Alec Baldwin says the documentary he's making with filmmaker James Toback, Seduced and Abandoned, continues to take shape. I spoke to Baldwin briefly at the reception that Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Stuart Suna threw at his East Hampton home on Saturday afternoon. There, the actor — who arrived at the party gallantly carrying his new bride Hilaria Thomas's high-heeled party shoes — explained that interviews he and Toback conducted with venerable filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci will comprise the core of the project. "They are the pillars of the film," said Baldwin, who described Seduced and Abandoned as a "meta" documentary about filmmakers who venture to the carnival-like South of France festival to raise funds for their latest projects. more »
From the time it detonated public consciousness at Sundance last January, Benh Zeitlin’s dazzling magic realist feature debut Beasts of the Southern Wild has occasioned its own peculiar brand awe and wonder. After winning the grand jury prize and an award for best cinematography in Park City, the movie continues to conquer the world. Last month at Cannes, it captured the prestigious Camera d’Or for best first feature.
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Also in Thursday morning's round up of news briefs, French director Leos Carax will receive honors at the upcoming Locarno Film Festival and a pair of actors take lead in upcoming thriller The Machine. Also actors Susan Tyrrell and Richard Lynch have died and Cannes, San Sebastian form alliance with Argentine film market.
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Young Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan won major praise back in 2009 for his debut I Killed My Mother which debuted in Cannes and winning awards at festivals there and around the world. His second feature Heartbeats also headed to Cannes and received theatrical release in the U.S. last year. And Dolan's third film, Laurence Anyways debuted in Cannes last month. But it his first film evaded U.S. audiences outside the festival circuit until now.
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When one reporter caught up with Michelle Rodriguez at Cannes, the Fast & Furious star waxed ecstatic about Lee Daniels' Southern potboiler The Paperboy — but she's not holding out hopes for a Nicole Kidman Oscar nod. And she's definitely not worried about making controversial statements explaining why. "I fucking loved it," she told Vulture. "One of my friends said, 'She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar for that.' I was like, 'Nah, man. She’s not black!' I laugh, but it’s also very sad. It makes me want to cry. But I really believe. You have to be trashy and black to get nominated. You can’t just be trashy." [Vulture]
His competition premieres fizzled a bit, but perhaps Harvey Weinstein controlled the message where it counts: "As I surveyed the room, I found that Gossip Girl’s Kelly Rutherford also held the rather odd opinion that Weinstein was secretly the gala’s best masseuse. 'I mean, there are guys that are really cute but you don’t know if they’d be good givers. And a massage, you have to be giving,' she told me. 'I bet Harvey would give a great massage. I think he’s so sexy and smart and he’s very giving. Plus, whatever he does, you know he’s going to do it well.'" [Vulture]
Michael Haneke's Amour won the Palme d'Or Sunday night in Cannes, capping the 65th edition of the festival. The film follows Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emanuelle Riva) a couple in their 80s who must endure a long demise after Anne suffers an attack.
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Después de Lucia by Michel Franco took the top prize in Cannes Un Certain Regard section this weekend. Also honored were Benoit Delépine and Gugstave Kervern's Le Grand Soir, winning a Special Jury Prize, while Emilie Dequenne and Suzanne Clément both won Best Actress prizes for their performances in A Perdre La Raison and Laurence Anyways respectively. Djeca (Children of Sarajevo) by Aida Begic received a "Special Distinction of the Jury nod.
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A year after Lars von Trier was publicly castigated for making a Hitler joke at Cannes, the festival has banned a controversial comedy by French comedian/provocateur Dieudonné. Entitled The Anti-Semite, the film was scheduled to play not in the official festival but in the Cannes Film Market, but outrage over its content — including mockery of Auschwitz and Dieudonné in Nazi dress — led the organization to scrap screenings.
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A week and a half after its world premiere kicked off the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom arrives Stateside this weekend in limited release. Starring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, acting novices Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward steal the show kids on the cusp of their teens who fall in love on an island off New England in 1965. To stay together, the couple make a pact to make a dash for the wilderness, but the authorities are on their trail.
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You might not know it from the blinding, white-hot happenings du jour, but the Cannes Film Festival has begun winding down its 2012 iteration with awards for its Critics Week sidebar. Few if any will likely come to a theater near you in the near future, but if Cannes completism is your thing, I am nothing if not obliging. Read on for the winners, and congrats to all.
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Pop star Kylie Minogue is in Cannes, and she's showcasing a career move: Starring in a film. Not just any film mind you, but Leos Carax's Holy Motors, which attendees here are calling the wackiest selection to hit the festival in years, a pretty amazing feat. With cyber-monsters, talking machines and a story that is a complete trip, Minogue plays two characters in Carax's tale, which centers on Monsieur Oscar — who himself is in fact many characters: a captain of industry, assassin, beggar, monster, family man and a half-dozen more.
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I know, I know — to paraphrase a popular rejoinder to the overexposed, "How can I ever anticipate On the Road if it won't go away?" Nevertheless, consider the two new clips released by IFC Films as complements to Brian's coverage from Cannes, where the long-awaited Jack Kerouac adaptation premiered this morning.
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The French Riviera got a triple dose of star power as Brad Pitt breezed into town for his Killing Me Softly premiere, where the goofy Pitt got snap-happy with the paparazzi. The Andrew Dominik debut was followed by another star-studded to-do as Twilight's Kristen Stewart and her On the Road co-stars hit the red carpet, joined by Robert Pattinson (who will unveil his own Cannes flick, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, on Friday). Check out Movieline's updated Cannes gallery for pics from the fest!
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More than half a century has passed since Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published and over 30 years since Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to the book. Only today, in one of the Cannes Film Festival's most anticipated events, has director Walter Salles's adaptation finally screened for its first audience.
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