Cannes
sheila.johnston
At last, some good news for this beleaguered country: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, by the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, took the Palme D'Or in Cannes tonight. Hailed as one of the most striking and unusual films in competition - and also the entry most in tune with the maverick spirit of the Jury President, Tim Burton - Uncle Boonmee is the story of a dying man who revisits scenes from his previous lives, as, inter alia, a buffalo and a princess and sets the seal on what was widely perceived to be a lacklustre year. Weerasethakul may not be a household name Read more ...
neil.smith
This slot is always one of the trickiest to fill satisfactorily, though last year’s choice – Pixar’s delightful animation Up – was inspired. Coming on the same day as the film’s release date, alas, Robin’s rain-lashed, Ridley-less premiere felt like a non-event from the get-go, putting the festival on the back foot before it had even begun. Ground was made up the following day thanks to an out of competition showing of Oliver Stone’s belated Wall Street sequel, Money Never Sleeps, a film that, while rather undermined by its perverse determination to de-fang Michael Douglas’s rapacious Gordon Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Cheering news for Brits in Cannes (always assuming anyone is actually able to travel there this year). Originally rumoured to be in line for the Critics' Week, a young British filmmaker, Alicia Duffy, has now secured an even better berth: her first feature has been selected by the Directors' Fortnight, the prestigious parallel (and rival) event to the main competition.All Good Children is about two young Irish boys who move to rural France after the death of their mother and, we're told, "hypnotically plays out in the gap between childish fantasy and adult reality". Duffy's prize-winning Read more ...
sheila.johnston
New films by Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears and Sophie Fiennes figure in the line-up of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, which was announced at a press conference in Paris this morning. As expected, Leigh's Another Year will vie for the Palme d'Or, the only British film to be selected. Frears's Tamara Drewe, based on the Guardian comic strip, plays out of competition, as does Oliver Stone's Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps and Woody Allen's London-set You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Also out of competition, Fiennes's Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a film about the artist Anselm Kiefer, gets Read more ...