panoramic view of Cannes
Hotel Martinez, where Jake Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore take up residence during the fest
Hotel du Cap at Eden Roc in Antibes, a 30-minute drive up the coast, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Clint Eastwood reside during the fest
Hotel Majestic Barriere, where Matthew McConaughey and Robert DeNiro stay during the fest
InterContinental Carlton Cannes Hotel, the place where Grace Kelly met her husband Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1955
Le Moulin des Mougins, for a more authentic Provencal experience, head 10 minutes inland, where Sharon Stone and Elton John resided during the fest
Le Baoli, a trendy, beachfront lounge and bar, a popular nightspot where Bono and Eva Mendes have been spotted
Inside the Palais, the Grand Théâtre Lumière and its nightly gala screenings (by invitation only), one at 7:30 pm and one at 10:30 pm, is the place to be
Cannes beach restaurant
Cannes beach
Red carpet shots
from The Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/cannes-2015-red-carpet-arrivals-795394/1-emma-stone
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/cannes-2015-red-carpet-arrivals-795394/1-emma-stone
A collection of pieces from The Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/package/cannes-style
Red carpet photos from PopSugar:
Best dressed from Vanity Fair:
Cannes photos from The Telegraph:
A French site that
lists daily galleries of red carpet photos:
Photo gallery from The
Daily Mail:
also vintage earlier looks of 18-year old model Charlize
Theron:
Celebrities arrive for the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, from The NY Daily News:
Vogue guide to
Cannes:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/celebrity-photos/2015/05/13/cannes-film-festival-2015
Also here:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/beauty/2015/05/14/cannes-film-festival-2015-hair-and-make-up
Elle fashion
photos:
http://www.elleuk.com/fashion/celebrity-style/the-cannes-film-festival-2015-celebrity-red-carpet
Photo Gallery from E-Online:
Los Angeles Times
gallery photos:
Fashionista blog:
Daily list of best dressed at Cannes from Blouin Art Info:
Best Cannes festival dresses of all time, from Marie Claire:
Best and Worst fashion choices from International Business Times:
http://www.ibtimes.com/cannes-2015-red-carpet-photos-best-worst-fashion-film-festival-so-far-1924787
Most Memorable Moments ever at Cannes from The Huffington Post:
Also the most iconic moments at Cannes from The Huffington Post:
also seen here:
and still more here:
Most Stylish Day Ever: Cannes Film Festival 1975, from GQ magazine:
Harper’s Bazaar at
Cannes:
Hollywood Life
photo gallery:
Another large
gallery of photos:
People magazine
hits the Cannes red carpet:
while also performing a running behind-the-scenes diary
style:
http://stylenews.peoplestylewatch.com/2015/05/14/cannes-film-festival-2015-behind-the-scenes-people/
Bubble House
Château de la Napoule
Villa Domergue
Château Dior
Inside Cannes'
Kick-Ass Party Villas, by Liza Foreman from The Daily Beast, May 17, 2015
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/17/inside-the-most-kick-ass-cannes-party-villas.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/17/inside-the-most-kick-ass-cannes-party-villas.html
When the stars party at the Cannes Film Festival, they head
to the many beautiful villas of the French Riviera—many with colorful,
glamorous pasts all their own.
When The Great Gatsby
opened
the Festival de Cannes in 2013, one could get from Baz Luhrmann’s lavish
screen soiree, a feel for the wild parties that played out in sophisticated
villas in the Hamptons in the 1920’s.
But author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who called the Riviera his
second home, also set some of his stories here in the South of France. His Tender is The Night is a twisted tale
about tumultuous couple Nicole and Dick Diver that is set between the big
parties at their French Riviera villa.
One can still find some of Fitzgerald’s imprint down here,
says long term resident Tim Swannie.
“One of my favourite French Riviera villas is called La
Picolette which is next door to the Belles Rives
hotel (a previous Fitzgerald home of course) on the Cap d’Antibes,” says
Swannie, who is a director of luxury realtor HomeHunts.
“It is from the same era and is full of 1930’s style, but it
is has been completely renovated throughout. There is a wonderful tower with a
roof terrace,” he says. “The sunset from there, looking west towards Cannes and
the islands, is magical.”
The Riviera comes to life every night, but most of all
during the annual Festival de Cannes. Parties can be found in other worldly
villas overlooking the blue Mediterranean or climbing up the hills that retreat
into the distance of a nighttime.
Here are some of the best party villas, homes, and castles
in and around Cannes:
The Bubble House:
Pierre Cardin
The iconic Palais Bulles, was designed by architect Antti Lovag.
