Cannes 2009

[domino harvey]

Read the first nine words of my post here

[Stefan Andersson]

Is Oliveira´s ESTRANHO CASO DE ANGELICA expected at Cannes?

Shooting seems to have begun in February.

[Nothing]

Shooting seems to have begun in February.

Surely you've answered your own question?

[Stefan Andersson]

Yes, I´ve probably answered my question. O. wants to show ANGELICA in Cannes, but it isn´t listed anywhere, so I thought I´d ask.

[Oedipax]

Shooting seems to have begun in February.

Surely you've answered your own question?

Godard managed this a few times, but not when he was 100 years old (we should be so lucky!)

[accatone]

Unfortunatly he did not managed to get Socialsime done in time for Cannes…

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The details on the official selection (plot summaries, photos, a few press kits) are now up on the website.

[DignanSWE]

Ceremonie-d-ouverture

(Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at 21:25)

[James]

They also have press conferences for each movie on the website, or at least I'm guessing they will update with each movie in competition because they have one for Up!, Fish Tank and Spring Fever, all of which have played at Cannes so far. There are also interviews and other stuff, which is really awesome.

[foliagecop]

Yoshimori, any chance of a blow-by-blow account like last year? Not being able to get to Cannes, I found it essential reading.

[MichaelB]

I've seen one of the competition films, but I've signed an NDA valid until the first Cannes screening - but I'll happily discuss it then.

[James]

Yoshimori, any chance of a blow-by-blow account like last year? Not being able to get to Cannes, I found it essential reading.

Mike D'Angelo is posting thoughts on the movies in his Twitter, and lengthier thoughts at the end of the day on A.V. Club's website, just so you know. Although, I would like to read Yoshimori's thoughts on the movie's too (the more, the merrier!).

[Finch]

From what I've read elsewhere, Jane Campion's Bright Star got a strong reception and is tipped as an early Palme D'Or contender. Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank is also receiving good reviews, especially for Katie Jarvis' performance.

[Nothing]

You've seen the Loach? Lucky you.

The Arnold sounds abominable, truly - even worse than anticipated. Kitchen sink handheld realism (could anything be more tired?) combined with a moralist narrative about "paedophila" (the correct term, in fact, is ephebophilia and, in many other European countries, the relationship depicted would be perfectly legal). Of course the press is favourable - this is what you call croneyism. Who wants to see this and why?*

Of the films screened so far, the Ghobadi sounds the most interesting. Perhaps Tetro and Up.

My early prediction is still that the Suleiman will walk away with one of the three main prizes, if not the Palme d'Or

*Edit: And it cost $4.5m!!!! What the fuck???

[James]

My early prediction is still that the Suleiman will walk away with one of the three main prizes, if not the Palme d'Or.

I'm actually thinking Antichrist will take the Palme d'Or.

[Cde.]

I strongly doubt it.

At least superficially it appears to be a horror genre film, and I don't think they will give it to von Trier again. I don't think he's as in favour with the right people now as he has been in the past, also. Plus, it's not the kind of film that wins Cannes these days.

Whatever wins will probably be a 'social issue' film which everyone will immediately deem controversial half way through the screening, and which won't create any real life controversy nor leave much of an imprint in anyone's memory.

I'd love to be wrong though.

[Nothing]

There's no "these days", really, it depends on the jury. Sean Penn was always quite likely to go for the kind of film you describe. Frears went with the critics' choice, ever the populist. Lynch was the last president to get it almost exactly right, imho.

Huppert - harder to predict as she's not a director. One imagines sympathies towards Haneke and Resnais, a frostiness towards Tarantino - but, if it's a grander, more ambitious version of Divine Intervention (which one imagines) then the Suleiman seems like the kind of film that could 'bridge the divide', so to speak. Unless there are any zionists lurking.

In other news, it looks like Critics' Week + Wild Bunch have found themselves another one. The first truly 'must see' film of the festival?

[bigP]

Peter Bradshaw is very positive toward Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, Jane Campion's Bright Star and Peterson and Docter's Up

[MichaelB]

In other news, it looks like Critics' Week + Wild Bunch have found themselves another one. The first truly 'must see' film of the festival?

Looks intriguing, and I'll probably see it in Sarajevo (where it must be a dead cert to screen) - but if this is the same Howard Feinstein who assured me that Kornel Mundruczó's Delta was an unmissable masterpiece, I'd quite fancy a second opinion.

And I bet it's a lot less fun than Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man, which stood out like a sore thumb in last year's Sarajevo competition lineup (being a cheerfully slambang action thriller surrounded by over-earnest arthouse efforts) but which made very similar points to those apparently made by Ordinary People regarding perpetrators of Serbian atrocities and the way they're dehumanised to the point when their very identity is open to question.

[Tark]

Someone let us know their White Ribbon thoughts.

Thanks.

[Nothing]

I bet it's a lot less fun than Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man

I'll bet it's a lot less "fun" than Transporter 3 as well... =D>

made by Ordinary People regarding perpetrators of Serbian atrocities and the way they're dehumanised to the point when their very identity is open to question.

That sounds like a far less interesting point than the one this film is supposed to be making. Obviously, I haven't seen it. Variety.

