MrN

Just wanted to bump since the festival is officially opening today.

If you get IFC, they're showing an hour long opening ceremony and I expect they will have updates practically every day in the form of 'Angelika' etc.

I for one am eager to hear all I can about the new films, so post links to reviews wherever you find them...

Pants

It doesn't look like Ebert will be covering Cannes with daily updates this year. Can anyone refer me to other online critics who will be doing this?

MrN

The Yahoo page seems to provide a good overall view.
http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid..._film_festival

Not sure which famous critics are going to be reporting daily. But here's another site that should have a slightly different picture, with reviews.
http://www.filmfestivals.com/

Grimfarrow

Cannes Update Day1:

1. "Fanfan La Tulipe" - no fanfare for this opening film, which received tepid responses from critics and audience alike.

2. Lars von Trier's "Mandalay" rights sold - before even his current film has been screened, his next film "Mandalay" (next in his controversial "U, S, of A" trilogy) had already been sold! It is supposedly set in the south and deals with slavery.

3. Eric Idle directs "Remains of the Piano" - Eric Idle returns to direct a spoof on Ivory Merchant films and films based on literary adaptations. It does not take a genius to know which 2 films are definitely referenced. It will star Jeffrey Rush, Anjelica Huston, Orlando Bloom, Neve Campbell and Patrick Stewart as Obie Ben Kingsley.

MrN

I watched the IFC opening ceremonies and at the end they said Ebert would be covering the closing award show for them.

Fanfan - not surprised.

Von Trier - I guess he'll be taking the boat if he wants to film it in the US?

'Patrick Stewart as Ben Kingsley?' Wonder if they're spoofing the making of a Merchant Ivory film?

Giles

Can't wait to read all the reviews in the coming couple of weeks from Variety. Question: what festival(s) in the US usually gets the chance to showcase some of the Cannes films later in the year, or are the distribution/festival deals difficult in obtaining.

Grimfarrow

No, von Trier is staying put. Again, he will be filming the US...entirely in Europe. His comment on this: "Americans always make films about places they have never been to, so why can't I?"

Actually, Patrick Stewart as OBIE Ben Kingsley. And some guy will play as "Daniel Day-Lewis". No joke.

Inverse

Well, not filming on location means von Trier violates one of the precepts of his goofy little manifesto. Of course, he's already violated all of the precepts of his goofy little manifesto since it came out ....

Grimfarrow

He has already abandoned Dogme95 - His new trilogy is not even close to being dogmatic (Dogville is filmed entirely in a pre-made set).

Phyre

He hasn't made a Dogme film in a while. I recall reading that he was afraid of flying or something.

Grimfarrow

His one and only Dogme film is "Idioterne". None of the rest are (including Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark).

Grimfarrow

Cannes Update Day 2:

1. Some interesting news on the upcoming films of major directors, including:

Alain Resnais: Pas sur la Bouche (Not on the Mouth)
Eric Rohmer: Triple Agent
Ken Loach: Ae Fond Kiss
Lynn Ramsey: The Lovely Bones
Thomas Vinterberg: Dear Wendy (written by Lars von Trier)
Olivier Assayas: Clean (with Maggie Cheung)
Neil LaBute: Vapor
David Gordon Greene: The Undertow
Mira Nair: Vanity Fair (with Reese Witherspoon)

2. Raoul Ruiz' "That Day" was well-received, but most thought it was "weird" and "light" compared to his other films (like the critically acclaimed "Time Regained").

3. Wim Wenders does another blues documentary with "The Soul of a Man", and as expected it was very warmly received. It will debut on US TV sometimes this year.

bothanspy

Okay. I want pics of Aishwarya Rai from Cannes. Yahoo is bare.

Pants

I like VonTrier, but he's so full of s***! While sounding clever that quote just isn't true. What American director has made a film set in a certain place, yet not filmed there or at least visited and heavily researched the intended location before recreating it elsewhere? American directors who make films about Europe have all visited Europe and researched europe. He's just dreaming up excuses to cover for his twisted insecure paranoia.