Wandering through its curvy curly hallways and rooms is like entering an even
more surreal Alice in Wonderland
adventure.
The house is, of course, the playground of the designer Pierre Cardin. As a result, the abode is legendary for festival parties and other big events. Built over a decade from 1975 to 1989, it overlooks the Mediterranean and the red cliffs of the Esterel, with a view all the way to the bay of Cannes.
The house is, of course, the playground of the designer Pierre Cardin. As a result, the abode is legendary for festival parties and other big events. Built over a decade from 1975 to 1989, it overlooks the Mediterranean and the red cliffs of the Esterel, with a view all the way to the bay of Cannes.
It might feel weird to be inside this pot of bubbles, but
the younger set seems to always enjoy it. It has long been a favorite of MTV
for their Cannes soirees, though, ironically, the design is apparently meant to
evoke cave dwellings.
Hôtel du
Cap-Eden-Roc
For nearly 150 years, the Hôtel du
Cap-Eden-Roc has been hosting the most glamorous guests, from Hollywood
celebrities to the political elite. The luxury resort is one of the most
storied venues on the French Riviera. It can claim Fitzgerald as a guest, but
perhaps Madonna overshadows him. The Kennedys vacationed there in 1938. In
fact, it is supposedly the place where Joe Kennedy Sr. began an affair with Marlene Dietrich.
Few, if any, locales can boast more than a century of icons.
Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall were hotel guests, but today, so are Brad and
Angelina.
Château de la
Napoule
The Château de La Napoule lies about six miles outside of
Cannes. This 14th Century castle has gone through a series of renovations. It
was famously bought by American couple Marie and Henry Clews Jr. in 1918. Under
their watch, it was made the center for the La Napoule Arts Foundation. To
fund the center, the chateau serves as a fabulous venue for soirees and
weddings.
For a long time, it was the scene of the most fabled party
of the Festival, hosted by the magazine Moving
Pictures at the end of the 10-day extravaganza.
The paper’s journalists (including this one) would sleep in
one of the myriad of decadent rooms during the Festival. There was always a
wild party in the beautiful gardens littered with sculptures and a winding
labyrinth of rooms.
Villa Domergue
Before Villa Domergue was hosting the most elite and covert
parties on the French Riviera, it was the home of Venetian painter Jean-Gabriel
Domergue, He designed the villa in 1934, and his wife, sculptor Odette
Maugendre, designed the gorgeous gardens and pools. The couple donated their
divine art deco home to the city of Cannes in 1973.
One of the most memorable soirees at a villa in recent years
was Chopard’s
2012 secret mystery party. Guests were driven to this secret location where
they found inside masked partygoers and brilliant jazz bands playing.
Villa Jeux de
Toits
This fabulous villa will be the site of a VIP filmmakers
party this year organized by the Festival, Raindance. As the Raindance website notes, dancing, pool, sauna, hot tub, and a VIP
Room will be available to the lucky guests to the villa. They will also get to
bask in the the breathtaking view from Super Cannes and live music from the
singer/actress, Justyna Kelley.
Villa Saint
George
One must take the winding back roads of Cannes to reach this
villa, which has hosted a number of fabulous soirees in recent years. During
the 65th Festival de Cannes, it hosted Calvin Klein’s Women in Film celebration back. The villa
was packed with super models two a penny.
Château de la Colle
Noire
Once the Provencal home of Christian Dior, it is lovingly
nicknamed the Château Dior. Built in 1860, Château de la Colle Noir is located
in Montauroux in the Var region of Provence.
An easy drive, it takes just a half-hour to get there from
the French Riviera coast. It has a beautiful set of gardens and outdoor pool.
As a treat for fashion buffs, Dior’s bedroom and office have been preserved.
The luckiest brides can even splurge and hold their weddings there.
Cornucopias of delight
still in prospect at 68th Cannes Film Festival, by Donald Clarke from The Irish Times, May 18, 2015
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/cornucopias-of-delight-still-in-prospect-at-68th-cannes-film-festival-1.2215817
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/cornucopias-of-delight-still-in-prospect-at-68th-cannes-film-festival-1.2215817
This correspondent has developed a theory that recent Cannes
Film Festivals are a little like Star
Trek films. Over the current decade, the even-numbered events have tended
to be classics, whereas the odd-numbered festivals have lacked a little oomph.
This lunatic notion tells us that the current event, the 68th, should offer
cornucopias of delight.
Happily, we see no need to redraw the theorem just yet.
