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Javier Bardem first met Penélope Cruz on the set of the movie Jamón, Jamón in 1992, but their beautiful relationship didn’t start until years later. They would work together again on the Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and started dating. Bardem and Cruz have been married since 2010 but Bardem thinks that their marriage doesn’t make any sense.

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in a still from Jamón jamón | Lola Films

As they celebrate their 14th year of marriage this coming Saturday, fans can think of a few reasons why their relationship does make sense. The couple have two children—Leo Encinas Cruz born in 2011 and Luna Encinas Cruz born in 2013.

Javier Bardem Shares A Humble Thought On His Marriage To Penélope Cruz Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in a still from Vicky Cristina Barcelona | Mediapro/Wild Bunch

Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are one of the power couples of Hollywood,...

Penélope Cruz is 5 feet 4 inches (162.6 cm) tall. For context, the average American woman is also around 5 feet 4 inches, making Cruz’s height quite typical.

Penélope Cruz vs. Scarlett Johansson’s Heights

Penélope Cruz, with a height of 5 feet 4 inches (162.6 cm), is slightly taller than Scarlett Johansson, who stands at 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm). Penélope Cruz is approximately 1 inch (2.6 cm) taller than Scarlett Johansson.

Penélope Cruz is about 1 inch taller than Scarlett Johansson, with Cruz standing at 5 feet 4 inches (162.6 cm) and Johansson at 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) (Credit: Tinseltown / Shutterstock)

Penélope Cruz vs. Salma Hayek’s Heights

Penélope Cruz is also taller than Salma Hayek, who stands at 5 feet 1.5 inches (156.2 cm). Cruz is approximately 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) taller than Hayek.

Penélope Cruz is approximately 2.5 inches taller than Salma Hayek, with Cruz standing at 5 feet 4 inches (162.6 cm) and Hayek at 5 feet 1.5 inches (156.2 cm) (Credit: S_Bukley / Shutterstock)

Penélope Cruz vs. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Heights

Penélope...

Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft” received a 10-minute standing ovation after its premiere at Venice Film Festival, despite a flurry of walkouts.

Though some audience members left as soon as the experimental action film finished (and at least 25 departed before that), Korine’s hardcore fans stuck around for a rousing 10-minute ovation at the midnight screening. As Korine greeted the crowd and did a happy dance, chants of “Harmony! Harmony! Harmony!” rang out.

Each time the applause started to died down, Korine waved his hands in the air like a conductor, and the cheers started up again.

Strippers twerking, demon-like crime lords chanting “dance bitch” and Travis Scott’s major-role debut are just a taste of what “Aggro Dr1ft” had to offer. When Scott first appeared on screen about halfway into the film, the crowd erupted in applause. However, the rapper was not in attendance at the premiere.

The “Spring Breakers...

Penélope Cruz Depositphotos

Penélope Cruz Sánchez, born on April 28, 1974, is a renowned Spanish actress. She has made a name for herself in various film genres, particularly in Spanish-language films, and has received numerous awards and nominations for her exceptional performances. These accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, four Golden Globe Award nominations, and five Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

Cruz embarked on her acting career at a young age, signing with an agent at 15. She made her television debut at 16 and her first appearance in a feature film the following year in Jamón Jamón (1992). Her notable roles include Belle Époque (1992), Open Your Eyes (1997), Don Juan (1998), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000), and Woman on Top (2000). She is particularly recognized for her collaborations with acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar in films such as Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Volver...

Javier Bardem is the first recipient of San Sebastian’s prestigious Donostia Award for this year’s 71st edition.

He will accept the prize, San Sebastian’s highest accolade, granted for career achievement, at the festival’s opening gala on September 22. His image will also feature on the poster of this year’s edition, unveiled today in San Sebastian.

The only surprise about Bardem’s Donostia Award is that it hasn’t come earlier. A rugby player for Spain’s national team, Bardem first came to fame as a local village hulk playing opposite his now spouse Penélope Cruz in Bigas Luna’s 1992 flamboyant social critique “Jamón, Jamón.”

Bardem wanted, however, to be an actor, not a sex symbol. Refusing to be typecast, his full international breakthrough came in 2000 thanks to a tearaway performance as gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel’s “Before Night Falls,” and in Spain,...

