In Contention

Tag: Cannes

  • Three days left to catch ‘Melancholia’ in LA

    I should really have drawn attention to this earlier, but as Jeff Wells pointed out on Hollywood Elsewhere, Lars von Trier’s Cannes hit “Melancholia” began a one-week, once-a-day screening run at Los Angeles’ out-of-the-way Laemmle Fallbrook 7 theatre on Friday — a handy opportunity for local film buffs with free afternoons to sneak a look at the film months ahead of its November 11 release in the US. (Most European viewers haven’t quite so long to wait.)

    As you can gather from my enthusiastic Cannes review of the film, it’s worth getting impatient for. One of von Trier’s most elegant and elegiac works — the silly controversy over his unwise Nazi-related comments at the festival is a red herring that doesn’t reflect remotely on the surprisingly subdued film — it showcases the man in full command of his formal powers, as well as a fascinating ensemble, the pleasures of which extend beyond Kirsten Dunst’s fairly rewarded performance.

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  • ‘Drive’ red-band trailer

    As you can see from the previous post, Kris is every bit as punch-drunk on Nicolas Winding Refn’s electric throwback thriller “Drive” as I was at Cannes — read my review here — where it deservedly won the Best Director prize. It stands as my favourite narrative feature of the year so far; the rest of 2011 would have to be nothing short of miraculous to dislodge it from my year-end Top 10. Anyway, on the heels of last night’s Comic-Con screening comes a neatly assembled red-band trailer via IGN — and as sleek, smart and propulsive a taster as it is, it still can’t quite capture what a rush the film is. I’d almost recommend saving yourself for the full movie, but who am I kidding? Click on the image to watch it at IGN, or check out the embed after the cut.

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  • New ‘Tree of Life’ poster, plus Brits to get first dibs?

    UPDATE: According to Anne Thompson, Fox Searchlight have denied reports of the early UK release date. Empire, however, is standing by their story, based on the word of UK distributor Icon. Watch this space.

    EARLIER: I’ll admit that when this Empire scoop first popped up on my Twitter feed, I had to check my diary to make sure I hadn’t slept through to April 1. But there it is. While Terrence Malick’s endlessly awaited “The Tree of Life” will play Cannes in May, as was confirmed last week, the film will not have its world premiere at the festival. That honor apparently falls to the UK, where the film will hit screens on May 4 — one week ahead of Cannes’s opening day, and just over three weeks ahead of its Stateside release.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Father of My Children’ director Mia Hansen-Løve

    As film critics continue to pick over the spoils of Cannes 2010, for regular cinemagoers, it can take an awfully long time for the movies in question to trickle down to them.

    Case in point: Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkable sophomore feature “Father of My Children,” which impressed critics and won a special jury prize in the Un Certain Regard strand a year ago, but is only now wending its way to U.S. theaters. It opened last week in Los Angeles; tomorrow, New Yorkers get to lay eyes on it.

    They’ll find it worth the wait. “Father of My Children,” which I reviewed out of the London Film Festival last October, is a marvelously mutable, personal study of family and film, beginning as a story about one thing and ending as quite another. Reviews and marketing materials may make it difficult to remain innocent of a key mid-film development — not a “twist” by any means, but a turn that entirely shifts and deepens the focus of the narrative — that floored me on my first encounter with the film. (I’ve done my best to keep it wrapped, but will insert a spoiler alert anyway.)

    This much I can tell you: the film is inspired by, and ultimately something of a tribute to, the late Humbert Balsan, a prolific French film producer and renowned champion of the arthouse. Before his premature death in 2005, he shepherded works by the likes of Lars von Trier, Claire Denis, James Ivory and Béla Tarr, but also acted as mentor to rising talents — the young Hansen-Løve, then an aspiring filmmaker and sometime Cahiers du Cinéma critic, among them.