True, on Friday night, we saw one of the worst films to play in competition
this century. Gus Van Sant’s eye-wateringly atrocious The Sea of Trees, in which the former Palme d’Or winner presses Naomi
Watts and Matthew McConaughey into a drama so soapy Nicholas
Sparks might pause, wound down to the sort of booing that often precedes an
art riot. A mix of New Age baloney and am-dram histrionics, the picture, set
largely in a remote forest in Japan,
will do nothing for any of the associated careers.
Fractious romance
On Sunday, Mon Roi,
by the French polymath Maïwenn, staged a moderately interesting, fractious
romance between mean restaurateur Vincent
Cassel and misused lawyer Emmanuelle
Bercot. The film charts many downs and few ups with some élan, but never
quite explains what the heck she sees in him.
Much better was My
Mother, by Nanni
Moretti. Concerning a film director juggling pressures of work while her
mother lies gravely ill, the picture is very moving and often funny, but it
probably doesn’t have quite enough wallop to win Moretti a second Palme d’Or.
One of our major bookmakers had Yorgos Lanthimos’s blackly
wonderful The Lobster down as
antepost favourite for the big prize. Happily, the Irish co-production,
starring Colin
Farrell and Rachel
Weisz, delivered on the promise of Dogtooth
and Alps, the director’s earlier
absurdist nightmares, and added greater levels of humour. Farrell ferments a
terrific blend of Josef K and Father Dougal as one of several citizens who, if
they fail to find a partner in a certain period, will be transformed into the
animal of their choice. The film received deserved raves, but may be a little
too outré to take the top prize.
At time of press, the race for the Palme, chosen by a jury
headed by Joel and Ethan
Coen, looks to be between two extraordinary pictures from very different
film-makers. The last time a debut feature took the prize was a quarter of a
century ago, when Steven Soderbergh’s Sex,
Lies and Videotape triumphed. László Nemes’s Son of Saul could well be the film to break that run. The Hungarian
picture stars Geza
Rohrig as a Sonderkommando – one
of those concentration-camp inmates who found themselves assisting with the
exterminations – devastated by the realisation that he may have helped murder
his own son. Those who cherish Theodor Adorno’s notion that there is “No poetry
after Auschwitz” will have understandable worries about the picture. Nobody,
however, can doubt the cinematic talent on display. The awful matter-of-fact
nature of the killing is heightened by its frequent relegation to soft-focus
background.
A protege of Béla Tarr, his famously austere compatriot,
Nemes shoots in similarly long takes, but, unlike Tarr, he fills those shots
with blazes of incident that must have caused logistical nightmares. There was
a sense in Cannes that a new star had just been spotted in the firmament. We
shall hear more of him.
Leading force
By way of contrast, Todd
Haynes has been thinking his way through great American films for 25 years.
One of the leading forces in the New Queer Cinema of the early 1990s, Haynes
came to Cannes with his adaptation of an early Patricia
Highsmith novel, concerning a lesbian romance in 1950s New York, titled The Price of Salt. Retitled Carol, the picture stars Cate
Blanchett and Rooney Mara as, respectively, a wealthy middle-aged woman and
a bohemian shop assistant who drift together over a snowy Christmas.
Haynes explained that, whereas Highsmith’s crime stories
often have a homoerotic undercurrent, here the same-sex relationship leads the
couple inadvertently into activities then deemed criminal.
The picture is built upon borrowings and variations. This is
the America of both Edward
Hopper and Norman
Rockwell. Blanchett confirmed that Vivian
Maier, the great photographer, was a significant influence on Edward
Lachman’s gorgeous Super 16mm images. Yes, Carol
will be the subject of many PhD theses, but it surges with such juddering,
largely suppressed emotion that the whiff of the pop-cultural senior common
room will trouble only the most resistant observer. It is infuriating that
distribution conventions mean domestic punters won’t get to see this superb
film until “Oscar season” in late autumn.
Prestige releases
Away from the competition, Cannes showed its continuing
ability to premiere prestige releases of all colours. Woody
Allen refuses to compete for prizes, so Inconvenient Man, his 44th film, arrived outside the race for the
Palme d’Or. A month or so ago, when the trailer emerged, even veteran Woody
watchers were unsure whether to expect a comedy or one of his late serious
ones. Having the seen the film, we are only the tiniest bit wiser.
Joaquin
Phoenix plays a drunken, depressed philosophy professor who, while carrying
on a relationship with Emma Stone’s bright student, overhears intelligence
concerning a corrupt judge and wonders – first as a mere thought experiment –
what would be the moral and personal consequences if he murdered the man. If
challenged to compare it with an earlier work, one might suggest that it plays
like a slightly inferior Crimes and
Misdemeanours. The odd mix of moral philosophy and wry humour kicks Inconvenient Man into the middle rank of
Woody Allen’s oeuvre.
