Ah, two puns and I've not even said a word.
It's that time of year, the most academically important and viewer fertile film-festival: Cannes.
Cannes is important to me mostly for the selfish reason that I like great films. I feel deep pleasure that at Cannes 2007 Kaufman aired Synecdoche, New York, received a standing ovation and then after two years of me banging on about how badly I wanted to see it to a completely oblivious world, it's here in the cinemas May 15th and getting such amazing reviews. I saw it first because of Cannes - so pay attention folks this is where the best come to show off.
The official selection can be found here.
Some obvious names jump out, Tarantino, Almodovar, Ken Loach, but I'd be most interested to see the latest work by Lars Von Trier and Park Chan-Wook. I'm gagging to see I'm A Cyborg... but still haven't (there's no real excuse other than HMV charge £18 for it and I haven't looked around - YET), while I thought Oldboy was great, it was quite a slow moving affair - but in Thirst he tackles vampires! Vampires! First cyborgs now vampires! That's something to get excited about.
I'm disappointed by how many political films represented in the line-up. In my mind a film can be great and not be about some serious issue, and similarly just because a film tackles serious issues doesn't make it good automatically. Perhaps I'm just not looking for films that show me the horrors of the world. I only watched half of Hunger, which I know was a good film, but because it had made it's point about the situation so early on that to watch any more would just be masochism.
Other points of interests are Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell heralding the return of the Raimi bros writing team - complete with supernatural theme: Think Evil Dead not Spiderman; Pixar's Up - no brainer, it's by Pixar right? Then again, so was Cars; The Coco Chanel biopic everyone's been talking about with Audrey Tautou playing the lady herself - The subject material is electric and it's going to be a feast of great music, ideas and visual arts; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus the ill-fated Gilliam addition, featuring Heath Ledger, *sigh* this was supposed to be out aaages ago, but thanks to a non-suspicious prescription drug related death has been having issues - I badly wanted to see this, but I'm now worried that editing and rewriting will have made it weaker. Should've been another solid made-for-adults fantasy tale, with many elements of Brothers Grimm and Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Michel Gondry's Thorn in my Heart - hoping it won't be as plot lacking as Be Kind Rewind, that film was like him thumbing his nose at the world thinking his direction alone could make a crappy script great - still a great director though.
Other little thoughts:
The president of the Jury is that French lady from I Heart huckabees - she's a fox! Asia Argento is also on the committee.
The president for the short film jury is John Boorman - made refamous by Charlie Boorman's escapes round the world on a motorcycle. Zhang Ziyi is on the committee, she was in Crouching Tiger and Hero.
Also showing at Cannes is I Love You Phillip Morris which has Jim Carrey falling in love with Ewan Mcgregor - I basically wil have to watch this.
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2 comments:
Awesome stuff. I should really go to Cannes one year. I take it you're not actually, er, there or anything? Because that would just be amazing.
Fair enough point about Hunger, but did you watch long enough to see the (amazing, highlight) scene between our man and the priest?
(Stephen, not long string of nonsense)
I left Hunger after he fished the radio out of his giant pile of poo. I was working at the time and so it was free and I wasn't in the mood for awfulness.
No, I'm not at Cannes - it would be cool though!
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