Natasha Poly
Eva Longoria
German model Toni Garrn
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek with her husband François-Henri Pinaud and Jane Fonda with Jake Gyllenhaal
Brazilian supermodel Adrina Lima
Danish fashion model Nina Agdal
British model Lily Donaldson
Portuguese model Sara Sampaio
American fashion model Lindsay Ellington
Brazilian model and designer Camila Alves
Swiss-born American actress Kat Graham
French actress Virginie Ledoyen
Michael Jackson’s father Joe arrived at Cannes with an entourage
Red carpet shots from The
Hollywood Reporter:
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/gallery/cannes-2015-red-carpet-arrivals-795394/1-emma-stone
A collection of pieces from The Hollywood Reporter:
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:
Also here:
Elle fashion photos:
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/
Cannes faces backlash
after women reportedly barred from film screening for not wearing high heels,
by Henry Barnes from The Guardian,
May 19, 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/19/cannes-backlash-high-heels-emily-blunt-flat-shoes
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/19/cannes-backlash-high-heels-emily-blunt-flat-shoes
The red carpet at the Cannes film festival
is an elysium of old-fashioned glitz and glamour, but the festival faced
controversy on Tuesday after it emerged that it takes the odd bout of
tyrannical fashion policing to keep it that way.
A group of women in their 50s were turned away from the gala
screening of Todd Haynes’s Carol for allegedly not wearing high-heeled shoes, according
to industry newspaper Screen Daily. The women, some of whom had medical
conditions, were apparently barred entry for wearing rhinestone flats.
The festival is facing a backlash from film fans protesting
against what many perceive as a sexist dress-code policy, even though Cannes’s
director, Thierry Frémaux, has denied that high heels are obligatory. “The
rumour saying the festival insists on high heels for women on the red carpet is
unfounded,” he said in
response to critics on Twitter.
Among those joining the backlash was actor Emily Blunt, who will
walk the red carpet tonight in support of her new film, the FBI drama Sicario.
“Everyone should wear flats, to be honest. We shouldn’t wear
high heels,” said Blunt, when asked about the controversy at the Sicario press conference.
“That’s very disappointing, just when you kind of think there are these new
waves of equality.”
Sicariodirector Denis Villeneuve joked that he and Blunt’s
co-stars, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin, would wear high heels to the
premiere in solidarity. Del Toro then mimed wobbling along the red carpet from
his seat.
Also critical of the dress code was Asif Kapadia, director
of the Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy, which premiered in Cannes last week.
Kapadia tweeted that his wife had initially been denied entry to the screening
because of her footwear, but was eventually allowed in.
It has also been reported that a film producer who has had
part of her left foot amputated has also been stopped for not wearing high heel
shoes. Valeria Richter told the
Telegraph she had been reprimanded on the red carpet for her footwear,
despite missing her big toe and part of her foot. She said she had been stopped
four times by officials at the premiere for The Sea of Trees, but had
eventually been allowed to proceed. Richter said: “We put on the dress and make
an effort to be formal and festive, but to demand heels is not right.”
Cannes’s red-carpet screenings are by invitation only. The
official dress code is explained to guests after they collect a ticket for
their film. Published guidelines are hard to come by, but it is generally
understood that men must wear black tie with black shoes and women must be
elegantly dressed with smart footwear. Festival staff quizzed by the Guardian
seemed unclear as to whether high heels are obligatory at red-carpet screenings
or not.
Gender equality has been a key theme in many of the films in
year’s Cannes selection. Ironically, Carol, the film to which the flat-wearing
guests were denied entry, is perhaps the Competition film with the strongest
feminist message. Based on the book by Patricia Highsmith (an
avid fan of loafers), it tells the story of a young shop assistant, played
by Rooney Mara, who embarks on an affair with a married older women.
Outside the Palais, 20-year-old Tami was one of many hopeful
of being given a spare ticket to the Tuesday-night premiere by a charitable
delegate. She was carrying her high heels in a plastic bag.
“It says on your ticket that you have to be smartly
dressed,” she said. “For women that means high heels. I wish we didn’t have to.
They’re uncomfortable.”
