flexible in terms of what works as a comedy. (It sometimes feels like a lighter, happier take on Like Crazy or Blue Valentine .) But it’s rare to see main characters as grounded and plausible as Tom and Violet are, and when they finally find their way back into each other’s arms, it feels earned. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
In this week’s The Raven , John Cusack brings 19th century author Edgar Allan Poe to life in a mystery-thriller that envisions Poe locked in a battle of wills against his biggest fan: a serial killer murdering in the style of Poe’s most twisted stories. The piece is a paradox in itself, literary-minded meta-meditation masquerading as a pulpy mainstream entertainment; between genre beats and moments of Sherlock Holmesian heroism, Cusack and director James McTeigue leave provocations to be found or ignored, depending on your inclination. Whether or not audiences choose to dive in, Cusack just hopes they take the film on its own merits: “If you want a very different, quiet, Masterpiece Theater version of this, someone will go make that movie. But this is what we made. We made a dream about Poe.” To play the enigmatic and complex author, poet, and critic — who died of still-unknown causes at age 40, days after being found delirious on a park bench in Baltimore in 1849 — Cusack went deep into his life and work, attempting to understand the psyche of the man who loved (and tragically lost) the women in his life, bitterly fought his foes, yearned for recognition and celebrity, and yet carried such deep melancholy. “He was definitely an artist who was famous and wanted fame and wanted recognition,” Cusack mused. “He wanted to destroy the other poets of the day. He really was crazy, in an interesting way. He was such a lunatic!” And yet much of The Raven plays on the audience’s expectation, or perceived demand, for sensational storytelling — R-rated kills, gruesome murders, suspense. As Cusack explains, that is entirely the point. “[Poe] was satiric and fucked-up and pop-pulp, and he was also totally rarefied. So the movie is both of those things.” [Movieline’s chat begins with a round of My Favorite Scene in which Cusack picks Sidney Lumet ‘s The Verdict . More on that here .] I think when you watch [films] you just get affected by them and you let them wash over you. When you’re watching something good, you’re not thinking about anything, the story is taking you over. But then as you try to think back about the technique behind why it works, then you can dissect it a little bit. As I watched it I thought, you can’t do that anywhere but on a big screen. A novelist can’t do that because it’s an actor and [Paul] Newman’s whole life — all of the actor’s life and the character’s life, the character and the actor blur — a mature man at 65 with all the regrets, this conscience, these ethics. All into a moment, a cinematic moment. And in those three words you have everything. It’s just what washes over his face, what the camera sees. It’s beautiful. Have you always watched and read films so closely, so analytically? That’s what I do, and I’m a filmmaker too. I make films and, you know — the stuff that I’ve done that’s worked, I think it’s done by feel but then you look back on it… I don’t believe too much in technique, I think technique can sort of get in the way. I think there’s a way technique can liberate you by simplifying things. How conscious are you of the mechanics of a scene when you’re giving a performance, and how a director is going to bring the performance and the camera and the script together? It’s a collaboration and a conversation that you have with the director and the cameraman. It’s a conversation you have. Does that collaboration factor heavily into your decision to do a project or not? Yeah — I’ll say, too, if I’m working with James and we’re working on this and I see the shots he’s set up, and if I see something or a way to do something, I tell him. It’s very collaborative. If I say, “Are you going to be in here for this?” We’ll have a shorthand and he’ll go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So you start to tell the same story together. James is a very sophisticated guy and a great filmmaker so by the end of the movie we were finishing each other’s sentences. But of course you have ideas. I saw the set, we were on a huge set, and I was talking with James — it was this opera hall and I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had Poe standing up top, kind of like a raven looking down?” And James was like, “And maybe we’ll put him over here…” So you come up with these things that have that language. I think it’s still in the movie, the scene where he’s watching the ball. Yes, it is. In that shot he’s perched above watching his lady from afar and there’s such a sadness in his face. That was a shot we came up with on that day, me and James. What drew you to Poe to begin with, and then to this project? The film is obviously being sold to audiences as a thriller and a mystery but it’s also got a