A flurry of new images recently hit offering a sweaty, revealing look at Lee Daniels' Precious follow-up, the '60s-set adaptation The Paperboy -- so how's about a round of Caption This! After the jump, help Movieline caption this startling image of Nicole Kidman as the sensual woman at the center of this dark Southern potboiler, here seen having what I can only imagine is quite a moment while sandwiched between Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey, and David Oyelowo.
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Following last week's unveiling of the Cannes Film Festival competition lineup, sidebar Critics Week today revealed its own 2012 slate. Opening the event is the world premiere of Broken, British director Rufus Norris's story of a young girl in North London whose life changes after witnessing a violent attack, co-starring Tim Roth and Cillian Murphy.
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I mean, being plucked from the Harry Potter supporting wings and the odd pre-fame arthouse pic for eternal teen vampire glory aside, signing on for David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis looks more and more like the best decision Robert Pattinson has ever made. Now that the edgy adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel is heading for a Cannes debut -- and with the fearlessly cold, cynical swagger RPattz displays in the latest Cosmopolis trailer -- this is shaping up to be the career-changer the erstwhile Edward Cullen has been looking for.
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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.
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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.
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Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti’s films speak for introverted individual concerns at work in a group dynamic. In Dear Diary, a 40 year-old Moretti rides around Rome on his motorcycle trying to figure out just how much of a part he wants in a society where legendary poet/filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini has died and soap operas are insanely popular. Similarly, his latest film, We Have a Pope (a.k.a. Habemus Papum), concerns a reluctant cardinal (an excellent performance by Michel Piccoli) elected to be the next pope but is too nervous to assume the role. Pope, which opens Friday in limited release, originally screened in competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival — to which Moretti is planning his return next month as the president of this year’s competition jury. Talk about group dynamics.
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Well, now: Lars Von Trier's notorious Nazi comments last May have haunted him all the way home to Denmark, where he says local cops questioned him in connection to charges leveled at him by French officials, post-Cannes. In a statement released today, the Melancholia director issued a promise of his own following the media and legal shit storm caused by his ill-conceived joking, announcing that he'll no longer speak publicly or to press. At all.
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"Well yeah, you could see my face. I was choking, because I'm watching a friend having a meltdown. And what he's saying is horrendous in a roomful of press. He was asked an inappropriate question [about his family] and his response was to make a joke about it. But no one laughed and he just kept unravelling." Kirsten Dunst told her side of the Lars von Trier Cannes controversy to The Guardian recently, wondering why none of her fellow Melancholia co-stars stepped in to stop their director from shoving his foot squarely into his own mouth.
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