Also playing out of competition was Asif Kapadia’s fine Amy, a study of Amy Winehouse’s rise
and sad, slow decline towards death from alcohol poisoning in 2011. Kapadia has
stuck with the purist techniques he used for his classic film on Ayrton
Senna: fresh interviewees appear only in audio; there are no newly recorded
talking heads. The result is a work of visual integrity that allows some
participants to shine and others to damn themselves.
Mitch
Winehouse, the singer’s dad, has complained that Kapadia stitched him up.
We don’t know. But the film certainly allows us to conclude that Mitch might
have tried a little harder to get Amy off the terrifying arsenal of drugs that
did for her.
There are some sour flavours. For its second hour, Amy discuss its complex subject simply
in terms of her addiction, reminding us of the tabloids that latched on to her
as a trigger for feigned shock. The closing tributes do, however, leave us
mourning a great character and wondering where that talent might have brought
her. Essential.
The Trek theory is
looking good.
The Callow Way – Why Cannes Still Matters, by Neil Calloway from The Flickering Myth, May 18, 2015
http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/05/the-callow-way-why-cannes-still-matters.html
The Callow Way – Why Cannes Still Matters, by Neil Calloway from The Flickering Myth, May 18, 2015
http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2015/05/the-callow-way-why-cannes-still-matters.html
This week Neil Calloway looks at what winning the Palme d’Or
can do to your box office…
So we are in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival, and
it’s easy to dismiss it as a two-week publicity vehicle for beautiful actresses
to get photographed next to middle-aged European film directors on the
Croisette, or a time for oligarchs and their trophy wives to entertain fading
Hollywood stars on their super yachts. However, the importance of the festival
to the film industry cannot be understated.
Cannes is the biggest film industry event of the year; the
Oscars comes close but that only lasts one night. It is, in fact, one of the
biggest annual events of any kind. As William Goldman points out in Hype and Glory, his entertaining memoir
of sitting on the juries for both Cannes and the Miss America Pageant, the
World Cup and Olympics are bigger, but they only happen every four years. No
other cultural event can garner front pages around the world for a solid two
weeks every year.
There are, of course, two festivals happening in Cannes; the
Film Market is where producers attempt to pre-sell films that haven’t been made
yet to international distributors so they can fund their production. If you
want an excruciatingly hilarious look at this, then check out James Toback’s
2013 documentary Seduced and Abandoned,
where Toback and Alec Baldwin attempt to fund and cast a film described as Last Tango in Paris, but set in Iraq.
Like I said, it’s excruciatingly hilarious.
The other festival is the one that gets the front pages; the
one where Salma Hayek gets photographed on the red carpet and Matthew
McConaughey gets booed at a press screening. This is the glamorous part of the
festival, with the festival jury being headed by Joel and Ethan Coen this year,
and also featuring Sienna Miller, topping off what has been a remarkable
comeback from tabloid fodder to serious actress. When the jury convene next
Sunday to decide on awards, the world will be watching.
Does being awarded the Palme d’Or by the jury matter,
though? It’s easy to dismiss Cannes as two weeks of selling and
self-congratulation by the European Film establishment, and the winners often
seem like they are plucked from the “Big Book of Great European Directors” –
Ken Loach, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, with the occasional “American Indie
Director It’s OK To Like”, such as Gus Van Sant, Michael Moore and Terrence
Malick thrown in for good measure.
The fact is, though, that winning the Palme d’Or all but
guarantees your film worldwide distribution. There is no way a Romanian film
about illegal abortion set in the dying days of the Communist regime would have
got a release in the US had it not won, but
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days did, and didn’t do too badly at the box office
there either. Roman Polanski’s The
Pianist, winner in 2002, did far better at the box office (earning $120
million) than the two films he made before and after it combined, despite one –
The Ninth Gate – starring Johnny
Depp and the other being an adaptation of Oliver
Twist. Ken Loach’s The Wind That
Shakes The Barley, winner in 2006, made $22 million at the box office,
accounting for more than half of the money taken by a Ken Loach film in a
career lasting almost fifty years.
The Tree of Life,
Terrence Malick’s semi-autobiographical coming of age drama, with an added
birth of the universe sequence and CGI dinosaurs, won in 2011, despite getting
booed at screenings, and went on to make $54 million at the worldwide box
office, whereas his previous film, The
New World, made only $30 million. His next, To The Wonder, made a paltry $2 million.