lot of interesting ideas about what it means to be an artist, to be be an artist who needs and wants an audience… I’m so happy you see all of that! It’s nice that you are picking up on that. Were those themes always there when the project first came to you, or did you help develop them along the way? James had the structure and the script was terrific, but I worked when I came onboard to try to elevate the language and texture of Poe’s vernacular and his idiom, because I thought it was so specific, and so textured and rich, that it has to really be at the very highest level. So there are some times in the script — because Poe was a mixture of esoteric, intellectual, rarefied air and pulp – Saturday afternoon thrillers, ‘I’m going to scare the audience and play on their fears, I’m going to give you a cliffhanger, I’m going to have a forensics detective thing where the killer is an orangutan with a razor – he was satiric and fucked-up and pop-pulp, and he was also totally rarefied. So the movie is both of those things, and creates that genre. It absolutely is. How do you think that will be received? So if you’re looking for The King’s Speech or some very serious, ultra-important movie, maybe you can make that movie. But that’s not really Poe! If you know Poe, that’s not really Poe; he was both. And so I thought the convention of Poe becoming a character in one of his own stories — the circular thing, the dream within the dream, very Poe-like — and within that we had the responsibility to make him as real as possible. Having now played him, what’s your take on Poe himself? He was famous, he was vain, he was at war with the world, he was theatrical. He went to West Point, he did all those things. He was an alcoholic, he loved his women, but I think he loved the women almost religiously, I don’t think it was sexual. He said, “I could not love except where death mingled his with beauty’s breath.” Just because of his past, with his mother and stepmother and his wife all dying in his arms, he was like an alchemist in that he was taking all of his misery and turning it into this great new art form. But he was totally fucked up by the deaths of all these women, and he revered them. I don’t think he played around. He wasn’t a playboy. But he loved the company of women and he loved to be revered by women. He hated men. I think he was only friends with a couple of men, and they were brief friendships. So he was definitely an artist who was famous and wanted fame and wanted recognition, he was competitive with other artists, he put them down — he said, “I don’t intend to put up with anything I can put down.” He wanted to destroy the other poets of the day. He really was crazy, in an interesting way. He was such a lunatic! A man of contradictions and extremes. A total paradox. And that, I think, is where you have to understand that about Poe to understand at least the premise of this movie. So if you want The King’s Speech , this isn’t that. This isn’t sort of measured and reverential. You’ve clearly done a lot of research into Poe’s life and work and complications, but do you feel like you related to him as well, personally, in any of those ways? Yes. I think Jung said that there’s a shadow archetype and in movies, or in art, we have these characters that become archetypical and I think it’s because they represent a part of our collective consciousness. So Poe, I think, was this pioneer into the underworld and into the subconscious and he housed all of our collective shame and fear and sorrow and expressed it so deeply that the image of him became sort of an archetype. So I think he was like a shadow figure, a figure now of your subconscious and your dreams. He’s like the raven – the raven was a harbinger to another world. Now Poe, for us, is sort of like the raven, sitting at the door of us, trying to say “You know, in your imagination and your subconscious is stuff that can frighten you and make you more in awe of anything you can imagine.” He was straddling both worlds artistically. So I think if you have a character like that, it allows you to tap into that in you. I can go use the Poe character to tap into my crazy stuff, you know — good and bad. So I don’t know if you feel you relate to Poe personally as much as you can find him in you. The Raven makes a number of amusing jabs at critics — Poe’s literary critics and rivals and enemies, at least one of whom meets a poetic end. Is the intent behind that to send a message to film critics reviewing this film about the film itself or how it might be perceived? My attitude is around what we’ve just been talking about, which is if you don’t like the conceit of the movie… review the movie that we shot. If you want a different version of a Poe movie, if you want a very different, quiet, Masterpiece Theater version of this, someone will go make that movie. But this is what we made. We made a dream about Poe. Our dream about Poe. Lou Reed made his album , and it was his dream about Poe. So this is me and McTeigue. But I think if they really