I've said before that a new film from Woody Allen is something like getting a Christmas gift from your eccentric aunt; you never know if you'll get a crocheted toilet paper cozy, or a piece of priceless heirloom jewelry. Fortunately, Allen's newest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, turns out to be more like the latter. The story opens with Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), two best friends heading to Barcelona for eight weeks of fun.
Vicky's distant relations Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and Mark (Kevin Dunn) live in Barcelona, and have invited the girls to spend the summer there, where Vicky will do research for her Masters and Cristina will soak up the local culture. Vicky is engaged to be married to Doug (Chris Messina), a stalwart, likable, but rather boring young man, and Cristina is recovering from her latest breakup and looking for an artistic outlet for her pent-up creativity.
Arnaud Desplechin's film Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale), playing in competition here at Cannes, is a tragically comic tale of love, death, and familial strife and forgiveness. The film centers around Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and her husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), whose oldest child, Joseph, is diagnosed at a young age with Burkitt's lymphoma.
The boy's disease is curable only with a bone marrow transplant, and neither the parents nor his younger sister, Elizabeth, are compatible. The couple conceives another child in the hopes of making a match to cure their son, but the third child, Henri, is also incompatible, and Joseph dies at the age of six. Eventually the grieving parents have a fourth child, Ivan, and in time the family's wounds over the death of the eldest son heal ... but not really.
Bonjour! Before I run out to the luncheon and roundtable for Blindness, I thought I'd get up a gallery with some scene pics around the festival and the lovely town of Cannes. I hope they'll give you something of a feel for what it's like to he here.
Cannes is a beautiful city -- lots of old buildings and winding streets, little shops, cafes and restaurants. There's so much to see and do here (besides, of course, watching tons of fabulous films) -- between the view of the Mediterranean Sea, the boats and yachts in the harbor, the islands off in the distance, and the people in designer clothing and fancy cars, it's a bit overwhelming to the senses.
Later in the fest, I plan to get out to wander through the Old Town area of Cannes, and hopefully will take the ferry across to at least one of the islands -- either the Île de Saint-Honorat, which houses a monastery, or the Île Sainte-Marguerite, where the Man in the Iron Mask was held captive. Later tonight or tomorrow, I'll also post some photos of the black-tie folks heading to premieres. Until then, merci, au revoir!
The Cannes Film Festival got off to a kind of dark and depressing start, with two movies about the worst side of humanity screening. But hey, it wouldn't be a film festival without some nice movies about human suffering to brighten your day, right?
Seriously, though, we can see light-hearted rom-coms anytime; a festival like Cannes is where you go to see movies that make you ponder life, wax philosophical with friends about the use of voice-over in film and the deeper metaphorical meanings of this or that scene, and geek out over things like editing and cinematography.
The horrors of war and the atrocities of which humans are capable of have, of course, been documented extensively in film since the birth of the medium. From the recent slew of documentaries on the Iraq war to Atom Egoyan's controversial 2002 Cannes debut Ararat (about the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman empire); from Schindler's List to The Killing Fields; from The Battle of Algiers to Apocalypse Now; from Ousmane Sembene's last film, Moolaadé (inspired by the genital mutilation of young girls in Burkina Faso) to The Devil Came on Horseback (a documentary chronicling the genocide in Darfur), recent cinematic history is filled with tales of human suffering, inflicted not by natural disasters, but by human beings upon one another.
Waltz with Bashir documents the struggle of the filmmaker, Ari Folman, to come to terms with the gaps in his memory surrounding the part he played in the first Lebanese war and the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in the West Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Where Marjane Satrapi'sPersepolis (to which this film will be inevitably, if somewhat inaccurately, compared) used stark black-and-white animation based on Satrapi's graphic novels to tell the history of one girl growing up during the Iranian revolution, Waltz with Bashir uses vivid, hand-drawn animation to bring to life interviews Folman conducted with friends who were involved in the Lebanese war in the early 1980s to bring to life harrowing memories of death, guilt and regret.
This morning James and I and a couple thousand other press folks took in a screening of the Opening Film at Cannes 2008, Fernando Meirelles's Blindness, starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal. You can check out James' review here, and tomorrow I'll be attending a luncheon/roundtable for the film. And in related Cannes news, Jack Black arrived at the 2008 Festival de Cannes in style. He's here to promote Kung Fu Panda, which premieres later in the week. Check out our gallery of Black and tons of panda bears down below.