If you’re a young up and coming director then winning the
Palme d’Or at Cannes gives you access to cinema screens around the world, if
you’re already a member of the film-making establishment, then Cannes can give
you the biggest box office hit of your career.
You don’t believe me? The opening film this year, screening
out of competition, was Mad Max: Fury
Road, which took almost $17 million on its opening night at the US Box
Office. All down to those pictures of Charlize Theron on the red carpet, I bet…
Jérémie Renier from The Wakhan Front
The Wakhan Front: The
invisible enemy, premiering in Critic’s Week, by Fabien Lemercier from Cineuropa, May 16, 2015
http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=291031
http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=291031
CANNES 2015: Clément Cogitore's first feature film is an
astonishing and highly original piece of young French cinema about a platoon of
soldiers in Afghanistan
"Southern Post to Northern Post", "civilian
in sight", warnings, patrols, long periods of waiting around, sudden
exchanges of fire which pierce the silence that quickly settles in again
afterwards: Clément Cogitore
ventures into military territory with his first feature film, The Wakhan
Front, which is being screened in competition in Critics'
Week at the 68th Cannes
Film Festival. A subject which has been touched on very little in French film,
here the army is portrayed in a way which is all the more original for the fact
that the storyline plays out in Afghanistan, centering around the inexplicable
disappearance of soliders in an environment characterised by rocky ground, heat
and isolation. The setting is reconstructed realistically and cleverly by the
director, known for his talent as a visual artist, who clearly knows how to
create atmosphere and works on the border between genres (war/fantasy;
thriller/action) and areas of interest (realism/mysticism).
"Blessings are for the dead! You need a cool head if
you want to return home in one piece." Captain Antarès Bonnassieu (played
by the intense Jérémie Renier)
firmly leads his platoon on a surveillance mission into a valley in the middle
of the Afghan mountains, not far from the border with Pakistan. With the
exception of minor skirmishes with the Taliban and diplomatic/stormy
neighbourly relations with the local villagers, all goes to plan. From
blockhouses, the soldiers observe their surroundings, on the lookout for the
unexpected day and night, exchanging stories over the radio or at their camp of
their memories of Kabul, of the bodies of soldiers that were blown into a
thousand pieces and then sent home in sealed coffins filled with earth. But
this routine comes to an abrupt halt with the inexplicable disappearance of two
soliders who seem to have vanished into thin air. After holding a fruitless
inquiry fraught with accusations and threats (from his own soldiers and then
the villagers), and increasing security measures, another disappearance moves
Antarès to take action and enter into talks with the Taliban rebels, as they
are also looking for men who seem to have fallen off the face of the Earth.
What's going on in this place? Why are the men having the same disturbing
dreams about the disappeared men being in a cave somewhere? Antarès tries to
find rational explanations to it all whilst fears that metaphysical forces are
at work mount...
Filmed using a shoulder-mounted camera, The Wakhan Front paints a highly realistic portrait of daily life
in the army and perfectly uses the scale of its natural setting and technology
such as thermal imaging and infra-red sight to thrust the viewer (in an
elegantly unique way) into the shoes of the soldiers. With a rhythm not unlike
that of The Desert of the Tartars,
the director skilfully creates a threatening atmosphere for a group of men
(solidly portrayed, most notably by Kevin
Azaïs and Sâm Mirhosseini)
straying dangerously close to the edge of the abyss as if suffering from
dizziness, torn between beliefs and worlds (western and eastern) that are just
too different. Built on the principle of "the less you say the
better", the film (the storyline for which was written by Clément Cogitore
with the collaboration of Thomas
Bidegain) showcases a filmmaker who, despite unfortunately going astray
during the home straight of the film with an excess of mysticism and metaphors,
is not afraid of being bold.
Quentin Dolmaire and Lou Roy-Lecollinet in Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days
Mike D’Angelo from The
Dissolve
http://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-cannes/1030-day-4-a-romantic-trio/
http://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-cannes/1030-day-4-a-romantic-trio/
Arnaud Desplechin’s My
Golden Days, on the other hand, recalls a more recent past, just before
mainstream adoption of the Internet put an end to long-distance relationships
conducted primarily via snail mail. Having heard that the film is both prequel
and sequel to Desplechin’s My Sex Life…Or
How I Got Into An Argument (1996), I made a point of rewatching that
three-hour epic during a long layover in Istanbul on my way here. It wasn’t
really necessary, though, as Desplechin has written a completely new story
involving several of the characters from My
Sex Life, not worrying much about continuity. Mathieu Amalric once again
plays Paul Dedalus—now middle-aged and headed back to France after years
working abroad—but he gets relatively little screen time, appearing primarily
in bookend sequences. Most of My Golden
Days consists of an extended flashback to the late ’80s and early ’90s,
when Paul (now played by charismatic newcomer Quentin Dolmaire) first embarked
upon his tempestuous love affair with Esther, who was embodied by Emmanuelle
Devos in My Sex Life but is now seen
only as a teenager (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). Neither Dolmaire nor Roy-Lecollinet
looks much like his/her older counterpart, but Paul’s witty self-deprecation is
a constant—he talks his way into a college course by suggesting that the other students
need a doofus like him to whom they can feel superior—and Esther is still
maddeningly mercurial. Desplechin depicts their years together as a series of
gorgeous fragments, employing his usual arsenal of meta-cinematic gimmicks
(split screen, silent-era irises, characters reciting letters directly to the
camera) to convey the sense that everything shown is being freshly remembered.
