Madonna described King Edward VIII as "very punk rock," at the North American opening of her film W.E about his infamous romance with American divorcee Wallis Simpson - and his subsequent abdication. 
 
 The singer-turned-film-director was explaining how an anarchist anthem by punk band The Sex Pistols ended up on the soundtrack for her second directorial work, starring British actors James D'Arcy and Andrea Riseborough. 
 
 The band's 1977 single "God Save the Queen" attacked social conformity and deference to the Crown. 
 
 Madonna said: "I thought he (King Edward VIII) was quite rebellious and cutting edge in his point of view about life and about how to run the empire and using the Sex Pistols was a perfect marriage." 
 
 In Venice, where the film premiere earlier this month, the Queen of Pop said there were "elements of myself" in the film, and said she could sympathise with Wallis as an outsider, an American living in London. 
 
 "I empathize with Wallis. Public figures or icons are often just reduced to a sound-bite, just a handful of attributes. I think people tried to diminish her... I tried to make her human," she said in Venice. 
 
 At the Toronto International Film Festival, Madonna added that Wallis "was and is a very provocative character. She is also a mysterious and enigmatic creature, not conventionally beautiful, not young, twice divorced, not anything fabulous about her background and somehow she managed to capture the heart of the man who at the time held the most important position in the world. 
 
 "That story intrigued me immensely and I wanted to understand it." 
 
 "But also I was interested in the concept of the cult of celebrity which we are all consumed with now, and then." 
 
 Polish classical composer Abel Korzeniowski set up the movie's haunting score. 
 
 He tried to explain to reporters that Madonna had urged him to "not try to be talented." Madonna interrupted, "No, I said: 'Don't over-think it.' I always wanted you to be talented." 
 
 The clash of his classical and Madonna's pop backgrounds, he continued, resulted in "the most interesting thing." 
 
 "I found myself learning very interesting things (from Madonna) about music, which helped me in my classical thinking," Korzeniowski added. 
 
 During filming, it was also revealed that Madonna and the cast held sing-a-longs "to pass the time" during rainy days when shooting was interrupted. 
 
 In Toronto, Madonna serenaded journalists with a few impromptu lyrics they had sung together: "We're making a movie, isn't it groovy, welcome to my house". 
 
 But Madonna has already conquered the music industry, and is more focused on filmmaking now. 
 
 "I had to earn my way ... to be taken seriously in the music department, and now I'm well aware that I have to do the same in the world of film," she said, welcoming critics' reviews of her film (not her personal life). 
 
 W.E is scheduled for wide release in December at the peak of the pre-Oscar season. "I'm keeping my legs and fingers crossed" for a nod, she quipped. ||||| Director Madonna poses before the news conference for the film ''W.E.'' at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival September 12, 2011. 
 
 TORONTO | 
 
 TORONTO (Reuters) - Madonna on Monday said she said she doesn't mind any criticism of her filmmaking abilities, so long as it is directed at her movie and not at herself. 
 
 The pop star told reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival, where she is promoting her second film "W.E.", she had to earn her reputation as a musician and she expected to do the same as a film director. 
 
 "I had the same kind of pressure when I began my music career," Madonna told reporters. "I was nervous, and I didn't know what to expect, and people didn't know what to expect." 
 
 The film, which premiered at the Venice film festival and is screening at Toronto, has been characterized by critics as visually stunning, but lacking in focus and burdened by weak performances. 
 
 "I can tell when people are reviewing my film and when they're reviewing me personally," Madonna said when asked whether she cared about what critics thought. "So when they stick to the film, then I do care." 
 
 "W.E." stars Abbie Cornish as a young New Yorker in the 1990s who becomes infatuated with the 1930s marriage of King Edward VIII and American divorcee Wallis Simpson, played by Andrea Riseborough. It follows Madonna's first feature, 2008's "Filth and Wisdom," which performed poorly at the box office. 
 
 Britain's The Guardian newspaper was the harshest among the critics, giving the film just one star out five, while the Daily Telegraph gave a more positive three star review. 
 
 The budget of W.E. is estimated to be around $15 million, and it hits movie theaters in the United States in December, prompting one journalist to ask Madonna about her Oscar hopes for the film. 
 
 "My legs and my fingers are crossed," she quipped. (Reporting by Julie Gordon, editing by Christine Kearney) ||||| W.E. is Madonna's first film as director and received some negative reviews when it debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. 
 
 Speaking at the Toronto Film Festival, the singer said she wanted reviewers to focus on her work as a director – not on her personal life. 
 
 "I can tell when people are reviewing my film and when they're reviewing me personally," she said. 
 
 "I welcome criticisms of my film when it's viewed as an artistic form and not when people are mentioning things about my personal life or my achievements in any other field because they're irrelevant to the film. So when they stick to the film then I do care, I pay attention to it." 
 
 Madonna said she has always been fascinated by the relationship between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII. Despite being based on true historical figures, the film is not a straight-forward biopic but vacillates between the historical love affair and a contemporary romance between a married woman and a Russian security guard. 
 
 While she takes her work seriously, the director said there was plenty of time on set where the cast relaxed with one another. 
 
 "We did have sing alongs. It was a way to pass time. When it was pouring down rain and you were shooting outside and you were stuck inside some grey dirty shack waiting for the sun to come out, what can you do but make up a song." ||||| The signs are always the same when any studio knows it has a bomb. Executives won’t commit any opinion to email. Phone calls from them pledging to “explain everything” are promised but never come. The suits deny up and down any truth to the inevitable leaks about a troubled shoot or creative friction or bad buzz. But when the studio is financially on-the-fence like The Weinstein Co, and it acquired U.S. rights to Madonna’s first feature-length directorial effort W.E., and the subject matter is Wallis Simpson, and its debut is at the unforgiving Venice Film Festival, which has panned far bigger and more influential big names in filmdom — then not even the PR maestro Harvey Weinstein can downplay crushingly lousy reaction and reviews. 
 