The Mediapro Studio is teaming with Spanish director Jorge Dorado and author Cuca Canals on detective thriller “The Young Poe” in a bid to build a second English-language international franchise on the heels and of the scale of “The Head,” sold to 90-plus territories and Tms’ biggest breakout hit to date.

Enrolling one of the biggest IPs in literary history, Edgar Allen Poe, the series adapts the hit novel saga of Spain’s Cuca Canals, co-screenwriter of Bigas Luna’s celebrated “Jamón Jamón” movie trilogy.

Canals’ novels imagine Poe as a precocious, irrepressible, neurotic and highly Gothic 11 or 12 year-old in 1820 Boston, grounding in true events of Poe’s childhood the extraordinarily analytical and morbid mind which Edgar Allen Poe brings to his fiction – whether 1841’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” commonly regarded as the first modern detective story, or the horror short stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher.

After wowing a home crowd at the opening night of the San Sebastián Film Festival on Friday, looking dazzling at 48, Spain’s best-known actress, Penélope Cruz, spoke to a packed auditorium at the city’s Tabakalera culture center on Saturday when she was honored with Spain’s National Cinematography Prize.

“It is truly an honor for me to receive this National Cinematography Prize,” said Cruz speaking in Spanish.

“Cinema is and has been my passion since I was a child. Since I dreamed in the living room of my parents’ house of worlds to explore beyond our neighbourhood. The streets of my neighborhood sometimes became sets for incredible stories,” she went on. “My childhood was fantasizing about acting, living life so intensely to be able to encompass many lives through dozens of characters.”

Cruz received two standing ovations during the ceremony. Cruz was presented the award by Spain’s Minister of Culture and Sports,...

Quad Cinema has announced that “Boundless Bardem,” a retrospective on Javier Bardem’s acting career tied to the release of his upcoming film “The Good Boss,” will run at The Quad in New York City from August 19th – 25th.

The films in the retrospective are Julian Schnabel’s “Before Night Falls“ (35mm); Bigas Luna’s “Golden Balls” (35mm) and “Jamón Jamón” (35mm); Pedro Almodóvar’s “Live Flesh” (35mm); Bond film “Skyfall” (4K); Asghar Farhadi’s “Everybody Knows”; Ethan and Joel Coen’s “No Country for Old Men,” Fernando León de Aranoa’s “Loving Pablo” and “Mondays in the Sun”; Álex de la Iglesia’s “Perdita Durango”, Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother!”; and Alejandro Amenábar’s “The Sea Inside.”

The screening series will be co-produced with the Consulate General of Spain in New York.

“One of the most exciting moments of my work as a Cultural Consul are the times when we...

Each year, Variety honors individuals who have offered a notable contribution to the film landscape for the year. The 2021 Creative Impact Award honorees have made their mark in awards hopefuls.

Javier Bardem, Creative Impact in Acting Award

Academy Award winner Bardem (“No Country for Old Men”) will be feted, celebrating a busy year that includes roles in Aaron Sorkin’s “Being the Ricardos” and Fernando León de Aronoa’s “The Good Boss,” Spain’s entry for the international film Oscar. “It is a huge honor that I take it with lots of gratitude and humility,” says Bardem.

In “Being the Ricardos,” he portrays real-life Desi Arnaz, alongside Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball. The entire film takes place in one pressure-cooker week during the shooting of their classic CBS sitcom “I Love Lucy,” specifically when gossip columnist Walter Winchell reports that Ball registered as a member of the Communist Party back in the 1930s.

Variety will honor Academy Award-winning actor Javier Bardem at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 7 as part of their annual “10 Directors to Watch” and Creative Impact Awards brunch at the Parker Palm Springs.

Bardem will be celebrated for his recent film, Amazon Studios’ “Being the Ricardos,” as well his entire body of work, which includes “No Country for Old Men,” “Dune,” “Skyfall,” “Biutiful” and “The Good Boss.”

“It’s been 30 years since Bardem emerged as a major international star in Bigas Luna’s ‘Jamón Jamón,'” said Variety’s executive vice president of content Steven Gaydos. “In that time, he’s garnered acting honors around the world, including the European Film Award, the Cannes Festival best actor award and three Oscar nominations, including a win for his powerful role in the Coen Brothers’ best picture winner, ‘No Country for Old Men.’ Along the way, Bardem has worked...