Festival Films Offer a
Lesson in (Bad) Parenting, by Justin Chang from Variety, May 19, 2015
http://variety.com/2015/film/columns/cannes-film-festival-a-lesson-in-parenting-critics-notebook-1201500498/
http://variety.com/2015/film/columns/cannes-film-festival-a-lesson-in-parenting-critics-notebook-1201500498/
The kids are not all right, to judge by the films that have
screened so far at Cannes 2015.
“Louder
Than Bombs,” Joachim Trier’s sensitively rendered family drama about
the lingering aftermath of a mother’s untimely death, begins with a shot
of a newborn’s hand clutching his daddy’s finger. It’s a perfect opening image
for a film that largely concerns itself with the tensions that can
arise between parents and children, particularly when each party is typically
doomed to a partial understanding of the other at most. As it
happens, it could also serve as one of the defining images for the 68th
annual Cannes Film
Festival (with apologies to Ingrid Bergman, whose regally disembodied head
graces the poster for this year’s event), which has screened a number of
pictures in which the price paid by neglectful, irresponsible or just plain
ineffectual parenting turns out to be a steep one.
“They f— you up, your mom and dad,” Philip Larkin wrote,
and some of the characters at this year’s festival don’t even have the
benefit of both. In her tepidly received opening-night entry, “Standing Tall,”
the director Emmanuelle Bercot traces the long, difficult reform of a
French juvenile delinquent named Malony (played by Rod Paradot) under the tough
but compassionate eye of a magistrate (Catherine Deneuve), but with little help
from his absentee dad or his junkie mom (Sara Forestier), who’s
seen noisily dumping the kid in the lap of social services in the
film’s very first scene. By contrast, the four
Japanese daughters at the center of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s lovely,
leisurely “Our Little Sister” seem markedly better adjusted, despite
having weathered their own fair share of parental short-sightedness in a
movie that climaxes with two of them screaming out their anger at Mom and Dad
from the hilltops.
The messed-up monarchs in “Tale of Tales” aren’t setting a
much better example. So bent on motherhood that she’ll pig out on sea-monster
offal and sacrifice her husband (John C. Reilly) in order to conceive,
the imperious Queen of Longtrellis (Salma Hayek) turns out to
be predictably domineering, alienating her son (Christian Lees) by
forcing him to stay away from his identical twin
brother-from-another-mother. Still, the worst-parent crown in Matteo Garrone’s
lavish 17th-century fantasy omnibus easily goes to the neighboring King of
Highhills (Toby Jones), who’s more infatuated with his pet flea than with
his princess daughter (Bebe Cave), whom he whimsically marries off to an
ogre — a bitter twist in a film that gives us no shortage of supernatural
creepy-crawlies and then slyly asks us to consider who the real monsters are.
A tragic real-life example of monstrous fatherly neglect
could be found in “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s documentary about the too-short,
too-troubled life and career of singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. Presented in
the Midnight Screenings section, “Amy” has been one of the most
resoundingly applauded films anywhere in the festival, and it’s one I’m eagerly
looking forward to catching up with. I can’t claim quite the same level of
anticipation for Valerie Donzelli’s “Marguerite & Julien,” which
rivals only Gus Van Sant’s insipid “The Sea of Trees” as the most roundly
despised film in competition, but by all accounts, neither Maman nor Papa turns
out to be parent-of-the-year material in this tale of brother-sister
incest.
Fortunately, not all this year’s parent-child dramas been
quite so pessimistic. Maiwenn’s polarizing but deeply involving “Mon
roi” is an intense, and intensely observed, romance between two uniquely
self-destructive individuals, played by Bercot and Vincent Cassel. The
characters’ behavior is frequently indefensible (and at times just plain inexplicable), but
the young son they share has a way of uniting them and bringing out their
best instincts, even though he inevitably becomes a bit of a bargaining chip,
as children of divorce often do. Something similar happens in Todd Haynes’
1950s lesbian love story, “Carol,”
easily the best-received film in competition so far and a presumed frontrunner
for the Palme d’Or, in which our eponymous heroine (Cate Blanchett) faces the
threat of losing her daughter to her jealous soon-to-be-ex-husband (Kyle
Chandler) sues for custody — a clash that leads to one of the most honest,
cathartic scenes of reckoning between two parents in recent memory.
