Kevin Spacey, Laura Linney and director Alan Parker were at the Berlin Film Fest to support their film 'The Life of David Gale.'
Nicolas Cage accompanied his film 'Adaptation,' directed by Spike Jonze, to the Berlin fest.
BERLIN -- The first weekend of the 53rd Berlin Intl. Film Festival turned into a parade of stars as Nicole Kidman, Nicolas Cage, George Clooney, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman and many more took their turn in the spotlight.
Meanwhile, U.S. buyers got down to business: Sony Pictures Classics picked up the Israeli Oscar hopeful "Broken Wings," screening in the Panorama sidebar here, and several distribs made bids for Italian competition entry "I'm Not Scared."
The Berlinale has always enjoyed its share of Hollywood star power, but this year's event has gone several steps beyond any recent edition in courting the marquee names.
Kidman accompanied Ed Harris and director Stephen Daldry to support Sunday's competition screening of "The Hours" before heading to London for the U.K. premiere today.
She confessed that she would not have cast herself as Virginia Woolf, whose books she found "boring" at school. "I thought I was reading for Julianne Moore's role, and Meryl (Streep) thought she was reading for Virginia," she said.
Clooney, in town with director Stephen Soderbergh and co-star Natascha McElhone for "Solaris," which screened on Saturday, and "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," which unspools today, livened up the usually polite Berlinale proceedings by lashing out at a journalist who dared to confess he found "Solaris" dull.
"What a shitty thing to say," Clooney growled. "I'd like to see you make a film." Soderbergh responded more diplomatically, "I don't think you can make a film like this and be surprised when people find it boring."
Fox is making a big effort to relaunch "Solaris" internationally after its box office failure Stateside.
Alan Parker's "The Life of David Gale" got its world premiere Friday, with Kevin Spacey and Laura Linney attending. Cage supported the "Adaptation" screening, alongside director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman.
Jackie Chan, currently prepping "Around the World in 80 Days" at Berlin's Babelsberg Studios, presented a special screening of his documentary "Traces of the Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family," which he said he had originally made for his family, with no thought of giving it a public airing.
He admitted that he feels uncomfortable making movies in Hollywood: "Hollywood has a good system, but not for me. I have to go to Asia to be happy as a filmmaker. In Hollywood there's too much studio control."
John Cusack was in Berlin for a screening of Menno Meyjes' "Max" outside the festival. Pop Svengali Malcolm McLaren hosted an avant-garde party for the pic at a vast art gallery devoted to video installations.
Dustin Hoffman turned up to support "Moonlight Mile" in the Panorama sidebar, while Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green showed up for "Party Monster."
Jet Li, Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi, three of Asia's biggest stars, took their turn in the spotlight for Zhang Yimou's lavish $31 million martial arts pic "Hero," which screened in competition.
Not that the Berlinale has forgotten about new European talent. Sunday night saw the glitzy launch of two major talent initiatives -- the Berlinale Talent Campus, in which 500 wannabe filmmakers will spend five days learning from tutors including Soderbergh, Dennis Hopper, Anthony Minghella, Mike Figgis and Spike Lee; and the annual Shooting Stars gala, which puts a selection of rising Euro thesps in the spotlight.
Back on the sales side, Sony pickup "Broken Wings" has already won top prizes at the Jerusalem, Tokyo and Palm Springs fests and is a blockbuster at the Israeli box office.
Drama concerns a middle-class Israeli family coping with bereavement. SPC struck the deal with producer Assaf Amir and Alison Thompson of Pathe Intl., which came on board last month to handle worldwide sales.
Meanwhile, Miramax is reportedly deep in negotiations with sales agent Capitol Films for "I'm Not Scared," the latest movie by Gabriele Salvatores, who won the foreign-language Oscar in 1991 with "Mediterraneo."
Pic concerns a 10-year-old in an isolated village in Italy's deep south. Earlier in the fest, Strand Releasing picked up U.S. rights to another Israeli movie, "Yossi and Jagger," a true-life drama about the love affair between two soldiers. Fortissimo Film Sales struck the deal after a market screening.
Contact Adam Dawtrey at
ed.meza@mannaa.de