Antonio Pérez‘ Seville-based Maestranza Films, producer of Benito Zambrano’s “Solas” and “The Sleeping Voice”), and Kiko Martinez Madrid-based Nadie Es Perfecto, the company behind Álex de la Iglesia’s “The Bar,” have teamed to co-produce a remake of Bigas Luna’s cult horror modern classic “Anguish” (1987).

Spain-born but based in Los Angeles, Spanish director F. Javier Gutiérrez is attached to direct. Gutiérrez’ second feature, horror “Rings” –part of the several remakes saga starting with Gore Verbinski’s “The Ring”­– nabbed $83 million worldwide.

Luna’s original “Anguish” followed an ophthalmologist with a bizarre hobby –collecting eyes– and a dominant mother. Following his mother’s orders, he goes to a movie-theater, where he meets two friends. The feature they are watching, however, didsrupts their perception of reality.

One of the greatest ever Spanish directors, who gave Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem their big break in “Jamón, Jamón,” Luna helmed some English-language...

Madrid — Four years in the making, Agustí Villaronga’s “Born a King,” starring Ed Skrein (“Deadpool”) and Hermione Cornfield (“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”) and produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez, has caught box office fire in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Released wide on Sept. 26, the true events-based historical drama – framing the coming of age of Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, against the background of a diplomatic mission he led to London in 1919 at the tender age of 13 – has earned an exceptional first-four-day $972, 962 in UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, according to figures from its distributor, Dubai’s-based Vox Film Distribution.

The lion’s share of that was made in UAE, where it grossed $547,725.

However execrating for an independent film, the results are not totally surprising. “Born a King” is a Spain-u.K. production, whose producers, director and crew pack huge experience: Gómez, producer of Fernando Trueba’s...

Penelope Cruz revealed she and her husband Javier Bardem received equal pay for their roles in their new movie Everybody Knows. When asked if they were paid the same amount at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, the 44-year-old actress told reporters, per Variety, "Actually, yes." In addition to talking about their paychecks, Cruz weighed in on what it's like to work with her husband, whom she's collaborated with since their 1992 film Jamón, Jamón.  "We don't take the characters home at the end of the day," Cruz said, per Variety. "We have similar ways of work. The fact that we know each other and trust each other helps."  While the couple...

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Penélope Cruz sheds her clothes for the cover of the latest issue of Esquire U.K., and bares other revealing details. The Spanish actress sat down with the men’s magazine to discuss her latest role as Donatella Versace in the FX Network’s forthcoming The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

In the interview, the Oscar winner discussed her very first nude scene in director Pedro Almodóvar’s 1992 classic film Jamón Jamón, which she believed would torpedo her career. “Of course I was not...

2017-10-16T07:36:37-07:00Penelope Cruz Gets Naked for Magazine Cover

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides star Penelope Cruz says she cried after filming her nude scene in 1992's Jamon Jamon, but it was because she was embarrassed or was badly treated. It was because she didn't know if she'd ever see the people she was working with again. As it turns out, she eventually married one of her co-stars from that film, Javier Bardem.

Now Cruz is once again taking off her clothes, this time for the cover of Esquire magazine.

Via Page Six.

Academy Award-winning actress Penélope Cruz revealed she was upset after filming her first nude scene at 18 years-old, afraid she would never work again.

Cruz, 43, who was featured on Esquire’s November magazine cover, told the publication about her nude scene for the 1992 film “Jamon Jamon.” The movie also featured her future husband,...

Playbill Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh got their Sardi's caricatures this week

BFI Pedro Almodóvar recommends 13 Spanish films, some classics and some recent, including Jamon Jamon, Blancanieves (♥︎), and Peppermint Frappé

McCarter want to see Murder on the Orient Express on stage before the big screen remake later this year? A new production just opened in Princeton with a pretty great cast that includes Veanne Cox, Julie Halston and gorgeous Max Von Essen who should've won the Tony two years back for An American in Paris

Jezebel "Carol Without Women" boring crap or still beautiful abstraction? Must watch!