Grimfarrow

A few more of von Trier's comments:

http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=12272

Dogville marks the first film in a new trilogy called U, S and A., which follows the Golden Heart trilogy of Breaking The Waves, The Idiots and Dancer In The Dark. "All my life I have been critical of American society - the way it looks from my perspective. No, I haven’t been there, but my perception of the US is based on a lot more information and images than the Americans had when the for example made the film about Hans Christian Andersen. The US is a much bigger part of my consciousness than Denmark has ever been to the people who made that film."

"As a young man I was a communist, and I still feel that I belong on some sort of a left wing, and I don’t believe that the American society is very nice to the people who don’t have much – to put it nicely. This is something I believe that I ought to criticize, even though I haven’t been there. So in one way it is critical of the US, but at the same time not, because its similarities to today’s Danish politics are striking. There’re also parallels to the war [with Iraq], which obviously wasn’t intended, but it is something I am very much against. I’m ashamed of the Danish participation and I have no sympathy or respect for this war.".

Grimfarrow

Cannes Update Day 3:

The first rave is in. And it isn't for Matrix Reloaded, which apparently was received, well, not as warmly as the producers would have liked. Especially for the noisy crowds at Cannes (where people arer known to boo openly during film screenings), small, quick, and soft applause followed by a rush to the door is not a good sign.

No, the kudos are reserved for the heir-apparent of the Makhmalbaf family, Samira. After two acclaimed films (The Apple, Blackboards), the 20-something year-old director is rumored to be a strong contender for the Palme D'Or itself. The powerful tale of a yong woman struggling in post-war Afghanistan won tremendous acclaim, just 3 days into the festival.

An interesting review of "At Five in the Afternoon" can be found here:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...afghanistan_dc

Pants

In reguard to Von Trier:

When you make a positive film about a culture you know little about (as in the Hans Christian Anderson example), no one cares. But when you make a critical film about a country and culture you've never experienced first hand you open up a big can of worms. I havn't seen Dogville yet, but his words seem to be what one would call "hate speech". If I made a film about how much I hate Comunist China and bashed the Chinese and painted them as cruel awful people who treat each other horibly and have no respect for one another and don't treat each other equally, I would be branded by the left as making a film that is HATE SPEECH. It's pretty hateful to broadly categorize a culture based on pop culture and what you've seen on TV and read in books.

BTW, America is the most diverse and tollerant country on the planet. While far from perfect, there is no more diverse or more tollerant place on Earth. It's a little too easy to point out to a Dane that his country has no diversity (it's 95% white protestant) and therefore they don't know the meaning of tolerance. They've never had to do it!

Grimfarrow

Ummm...while your conviction is understandable, but I'm a little lost at to who you are addressing this to. It's not like von Trier is on this forum?

And I think it's a little too early to judge - let's see how "Dogville" (or, more importantly, Mandalay) turns out before the bashing of von Trier commences. After all, the portrayal of the US justice system is not pretty (not very realistic) in Dancer in the Dark either. But no one seemed to complain much.

Pants

I'm just thinking out loud

I like Von Trier, but I was very put off by his depiction of the US courts in Dancer. I was willing to write it off as essential to his intent to be over-melodramatic, but I do have a problem with someone making a critical film about something they know nothing of first hand.

Breaking the Waves didn't single out the Scottish as being religiously hypocritical, it was a film about the hypocracy of religion that just happend to be in Scotland. I don't think the scottish were offended nor did I leave the theater feeling the scottish were somehow to blame.

But Dancer was most definately about the problems inherent not just in the judicial system in general, but in America's Judicial System. I'd like to see a film about the problems of America's criminal justice system, but not from a person so totally outside of American society. Someone who, again, can't begin to comprehend the complexities of American life because he lives in a country that is 95% WASP and has probably 25 murders a year.