The film’s French title translates as Three
Memories Of My Youth, which better captures its ephemeral charms, even as Paul
and Esther are increasingly forced to profess their love on paper, via
correspondence that can be (and is, in this case) retained for decades
afterward. I’m pretty sure My Golden Days
works just fine as a stand-alone work; for those familiar with My Sex Life, however, it’s a bit as if Before Sunrise had been made 20 years
after Before Midnight, using entirely
different actors.
* * * *
Cannes critics ratings, a composite of 7 different critic scores, where some of the
highest ratings might surprise you: http://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/index.pl/2015
The Cannes Criterion Forum is up and running:
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=513599
http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=513599
Screendaily Jury Grid (Page 32 from Digital edition from Day 7), where the Todd Haynes film Carol is still the only film rated higher than 3 with a 3.5 average score
Les Etoiles de la
critiques is up and running as well:
While Neil Young from Jigsaw Lounge maintains the odds for
winners:
PALME D’OR
FRONT RUNNERS
7-2 Hou – The Assassin
FRONT RUNNERS
7-2 Hou – The Assassin
4-1 Nemes – Son of Saul
4-1 Haynes – Carol
– – – – – – – – – – –
POTENTIAL CONTENDERS
4-1 Haynes – Carol
– – – – – – – – – – –
POTENTIAL CONTENDERS
9-1 Maïwenn – My King aka Mon Roi
10-1 Audiard – Dheepan
12-1 Jia – Mountains May Depart
10-1 Audiard – Dheepan
12-1 Jia – Mountains May Depart
12-1 Trier – Louder Than Bombs
12-1 Lanthimos – The Lobster
12-1 Sorrentino – Youth
12-1 Lanthimos – The Lobster
12-1 Sorrentino – Youth
14-1 Garrone – Tale of Tales
– – – – – – – – – – –
PRIZE CANDIDATES
– – – – – – – – – – –
PRIZE CANDIDATES
20-1 Moretti – My Mother aka Mia Madre
20-1 Kore-eda – Our Little Sister
20-1 Villeneuve – Sicario
20-1 Franco – Chronic
28-1 Kurzel – Macbeth
20-1 Kore-eda – Our Little Sister
20-1 Villeneuve – Sicario
20-1 Franco – Chronic
28-1 Kurzel – Macbeth
33-1 Brizé – The Measure of a Man
– – – – – – – – – – –
LONGSHOTS
100-1 Nicloux – The Valley of Love
– – – – – – – – – – –
LONGSHOTS
100-1 Nicloux – The Valley of Love
125-1 Donzelli – Marguerite and Julien
500-1 Van Sant – The Sea of Trees
500-1 Van Sant – The Sea of Trees
BEST ACTRESS
7-4 Cate Blanchett and/or Rooney Mara (Carol)
4-1 Emmanuelle Bercot (My King aka Mon Roi)
7-1 Margherita Buy (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
9-1 Emily Blunt (Sicario)
– – –
7-4 Cate Blanchett and/or Rooney Mara (Carol)
4-1 Emmanuelle Bercot (My King aka Mon Roi)
7-1 Margherita Buy (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
9-1 Emily Blunt (Sicario)
– – –
11-1 any (or several) from Our Little
Sister
16-1 Marion Cotillard (Macbeth)
– – –
25-1 Shu Qi (The Assassin)
25-1 any (or several) from Dheepan
28-1 Zhao Tao (Mountains May Depart)
16-1 Marion Cotillard (Macbeth)
– – –
25-1 Shu Qi (The Assassin)
25-1 any (or several) from Dheepan
28-1 Zhao Tao (Mountains May Depart)
33-1 Rachel Weisz (The Lobster
and/or Youth) solo
33-1 Isabelle Huppert (Louder Than Bombs
and/or The Valley of Love)
50-1 Anaïs Demoustier (Marguerite and
Julien)
50-1 The Lobster’s female ensemble
50-1 The Lobster’s female ensemble
BEST ACTOR
7-4 Vincent Lindon (The Measure of a Man)
7-2 Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul)
– – –
10-1 Tim Roth (Chronic)
12-1 Jesuthasan Antonythasan (Dheepan)
7-4 Vincent Lindon (The Measure of a Man)
7-2 Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul)
– – –
10-1 Tim Roth (Chronic)
12-1 Jesuthasan Antonythasan (Dheepan)
14-1 Vincent Cassel (My King aka Mon Roi)
14-1 Colin Farrell (The Lobster)
16-1 Michael Caine and/or Harvey Keitel (Youth)
14-1 Colin Farrell (The Lobster)
16-1 Michael Caine and/or Harvey Keitel (Youth)
16-1 any (or several) from Louder Than
Bombs (Byrne, Eisenberg, Druid)
– – –
– – –
25-1 Toby Jones (Tale of Tales)