Mnpp Sam Claflin will costar in the next film from brilliant Babadook director Jennifer Kent

Interview talks to the new Iron Fist Finn Jones

Ashlee Marie shows you how to make a standing Lego Batman cake

Shudder a new streaming service for horror fans is streaming Ken Russell's notorious and brilliant and...

3 June 1993: Joel Schumacher tries for a Taxi Driver of the nineties, while Bigas Luna’s comedy suggests Spain is full of people unable to contain their appetites

Falling Down

Dir: Joel Schumacher

With Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall

112 mins, cert 18. Empire etc.

Jamon Jamon

Dir: Bigas Luna

With Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Stefania Sandrelli

94 minutes, cert 18. Metro, Camden Plaza, MGM Tottenham Court Rd, Screen/Baker St etc.

Continue reading...

Kevin Macdonald’s How I Live Now will close the festival, which has assembled it largest programme to date.

The 33rd Cambridge Film Festival (Sept 19-29) has unveiled its 2013 line-up, comprising 150 titles from 40 countries.

As previously announced, Professor Stephen Hawking will attend the opening night gala of documentary Hawking, which will be broadcast live to more than 60 screens across the UK.

The festival will close with Kevin Macdonald’s How I Live Now, an Orwellian vision of a post-apocalyptic future starring Saoirse Ronan and George MacKay.

Alongside Hawking, other special guests to the festival will include directors Lucy Walker (The Crash Reel), Roland Klick (Deadlock), Mark Levinson (Particle Fever), Julien Temple (Oil City Confidential), Ramon Zürcher (The Strange Little Cat), Małgośka Szumowska (In The Name Of), Marzin Malaszczak (Sieniawka), Matt Hulse (Dummy Jim) and Andrew Mudge (The Forgotten Kingdom), Bob Stanley, John Pearse and actress Stephanie Stremler (Dust On Our Heart).

Strands include Young Americans, aimed at showcasing...

Madrid - Acclaimed Spanish director, Josep Joan Bigas Luna, who discovered Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz and cast them opposite each other 20 years ago in Jamon, Jamon died over the weekend at age 67. Bigas Luna, who died of cancer, was recognized as having an unfailing eye for discovering fresh talent. He cast Bardem in 1990 in The Ages of Lulu, giving the future Oscar-winning actor his first break. "I don't know where to begin," Bardem said, adding that he owes Bigas Luna "the woman I love," and "a career that I never dreamed I could have.

read more...

Spanish film director whose 'Iberian passion' trilogy began with Jamon Jamon

For 39 years, under General Francisco Franco's repressive regime, it was almost impossible for Spain to create a vibrant film industry and for talented film-makers to express themselves freely. However, after the death of the Generalissimo in 1975, there was a burst of creativity, with Pedro Almodóvar paving the way for directors such as Bigas Luna, who has died of cancer aged 67.

After some years as a conceptual artist who experimented with new audio-visual media, Luna became known internationally for his "Iberian passion" feature film trilogy: Jamon Jamon (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and the Moon (1994), which explored the darkest depths of eroticism and stereotypical Spanish machismo. The first film introduced Penélope Cruz to audiences and launched Javier Bardem as the embodiment of the Spanish stud. "I owe my career to Bigas Luna," Bardem said in 2001.

In the trilogy, Luna,...

Jamon Jamon director Bigas Luna has died, aged 67.

The Spanish director died at home in Riera de Gaia in the north-east of the country today, after a long battle with cancer, Spanish state broadcaster Rtve reported.

Luna, whose directing career began in 1976 with Tattoo, launched the careers of celebrity couple Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem in his 1992 movie Jamon, Jamon, which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and Jury Award at San Sebastian Film Festival.

Known for his erotically charged films, his Iberian Trilogy, which began with Jamon Jamon, also included Golden Balls and The Tit And The Moon. His film Second Origin was in pre-production a the time of his death....

