CANNES, FRANCE -- Breaking news from the Cote d'Azur: Laurent Cantet's The Class, a kind of Gallic Half Nelson about boundary-pushing kids in a blackboard jungle, has taken the big Palme d'Or from Sean Penn's Cannes Film Festival Jury. Which is fine with me -- I like the movie. But I'd be remiss here not to give a l'il shout out to another deserving Cannes film, Albert Serra's El Cant Dels Ocells (Birdsong), an ultra-minimalist cross between The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Gus Van Sant's Gerry -- with a touch of the Three Stooges. In Serra's film, my Cinema Scope editor and pal Mark Peranson makes his screen debut in a genius turn as Joseph (that's him, rubbing sore head, above-left), the emasculated spouse of the immaculately conceiving Mary. I know a critic isn't supposed to review his friend's movie -- just like Penn isn't supposed to judge his buddy Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which somehow snared the Prix du 61e Festival. But I can say that Peranson, whether breathing onscreen or, in high drama, swatting a fly, proves himself the definitive heir to Marlon Brando's Method throne. And I can say that because this isn't journalism, it's just yet another blog wherein anything goes. Right?

-- Rob Nelson 

5/26/2008 4:44:00 PM by phloggist | Comments [1] |  

 

 

CANNES, FRANCE ― The nearest that yours truly ever got to George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Steven Spielberg was the balcony above the tent for their big photo call at their big Crystal Skull press conference in Cannes. See the back of George’s white-haired head (or crystal skull?) in the middle of my amateur snapshot above? See the arm that’s wrapped around his shoulders? That’s Harry’s arm. Now: See that little stub on the other side of Harry’s back? The thing that looks like a claw? That’s his other arm― or I’m pretty sure it’s his other arm, mostly hidden from my camera’s sight as it cradles another guy: another guy with tons and tons of cash, but with less height than the other two, a guy by the name of Steve. He’s the guy who made Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 ― and who raided Raiders thrice since, not to mention the archeological dig he pulled on our precious pocketbooks.

 

The critic’s thumb meanwhile ― in relation to Episode IV, a new hope for Indy fans, opening wide on Thursday ― is pointed...well, it’s pointed up, in fact. Not straight up, perhaps, but the thumb is distinctly erect ― excited, juiced, manly, action-packed, like the flick. Said thumb is the same one I used to push the “record” button on my l’il digital doohickey while the sounds of said press conference were beamed as if by magic to every TV set in the gargantuan Palais des Festivals, Ground Zero of Cannes. The fruits of that great labor are hereby presented to you below ― free of charge. Just a transcript of some loaded old dudes with crystal skulls flappin’ their lips about a movie en route to raiding your treasure chest.

 

― Rob Nelson 

 

 

The first question was wondering whether there was there any sort of communist pressure on Mr. Spielberg to create this movie?

Spielberg: You want me to actually try to answer that question?

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

5/22/2008 11:26:00 AM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  

 
Spike Lee gives reviewers a super-advance sneak peak of his upcoming Miracle at St. Anna

CANNES, FRANCE -- “Turn off your cell phones, pagers, and iPods,” says Spike Lee, standing in front of a huge white screen at the Olympia multiplex in Cannes.He continues: “Turn off your Blackberries, Bluetooths, Clios, and Game Boys.”

This is a man who knows his brands.

As you can see from my photo (cameras were okay with him, evidently!), the filmmaker is wearing a Yankees cap that sports all the team’s series pennants (did I get that right?), and a baby blue All-Star Game sweatsuit with Nike swooshes, the top unzipped to reveal a pair of dangling crosses.One more brand: Lee is working for Uncle Walt, a.k.a. Disney, which put out his last work screened in Cannes, the woefully underrated, commercially trifling, and pretty damn great Summer of Sam--the missing link between, among other things, Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps and David Fincher’s Zodiac.“This,” Lee says, pointing at the screen, “is just a small taste of -- if I do say so myself -- an epic film. It’s David Lean in Italy.”At this, someone in the audience whistles -- okay, I admit, it’s me. I came here this afternoon thinking the eight-minute clip reel of the director’s forthcoming WWII movie Miracle at St. Anna would represent Lee’s Open City -- or maybe his Bicycle Thieves, judging from the invite’s photo of a dirty-faced kid under a grown man’s arms, rubble beneath their feet. But “David Lean in Italy”--as a Spike Lee joint--sounds too good to miss as well.The lights dim and, in beautiful widescreen Panavision, there are the African-American men of the 92nd Infantry Division, enduring a Nazi radio broadcaster’s psychological warfare taunt. Later, we see the aforementioned Italian kid being lifted out from under a mountain of brick by a 92nd soldier, whom the kid calls a “chocolate giant.”Other critics will likely say this bloody-looking ode to the wartime miracle is Lee’s Saving Private Ryan when Uncle Walt sends it to U.S. civilians on October 10.But speaking as one who has lately been wondering what Lee has been up to this election year, I think now I know. And, as they say in election years, I approve this message. -- Rob Nelson