Nevertheless I'm excited to see his next film. Nothing keeps you thinking about contemporary life like Von Trier

Udpint

So you're telling me that I don't know what tolerance is? How very kind of you.

MrN

Pants, I think you're taking this way too personally, for a film that not only hasn't been released but hasn't been even reviewed yet. Besides, those articles say von Trier is critical of the U.S. but that doesn't mean he 'hates' the U.S. - of course if you're really G.W.Bush it might make sense to you.

And while it may be true that to see how tolerant a society is, they must be exposed to outsiders, I think your assessment of Denmark is akin to saying 'Only white people are racist' which definitely is not true.

Now if you happen to know that Von Trier personally hasn't been exposed to outside culture, fine, but to judge a whole nation based on the fiction of one man is questionable.

MrN

Try:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...170/427rg.html
or
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...168/42omd.html

Pants

I'm sure you do, but in a very different way than someone like myself whose lived for extended periods of time in neighborhoods where white protastants were the vast MINORITY. Can you say you've done that in Copenhagen?

I'm not taking anything seriously here. I'm just bouncing ideas around. I really am anxious to see his Dogville.

And mr. N- From all acounts (even his own) von Trier is so paranoid and fearful of airplanes, buses, large machinery, travel over water, etc. that yes, I do think it has to be considered when examining his art. His art is the product of a paranoid mind. He is a glass half empty kind of guy. At least that's the image he puts out there.


That's why I actually give him the bennefit of the doubt in the case of Dancer in the Dark. I think his cynical view of the American courts isn't anti-American, but actually a reflection of his own (rather rediculous) fears that he himself might get tried, convicted, and excecuted for a crime he didn't commit. He has said that he writes from his fears. He fears oil rigs and medle presses, so he writes them into his scripts. All though it makes him look silly, I think he genuinely thinks what happened to Selma would happen to him if he lived in America. He's really paranoid. Not Phillip K. Dick paranoid, but paranoid nonetheless. Or maybe we should say "fearfull"

Any way, have a good weekend.

Udpint

No, but as I'm not a protestant - or even a christian - I don't belong to that group anyway, be they a minority or not.
I'll admit to being white, as are the vast majority of my compatriots, but I won't accept that this in any way makes me less tolerant in theory or in practise.
It's not as if I've never encountered, worked with or befriended non-whites. And in any case tolerance is about many other things than just skin colour.

I can understand how Trier might upset or offend you. Personally I think he's an immature jerk (albeit a very talented one). But if you feel the need to vent, please attack his views and/or actions and not his Danish background which is shared by millions of "innocent" people like myself.
Thank you.

Grimfarrow

Pants, you're making way too many assumptions without having ever met the guy, or even going to Denmark.

I'm not Caucasian, and I dare say that the level of racial tolerance that I experienced between, say, Houston and Conpenhagen is worlds apart. Meaning that Copenhagen is much better and friendlier.

The assumption that just because you have a multi-ethnic and multi-racial country like the US means everyone is more tolerant is just plain untrue. In fact, sometimes the complete opposite is true, I find.

And to fan the flames further,

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/030516/af...146people.html

CANNES, France (AFP) - German film director Wim Wenders said he was wondering whether to pack his bags and leave the United States because of the poisonous "almost McCarthyist" atmosphere there.

Wenders, who lives in the United States and was at the Cannes film festival to present his new film "The Soul of Man", said "right now I really feel like it" when asked whether he wanted to leave the country.

There was an "almost McCarthyist" response to critics of President George W. Bush's administration, he said. "Perhaps I should stay," Wenders said. "I don't know, I'm split about it."

Wenders previously quit New York in the early 1980s and gave back his "green card" working and residence permit because of anger over the administration of former US president Ronald Reagan.

"I have the same feelings at the moment, it's very disagreeable," he said.

Wenders will head a jury that will award the festival's Camera d'Or prize for best first feature-length film during his stay at the May 14-25 festival.

His film about Blues music is being screened out of competition at the festival.