Cine Latino covers, well, all things relating to Latino culture and the movies, every Friday. Ever since his 1992 film role as an aspiring bullfighter in Jamón Jamón, Javier Bardem quickly established himself as an action star. He's played a bank robber, a detective, a crime lord, a twisted monk and a sociopathic assassin in No Country for Old Men, which garnered him his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. So, in celebration of his latest big-screen project, Skyfall, in theaters today, we decided to highlight a few of our favorite Javier Bardem on-screen characters. Jamon Jamon (1992) Filled with sexual energy and twisted romantic relationships, Jamón, Jamón stars Javier Bardem (Raul) and a very young Penelope Cruz (Silvia) in her first...

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Penelope Cruz is set to star with her husband Javier Bardem once more in Ridley Scott's drug thriller The Counselor, according to a new report.

The Spanish actress first worked with Bardem in 1992's Jamon Jamon, and they've teamed up onscreen several times since, including in Woody Allen's 2008 drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cruz is the frontrunner for a major role in The Counselor, which already stars Bardem, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt.

Cruz and Bardem married in 2010, and she gave birth to their son Leo a year later.

London, Jan 2: Penelope Cruz revealed that her mother Encarna understood her when she was so upset doing nude scenes in her first film 'Jamon Jamon'.

The 37-year-old actress did some frank nude scenes for the first and only time in her life in the movie starring Javier Bardem.

"She also understood me when I was so upset about my first film, Jamon Jamon. I did not handle it at all well. I had a strong reaction to anything sexual or sensual for a while. I cut my hair short. I didn't do any love scenes - not even kisses - for many years," the Sun quoted her as saying.

"I was told by everyone: 'You are risking your.

Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz received a coveted star on Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame on Friday, becoming the first Spanish actress to earn the honour. Cruz, who won her Oscar for supporting actress playing a fiery artist in Woody Allen's movie "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," called the unveiling of her pink granite star "a very special day that I will always remember. "Every time I look at that star, I will see the names of all the people that have helped me make many of my dreams a reality," she said at the unveiling attended by a large crowd, including her husband Javier Bardem and friend, Johnny Depp. Cruz, 36, thanked her parents, siblings, Bardem and their newborn son, "for making me happy every day." The Spanish beauty made her acting debut on television when she was just a teenager and began her feature film career under the direction of...

Beyond Buñuel, Spanish film-makers struggled to make an international impact – until Franco's death in 1975 liberated an entire generation

Spain embraced the new medium of cinema at the turn of the century as fervently as any of its European counterparts; this film of a religious procession in 1902, by the splendidly named Fructuos Gelabert, is typical of the early amateurs.

In Segundo de Chomón, however, Spain produced a trickster director

to rival France's Georges Méliès.

De Chomón worked mostly in France, and even made An Excursion to the Moon, his own version of Méliès's most famous film.

The route from Spain to France was well-trodden by the time Buñuel and Dalí made Un Chien Andalou in 1928; otherwise, little of Spain's silent-film output made any impact internationally.

The early sound period fared little better, as political convulsions in the run-up to the civil war made a settled industry difficult.

After L'Age d'Or (1930), his second French film,...

Los Angeles - Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, James Franco and Colin Firth are nominated for the Academy Award for best actor. Javier Bardem, Biutiful - Bardem is no stranger to Oscar glitz, having been the first Spaniard to be nominated for an Oscar, as well as the first to win an acting Oscar for his role in No Country for Old Men. Married to Penelope Cruz, the 41-year-old is a scion of a famous Spanish acting family. His other acclaimed films include Jamon Jamon, Before Night Falls, The Sea Inside, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Eat Pray Love. In Biutiful he plays a cancer-stricken father on the fringes of the Barcelona underworld who seeks to create a better...

A brilliant actor with piercing eyes, Javier Bardem received his third Academy Award nomination for "Biutiful," in recognition of his role as Uxbal, a single, struggling father with cancer who decides to take the path to redemption before he dies.

Bardem took home an Oscar in 2007 as Best Supporting Actor in "No Country for Old Men" and was nominated for Best Actor in 2000 for "Before Night Falls." Javier is also a five-time Goya winner, Spain's version of the Academy Award.