5/19/2008 11:27:00 PM by phloggist | Comments [0] |  

 

CANNES, FRANCE -- Two minutes before I snapped this amateur photo, the pro shooters featured in it had unceremoniously displaced me from my coveted spot -- crouched on the floor with my laptop, within cord’s reach of what had been the last open AC outlet in the Orange corporation’s moist, teeming Wi-Fi Lounge. Oh la la--Cannes is glamorous, n’est-ce pas? Seems what had drawn every long lens in town to my humble workstation was “the twins”-- toted in utero by Angelina J., who was herself carted from press conference to photo shoot by DreamWorks’ animation division, those dutiful product-stuffers of Kung Fu Panda. (Great -- now my kid will want one.) No complaints here, really, as my lost square-inches of Lounge space are simply the price paid in Cannes’s age-old art and commerce equation: Wimpy geeks like moi make way for the macho paparazzi to shoot Angie and the twins, whose photos ostensibly allow le festival to screen the work that wimpy geeks would much rather think about -- like Tokyo!, an omnibus film whose coolest installment, by sporadically productive French auteur Leos Carax (Pola X), is an alternately nasty and tender throwback to the sympathetic-monster movies of the early 20th century. (The tryptych's other two installments are by Michel Gondry and Bong Joon Ho.)

In Carax’s episode of Tokyo!, the titular city is menaced by “Mr. Merde” (brilliantly played by Denis Levant), a sewer-dwelling, evidently anti-capitalist oddball with a green suit, a milky white eye, a long red beard, and a hunchback swagger--and a few hand grenades. [No word on whether Carax's Mr. Merde is in any way inspired by M. Gondry's Mr. Merde -- ed.]

Urban terrorist? Performance artist? Homeless man? Whatever the designation (Carax’s end credits promise a New York-set sequel called Merde in U.S.A.), I could’ve used you in the Wi-Fi Lounge, Mr. Merde. Now that guy knows how to clear a room. --Rob Nelson

5/17/2008 1:02:00 PM by phloggist | Comments [0] |  

 

 

[Ed Note: ThePhoenix.com freelancer Rob Nelson is embedded at Cannes and will be filing reports all this week, provided he can stay out of jail, resist the urge to screw off into the south of France, and survive the Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull press conference. Stay tuned for daily updates from the front lines of cinematic ridiculosity.]

CANNES, FRANCE -- FYI: Casual sex ― or recreational sex, sport F-ing, whatever you wanna call it ― isn’t the only thing for which Cannes is renowned and adored. Seems they show motion pictures in this debauched seaside paradise as well!

As per a recent Cannes press release: “Select media” (who, moi?) “[are] invited to join Cannes beauties and legendary French producer Alain Siritzky for announcement of new 50 million dollar feature film and kick off of worldwide search for the new Emmanuelle... Media who [sic] does [sic] not respond will be admitted depending on space and time limitations.”

Monsieur! Lemme in!

The sense that nothing could be worse for impatiently queuing cineastes than not seeing (whereas for nymphos here it’s kinky) has been made meta ― sorta ― by Blindness, a Julianne Moore-headlined pseudo-thriller wherein the titular malady spreads quicker than crabs on the Croisette. Emmanuelle aside, if there’s anyone here who saw Blindness and thinks it’s watchable, I don’t know her--not carnally or any other way.

Directed by City of God auteur Fernando Meirelles, Blindness (which you can choose not to see come fall) seems to have been booked for l’ouverture because it’s a Big Metaphor Movie about all that’s hidden in plain sight these days ― good movies included. In the dull, dour film’s one funny moment, Gael García Bernal’s blind-leading blind thug croons a Stevie Wonder song (get it?) over an Abu Ghraibesque compound’s intercom. Soon thereafter, women, as in the novel on which the Blindness flick is based, are forced to become whores for food. (Metaphor? Don’t ask me...)
 
Because Blindness is an apocalypse-now movie for people who don’t like horror or sci-fi or war films (or whatever generic bastard Children of Men was, either), it’s therefore a melodrama ― which in turn means that the Moore character’s doctor hubby (Mark Ruffalo) spends the last few scenes whispering sweet nadas a la “I miss you ― I miss you so much.” Yeah yeah, Mumbleman, love is blind, but here you wish it could be dumb ― not stupid, but dumb.

Silencio.

― Rob Nelson

5/15/2008 4:50:00 PM by phloggist | Comments [0] |