Meantime, though, my take on Blindness is that it's ambitious and good, but falls short of being great. In part, I think, this is because the source material was challenging to adapt to a visual experience, but it's also due to some clunky expositional voiceover that detracts from the experience more than it adds. I don't want to be told how this or that person feels or reacts, I want to see it.
James Rocchi and I got into Cannes late this afternoon after a rather adventurous journey that included my flight being delayed, first by a medical emergency on the incoming plane I had to get on to get to Detroit, then by an unauthorized passenger being on my plane (how the hell does that happen in this day and age? I have no idea ...). Those delays very nearly caused me to miss my connection to Amsterdam, and then I realized when I got to the gate that I'd lost my boarding pass. Yes, I am officially the world's biggest travel dork. I did make the flight, though, and then James and I were treated to a screaming infant in front of us for the eight-hour flight to Amsterdam. Whew. Fortunately I brought my travel Scrabble to keep us busy.
We finally got to Cannes and found our flat. Thanks to James and his travel ingenuity, we have a lovely flat with a terrace that has a teensy view of the Mediterranean Sea and the all-important wifi connection. Once we dumped off our ten tons of luggage and freshened up, we were off to the Palais de Festival to collect our press badges. We managed to take a slew of pics of movie posters while enjoying the nice 20-minute walk from our flat, and spotted Juliette Lewis and Danny Glover strolling the Croisette.
James Rocchi and I got into Cannes this afternoon, checked into our flat, and then promptly headed out to the Croisette to get our press badges and take a slew of pics. Movie posters abound on the Croisette. They're draped on luxury hotels and adorning the sidewalks; pretty much everywhere you look, it's movie marketing central around here. I'll have a Live from Cannes post up later with some other pics of the Cannes scene and the lovely Croisette, but in the meantime, here's a bunch of movie poster pics for your viewing pleasure.
We'll be up bright and early tomorrow to catch the opening film, Blindness, and we'll be posting regularly throughout the fest, so keep checking back for more. Let us know what you're most interested in hearing about from the fest, and we'll do our best to oblige.
With the 2008 Festival de Cannes right around the corner, we thought we'd give you a preview of the films we're most excited about watching at this year's fest. From Indy to Angelina, there's something for everyone this year -- and while Cinematical's James Rocchi and Kim Voynar set up camp in France (daily coverage starts Wednesday), here are the ten films we're looking forward to the most. To get started, just click on any of the images below to find out more about that film ...
DIRECTED BY: Kelly Reichardt STARS: Michelle Williams, Will Patton
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Wendy and Lucy, helmed by Old Joy director Kelly Reichardt, stars Michelle Williams as Wendy, who's traveling by car with her dog Lucy, on her way to Alaska for a summer gig at a fish cannery, when her car breaks down somewhere in Oregon. Wendy's dog is taken to the pound, her threadbare finances start to unravel, and she has to make a series of "increasingly dire economic decisions."
WHY WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT IT
Reichardt's Old Joy was one of the best films of 2005 and showed her flair for making small feels that delve deeply into intimate relationships. Wendy and Lucy screens in the Un Certain Regard section of the fest and, according to Screen Daily, is the only film in competition that was received by post, unsolicited by the festival. If it stood out enough to the Cannes programming staff to make the cut as an unsolicited submission, we're betting on it being as good, or even better than, Old Joy.
DIRECTED BY: Woody Allen STARS: Scarlett Johannson, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Woody Allen's first film shot in Spain uses Barcelona as the backdrop for a tale of two young Americans, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johannson). Vicky's the straightlaced one, Cristina's the "sexually adventurous free spirit." The pair meet an artist (Javier Bardem, sporting a much better hairdo -- and, hopefully, attitude -- than he did in No Country for Old Men) and his lovely but insane ex-wife (Penelope Cruz). Much sexual trysting, including a reportedly hot sex scene between Johannson and Cruz and a three-way with the two ladies and Bardem, ensues. This being a Woody Allen film, we don't know a whole lot else about the plot at this point, but really, do we need to?
WHY WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT IT
Aside from the promise of those steamy sex scenes, a Woody Allen film is always intriguing. He can be a little uneven from film to film, sure, but watching a new Woody Allen film for the first time is a lot like opening a Christmas present from your wacky, eccentric old aunt: you never know whether you're going to get something really cool, like a gorgeous piece of heirloom jewelry -- or an olive-drab, hand-crocheted toilet paper cozy. But it's still fun to unwrap it and see what's inside.