We would like to offer our felicidades to Penelope Cruth and Haaaavier Bardem on the birth of their first child. A baby boy! Also, congratulations to the baby for winning the genetic lottery. Fun fact: his dad was nominated for an Oscar the day he was born. Pequeño Baby Luck, we’ll call him. He’s going to want to know how he was conceived at some point, so I’ll just save Penelope and Javier the trouble and present Pequeño Baby Luck with this image, which is the poster for the movie where his parents met entitled, Jamon Jamon, which, loosely* translated, means Ham Ham: Now that’s what I call Sexy Education! *precisely...

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are now the proud parents of a baby boy -- according to the Spanish newspaper "El Pais." According to the newspaper, which cites "sources close to the family," Cruz, 36, gave birth at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. This is the first child for the couple, who married last July with an intimate ceremony at a friend's home in the Bahamas. Cruz and Javier met in 1992 when they filmed Penelope's first movie, "Jamon Jamon" together, but didn't start dating until 2007. Penelope will be seen in this summer's "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" -- which she filmed while pregnant. Read more...

Penelope Cruz might have given her actor husband Javier Bardem another reason to celebrate. Rumor has it, the 36-year-old actress has given birth to her first child with the "Biutiful" star on Tuesday, January 25, the same day he received a Best Actor nomination from this year's Oscars.

Bringing up the story to attention was Spanish newspaper El Pais. In its report, the publication claimed that the "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" beauty gave birth at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Several other reports suggested the newborn is a baby boy, but the actress and her husband have yet to officially announce the infant's gender and name.

Penelope and Javier first met on the set of her 1992 debut film, "Jamon Jamon", but didn't start dating until they starred together in the Woody Allen movie "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" in 2007. They tied the knot in a low-key ceremony in the...

Don’t think about that title too hard. I didn’t. So Jay Leno (Jay Leno’s writers) dug up this clip of Javier Bardem dressed as Superman for a comedy(?) bit on Spanish TV in the late 80′s before he was un actor famoso and just an hombre trying to find trabajo wherever he could. Also, donde esta la biblioteca? ¡¡¡Jajajajajajajajaja!!! Two years after this, Javier would go on to shoot the film Jamon Jamon with Penelope Cruz. The rest is, as they say, historia. Heatworld...

Javier Bardem is not one to shy away from challenges. His brave work in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls," in which he portrayed Cuban poet and dissident Reinaldo Arenas, earned Bardem his first Oscar nomination. His equally moving performance in "The Sea Inside" earned him a Golden Globe nom. And then there was his chilling portrayal of sociopath Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men," for which Bardem won the Academy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and BAFTA awards for best supporting actor two years ago. So when Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Amores Perros," "21 Grams," "Babel") sent the Spanish actor the script for "Biutiful," Bardem was at once drawn to the lead character, Uxbal, a dying man racing against time to ensure that his children are left in good hands. Bardem describes Uxbal as a man "trapped between what he would like to do...

The ingenious poster for this year’s BFI London Film Festival, which kicked off this Wednesday, could not be more up my alley: a poster made from movie posters. Designed by [correction] Leo Burnett and Village Green, it was created by actually printing up posters, pasting them on a wall and then tearing them to conjure up the London skyline. The posters are all British quads, though not all for British films. There are local favorites My Beautiful Laundrette and This is England, and not one but two for The Long Good Friday, but there’s also Jamon Jamon and Nine Queens and Lost in Translation. The montage features three of Peter Strausfeld’s superb woodcut posters for the Academy Cinema (for Kanal, The Crime of Monsieur Lang, and Tonite Let's All Make Love in London) and I’m happy to see two Tarkovsky posters in there. In addition to the...

Javier Bardem, who stars in the upcoming No Country for Old Men, will be honored with the Montecito Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. The award, which recognizes a performer who has given a series of classic and standout performances, will be presented to the actor at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara on Jan. 28. Bardem, who also stars in the upcoming Love in the Time of Cholera, has had lead roles in Jamon, jamon, Live Flesh, Before Night Falls and The Sea Inside.

Spanish cinema stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are reuniting for Woody Allen to shoot their first screen pairing since 1992. Jamon Jamon launched the pair's glittering career when Cruz was just 19 and her co-star Bardem was 23. They since appeared in Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh in 1997 but didn't share a scene. Now Hollywood director Allen has convinced the couple to re-team for his first foray into continental Europe. His movie is to be shot this summer in Barcelona in English and Spanish.