The Cannes Film Festival revealed its 2012 lineup this morning in Paris, with a competition heavy on male auteurs — and films featuring Croisette-ready stars like Robert Pattinson (Cosmopolis), Kristen Stewart (On the Road), Brad Pitt (Killing Them Softly), Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy (Lawless). Lee Daniels's Precious follow-up The Paperboy (starring Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman) is also among the 22 films screening in competition, along with Wes Anderson's opening night film Moonrise Kingdom. Other competition highlights include new work from veterans David Cronenberg, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach, Cristian Mungiu, Thomas Vinterberg, Walter Salles and Abbas Kiarostami. They are joined by fellow Cannes returnees Bernardo Bertolucci and Takashi Miike, who will screen their new films out of competition. And 2012 Sundance Film Festival competition winner Beasts of the Southern Wild by Benh Zeitlin joins the festival's Un Certain Regard lineup along with 16 other titles.
more »
The late Claude Miller's Thérèse D will close the 65th Festival de Cannes, the festival announced today. The adaptation of François Mauriac's 1927 novel (adapted previously in 1962 by Georges Franju) stars French favorite Audrey Tautou (Amelie) in the title role as a free-spirited woman trapped in an unhappy marriage in 1920s France who poisons her husband out of desperation, then must suffer the consequences. more »
Grainger David's The Chair is the only American filmmaker to make the shorts lineup cut for this year's upcoming Cannes Film Festival, though U.S. territory Puerto Rico also made the list for the first time with Mi Santa Mirada by Alvaro Aponte-Centeno. The Chair debuted last month at South by Southwest where it won the Short Film Jury Prize. The 12-minute film revolves around a mysterious outbreak of poisonous mold in a small town and one boy's attempt to understand his mother's death, his grandmother's obsession with a discarded recliner and the roots of this mysterious plague.
more »
Get ready for some twee twinkling on the Croisette -- Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom is set to open the 2012 Cannes Film Festival! Last year's opener, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, went on to enjoy a rousingly successful theatrical run on its way to a Best Picture nomination; Anderson's comedy, about a pair of pre-teen lovebirds on the lam in 1960s New England, will open stateside just over a week after its May 16 Cannes debut and marks his return to live-action film after his most recent film, the Oscar-nominated Fantastic Mr. Fox.
more »
Tilda Swinton may not have won Best Actress at the 64th annual Festival de Cannes, but that doesn't mean her lauded work in We Need to Talk About Kevin will be forgotten come Oscar time. Oscilloscope has acquired the film for North American release, with eyes to release it during awards season this winter. That gives them plenty of time to start planning those For Your Consideration ads! [Deadline]
Today the area around the Palais was emptier than I've seen it in the nearly two weeks I've been here, but the air of anticipation seemed heightened rather than diminished: Everyone -- the locals as well as the critics and journalists who haven't yet cleared out -- has been waiting for the prizes.
more »
The 64th Cannes Film Festival handed out its awards today, delivering its coveted Palme d'Or to Terrence Malick's epic The Tree of Life. Kirsten Dunst and director Nicolas Winding Refn made unexpectedly strong showings as well. Check out the full list of winners after the jump, and drop back by this afternoon for a final wrap-up from Stephanie Zacharek on the Croisette.
more »
The other night, at dinner with some friends, our waiter forgot to bring something we'd asked for. When we politely reminded him, he said, "It is the end of the festival! Things fall out of our brain!"
more »
In the special category of Un Certain Regard, Arirang and Halt Auf Freier Strecke (Stopped On Track) tied for the top prize. Elsewhere, the Special Jury Prize went to Elena and directing prize went to Mohammad Rasoulof for Be Omid E Didar (Au Revoir). It's a bittersweet consolation for Rasoulouf, who, along with director Jafar Panahi, was sentenced to a six-year jail term by the Tehran government for "propagandizing against the regime." [Deadline]
A few days ago I checked one of the fashion blogs I occasionally visit and noticed that the French fashion photographer and blogger Garance Doré was here in Cannes, shooting a portfolio for French jeweler Chopard, a sponsor of the festival. Her first post details how, when she first arrived, she told her chauffeur as he drove her down the Croisette, "I hate the show business, the evening gowns, and red carpets. Seriously now... That's why I thought I'd never set foot again at the Festival de Cannes." He responded, "I'm sorry mademoiselle, that just won't do. You just have to jump in and live it, or else I'll have to take you right back to the airport. Cannes is amazing, and you gotta love it all: the sun, the crazies, the films, the stars, the weirdos and the soirées."
more »
Christophe Honoré -- director of bittersweet, entertaining pictures like Love Songs and Dans Paris -- makes films that seem very, very French when you're watching them in New York, but merely enjoyably normal when you see them in France. The festival's closing-night film, Honoré's Les Bien-Aimés (Beloved), is a family epic -- as well as a musical and a romance -- that lasts nearly two-and-a-half hours, and sometimes it comes close to being too top-heavy. But the picture has plenty in its favor, too.
more »
Werner Herzog. Wim Wenders. Animator Michel Ocelot: Everybody's jumping on the 3-D bandwagon these days, whether they have ideas that are well-suited to the medium or not. Takashi Miike adds his voice to the multi-tracked chorus with Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, a 3-D melodrama showing in competition here at the festival.
more »
In the past few years we've seen a mini-renaissance in Italian filmmaking, an environment in which young filmmakers like Paolo Sorrentino have been able to flourish. Sorrentino broke through with his 2008 political epic Il Divo, which won a special jury prize here in Cannes that year. So what happened with his follow-up, This Must Be the Place, a picture so ill-conceived and so bizarrely executed that watching it, I wondered if nine days (and counting) of nonstop movies had finally pitched me right over the edge of sanity?
more »
And you thought you could get through the week without another Lars von Trier update! Zentropa -- the production company that Von Trier co-founded with Peter Aalbaek Jensen in 1992 -- released a statement apologizing for the director's comments: "We would like to make it perfectly clear that Zentropa does not share Lars von Trier's view of what might be funny to say at a press conference, and that his comments are a direct contradiction of Zentropa's values." It's going to be awkward when these two run into each other at the coffee machine. [Variety]
As we critics settled into our seats before last evening's screening of Drive, the big topic of conversation was -- what else? -- Lars von Trier's exile from Cannes after his sort-of but not-quite pro-Hitler remarks at Wednesday's Melancholia press conference. The consensus was that festival officials had gone overboard, turning Von Trier into a martyr when really, he's just a socially awkward guy who was trying to stir up some controversy with a few ill-considered, ill-advised jokes. The whole event is unfortunate from top to bottom, especially considering that Von Trier has just presented a strong film that has surely lost any chance of winning the Palme d'Or. But there we were, gearing up to watch a movie made by another -- although very different -- Danish-born filmmaker, Nicolas Winding Refn.
more »
