To continue with the Vicky Cristina Barcelona celebration updates, I am posting a handful of gorgeous images of Pe from the 2008 Cannes Film Festival (where the film made it’s world premiere). We simply adore this photocall, and she could not be more cute if she tried!

Vicky Cristina Barcelona was released this past Friday (August 15th) and to celebrate here is a batch of promo images of gorgeous Penélope as Maria Elena. Since the film made it’s premiere at Cannes, reviews were very positive for Penélope’s performance, some even going as far to say another Oscar nod could be in her future! Sadly for me, the film didn’t get into release in my neck of the woods, but I still couldn’t be more excited for the movie!

From Rolling Stone:
What sparks the movie is Penélope Cruz as Maria Elena, the painter’s ex-wife, a fireball given to strong emotions — hell, she once stabbed Juan Antonio during an argument. You haven’t lived till you’ve heard Cruz and Bardem trading Woody Allen one-liners in Spanish. They’re so ferociously funny you won’t even need the subtitles. Bardem, spinning 180 degrees from his bad-haircut villain in No Country for Old Men, is charm personified. And watching him switch tactics to tempt the luscious, pliable Johansson and the resistant, engaged Hall is a lesson in the art of seduction. But watching Cruz, switching between Spanish and English, untamed passion and chilly despair, is a lesson in the art of acting. Oscar-nominated for Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, Cruz should have the golden boy at her feet this time. Whether she’s (whoa!) planting hot kisses on Johansson in a darkroom or shedding light on her own secret pain, Cruz is a stunner in every sense of the word — wild, erotic, quick-witted, touching and possessed of a beauty that can sneak up and break your heart. In this light-comic breeze of a movie, Cruz is a gathering storm.

Opening in just under 700 theaters, Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona (MGM/Weinstein), starring Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, rounded out the Top 10 with $3.7 million, becoming Allen’s biggest opening movie since 2000′s Small Time Crooks as well as the second-biggest opening of his 35-year career.

1. Tropic Thunder
2. The Dark Knight
3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
4. Mirrors
5. Pineapple Express
6. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
7. Mamma Mia!
8. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
9. Step Brothers
10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Source: ComingSoon.net

Penelope Cruz walks into a Beverly Hills hotel room with a stunning red dress looking ravishing. Quietly reserved and ferociously guarded, Cruz is receiving strong reviews as the tempestuous ex-wife in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Cruz is also starring in the erotic adaptation of Phillip Roth’s Elegy and is about to join the star-studded cast of the musical Nine. Cruz talked to Paul Fischer.

Question: At the press conference yesterday Woody Allen talked about, and it was very funny to hear him talk about the arguments that you had with Javier in Spanish, scenes where you’re arguing with Javier in Spanish, and he had no idea, Woody Allen had no idea what you were saying, until you went back to his, to edit the film, and get someone who could translate what you were saying. How freeing is it for you as an actress to be able to do stuff like that, without even worrying or caring what the director thinks?

Woody Allen knew he was making a comedy when he was shooting Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Spain. Penelope Cruz approached it as a drama.

“I felt like I was doing the most serious drama that I had done in my career,” Cruz says now, with the sexy romantic comedy set for release tomorrow across North America. As a slick return to form, and looking like a gorgeous travelogue despite its modest $15-million budget, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the funniest Allen comedy since Mighty Aphrodite in the 1990s.

“When I saw the film in Cannes,” Cruz says of the world premiere in May at France’s glamourous Riviera filmfest, I said, ‘Why are they laughing?’

“I understood that when I read the script. But preparing Maria Elena (her tempestuous Spanish temptress) and then playing her for those few weeks, I forgot. I was suffering with her. And I think probably Woody was laughing about that, too, about how seriously everyone was taking everything. Because all the characters are suffering and struggling.

Penélope Cruz at the screening of Elegy in New York City on August 5, 2008. Penélope kept it simple in vintage Chanel Couture, channelling the gothic with a strapless, floor-length, black dress and tailored jacket. A cocktail ring on her index finger added a touch of sparkle, while the detailing on her jacket lifted what could otherwise have been a heavy look.

Penélope Cruz at the Vicky Cristina Barcelona Special Screening in New York City on August 6, 2008. She is pictured with Javier Bardem, Harvey Weinstein and Patricia Clarkson.

Penélope Cruz at the Vicky Cristina Barcelona Premiere in Westwood, California on August 4, 2008. Penélope wore Chopard diamond earrings with her sweeping Hervé L. Leroux gown. This is one of our favorite Pe looks to date; she looks nothing short of breathtaking!

Ay dios mio!

Hot on the heels of her first best-actress Oscar nomination, Spain’s Penelope Cruz is basking in some very sweet reviews for playing a stormy artist in Woody Allen’s dramedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona and a composed college student involved with her ambivalent professor in the drama Elegy.

And yet, she can’t sit through a single interview or stroll down a red carpet without the same question cropping up: What was it like kissing her Vicky Cristina co-star Scarlett Johansson?

“Always,” Cruz says with a sigh, raising her eyebrows, of inquiries about a quick yet potent scene that’s pivotal to the film. “Maybe if I was a journalist I would ask about it, too. But Scarlett and I have run out of things to say about it. We get asked 50 times a day.”

The stars of new movie musical Nine are to be marched through a Fame-style bootcamp to make sure they can sing and dance when director Rob Marshall calls for action.

The Chicago filmmaker is setting up a drama school, where his stars, including Penelope Cruz, Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard can work exclusively on their high notes, dance steps and even their dialect.

Spaniard Cruz reveals, “We have a camp in London where you go from the dancing room to the singing room, to the acting room to the dialect coach. It’s all day like that and I can’t wait to get started.”

Source: Pr-Inside.com