Blindness to Open Cannes 08
The 61th Annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off tomorrow on the French Riviera with Blindess by Fernando Meirelles' (City Of God, The Constant Gardener). Based on a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer José Saramago, the science fiction fable stars Julianne Moore as an ophthalmologist's wife who ends up as the last survivor with sight in a city racked by an onset of mass vision loss. The international cast also includes Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh, Gael Garcia Bernal, Don McKellar and Alice Braga. (An exclusive clip can be viewed on the LA Times website.)
This year's festival showcases 57 feature lengths films from 31 countries. As expected, their will be big Hollywood premieres, bringing a parade of celebrities to the red carpet. Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes its premiere at Cannes, as well as Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz, a romantic comedy that is rumored to be the director's most erotic film to date.
Twenty-two films have been selected to screen in this year's competition. The highlights are many: two-time Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are back with The Silence of Lorna; Steven Soderbergh's Che, a two-part double feature starring Benicio Del Toro as revolutionary icon Che Guevara; A Christmas Tale by French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen), starring the legendary Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric; screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theater director; Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's Adoration, a tale of the relationship between teens and new technology starring Scott Speedman of Felicity fame; Wim Wender's thriller/romanceThe Palermo Shooting, starring Milla Jovovich, Dennis Hopper and Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiono; from China, Jia Zhangke's 24 City; and Clint Eastwood's prohibition drama Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie as a mother whose child vanishes in Los Angeles.
Oscar-winning actor and director Sean Penn is leading the luminous nine-member jury that will select this year's Palme D'or winner. The jury also includes Natalie Portman, Alfonso Cuaron, Sergio Castellitto, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Alexandra Maria Lara. German director Fatih Akin will award the best film in the Cannes film festival's Un Certain Regard, which focuses on the works of emerging filmmakers.
The festival runs from May 14-25.
Summer Movie Trailers
There's more to summer than Indiana Jones' Crystal Skull, the Dark Knight's Bat Bike, and Iron Man (though we, too, love Robert Downey Jr.) Summer films also means exciting new world and independent releases: Julianne Moore gets fresh with her son in Savage Grace (pictured), Monica Ali's best-selling novel Brick Lane comes to the big screen, and Asia Argento is scarier than ever in her father Dario's The Mother of Tears, which caps his "Three Mothers" trilogy. Check our June preview and the movie trailers page for more.
Summer Movie Trailers:
Review: The Fall
It's a crazy film. Tarsem Singh's The Fall is a children's fairytale, never mind the fact that it's rated R. Shot all over the world, it's got candy colored action scenes featuring masked men in ridiculous, garish costumes. What, I thought, initially, am I watching? And why? But my cynicism was steadily broken down, completely undone by a five-year-old Romanian actress named Catinca Untaru. The Fall opens today. Read Marcy's review.
New DVDs: Dans Paris, I'm Not There, Delirious
Cinephiles take note: a few of the best and most shamefully overlooked films of 2007 are out this week on DVD. Don't miss Christophe Honoré's homage to the New Wave, the moving Dans Paris. Todd Haynes's I'm Not There takes on Bob Dylan in six different ways, including one of the final performances by Heath Ledger. Independent filmmaker Tom Dicillo's Delirious, starring Michael Pitt, Steve Buscemi, and Alison Lohman, tells the unexpectedly charming romance between a homeless paparazzo and pop star.
Interview: Isild Le Besco on Directing Charly
An unusual and arresting coming of age story, Isild Le Besco's Charly just made its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca film festival. While primarily known as an actress (A Tout De Suite, The Untouchable), Charly is Le Besco's second feature film as writer and director. Marcy talked to Le Besco.
Tribeca Review: War, Inc.
Josh Seftel's satire War, Inc. is set in the so-called future, where corporations, not governments, run the world -- and the wars. The ridiculously likable John Cusack stars as Brand Hauser, a CIA hit man with a conscience sent to war-torn nation of Turaqistan to kill a dignitary, run a trade show, and orchestrate a celebrity wedding. The cast also includes Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley, and Hillary Duff, who's terrific as teenage pop princess Yonica Babyyeah. War, Inc. premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and there are three more showing this weekend. The film also opens in theaters on May 23. Read Marcy's review.
Buzz Aldrin at the 40th Anniversary Screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Forty earth years have passed since the Star Child first floated into view at the mind blowing climax of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and to celebrate the anniversary, the Tribeca Film Festival put on a special screening followed by an extraordinary panel consisting of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, screenwriter Ann Druyan, artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky, and actor Matthew Modine. Jürgen was there.
New DVDs: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Guatemalan Handshake, The Living End
We've got three exciting DVDs to recommend this week: Julian Schnabel's brilliant, Oscar-nominated The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the idiosyncratic indie release The Guatemalan Handshake and Greg Araki's groundbreaking AIDS road film The Living End, freshly remastered and remixed.Tribeca Update: Savage Grace, The Aquarium, Two Mothers, Faubourg Treme
Say what you will about the sprawling Tribeca Film Festival, which has taken over Lower Manhattan and continues through May 4, but they do have the biggest press badges of any festival we've been to. The festival itself, however, has scaled down slightly, and after the first weekend, the ratio of exciting discoveries to disappointments has been encouraging.
Julianne Moore in period clothing is something to see -- the pale, freckled skin, the gorgeous dresses, the campy sun glasses. In Tom Kalin's Savage Grace , an oddly compelling film about contemptible people doing contemptible things to each other, Moore plays American socialite Barbara Bakelite, who was infamously murdered by her son in a shocking case that captured the nation's attention. Eddie Redmayne, primarily known for his work on the British stage, plays Moore's emotionally and sexually conflicted son Tony; he proves himself to be equally pale, wan and good looking as his famous on-screen mother -- no small feat. ***
German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim's Two Mothers is a fascinating trip through family secrets and Nazi archives into a mysterious past. Shortly before her death, the 97-year-old woman von Praunheim called his mother revealed that she had adopted him during World War II. In the Latvian capital of Riga, he follows vague trails and manages to uncover his real mother's identity and many of the dark truths surrounding his birth. ***
Ever since it screened in Berlin, the description of Yousry Nasrallah's The Aquarium has become a bit of a running joke because it seemed to perfectly encapsulate the seeming arbitrary subject matter of many festival movies: an Egyptian anesthesiologist roams the streets of Cairo and visits the local aquarium at night. We finally had a chance to see the film, which blends surreal sights, movies-within-the movie, and actors breaking character with vital cultural concerns. The sleepless doctor performs secret abortions, a talk radio host fights censorship: fear, pain, and alienation are the central themes in a film that squanders what little dramatic traction it manages to conjure. **
The Aquarium was preceded by two of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno shorts, which playfully illustrate the sex life of bugs. Catch them if you can! ****
Review: Then She Found Me
Helen Hunt's directorial debut Then She Found Me is a lovely adaptation of Eleanor Lipman's bestselling novel, stuffed to the breaking point with overlapping story lines. It's a romantic comedy, it's a mother-daughter drama, and most importantly, it's an unpretentious, gentle, moving film. Hunt, who co-wrote the screenplay, also stars as April Epner, a vanity-free thirty-nine-year old schoolteacher who wears sandals and old sweaters and desperately wants to have a baby. Then She Found Me opens today. Read Marcy's review.