Who are you calling "little fresh meat"? I'm the king.

Chapter 697 Capturing the Lion Again (13)

September 11th, 9 AM...

In Beijing, at Weibo headquarters, Chen Yiyi sipped her tea while clicking the mouse with one hand…

She is searching for news related to the Venice closing ceremony...

Okay, I mainly wanted to know as soon as possible whether Shen Yan had won an award!
The opening day screening of "La La Land" in Venice ignited the entire Venice Film Festival...

Just days after its premiere in Venice, the film received an 8.9 rating on IMDb, a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a high score of 92 on Metacritic!
The event program received a score of 3.83!
As many film critics have put it: Pre-ordering the Golden Lion…

Then "Carol" and "The Danish Girl" were released, with "Carol" scoring 3.85 and "The Danish Girl" scoring as high as 4.14!
The latter two both belong to queer cinema!

—A film where the male and female leads are queer. Queer refers to homosexuals, bisexuals, or transgender people.

"The Danish Girl" tells the story of painter Inar Wikkiner, who, encouraged by his wife, bravely underwent surgery and became the first transgender person in history...

The director is Tom Hooper, and the male lead is Eddie Redmayne, last year's Oscar winner!

By the way, all three films, "Carol," "The Danish Girl," and "La La Land," were submitted by A24 to the Venice Film Festival.

At that moment, several voices discussing something came over the phone…

They were colleagues who worked overtime together!

"It's a bit risky... While 'La La Land' pays homage to musicals, it's essentially still a romance film, and romance films... are basically unlikely to win awards!"

"...I also think it's unlikely, giving out the Golden Lion Award for two consecutive years...that's just too much!"

A bespectacled man interjected, "But both 'Carol' and 'The Danish Girl' were brought by Shen Yan..."

"How did you know?"

"Brother Yan said it himself during the live stream!"

"You watch his live stream?"

"Yes, I asked, and he answered... He also said that film festivals around the world are facing a shortage of good films, especially Venice and Berlin..."

Did he mention the odds of winning the prize?

He said the chances of winning the Golden Lion are there, but not high; he'll see if there's a chance of winning Best Actress...

Just as I was listening, a breaking news report came in: Best Actress at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival: Cate Blanchett for *Carol*, Emma Stone for *La La Land*…

"Holy crap, a double yolk!"

Did Venice ever have double-yolk eggs?

"Yes, there were even two golden lions before!"

The 50th Golden Lion Awards were awarded to Robert Altman for "Crossroads" and Krzysztof Kieslowski for "Blue: The Three Colors Trilogy".
The 51st Golden Lion Awards went to Mirko Manchevsky's "Before the Rain" and Tsai Ming-liang's "Vive L'Amour"...

Two consecutive Golden Lions!
In earlier years, double-yolk eggs were even more common.

The same applies to Best Actor and Best Actress winners. For example, Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival twice, both times sharing the award with other winners.

These are the 45th and 53rd editions: Shirley MacLaine's "The Melody of the Piano" and Isabelle Huppert's "Women's Romance"; Isabelle Huppert's "The Cold Ritual" and Sandrine Bernal's "The Cold Ritual"...

So please don't assume that double-yolk awards are a unique phenomenon of Chinese film awards...

The Venice awards ceremony was swift, with no interludes or jokes. After the Best Actress award, it was quickly followed by Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor, and the Jury Prize…

None of these awards included La La Land…

"I won three major awards last year, and I've already won one this year, that's pretty good!"

Will "La La Land" be released simultaneously in mainland China?

"We'll probably have to see how things go during the Oscars season... As you know, musicals aren't mainstream in mainland China, and without big-name stars, they'll probably have a hard time attracting box office revenue..."

"Fuck!"

"What happened?"

Colleagues quickly gathered around, asking all at once, "What happened? What happened?"

"The Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice Film Festival... La La Land!"

"...Wow, that's awesome! They won the Golden Lion again!"

"Two consecutive times...that's historic, isn't it?" "Yes, the fifth person to win two Golden Lions, and the first director to win the Golden Lion Award consecutively!"

"Let me check the information... The updates are really fast! Wow, there are five directors who have won two Golden Lions, and three of them are Chinese directors: Zhang Yimou, Li An, and Shen Yan!"

"The key is that Shen Yan is only 28 years old this year..."

"Brilliant!"

At this moment, Chen Yiyi came out of the director's office: "Arrange for a trending topic immediately. Also, we need to interview Shen Yan as soon as possible..."

"How do you feel about winning the award?"

Chen Yiyi shook her head: "...Let's talk about his thoughts on the Golden Rooster Award nomination!"

Several colleagues were stunned for a moment, then gave a thumbs up: "Editor-in-chief, you really know how to interview..."

The man with glasses who watched Shen Yan's live stream earlier raised his hand: "But I heard from Shen Yan that he went directly to Thailand to film 'Detective Chinatown' and isn't coming back to China!"

Chen Yiyi frowned: "Go straight to the production team?"

"He said he'd go to the Toronto International Film Festival first, then fly directly to Bangkok... He also mentioned that 'Detective Chinatown' is scheduled for release during next year's Chinese New Year!"

Chen Yiyi suddenly remembered something: "Is 'Detective Chinatown' a show with two male leads?"

"Yes, Shen Yan and Wang Baoqiang..."

"Baoqiang and Xu Zheng have fallen out?"

"...That's right, and Shen Yan has never liked Xu Zheng...he's targeted him before!"

A fat man chimed in: "It's the same this year, 'Never Say Die' is deliberately blocking 'Lost in Hong Kong'!"

What's their conflict?

"do not know…"

Chen Yiyi asked the bespectacled man, "Did he say that?"

"...He said that the ceiling for domestic comedy should be diversity; just repeating the same old 'awkward' stuff is boring!"

Chen Yiyi pondered for a moment: "How about this, I'll lead the team myself, and we'll go to Toronto..."

"it is good!"

……

The Venice Film Festival's special celebration hotel—the Excelsior Hotel…

Compared to Cannes, Venice is too small, especially the Lido Island, where the event is held, which has only one decent hotel. Cannes, on the other hand, has about ten five-star luxury hotels!
Actually, "La La Land" is an English-language film and cannot represent Chinese elements!

There are relatively few Chinese-language films this year.

However, there was a film called "Mr. Six" in the screening section...

The closing film of the screening section.

That guy was releasing all sorts of marketing articles: "Mr. Six's global premiere at the Venice Film Festival receives zero negative reviews and is a critical stunner," "Mr. Six selected as the closing film of Venice," "Mr. Six shines on the Venice closing red carpet."

If you didn't know better, you'd think "Mr. Six" was going to win an award...

They weren't even shortlisted for the main competition!

Oh, at the celebration party, Shen Yan chatted with Alfonso Cuarón for a while about "Roma"...

Alfonso Cuarón has always wanted to make a personal film that carries his own memories.

But nobody's investing!

Because this movie is too niche.

Even though he's already an Oscar-winning director...

The Rome project was formed in 2014, but then funding was unavailable and the project was cancelled…

In the original timeline, he didn't connect with Netflix until 2016. Netflix invested $1500 million in him to produce "Roma," and then spent another $2500 million to try and win awards...

Actually, it wasn't worth it, because "Roma" did very poorly at the box office, with its domestic box office not even reaching 500 million yuan...

Oh, Shen Yan introduced the project to Netflix!
(End of this chapter)