know his writing, they’re going to really respect that we’ve done our homework. The Raven is in theaters Friday. John Cusack is on Twitter! Check him out here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This is officially the most brilliant ceremonial first pitch gimmick ever staged, just narrowly beating out that time Bill Murray ran the bases and slid into home at Wrigley Field: Yesterday at Japan’s Tokyo Dome, Ringu/The Ring villainess Sadako (who’s coming back for more in Sadako 3D , in Japanese cinemas this May) trudged to the mound to throw the first pitch before the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters battled the Chiba Lotte Marines. Somehow she managed to see through her signature wall of scary horror hair to toss a decent looper before the ghostly spirit took over and…well, just watch for yourself. Yep. Just about the best thing ever. (Sadako entrance at 1:30.) But wait — does this mean everyone who throws the first pitch after her is cursed? [ Movie Collection via TwitchFilm ]
After scoring a book deal, selling several TV pilots, and making her name 140 characters at a time on Twitter , microblogging mom and Canadian wit Kelly Oxford has sold her first screenplay to Hollywood. Warner Bros. acquired her spec Son of a Bitch for a reported low- to mid-six figures; the story concerns a pothead party girl who tries to keep her image intact despite discovering she’s pregnant. The ringing sound you just heard is Anna Faris’s agent’s phone. [ Deadline ]
Here is the first trailer for Hope Springs , featuring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as a 60-something married couple on a steep sexual downswing. What to do? Travel to Dr. Steve Carell’s Seaside Coitus Clinic, of course, where, with the director of The Devil Wears Prada and Marley & Me , the group will explore the all the carnal dilemmas of our proto-senior population. I don’t know about crankypants Jones, but I predict that at least the box office for this thing — which Sony will open Aug. 10, right around the time the studio’s ” Julie & Julia ” hit big three years ago — will be rock hard. VERDICT : Sold! (To our parents)
Gone are the days of callouses and carpenter pants. Today, men are rocking skinny jeans and moccasins as they treat themselves to spa days, having no shame in getting waxed, tweezed, manicured and/or exposed to other meticulous grooming techniques. This ongoing — and slightly horrifying — “manscaping” trend is spreading throughout America and beyond, and Morgan Spurlock (along with executive producers Ben Silverman, Will Arnett and Jason Bateman) captured it all in their world premiere Tribeca documentary, Mansome . The film highlights everything from elite beardsmen (yes, it’s a sport) to wrestlers’ full-body shaving, but mostly focuses on candid interviews with some familiar Hollywood men. Movieline caught up with director Spurlock at the film’s premiere over the weekend, chatting about everything from the ongoing “manocolypse” to the Oscar-nominee’s top five manscaping tips. When you think of the manscaping trend, who comes to mind in Hollywood? Zach Galifianakis! That’s why we called him first. How much grooming does he do? None — that’s why he was perfect. You think of someone like a David Beckham, you know; you think of somebody like that. We immediately thought of Scott Ian from Anthrax because he’s been shaving around that crazy beard his whole life, and he’s one of the first people I called. You think of like these kind of perfect-looking actors and actresses, many of which wouldn’t talk to us, simply because they didn’t want to get into it. In reference to some of those guys, do you think that kind of seal look is good for anyone? Well, it seems to be good for Seal, I don’t know — it seems to work out! I feel like if you’re going to commit yourself, like really going for it, then you might as well go for it. I’m not quite that guy. I wasn’t even talking about Seal the musician — I was talking about a seal, like the body slickness of a fully-waxed man… Oh, like when they seal it all in? No, that’s not for me. What was the most exciting part about working with this group of men? Had you ever worked with them before? I had never worked with Will or Jason; I’d never worked with any of the guys in the film. I had met a lot of them and had said that I’d love to work with them sometime. When we called Zach for the film, he jumped at the chance. He said “Absolutely — come meet me at my place in North Carolina!” And he was great. I’ve been such a fan of Judd Apatow for so long, and Paul Rudd, so to have those guys to come in was great. And the characters that we follow in the film — Jack Passion, Shawn Daivari, Ricky [Manchanda] — to have these guys open their lives to us, to let us kind of follow them through these like manscaping rituals, you gotta be a brave guy; you gotta be really courageous to kind of open yourself up like that. I think we had really cool, courageous guys who realized that we were going to make a fun, funny film. Why do you think