25-1 John Turturro (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
28-1 Michael Fassbender (Macbeth)
25-1 John Turturro (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
28-1 Michael Fassbender (Macbeth)
28-1 Benicio Del Toro (Sicario)
33-1 Gérard Depardieu (The Valley of Love)
33-1 Liang Jingdong (Mountains May Depart)
33-1 Gérard Depardieu (The Valley of Love)
33-1 Liang Jingdong (Mountains May Depart)
50-1 Jérémie Elkaïm (Marguerite and
Julien)
50-1 Ken Watanabe and/or Matthew McConaughey (The Sea of Trees)
50-1 Ken Watanabe and/or Matthew McConaughey (The Sea of Trees)
The round-up of various links covering Cannes:
Screendaily still has paywalls, but if you click on the
reviews, they are open to the public: http://www.screendaily.com/, also: http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/cannes/reviews/
The Hollywood Reporter
at Cannes: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/cannes-film-festival/2015
David Hudson does all the links for each review at
Fandor: https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/category/daily
The Film Center's Barbara Scharres and Michał Oleszczyk,
also Ben Kenigsberg and Chaz Ebert at Cannes from the Roger Ebert blog: http://www.rogerebert.com/cannes/cannes-2015-table-of-contents
Kevin Jagernauth, Oliver Lyttelton, and Jessica Kiang the
indieWIRE Playlist: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/tag/cannes-film-festival
a round-up of indieWIRE reviews: http://www.indiewire.com/tag/cannes-2015
The Guardian
collection of reviews: http://www.theguardian.com/film/cannes-2015
BFI Sight and Sound:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/festivals/cannes-2015-all-our-coverage
Mike D'Angelo at the Dissolve: http://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-cannes/
David Jenkins from Little White Lies: http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/features/festivals
Daniel Kasman, Adam Cook, and likely others at Mubi: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tag/Cannes%202015
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky at Cannes for The Onion A.V. Club: http://www.avclub.com/features/cannes-film-festival/
Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa: https://storify.com/cineuropa/cannes-2015
Sukhdev Sandhu and Robbie Collins from The Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/cannes-festival/2015-movie-reviews/
The House Next Door at Cannes: http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/tags/cannes+film+festival
Cannes Diary from Film
Comment: http://www.filmcomment.com/blog
Eric Lavallee and Nicholas Bell from Ion Cinema: http://www.ioncinema.com/category/news/film-festivals
Drew McSweeny and Guy Lodge & others from HitFix: http://www.hitfix.com/movies/cannes-film-festival
Glenn Heath Jr. from the L-magazine: http://www.thelmagazine.com/tag/cannes-2015/
Various writers at Twitch: http://twitchfilm.com/festivals/cannes/
Time Out New York: http://www.timeout.com/newyork/movies/cannes-film-festival
And, of course, George is back at Cannes this year, where he
finds off the beaten track film fare: http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com
Today is the half-way point of the festival. I've seen
39 films so far and have yet to see a great one. I'm not worried though,
as I've only seen five of the ten Competiton films that have screened and two
of those that I have missed have been the best-reviewed--"Son of
Saul" (an Auschwitz film by a first time Hungarian director that Sony just
picked up for US distribution) and "Carol" (a lesbian period piece by
veteran American Todd Haynes). Plus three of the potentially best films
have yet to play--those by Sorrentino, Audiard and Hsiao-Hsien Hou. A
festival rarely offers more than two or three greats, so that is still
possible. Last year was a good year with "Winter Sleep,"
"Foxcatcher," "Wild Tales," and "Force Majuere."