 Fact is that the international press and its U.S. counterparts are having a field day killing Madonna’s movie in what can only be seen as the latest “Death In Venice”. Or maybe the more accurate way of saying this is “Death By Venice”. The Times of London claimed Madonna had made an inadvertent comedy “screamingly, inadvertently funny in parts [that] had ‘em rolling in the aisles at Venice” The Guardian review was truly vicious under the headline, “Madonna’s jaw-dropping take on the story of Wallis Simpson is a primped and simpering folly, preening and fatally mishandled”. Only the Daily Mail gave it a true thumbs-up. But my guess is that probably has more to do with that newspaper’s long and troubled history with Madonna, who in 2009 won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit again the Daily Mail and whose legal reps have been threatening the paper recently and repeatedly of more to come because of its nearly always negative coverage of her. 
 
 In fact, The Weinstein Co in June was strenuously denying the British tabloid’s article pronouncing W.E. a mess after detailing a secret NY test screening that reportedly left Harvey “thunderous and sour”. His minions claimed that the audience loved the picture and so did Weinstein, who had made Truth or Dare with Madonna and enjoyed a critical and financial success. The studio confirmed the pair had been working on W.E. for some time before that test screening, but wouldn’t confirm or deny reports that Harv was re-editing the picture to make it more commercially viable. That’s something he’s done to only mixed success in the past — earning him the nickname “Harvey Scissorhands”. 
 
 I do think The Weinstein Co was masochistic not only to send Madonna’s oeuvre to the film festival even if out of competition but also schedule it during the coming Oscar corridor. The good news is that Madonna’s movie cost less than $35M, and all of it shows on the big screen. Even Madonna’s many detractors said the film looks beautiful — even if its story is superficial. (As Bloomberg opined: “Madonna’s second stab at filmmaking is stylish but sophomoric. From a purely emotional standpoint, it’s barely more engaging than a fashion shoot, or a music video. Feelings — love, fear, betrayal, solitude — are expressed in their most elementary form. Actors get little direction.”) 
 
 The bad news is that The Weinstein Co already made a major distribution commitment to release W.E. on December 9th in NY and LA, then expand to additional markets in December, with wide release anticipated by mid-January. At the time of the announcement, Harvey gave the film a rave: “Madonna beautifully interweaves past and present in W.E. It’s a very smart film, and a stunning feature directorial debut. I’m incredibly excited about this movie and I wanted to give it a prominent release date.” It was Harv who decided not to show W.E. at the Cannes Film Festival and send it instead to Venice. This was after the film was previewed in Berlin back in February and sales agent IM Global screened clips to 200 invited guests. But it was Madonna’s agents CAA who held back the U.S. rights which went to Weinstein. 
 
 Now the terrible reviews for W.E. couldn’t be coming at a worse time for The Weinstein Co. It’s had two major box office disappointments in a row, and coming this weekend is Dimension Films’ Apollo 18. I don’t know how the studio is going to stay on track with its reorganized finances if Dimension films keep bombing like Spy Kids 4 (which opened to a weak $12M weekend from 3,295 theaters) or TWC pics underperforming like Our Idiot Brother (only $5.7M from 2,555 locations hurt by Hurricane Irene but dead last of the trio of new films). 
 
 As for Madonna’s narrative, it was co-written by her and her pal Alek Keshishian (In Bed With Madonna), produced by her and another of her pals Kris Thykier. This was only her second stab at filmmaking (after the 2008 Filth and Wisdom). No question this production was troubled: Among those who exited were producer David Parfitt (who’d been on Harv’s Shakespeare in Love, which stole the Best Picture Oscar from Steven Spielberg’s far more worthy Saving Private Ryan) and casting director Nina Gold and actor Ewan McGregor and actresses Vera Farmiga and Margo Stilley. 
 
 I predict that The Weinstein Co will wind up just dumping W.E. into North American theaters, put little marketing push behind it after the first weekend, and instead focus on the real Oscar possibles that the studio has this year. It’s more the rule than the exception for Harv to throw his Fall films against the wall, see which stick with critics and awards voting members, and then abandon those that don’t. Last year he whittled down his contenders early and wound up with many acting nominations and the Best Picture Oscar for The King’s Speech. This year potentially, he’s got Academy Award contenders in the black-and-white silent film The Artist that he bought right before the Cannes Film Festival and became a rave on the Croisette. He’s got Iron Lady with Meryl Streep playing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and also bought at Cannes. And the John Hillcoat-directed The Wettest County in the World expected to be platformed for Oscar and released in early 2012. The Weinstein Co also will push Michelle Williams for her turn as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. And so on. Here is Madonna talking about her film at the 68° Mostra del Cinema di Venezia: 
 
 Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
– Madonna doesn’t mind criticism of her new movie, WE—a good thing, since it bombed at the Venice Film Festival and, Reuters notes, subsequently received a one-star review in the Guardian—as long as that criticism is directed at the movie, and not at the Material Girl. "I can tell when people are reviewing my film and when they're reviewing me personally," Madonna said yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where WE is screening. "So when they stick to the film, then I do care" what critics think, she explained. She also described King Edward VIII, whose romance with Wallis Simpson is depicted in the film, as “very punk rock,” the Telegraph reports. That’s why she put the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” on the soundtrack, she explained: “I thought [the king] was quite rebellious and cutting edge in his point of view about life and about how to run the empire and using the Sex Pistols was a perfect marriage.” (She also, the Telegraph adds, broke into song at one point during the Q&A session—watch at left.) Click for another story coming out of the film festival—apparently, Madge doesn't like to be looked at by volunteers...