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Monday July 31, 2017 16 ENtertainment

Clooney to sue magazine for

photos of twins

GEORGE CLOONEY plans to sue France’s Voici magazine for publishing photos of his twin babies, as well as the paparazzi who illegally shot the images, the actor says in a statement to Gossip Cop.

The cover of the latest issue of Voici features the fi rst pictures of Clooney’s twin boy and girl, Ella and Alexander, who his wife Amal gave birth to in early June. The images show the par-ents holding their babies at the actor’s Lake Como estate in Italy, but they were illegally obtained by photographers who broke onto the family’s property.

Clooney says in response to the invasion of privacy, “Over the last week photographers from Voici magazine scaled our fence, climbed our tree and illegally took pictures of our infants inside our home,” Cloo-ney says in a statement. “Make no mistake the photographers, the agency and the magazine will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The safety of our children demands it.”

This is not the fi rst time Clooney has gone after the paparazzi in Italy. As Gossip Cop reported in 2009, after another photographer allegedly scaled a wall at the actor’s Lake Como home and snapped a top-less shot of a friend’s 13-year-old daughter changing in one of his guestrooms, the Oscar winner said he would sue both the brazen paparazzo and the two magazines that published the pictures. There were also photos taken of Clooney and his then-girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis relaxing privately in his yard. (SD-Agencies)

Matt Damon (L) stars in George Clooney’s “Suburbicon.” SD-Agencies

Venice to debut potential

Oscar contenders

IN its 74th year, the Venice Film Festival is once again debuting a slate of potential Oscar con-tenders from top directors, including George Clooney, Darren Aronofsky and Guill-ermo del Toro.

Festival director Alberto Barbera on Thursday unveiled the lineup for this year at the Cinema Moderno in Rome.

“I’m very satisfi ed,” Barbera said about the slate. “I have to say that I am 97 percent satis-fi ed in the sense that there are only maybe two or three fi lms that we wanted to have for the festival, and we couldn’t, because they will go to other festivals. So all the fi lms that we saw and that we wanted to have are in the lineup of this year’s festival.”

As previously announced, Alexander Payne’s satire “Downsizing,” starring Matt Damon, will open the event in competition. The fi lm is about a family that seeks a better life through shrinking. It also stars Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Laura Dern and Jason Sudeikis. Vying for the Golden Lion this year, to be award by a jury led by Annette Bening, are 21 world premieres.

Darren Aronofsky, who presided over the Venice jury in 2011, will bring his eagerly anticipated horror fi lm “Mother!” to the fest. The pic, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Ed Harris, centers around a relationship being tested after the arrival of unwelcome visitors.

Damon will be pulling double-duty at the festival as he will also star in George Clooney’s “Suburbicon,” written by Clooney and the Coen broth-ers, which focuses on a family’s moral descension after a home invasion goes very wrong. It also stars Coen favorites Juli-anne Moore, Oscar Isaac and Josh Brolin.

Guillermo del Toro will debut his otherworldly Cold War era fairytale “The Shape of Water,” starring Michael Shannon, Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer.

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” a dark comedy from Martin McDonagh, starring Woody Harrelson, Peter Dinklage and Frances McDormand, will also bow on the Lido.

Paul Schrader’s reli-gious-themed thriller “First Reformed,” starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried,

will also premiere in Venice. Abdellatif Kechiche will bring

his 1980s coming-of-age story “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno” to the fest, and Paolo Virzi will premiere his fi rst full Eng-lish-language pic, “The Leisure Seeker,” starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland.

Out of competition, the fes-tival continues its relationship with Netfl ix with the world pre-miere of “Our Souls at Night,” with honorary Golden Lions going to the fi lm’s stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

Netfl ix also will premiere its fi rst Italian production, the modern-day mafi a saga “Sub-urra.” It also will screen the Errol Morris series “Worm-wood,” starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker, the festival’s only non-world premiere.

Also out of competition, Stephen Frears will premiere “Victoria & Abdul,” starring Judi Dench, Ali Fazal and Eddie Izzard in a pic about the unlikely friendship between Queen Victoria and a young Indian clerk. And Fernando Leon De Aranoa’s “Loving Pablo,” star-ring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard, will debut. (SD-Agencies)

George Clooney and his wife Amal.

Elizabeth Smart movieELIZABETH SMART said it required years for her to par-ticipate in a movie about her kidnapping ordeal.

Smart said Friday that she couldn’t have done so immedi-ately after her abduction from her Salt Lake City home in 2002 at age 14. She was rescued nine months later, and said Friday she was eager to “run away” from the experience.

“I Am Elizabeth Smart” debuts Nov. 18 on Lifetime, preceded by a two-part documentary Nov. 12 and 13 that Lifetime said will include new information on the case and detail Smart’s life today. Brian David Mitchell, a Utah street preacher, was convicted of kidnapping and raping Smart and sentenced to life in prison.

Fire FLAMES took over the Tomor-rowland Unite stage Saturday night at Parc de Can Zam in Barcelona, leading festival orga-nizers to evacuate 22,000 people in attendance.

The fi re was caused by a “tech-nical malfunction,” according to a statement released by Tomor-rowland. As of press time, no injuries have been reported. The electronic dance music festival scheduled “Unite with Tomorrowland” events in eight countries this year, with the main event held in Boom, Belgium. The past weekend is the second weekend of the 2017 festival.

‘Dietland’AMC says it’s green-lighted a new series, “Dietland,” based on the darkly satiric novel about a weight-obsessed society.

The show’s creator is Marti Noxon, whose credits include “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce” and “UnReal.”

AMC said the show based on Sarai Walker’s novel will explore the emphasis on weight and beauty in a “bold, original and funny way.” The main character of the 2015 novel “Dietland” is a 300-pound woman, Plum, who becomes involved with an underground group of radical women.

(SD-Agencies)

At a Glance

THE San Sebastian Film Fes-tival on Friday unveiled the first competition titles for its 65th edition.

The festival, which runs from Sept. 22 to 30, will in its competition program premiere “Life and Nothing More,” the second fi lm by Antonio Mendez Esparza; “Handia,” the latest fi lm from Jon Garano and Aitor Arregi; as well as “El Autor,” by Manuel Martin Cuenca. The competition winner will

be honored with the Golden Shell award. “Loving Pablo,” by Fernando Leon de Aranoa and starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, will be the closing-night fi lm of the Pearls section and screen out of com-petition. The fi lm tells “the true story of the notorious drug king-pin Pablo Escobar, who struck up an unlikely love affair with a glamorous television host named Virginia Vallejo.”

(SD-Agencies)

San Sebastian unveils titles

in competition Javier Bardem (front) and Penelope Javier Bardem (front) and Penelope Cruz. Cruz.