Nanni Moretti’s moderately appealing comedy-drama “My
Mother” stars an excellent Margherita Buy as a stressed-out film director
trying to cope with her mom’s terminal illness while also striving to be a good
mother to her own teenage daughter; it’s a cross-generational family portrait
that, for all its transparent manipulations, conveys a real sense of the
affection and generosity that close family members feel for one another. The
same goes for an even better film in the competition, “The Measure of
a Man,” Stephan Brize’s Dardennes-influenced study of a working-class husband
and father, Thierry (a superb Vincent Lindon), at the mercy of everyday
capitalist inhumanity. The scenes in which Thierry and his wife take care
of their teenage son, who has what appears to be cerebral palsy, are
deeply yet understatedly moving, with none of the grotesque sentimentality that
often attends stories of the developmentally disabled.
Still, perhaps the most hopeful vision amid all this
parent-child Sturm und Drang has been Arnaud Desplechin’s “My Golden Days,”
which is simply one of the most enveloping coming-of-age sagas I’ve seen in
years — a film as spontaneous as it is surefooted, and one that
wisely suggests that our parents’ bad behavior need not be the end of the
story. Notably, the film opens with its young hero, Paul Dedalus, waving a knife
and screaming insults at his frightfully overbearing mother, who promptly
commits suicide; in a later scene, Paul’s depressive father smacks him
across the face after seeing his son’s poor report card. As was widely
reported before it had even screened, “My Golden Days” was passed over for
a competition slot (it’s no “Sea of Trees,” after all), which is why it
wound up premiering instead at the Directors’ Fortnight program.
Vindication has been swift and sweet: When all is said and done,
this unwanted child of the official selection will long be remembered as
one of the festival’s finest.
Elad Keidan’s Afterthought
A Jewish 'Ulysses' at the Cannes Film Festival, by A.J. Goldmann from Forward, May 19, 2015 http://forward.com/culture/film-tv/308479/in-search-of-the-jewish-films-at-cannes/
It’s the 68th installment of the world’s most glamorous film
festival, and thousands of filmmakers, actors, movie execs, journalists,
tourists and adoring fans have descended on this small, surprisingly
unremarkable town along the French Riviera, a town whose name is synonymous
with cinema.
Last Wednesday, the International Jury headed by the
American directing duo The Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan) presented itself at
the festival’s inaugural press conference.
The filmmakers’ relationship with Cannes goes back nearly 30
years, when their screwball comedy “Raising Arizona” screened out of
competition. Four years later, their dark Hollywood satire “Barton Fink” was an
unexpected triumph, capturing the festival’s highest prize, the Palme d’Or and
establishing the Coens as the most exciting filmmaking duo of the day. Since
then, two of their subsequent films “Fargo” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There” have
scooped the festival’s directing award. Most recently, their 2013
folk-music-biopic “Inside Llewyn Davis” took home the Grand Prix, the de facto
second place prize. Incidentally, the Jury President that year was Steven
Spielberg. (Whether by accident or by design, the brothers’ two strangest and
Jewiest films, “The Big Lebowski” and “A Serious Man,” were not chosen for this
high-minded festival).
The only other Jewish member of this year’s jury, Jake Gyllenhaal, joked about the group being neatly divided into the “Joel Camp” and the “Ethan Camp.” Asked about why he had signed up for the grueling job of watching and evaluating over 20 films in a ten-day period, Gyllenhaal said, “I was just thrilled about seeing films before anyone else in the world would see them. And for free.”
Fielding a question about Ingrid Bergman, the icon of this year’s festival, whose face is plastered on just about every conceivable surface here, Gyllenhaal alluded to father, the director Stephan Gyllenhall: “I’m Swedish and I deeply hope that I’m related to her somehow and in some form.” However, it was his mother, the producer and actress Naomi Foner, who is the avid fan. Gyllenhaal has promised her the festival poster, on which the “Casablanca” star is featured.
2014 was a bumper year for Israeli cinema, with five of that
country’s films screening at Cannes in the festival’s main and sidebars
sections, most impressively Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s “Gett, the Trial of
Viviane Amsalem” and “Self
Made” by Shira Geffen. This year, there are only two Israeli features on
the festival slate. The first to arrive was Elad Keidan’s “Afterthought.” It
isn’t competing for any of the main prizes, but is a contender for the Camera
d’Or for best first film.