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  • ‘Biutiful’ reactions reflect a tale of two movies

    Guy hasn’t pulled his full review of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” together yet, though he will shortly.  Directly after this morning’s Cannes screening, he Tweeted that the film was “critically unfocused and emotionally muted,” and that “Inarittu clearly needs to kiss and make up with Arriaga.”  And judging by some of the reactions coming out of the theater, he wasn’t alone.

    MSN’s James Rocchi, always a tough sell on films of the Iñárritu breed, mind you, called the film “[m]oving, yes, but I’m unsure about what it’s moving for; Bardem superb, but morally murky melodrama’s depression lacks direction,” while Variety’s Justin Chang wasn’t that far behind: “The grinding arthouse equivalent of ‘The Pursuit of Happyness,’” he called it.

    Chang has one of only three full reviews I’ve come across so far.  The other two come from Sukhdev Sandhu at London’s Telegraph (a pan), and Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter (a rave).

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  • Of notes and diaries on the Croisette

    While Guy is doing a bang-up job handling Cannes for us this year, I thought I’d poke around and see what some of the other usual suspects of the Oscar season are covering things on the ground.  When I clicked over to Awards Daily, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed.

    Sasha Stone, attending the fest for the first time in the 11 years she’s been on the film awards beat, has charted her experience in a series of diary entries that uniquely — and smartly — aims to assess the psychology of a place so wonderfully bizarre as a cosmopolitan film festival.  Her coverage is armed with cheeky barbs such as this:

    There are obscure screenings and high profile screenings and many variations therein. But it does give one a warped sense of things when you see crowds begging for tickets to Wall Street 2. If it were any ordinary Friday in the states you’d be thinking, “do I really want to go see another sequel?” Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t, but it is pressing here. It is a must-do.

    Pete Hammond, meanwhile, kicked the tires on his Notes on a Season column over at The Envelope to piece together one of his typical “Notes on the Town” features from the fest.

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  • First images, teaser poster for ‘Biutiful’

    As I mentioned in my Cannes preview, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” is the director’s first Spanish-language effort since his 2000 debut “Amores Perros.” That, combined with the star power of Javier Bardem, means more eyes on this one than most of its Competition rivals. Thanks to D*Hollywood for the film’s Cannes poster. Two stills after the cut.

    (By the way, the third and final part of my Cannes preview will go up tomorrow. Apologies for the delay.)

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 26 — Special Edition! — Catching up, Cannes on the way, ‘Iron Man’ kicks off the summer season

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk, your one-stop kudocast between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood.

    It’s been a while, so there was plenty to cover in this, the first of three off-season podcasts we’ll offer up through the summer. On the docket today…

    • With Cannes around the corner, we briefly size things up. Guy will be covering for us this year and indieWIRE will be heavy on coverage as well, so we talk about what to expect, the rigors of festival coverage, etc.

    • Speaking of indieWIRE, Todd McCarthy joined the site a few weeks back and Anne welcomes him aboard on the podcast, excited to be working with her former colleague again.

    • Since it’s been a few months since we last did one of these, we look back at the year to date and what stands out so far. We both agree on the year’s best American film.

    • Today is the start of the summer movie season with the release of “Iron Man 2.” We talk about our disappointments with the film.

    • Finally, we kind of wander around a forecast of the summer to come, looking at a few of the key titles on the way.

    Have a listen to the latest podcast below. We go on a bit long, but it’s been a while, so forgive us. The next installment of the summer edition will drop, we think, June 11. Until then, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

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  • A soupçon of ‘Certified Copy’

    I’ll begin a more in-depth Cannes preview tomorrow, but I’m happy to trail it with this vaguest of teasers for my own most anticipated film of the festival: Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy,” starring Juliette Binoche. (Thanks to AwardsDaily for the tip.)

  • Schnabel holds ‘Miral’ for Venice

    One of the more eyebrow-raising omissions from the Cannes official selection announced this morning was Julian Schnabel’s “Miral.” The New York artist’s biopic of Hind Husseini, with a cast including Hiam Abbass, Willem Dafoe and Freida Pinto, had been widely deemed a good bet for the competition lineup, given its lofty arthouse profile and the Cannes success of Schnabel’s last feature, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” for which he won the Best Director award.