None of my 39 have provided such a jolt or uplift.
I made an attempt on "Son of Saul" this morning.
I was the eighth person in line an hour ahead of the noon screening, but
none of us got in as those with priority passes filled the 63-seat theater
before any of us with mere Market passes were allowed entry. That meant I
could see a South African version of "Spinal Tap," a mockumentary
called "Stone Cold Jane
Austen." It could have been wacky, but was mostly silly and
stupid. The two members of the rock band of the same name as the title of
the movie are trying to make a comeback. No one much cared about them
originally, and even less so now. A cop though who recognizes them when
they are out and about was a fan and even has a couple of their CDs in
his car that he asks them to autograph. They refuse when they discover
they are bootleg copies. That upsets the cop, so he gives them a ticket,
about the lone comic scene in the whole movie.
I tried for a second rock band movie, "The Green
Room," as it had received rave reviews after its screenings in the
Director's Fortnight. The word was out and I fell five people short of
getting in. Playing right next door was "The Birth of Sake," a documentary on a 140-year old
Japanese distillery that still brews the drink in the labor-intensive
traditional manner. Its workers live dormitory-style for six months
during the winter months when the distilling takes place. They arise at 4:30 in
the morning and every day manually process 2,600 pounds of rice. One
hundred years ago there were 4,600 distilleries in Japan. There are now
just 1,000 as wine and beer have increasingly become the choice of drink in
Japan. I thought I might see Gary Meier, a former director of Telluride, at
the screening. He told Ralph and I yesterday that he had left Telluride
and would be launching a film festival of his own called Eat, Drink, Film
in the Bay Area. We were sorry to learn he had ended his time with
Telluride. It will be the first Labor Day in over forty years that he
won't be out there.
I didn't spot Gary, but I was joined by Milos of Facets and
a member of the Board of Telluride at my next screening, part one of the
three-part six-hour Arabian Tales that has been much talked about due to its
running time and its subject matter--the economic crisis in Portugal.
Milos said he was leery the film might be a case of the Emperor's New
Clothes, as he wasn't confident the movie would be as good as the reviews
claim. The title alone was questionable, as it was a mere
attention-grabber since the movie had nothing to do with the Arabian Tales
other then their structure. Milos is someone to listen to. He has
been coming to Cannes for over thirty years and knows the tea leaves.
He had skipped the morning's Competition film, "The
Measure of a Man," as he feared this French film had slipped into the
Competition to meet the French quota and also that it would be heavy-handed in
its portrayal of a man out of work seeking employment. He was right on
that. I told Milos the movie had some merit, but when I described it to him,
the movie met his expectations. The film concludes with the lead working as a
security guard in a large supermarket. His job is to catch shop-lifters.
They all have a sad, justifiable reason for shop-lifting, but he does his
job. He is more troubled though when he is ordered to try to catch
check-out women cheating when his boss tells him they have to cut back on staff
and need to fire some people. One woman he catches, who was merely pocketing
coupons, commits suicide. When he catches another who was swiping her
bonus card to get bonus points on the purchases of others, he doesn't think he
can continue with his job. The audience, most likely the French faction,
cheered at the end of the movie.
And Milos was right about "Arabian Nights." Its subject matter and its
ambition, not its execution, was what had won the favor of the critics.
Its series of short tales commenting on the economic woes of the
Portuguese was lifeless and plodding, and at a certain point an ordeal to
sit through. Milos was among the trickle of people who started walking
out after an hour. I stuck it out and even gave part sat through part two
since I had no viable alternative. Part one was enough for Ralph.
The film could have been effective if it had had a dollop of Romanian
realism or Iranian humanity or Japanese sensitivity.
Natalie Portman's Out of Competiton directorial debut, "A Tale of Love and Darkneas,"
also was missing that elixir making a movie something more than simply images
on a screen going through the motions. She even failed to elicit more
than a flat performance out of herself playing a young wife and mother
suffering a breakdown during the early years of Israel after WW II.
By the time I dashed a few blocks to the Arcades for its
10:30 screening of a Belgian black comedy with Catherine Deneuve about God
luring based in Brussels the theater was "complet." I had five
minutes to bike a mile up Antibes to the Miramar for the Critics Week screening
of "Land of Shade" from
Colombia. I made it just as the lights were dimming. Though it had
been another long day with some nodding off, this minimalist film set in the
land of sugar canes had me fully riveted. The story was as sad as any of those
of "Arabian Nights," a young woman working in the cane fields while
her husband lay at home seriously ill. The workers aren't getting paid
and no one will help her husband.
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