Set in Haifa, the film centers on two men crisscrossing the staircases along the Carmel Mountain, leading down to the port. As boring as that premise sounds, this film is anything but. Take for instance the long opening shot, a panning wide shot of Haifa as seen from the port. The customary soundtrack of seagulls and foghorns gives way to a prolonged fit of coughing, snippets of telephone conversations and a radio broadcast of a music program called “Their Most Mediocre Performances”: the artist of the week is Jascha Heifetz, a deadpan deejay informs us (next week’s will be Yehudi Menuhin).
Moshe, a former archeologist who owns a fleet of coin-operated mechanical horses, is spending the day looking for an earring that his wife has lost (she thinks) somewhere walking on the stairs. Uri, a writer who’s just broken up with his girlfriend and is plotting to skip the country in order to ditch his mandatory reserve duty, walks up and down the endless staircases, committing his momentary inspirations into a tape recorder, and putting things in order to the extent that he can in his distracted, nervous state.
As the film meanders, a narrative arc comes into focus. My hunch is that Keidan has set out to do a version of “Ulysses.” Like Joyce’s opus, “Afterthought” follows two men walking all over a city in the course of a single day, eventually intersecting briefly yet meaningfully. Like Joyce’s alter ego Stephan Daedalus, Uri is a restless writer dreaming of going abroad. Moshe shares Leopold Bloom’s melancholy as well as heartbreak caused by an unfaithful wife.
A free associative logic seems to guide the film. The situations that Keidan throws his characters into are often absurdist or surreal, but the film’s bizarre chain of events rarely seems contrived or forced. There is Moshe in an Arab lawyer’s office explaining his dream to build a museum to the Naqba (he thinks only a Jew could get away with it and that it would be great for tourism) and Uri spontaneously deciding to be a character witness for a former classmate who once broke three of his fingers. When Uri makes it to the port to board his steamer, the barbershop quartet he sings in sends him off in classy musical style. The film’s title is explained in a hilarious monologue, delivered by an irate chassid, who doesn’t understand the function of voicemail boxes. It would be much better, he says, to be able to leave a message for someone after you’ve spoken to him, to say the things you couldn’t bring yourself to say during the conversation. This is “afterthought,” what you really meant to say, your true thought.
Keidan’s film also scores a victory for Cinéfondation, Cannes young filmmakers program. In 2008, his short film “Anthem,” won the Cinéfondation’s top award, a 15,000-euro cash prize that guarantees that the director’s next film will screen in the official Cannes selection.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendor, by James Lattimore from The House Next Door
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/cannes-review-cemetery-of-splendor
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/cannes-review-cemetery-of-splendor
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's quietly incandescent new
feature, Cemetery of Splendor, is so
serene, so perfectly meditative, that it puts the viewer in precisely the same
hushed reverie to which its characters eventually submit, one's fluttering eyes
due not to tiredness, nor boredom, but rather some strange, inexplicable desire
to join in with all the collective dreaming on screen. Moving away from the
spatial and temporal bifurcations of much of his previous work, the film fixes
its tender gaze on all the myriad things that one specific place has been,
gently and often imperceptibly shifting between past and present, legend and
modernity, wakefulness and dream.
The place in question is an improvised hospital in Khon
Kaen, northeastern Thailand, which has been set up to house all the many
soldiers struck down by some mysterious sleeping sickness. Jen (Jenjira Pongpas
Widner), a middle-aged housewife with an American husband and one leg shorter
than the other, turns up at the hospital to volunteer, recalling immediately
that this former school is the one she herself used to attend. She's quick to
befriend Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a medium and possible FBI agent able to
tap into what the slumbering inmates are dreaming, and swiftly makes one
soldier, Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), into the son she never had.
Hospital life unfolds at a leisurely pace, as bodies are
washed, new anti-snoring machines shipped over from America installed, and
seminars on meditation given, the only interruptions being the chicken and its
offspring that wander in from time to time and the sound of the digger ripping
through the earth outside. Weerasethakul captures the languorous ebb and flow
of life here in sustained, beautifully composed shots that are strung together
based on rhythm and instinct rather than any overt narrative concerns: a
colostomy bag slowly filling with urine, makeshift turbines splashing water
across the nearby lake, dappled sunlight on a bed of leaves. Gentle humor also
leavens these quiet routines again and again: the garrulous Jen will chat with
everyone, her various conversations rendered in wry, unusually frequent
dialogue that's equally capable of namechecking Superman, past lives, and the
number of calories in fried banana.