    Roger Friedman reports, however, that this year Schnabel was offered only an out-of-competition slot by festival organizers. The director declined the offer, choosing instead to unveil the film on the fall festival circuit: “Miral” will therefore premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, before moving on to Toronto.Venice, of course, is where Schnabel premiered “Before Night Falls” in 2000 — he has form in both festivals.

    If the film turns out well, it won’t be the first time Venice has successfully fed off the bigger festival’s leftovers: both “Vera Drake” and “Brokeback Mountain” debuted on the Lido (and went on to win the Golden Lion) after being turned down by the Cannes selection committee.

  • Cannes official selection unveiled, includes Leigh, Iñárritu

    Okay, before you ask, “The Tree of Life” is reportedly not ready — though the Cannes selection has apparently seen a cut, so never say never. Four slots in the competition lineup have yet to be filled.

    That aside, many of the expected names are present and correct, including former Cannes champs Leigh, Kiarostami, Mikhalkov, Tavernier, Weerasethakul and González Iñárritu. (Beefing up the veteran auteur quotient, Jean-Luc Godard shows up in the very appetizing Un Certain Regard strand, as does 101 year-old Manoel de Oliveira.)

    On paper — which is all we have at the moment, after all — it’s the first two of the aforementioned directors that I’m most excited to see in competition: “Another Year” will mark Leigh’s first trip to Croisette since the undervalued “All or Nothing” in 2002, and boasts the almost unfeasibly Leigh-ian cast of Imelda Staunton, Jim Broadbent, Phil Davis and Lesley Manville.

    Meanwhile, Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” — a romantic drama starring Juliette Binoche, and the director’s first film to be shot outside his native Iran — has had me curious for the better part of two years now. I sensed this might be afoot when Binoche was revealed as the official face of this year’s festival.

    (More thoughts, and a complete list of films in the official selection, after the cut.)

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  • ‘Robin Hood’ to open Cannes

    More of a handy PR opportunity than an actual festival honor, Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” has secured the opening night slot at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival on May 12, two days ahead of its US and UK release date.

    Like last year’s Cannes opener, “Up,” the film will premiere out of competition, affording it the lustre, but not the critical pressure, of a festival berth. That said, the slot is no guarantee of prestige — in 2006, Cannes programmers were taken to task when Ron Howard’s widely derided “The Da Vinci Code” was selected to open the fest. Here’s hoping Scott fares a little better.

    “Up,” of course, broke something of a curse attached to Cannes’s opening night, which in recent years has showcased disappointments more often than not — in the years when festival directors haven’t courted blockbusters, the slot has housed in-competition flops like “Blindness” and “My Blueberry Nights.”

    I can’t see “Robin Hood” lending the fest the same hip cache that last year’s Pixar pic did, making it something of a conservative choice. But who cares — let’s get to the competition titles already.

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Guild awards, pre-nomination jitters

    A scene from Inglourious Basterds• In the biggest upset of the season so far, “The Hurt Locker” came up trumps at the PGA Awards.

    • “Inglourious Basterds” took the top prize at the SAG Awards, which also gave another boost to Sandra Bullock.

    • With Oscar nominations out next week, we listed some of the greatest nominee fields in Oscar history.

    • Off the Carpet took stock following the weekend’s precursors, and Kris revised his winner predictions.

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  • Tim Burton named Cannes jury president

    Tim BurtonIn a move that should remind some of his more disenchanted fans of the high esteem with which he is still held in the industry, Hollywood’s resident kook-auteur Tim Burton has been tapped to head the jury of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. He said in a statement:

    After spending my early life watching triple features and 48-hour horror movie marathons, I’m finally ready for this … It’s a great honor and I look forward, with my fellow jurors, to watching some great films from around the world. When you think of Cannes you think of world cinema. And as films have always been like dreams to me, this is a dream come true.