now was the right time to make this movie? You know, we’re in the midst of a manocolypse! We gotta help figure out what we need to do to help define masculinity today! What do you think are the top five things in the manscaping world? Well, there’s a lot of waxing; a lot of hairy guys waxing is a big one. Grooming is also a big one — making sure you shave your face or cut your hair. There’s a lot of guys with big caterpillar eyebrows… Peter Gallagher? Peter Gallagher may want to take a little something to the middle of that; it’s okay to do that these days. You don’t want to have the unibrow — not so en vogue anymore. I think you don’t want to have a bunch of grimey fingernails; I don’t ever want to see a guy with big, dirty fingernails. Unless you’re like a coal miner or you’re digging a ditch somewhere and that’s your job — like “I dig ditches” or “I dig mud all day! That’s what I do.” — you can’t just go around all day with scrub in there. Do you think women are more attracted to men that manscape? I think that what attracts you initially is how you look. I think ultimately you are attracted to someone at first because of “X,” no matter what it is; there’s something about those pheromones that they’re sending out, and you want them, for whatever reason that is. And then you start to understand who they are and what they’re about, and you continue to stay attracted to them once you peel back the layers. But I do think that we are a judgmental society, and you want to be attracted to them first. But then once you start to talk to them, then you realize, “Wow, you are a completely terrible, shallow person. I don’t want to be around you anymore.” And then you realize that what really matters is all the stuff that’s in here. [Points to head] All the pretty people that I’ve gone out with aren’t the pretty people that I’ve stayed with; I’ve usually stayed with people that have much more to offer from the inside. Is that the advice that you’re going to give to your son? I’m going to tell my son, “Marry the most ugly woman that you can — she’s going to be the best to you of all time.” Read all of Movieline’s Tribeca 2012 coverage here . Alyse Whitney is a New York-based writer, currently with TVLine.com . Her work has been featured in Bon Appétit and a handful of other publications, and you can also find her on Twitter . [Top photo: WireImage]
Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus debuted her new HBO series Veep over the weekend, and she — along with husband/director Brad Hall — appears eager to add independent filmmaking to her repertoire. The pair hit the Tribeca Film Festival with their new short Picture Paris , teasing the project at an Apple Store event and hinting that this will not be their last foray into the indie space. Starring Dreyfus, the film follows a woman with an extraordinary obsession with Paris and a surprising past. “It was a way to dip our toes into the independent film world,” Dreyfus said at the event co-hosted by Indiewire. “It was like being in our old theater days, so we called in favors from friends and it was a great experience.” “The short is based on true life,” Hall added. “We had a kid heading off to college and it’s a major life-changing event. So I wrote a script by chance and I showed it to Julia. It has a good amount of twists and turns, and Julia said, ‘maybe we should just make it.'” Hall and Dreyfus are used to working together, but noted that this project allowed them to call the shots, which they are hoping to replicate on a future feature. “I’ve written other shorts about Paris,” Hall said, “but then we realized that we can’t really recoup our money making shorts, so we are going to do an independent feature, but keep the same group together.” Hall also contributed a complimentary gush about the French capital where they shot their short over six days, calling it “the Buenos Aires of Europe.” As for Veep , Dreyfus apologized for the onslaught of posters around New York City at the moment promoting the new HBO comedy in which she plays a fictional vice president of the United States. She said the show’s tagline is that the “buck stops somewhere near here,” but noted also that it is decidedly non-partisan. “This is a show about political behavior,” she said. “You’ll never see the actual president, and you’ll never know which party I belong to.” Read all of Movieline’s Tribeca 2012 coverage here .
Don’t let the overseas Battleship hype fool you: “Allen’s Rome-set pic, consisting of four non-intersecting vignettes, one of which starring Roberto Benigni — making a rare appearance in a film not directed by himself — pulled more alone than the total weekend gross of the five titles that follow it in Italy’s weekend box office chart: Battleship , Titanic 3D , Street Dance 2 , Mirror Mirror and The Intouchables , which together totaled $3.54 million this weekend. ‘The combined effect of Allen and Benigni proved to be huge magnet,’ said one Italo exhibber.” Related: I am totally calling my next band Italo Exhibber. [ Variety
