Acting is a craft so varied that naming someone as being better than everyone else at acting seems a bit stupid. Especially when, like the organisers of the Venice Film Festival recently did, they name Ben Affleck.
Ben Affleck was named Best Actor this weekend at the Venice Film Festival for his role in Hollywoodland where he portrayed an actor that nobody really likes any more. Also lauded at Venice was Helen Mirren for playing The Queen so perfectly that many people now get Helen Mirren and The Queen mixed up. However, this confusion can be easily rectified by remembering that one of these women regularly took her clothes off in several films in the seventies and eighties, and the other one is Helen Mirren.
The Venice Film Festival seems like it was a right old laugh this year, as all kinds of Hollywood cheeseballs flew over to Europe to show how clever and deep they were with their new intelligent movies at the world's oldest film festival, with mixed results. Lindsay Lohan's attempts to get political about her new movie Bobby were completely overshadowed by her getting $1 million in jewellery nicked at Heathrow airport a few days later. Meanwhile David Lynch was given an award for confusing the most people over the course of a single career and Rachel Weisz got booed. And then there was Ben Affleck.
Ben Affleck, remember, is most famous for being so in love with Mills-McCartney botherer Jennifer Lopez a few years ago that he made two stinking movies and a dreadful music video with her. But, despite being such an attention-whore that he even made a cruddy deodorant advert all about how pretty he was, Ben Affleck decided to blame the paparazzi at Venice as the reason why everyone thinks he's an irritating box-faced twat. And that outburst seems to have worked – organisers of the Venice Film Festival named Ben Affleck as Best Actor for his role as Superman George Reeves in Hollywoodland at the weekend, even though it may as well be called Poor Me: The Ben Affleck Story.
Meanwhile, the Best Actress prize went to Helen Mirren for her role in The Queen, where she plays Elizabeth II reacting to the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. From the trailer for The Queen, it looks as if Helen Mirren does pretty much nothing more than wander around a bit accepting flowers from little girls and looking a bit dour which, to be fair, is pretty much the only thing that the Queen has done for the last 50 years.
There will be two big kickbacks for Ben Affleck and Helen Mirren following their Venice Film Festival nods. Firstly, both Ben and Helen will become Oscar front-runners and can expect to scoop all kinds of other prizes when awards season rolls around. Secondly, recognition from the Venice Film Festival means that box office glory will no doubt follow. Unless it gets beaten at the box office by a bag of shit film about some sexy warlocks, that is. Which did actually happen to the Ben Affleck movie, in fairness.
Read more:
Affleck's Stock Soars In Venice – LA Times
[story by Stuart Heritage]