    The selection makes him the first full-time American filmmaker to preside over Europe’s most sanctified cinematic institution since Quentin Tarantino in 2004. (Actor-director Sean Penn took the gig two years ago). A more mainstream pick than usual, he’s nonetheless one of the industry’s most identifiable directorial brands, and therefore an obvious candidate for the position.

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Mind your language

    (from left) Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in A ProphetYou might not be aware of it, but the competition is already formally under way in Oscar’s most perennially problematic category, Best Foreign Language Film.

    For almost two weeks now, official Academy screenings of the longlisted contenders in the race have been in progress, and will continue through January, until all 65 titles have been subjected to the foreign-language committee’s scrutiny.

    Pete Hammond has details of the screening schedule and voting rules, as well as some gossip on audience reaction to the screenings thus far: Mexico’s “Backyard” and Switzerland’s “Home,” starring Jimmy Smits and Isabelle Huppert respectively, have apparently gone down well; Croatia’s “Donkey,” thanks to incomprehensible subtitles, not so much. Add a pinch of salt to taste.

    Coincidentally enough, courtesy of the London Film Festival, I’ve been simultaneously working my own way down the contenders list, though my personal tally has stalled at eight titles. (It could have been 11, if scheduling and admin obstacles hadn’t kept me away from the Australian, Colombian and Serbian entries. I am but one man.) Only 57 to go, then.

    I will offer a more detailed assessment of the films in another post, but by and large it’s been a pleasure making their acquaintance. Of course, my own selection has been filtered through that of the fest’s generally thoughtful programmers, safeguarding against any real horrors – but I don’t mind saying that an unembarrassing list of nominees could theoretically be assembled from just my scant sampling of the longlist.

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  • LONDON: ‘Dogtooth,’ ‘Kinatay,’ ‘Burrowing’

    DogtoothOnce more, Friday’s major festival screenings covered ground I’d already trod in Venice — the day’s glossiest gala slot was reserved for “The Road” (which you know did little for me), with a less prominent early evening slot for Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” (which did rather more).

    Given the current buzz levels for each film, they perhaps should have swapped places, but festival programmers can be forgiven for not knowing that in advance.

    In fact, it was a crammed day for anyone hoping to catch up on the hot Venice titles, including “Life During Wartime,” “The Double Hour” and “White Material,” still my film of 2009 so far. (Friend and critic Tim Robey shares my enthusiasm for the film, claiming the LFF will have a hard time topping it. Truth.)

    Hard as it was to resist giving “Material” another whirl, I took advantage of my head-start to catch a stark Swedish mood piece and two provocative Cannes winners that had been intriguing me since May, and not only because of Old Man Ebert’s proclamation that Brillante Mendoza’s “Kinatay” was the worst film ever screened on the Croisette. See if I agree after the cut.

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  • International ‘White Ribbon’ trailer

    Okay, so your appreciation of this trailer for Michael Haneke’s lavishly acclaimed Palme d’Or winner will obviously be enhanced if you have at least a working knowledge of German. (No subtitles here.)

    But since it’s the first substantial glimpse most of us have had of what is clearly a major work, I thought it worth posting. The imagery and atmospherics on display here speak for themselves, anyway. Hat tip to Jeff Wells for digging it up. (Trailer plays after the cut.)

    The White Ribbon

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  • Korea selects ‘Mother’ for Oscars, bypasses ‘Thirst’

    MotherThanks to The Film Experience for pointing out this news nugget: a month after Sri Lanka kicked off the convoluted, multi-tiered contest for Best Foreign Language Film by selecting their official entry, we have our first relatively high-profile submission, as Korea has entered Bong Joon-ho’s “Mother” into the race.

    Some might be surprised that the country’s selectors passed over Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst” — which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and has received an interesting Stateside promotional push from Focus Features — but they shouldn’t be.

    For one thing, the Koreans are probably as aware as any Oscar-watcher that the chances of the Academy blue-hairs going for an erotic vampire flick with healthy lashings of gore are, to put it gently, minimal. (It appears that “Thirst” was one of six films considered, however.)

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