DIRECTED BY: Charlie Kaufman STARS: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Tilda Swinton
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman makes his directorial debut with this film, which stars the ever-excellent Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden, a playwright who finds that his autonomic functions are shutting down just as he begins a new play. We don't know much about it, other than it explores Caden's relationships with the various women in his life around the backdrop of the staging of the play, and that Catherine Keener plays his first wife, Michelle Williams his second wife, and Samantha Morton his lover. Like the previous films Kaufman has written, this one is supposed to explore blurrings of reality, and it's been described as kind of like a horror film, but not really. Trippy.
WHY WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT IT
With talent like this, what's not to be excited about? Hoffman is consistently good in every film he takes on, the female roles are filled by women who excel in strong roles for women, and the quirky, brilliant Kaufman has penned some of our favorite films ever (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Being John Malcovich). Kaufman wrote the script for Synedoche, NY, and reportedly signed on to direct after Spike Jonze, who was pegged to helm the film, decided to take a walk on the wild side with Where the Wild Things Are. It's going to be interesting to see if Kaufman's directorial eye is as sharp as his pen.
DIRECTED BY: Clint Eastwood STARS: Angelina Jolie, John Malcovich
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort, written by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, is a late-1920s period drama about a real-life kidnapping and murder case. Angelina Jolie stars as Christine Collins, a working-class mother whose 10-year-old son disappears. When her son is "found" some months later, she knows the boy police say is her son is a different child, but no one will believe her, and she can't get police to try to solve the case. The police chief has the distraught mom locked away in a psych ward, and a fiery Presbyterian evangelist, Gustav Briegleb (played by John Malkovich) rallies public support for Collins to find out what really happened to her son.
WHY WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT IT
Eastwood's directorial efforts of late have been solid and satisfying. He had a bit of a directorial lull after 1992's stellar Unforgiven, but since then has made critically acclaimed films with Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers. While we're not entirely sure how we feel about Straczynski penning a period drama, his solid character and storyline development with Babylon 5 speaks to his talent as a writer, and Jolie is a solid choice to play the lead. Changeling looks to be one of the most interesting films in the competition at Cannes.
Directed by: Atom Egoyan Stars: Arsinée Khanjian, Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard, Devon Bostick
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
A high school French teacher (Egoyan's wife, Arsinée Khanjian, who has been in many of his films) gives her class an assignment to translate a news story about a terrorist who plants a bomb on his pregnant girlfriend and puts her on a plane. One of her students, Simon (Devon Bostick), becomes obsessed with the story, imagining himself to be the couples' child. He creates a new identity on the internet to allow him to discover the truth about his family.
WHY WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT IT
The Canadian director is best known for The Sweet Hereafter, which debuted at Cannes in 1997 and earned him duel Oscar nods, as well as Exotica and Ararat. With Adoration, Egoyan returns to making a smaller, more intimate film, after a bigger Hollywood effort with 1995's Where the Truth Lies. The storyline sounds potentially a bit convoluted, but given our own adoration of most things Egoyan, we're excited to see what he does with it.
There's been much buzzing around the Cinematical virtual office over the past few days about Speed Racer. James pretty much liked it (for a kids' movie), Scott pretty much hated it, and Eugene seems, well, a bit disappointed. We just got back from taking the crew to see Speed Racer.
Last week at the same time, we were at Iron Man, and the theater was almost completely packed, with only front row seats left by the time the previews started. This week, same time, exact same theater, even, and there were maybe 20 people total. And I have to say, if the Wachowskis are aiming for the kiddie market with this film, as many seem to think, I think they've largely missed their mark. Aside from the largely empty matinee theater, there were a couple of signs during the screening that this movie wasn't playing well to the kiddie set.
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James Rocchi and I got into Cannes late this afternoon after a rather adventurous journey that included my flight being delayed, first by a medical emergency on the incoming plane I had to get on to get to Detroit, then by an unauthorized passenger being on my plane (how the hell does that happen in this day and age? I have no idea ...). Those delays very nearly caused me to miss my connection to Amsterdam, and then I realized when I got to the gate that I'd lost my boarding pass. Yes, I am officially the world's biggest travel dork. I did make the flight, though, and then James and I were treated to a screaming infant in front of us for the eight-hour flight to Amsterdam. Whew. Fortunately I brought my travel Scrabble to keep us busy..jpg)
There's been much buzzing around the Cinematical virtual office over the past few days about Speed Racer. 
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SCOOP: Spider-Man 4 and 5 Might be Shot at the Same Time!
Cinematical Seven: Disney's Awesome Live-Action Kid Adventures