Yet other forces soon begin to impinge on the blissful calm.
When Jen comes across two beautiful young women hawking clothes, they casually
reveal themselves as centuries-old dead Laotian goddesses. They mention in
passing that an ancient cemetery lies beneath the hospital, with the kings and
warriors buried there draining the sleeping soldiers of their energy so that
they can keep fighting their age-old wars. As Jen, Keng, and Itt grow closer,
their thoughts, dreams, and eventually even bodies gradually converge, led by
and suffused with all the rippling layers of reality this place contains. The
neon lights by the soldiers' beds soon cast their glow across the entire town,
a sumptuous palace of past days is verbally conjured out of an overgrown
garden, and, as the sun threatens to break through the clouds, an amoeba slowly
inches its way across the image. The tone is one of sweet, aching melancholy,
the realization that everything leaves an impression carrying both rapture and
great sadness for the characters and the viewer alike.
Weerasethakul's films have always been marked by their
tenderness, unobtrusive rigor, and desire to splice the straightforward with
the oblique, with Cemetery of Splendor
perhaps the purest, most focused expression of these concerns. Yet, couched in
perhaps the film's strongest scene, he also seems to be making a typically
indirect statement as to what film itself should be: a darkened auditorium, the
audience standing up as one to gaze at the screen, an unstemmable flow of
beautifully unfathomable images, cinema as the stuff dreams are made of.
* * * *
* * * *
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 24 from Digital edition from Day
8), where the Todd Haynes film Carol
is still the only film rated higher than 3 with a 3.5 average score
http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/cannes/cannes-2015-screens-dailies/5087854.article
http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/cannes/cannes-2015-screens-dailies/5087854.article
Les Etoiles de la
critiques is up and running as well (By the way, to open up the screen,
click on the link [Edition mobile : cliquez ici pour afficher l'image]):
http://www.lefilmfrancais.com/cinema/123012/cannes-2015-les-etoiles-de-la-critique-6
http://www.lefilmfrancais.com/cinema/123012/cannes-2015-les-etoiles-de-la-critique-6
While Neil Young from Jigsaw Lounge maintains the odds for
winners, making some early predictions for prize winners:
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2015/
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2015/
PALME D’OR
FRONT RUNNERS
7-2 Hou – The Assassin {prediction: Palme d’Or)
FRONT RUNNERS
7-2 Hou – The Assassin {prediction: Palme d’Or)
4-1 Nemes – Son of Saul {Grand Prix}
9-2 Haynes – Carol {Best Actress}
– – – – – – – – – – –
POTENTIAL CONTENDERS
– – – – – – – – – – –
POTENTIAL CONTENDERS
8-1 Jia – Mountains May Depart {Prix
du Jury}
9-1 Maïwenn – My King aka Mon Roi
{Best Director}
10-1 Audiard – Dheepan
10-1 Audiard – Dheepan
10-1 Sorrentino – Youth
14-1 Trier – Louder Than Bombs {Best Screenplay}
14-1 Trier – Louder Than Bombs {Best Screenplay}
14-1 Lanthimos – The Lobster
– – – – – – – – – – –
PRIZE CANDIDATES
– – – – – – – – – – –
PRIZE CANDIDATES
16-1 Garrone – Tale of Tales
20-1 Moretti – My Mother aka Mia Madre
20-1 Kore-eda – Our Little Sister
22-1 Franco – Chronic
28-1 Kurzel – Macbeth
20-1 Moretti – My Mother aka Mia Madre
20-1 Kore-eda – Our Little Sister
22-1 Franco – Chronic
28-1 Kurzel – Macbeth
33-1 Brizé – The Measure of a Man
40-1 Villeneuve – Sicario
– – – – – – – – – – –
LONGSHOTS
100-1 Nicloux – The Valley of Love
40-1 Villeneuve – Sicario
– – – – – – – – – – –
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
5-2 Cate Blanchett and/or Rooney Mara
(Carol)
11-4 Zhao Tao (Mountains May Depart)
5-1 Emmanuelle Bercot (My King aka Mon Roi)
8-1 Margherita Buy (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
– – –
11-4 Zhao Tao (Mountains May Depart)
5-1 Emmanuelle Bercot (My King aka Mon Roi)