News in on the Costa too.

Das Weisse Band isn't screening for four days, there's plenty of fun to be had before then.

[James]

Das Weisse Band isn't screening for four days, there's plenty of fun to be had before then.

Indeed. Antichrist screens in two days, I think, and I'm excited to read all about it. After seeing Paz de la Huerta in The Limits of Control tonight, I am even more excited for Enter the Void, which doesn't screen until later.

[MichaelB]

I bet it's a lot less fun than Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man

I'll bet it's a lot less "fun" than Transporter 3 as well... =

I know absolutely nothing about Transporter 3, so can't comment. Did it have a surprisingly blunt political subtext about nationalist atrocities committed by the filmmakers' fellow countrymen, ostensibly in their name?

I love the way you put "fun" in scare-quotes, though, as though the whole notion of actually enjoying oneself at a film festival was somehow outrageous. Believe me, after several days of the likes of Delta, We've Never Been To Venice, Autumn and other equally snail-paced examples of only intermittently striking navel-gazing, The Fourth Man (which Variety also liked) was a refreshing surprise.

That sounds like a far less interesting point than the one this film is supposed to be making. Obviously, I haven't seen it. Variety.

Well, I'll almost certainly see it - but as a regular Sarajevo attendee I've sat through more than my fair share of contemplative arthouse films about issues arising from the 1990s Balkan conflict, so you'll excuse me for being less enthused about the prospect upfront than you appear to be.

[ellipsis7]

are there any online reviews of the Restored Red Shoes yet?

There's this...

'The Red Shoes' shines anew

After combating mold, dirt and shrinkage, a 2 1/2-year restoration of the 1948 Technicolor stunner culminates at Cannes.
By KENNETH TURAN
May 17, 2009

EVEN REDDER: Moira Shearer stars in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s film nominated for five Academy Awards. Modern technology has made the film look better than ever, preservationist Robert Gitt says.

After combating mold, dirt and shrinkage, a 2 1/2-year restoration of the 1948 Technicolor stunner culminates at Cannes.
By KENNETH TURAN, Film Critic
May 17, 2009

Few films have more passionate partisans than Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Red Shoes," but no matter how much you love it, you probably don't know it as intimately as Robert Gitt.

Gitt spent so much time looking at the 1948 British classic he not only can tell you how many frames it contains -- 192,960 in the print, 578,880 in the tripartite negative -- but what had gone wrong with each and every one of them, from a massive attack of mold to wonky negative shrinkage.

Gitt knows all this because as preservation officer at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, he's spent the last 2 1/2 years supervising a painstaking restoration of this landmark three-strip Technicolor film. He watched it so long and so hard he can recite the dialogue, and Barbara Whitehead, the assistant film preservationist who worked with him, knows the ballet choreography by heart.

All this demanding effort -- Gitt called it one of the most complicated endeavors of his career -- paid off Friday night when the "Red Shoes" restoration was scheduled to have its world premiere on the big screen at the Cannes Film Festival's glamorous Salle Debussy. (Time and place for an eventual Los Angeles screening have yet to be determined.)

The film was to be presented by two of its most illustrious devotees, director Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's longtime editor and Powell's widow. Scorsese and Schoonmaker consulted closely with Gitt and Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, which did the digital picture restoration, with Schoonmaker providing meticulous notes that proved invaluable...

The other major factor was the gorgeous color photography of Jack Cardiff. The UCLA restoration does full justice to what has to be one of the most exquisite color films ever made, filled with the kind of deep, vivid hues that will leave viewers literally gasping.

Not that restoring those colors to their original brilliance was easy. First, it turned out that every reel of the original negative, which had been stored in Great Britain, had been attacked by mold, causing what Gitt describes as "thousands of visible tiny cracks and fissures."

To get rid of the mold, Whitehead had to both use ultrasonic cleaners and hand-clean parts of the negative frame by frame with perchloroethylene, commonly known as perc, a hazardous fluid usually used in dry cleaning.

Another problem discovered early on was that "there were thousands of visible red, blue and green specks caused by embedded dirt and scratches." Once all this was dealt with, Gitt remembers, "we breathed a big sigh of relief, we thought we were free and clear." It was then that yet another problem, negative shrinkage, was discovered.

A Technicolor issue

As its name indicates, three-strip Technicolor was shot with three different negatives, and over the course of time some of the negatives had shrunken to different sizes. Also, it turned out that the camera had been out of adjustment for much of the shoot, and the equipment Technicolor had originally used to adjust for that was no longer functional. As a result, the images looked like a 3-D movie without the glasses, with red and green fringes around the sides.

These problems, and others, including the "flickering, mottling and 'breathing' " of the image, were all corrected via digital restoration to the point where "The Red Shoes" actually looks better now than it ever has. "In 1948, images were fuzzy by today's standards," Gitt explains. "And because there was more information on the negative than could be printed at the time, we got a lot more off it than they were able to do when the film first came out."

Those red shoes have never looked redder, or more alluring, than they do today

Blu Ray from ITV DVD on 29th June

[Nothing]

Yeah, they like it too. Nothing they write makes me want to see it, though.