Ordinarily this kind of report would find itself in our Movie News page. But, since Madonna is involved, Mike's refusing to have anything to do with it. Me, I'm more than happy to whip it up here as it makes for an amusing read. Madonna's directorial debut has opened at the Berlin Film Festival. The following snippets come courtesy of the Examiner: 'Filth and Wisdom' is an 81 minute-long story of a Ukrainian immigrant who finances his dreams of becoming a rock star by moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix. Set in London it stars Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of New York gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, in the main role of a philosophising S&M escort. The ensemble of characters also includes a thieving chemist's shop worker and a ballet dancer who is forced to lap dance. As well as directing and executive producing the film, which Madonna plans to release on the internet, the pop star co-wrote the script." Presumably 'cause no distributors will touch off it. If that has you creased over, wait 'til you read the following review excerpts. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said: "Her conception of super-cool streetwise reality is so clueless it's as if Marie Antoinette had made a film about cake-munching peasants" and "Madonna has been a terrible actor in many, many films and now - fiercely aspirational as ever - she has graduated to being a terrible director." Derek Malcolm of the Evening Standard said: "The absence of a decent screenplay doesn't help the energetic actors, and Madonna has far to go before she can breathe the same air as Godard, Pasolini, Fellini and Visconti, whom she insists she admires in a director's statement in which two of the four are misspelt." Hilarious. It's not all bad though; a random review for German newspaper Berliner Zeitung summed things up nicely by saying: "Filth and Wisdom isn't a bad film. That's quite an achievement by Madonna's standards."