8-1 Margherita Buy (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
– – –
11-1 any (or several) from Our Little
Sister
12-1 Marion Cotillard (Macbeth)
12-1 Marion Cotillard (Macbeth)
14-1 Emily Blunt (Sicario)
16-1 Shu Qi (The Assassin)
16-1 Shu Qi (The Assassin)
16-1 Isabelle Huppert (Louder Than Bombs
and/or The Valley of Love)
– – –
20-1 any (or several) from Dheepan
– – –
20-1 any (or several) from Dheepan
25-1 Rachel Weisz (The Lobster and/or
Youth) solo
33-1 Anaïs Demoustier (Marguerite and Julien)
50-1 Jane Fonda (Youth) solo or with Rachel Weisz
50-1 The Lobster’s female ensemble
33-1 Anaïs Demoustier (Marguerite and Julien)
50-1 Jane Fonda (Youth) solo or with Rachel Weisz
50-1 The Lobster’s female ensemble
BEST ACTOR
9-4 Vincent Lindon (The Measure of a
Man)
7-2 Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul)
7-1 Michael Caine and/or Harvey Keitel (Youth)
– – –
10-1 Tim Roth (Chronic)
11-1 Antonythasan Jesuthasan (Dheepan)
7-2 Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul)
7-1 Michael Caine and/or Harvey Keitel (Youth)
– – –
10-1 Tim Roth (Chronic)
11-1 Antonythasan Jesuthasan (Dheepan)
14-1 Vincent Cassel (My King aka Mon Roi)
16-1 Colin Farrell (The Lobster)
16-1 any (or several) from Louder Than Bombs (Byrne, Eisenberg, Druid)
– – –
16-1 Colin Farrell (The Lobster)
16-1 any (or several) from Louder Than Bombs (Byrne, Eisenberg, Druid)
– – –
28-1 Toby Jones (Tale of Tales)
28-1 John Turturro (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
28-1 Michael Fassbender (Macbeth)
28-1 John Turturro (My Mother aka Mia Madre)
28-1 Michael Fassbender (Macbeth)
33-1 Liang Jingdong (Mountains May
Depart)
33-1 Benicio Del Toro (Sicario)
33-1 Gérard Depardieu (The Valley of Love)
33-1 Benicio Del Toro (Sicario)
33-1 Gérard Depardieu (The Valley of Love)
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/
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
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
International Cinephile Society: http://icsfilm.org/
Various writers at Twitch: http://twitchfilm.com/festivals/cannes/
Time Out New York: http://www.timeout.com/newyork/movies/cannes-film-festival
Glenn Heath Jr. from the L-magazine: http://www.thelmagazine.com/tag/cannes-2015/
Cannes Diary from Film
Comment: http://www.filmcomment.com/blog
And George has reconfigured his damaged computer to offer another day’s offerings: http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com
And George has reconfigured his damaged computer to offer another day’s offerings: http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com
My day was bookended by violent-laced crime thrillers--one
an American production about Mexican drug cartels and the other of office
politics from South Korea. One featured inventive plot twists and the
other didn't much care about the credibility of its twists. No surprise which
was which.
The American production, "Sicario" by Canadian director Denia Villeneuve, put its
budget into its cast (Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro) and aerial
shots and car chases rather than its script. Its was slick enough to be
shown in Competition, while the Korean film, "Office," was given an
Out of Competition slot.
"Sicario" began with great promise as Emily Blount
leads an FBI raid on a drug house in Phoenix. Her assured demeanor along
with the first-rate action directing remain a strong current through the film.
She is enlisted by higher operatives led by Josh Broslin to cross the
border into Mexico and snatch a drug lord. It is more bravado
film-making, though the credibility of the script begins to ebb. It doesn't
become as outlandish as Villeneuve's "Prisoners," and can be somewhat
overlooked since the premise of a Colombian drug prosecutor, played with
matching vigor as the other leads by Del Toro, who turns into a superhero out for
the revenge for the death of his wife and daughter by drug lords adds a jolt to
the script that is more for the popcorn crowd than the cineste, and a far cry
from Villeneuve's masterpieces "Incendies" and
"Polytchnique."
"Office"
couldn't match the polish and pizzazz of "Sicario," but it was
equally gripping, delving into the psyche of the detective trying to track down
the employee of a company who inexplicably murdered his wife and son and
disappeared. A surveillance camera shows him returning to the skyscraper
where he worked, but not leaving. The drama bridges upon horror, but more
psychological than physical.
I found myself in a minor horror movie of my own when I
arrived back at the apartment after midnight and discovered my email
account had been taken hostage and a message sent out to everone in my address
book saying I was in Istanbul and had lost my wallet and needed money.
The worst of it was that I could no longer receive emails, as messages
replying to the plea would be intercepted by the perpetrator. At least I
can send out emails from the account, I changed my password, but so far
that hasn't helped. So I have not received any emails in the past
24-hours allowing me to concentrate further in the film festival.
The day wasn't without good fortune as after the 8:30 am
screening of "Sicario" a woman walked up to Ralph and I and offered
us invitations to the next Competiton screening in the Lumiere at 11:30.
Ralph already had one. It was the first I had come by this year.
I rushed directly to the Lumiere, but still ended up in the nose bleed
seat in the last row in the balcony. Its a vantage I know well from years past
and don't mind at all looking over a sea of heads at the distant screen far
below.
I won't have memories of this film though, "Marguerite and Julien," a
true story of incest in France in 1600. Valerie Donzelli returns to those
times but tries to jazz up the story with Rock music and odd insertions of
twentieth century technology, including the flash of a helicopter.
Unfortunately it doesn't work. A straightforward telling of this
story that ends in tragedy could have made for a fine movie. No one much
liked it, with a rare below one star overall rating from "Screen's"
panel of ten critics , though still twice as high as Van Sant's .4
disaster.
Today's Un Certain Regard film, "Trap," took me back to the Philippines through the same
post-typoon disaster scene I had bicycled through a year ago. It captured
all the images I know well - - UN tents for the survivors, battered palm trees,
religious services, bicycles with side cars, small road side cafes and the
great resilience of the Filipinos. Despite the sure hand of acclaimed
director Brillante Mendoza, he accompanied his fine images with just a
perfunctory story of recovery.
I filled the rest of the day with three documentaries.
One of them would have been Kent Jones's on the legendary conversations
between Hitchcock and Truffaut that resulted in a book, but I was among a
hundred or more who were turned away from the Bunuel where special events are
held. One floor below was a Market screening of the Directors Fortnight
entry "Beyond My Grandfather
Allende" filmed by one of his granddaughters. She was too young to
remember him when his life came to an end in Chile's 1973 coup and this is an
attempt to come to know him through her family members. His elderly wife is a most unwillingly
subject. She continually cuts off interviews with her granddaughter
laying beside her in bed. The director's other family members are also
very reticent to talk about their memories that they have all suppressed. The
best thing about the doc was remembering the exceptional doc by Sarah Polley
uncovering her big family secret.
A Swedish documentary, "Ingrid
Bergman--In Her Own Words," on the actress who overlooks the entries
to the Palais and Debussy as the subject of this year's poster, was given the
star treatment with Isabella Rosselini on hand to introduce it in the Soixante.
She was one Bergman's four children by two husbands. The children
are all extensively interviewed in this artful rendition of her life receiving
more screen time than movie clips. Three of the children were fathered by
the Italian director, and the first by her Swedish husband, who became a doctor
in the US during the early years of their marriage after Bergman had come to
Hollywood. When she left her husband and eight year old daughter for
Rosselini, it was an international scandal, even denounced on the Senate floor.
She didn't return to the US for eight years, not even for the Oscars when she
won her second, accepted by Cary Grant in a year when the Oscars were held in
New York. When she finally did return to the US Ed Sullivan took a poll whether
he should have her on his show.
My third documentary was one of those few films of personal
interest I was most eager to see when I had spotted it in the program on my
first perusal - - "The Fabulous
Story of Mr Riquet." He engineered the Canal du Midi linking the
Atlantic with the Mediterranean under Louis XIV in the 1700s. It is one
of the world's first great feats. It has a beautiful plane-tree lined
bike path along it. It was exciting to see its beauty captured on the big
screen, but unfortunately it didn't have a big enough budget to have added
English subtitles, the first such film I've come across in the Market.
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