Cannes Film Festival
Cannes 2009 Winners
UPDATE: Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” won the Palme d’Or!
It wouldn’t be surprise if French prison drama “A Prophet” directed by Jacques Audiard win the race for best picture. Another favorite is New Zealand’s Jane Campion with her biopic “Bright Star,” who won the Golden Palm in 1993 with “The Piano,” as is Pedro Almodovar and his “Broken Embraces” starring Penelope Cruz.
Among the other frontrunners for the Palme d’Or is Austrian Michael Haneke for his “The White Ribbon.” Italian entry “Vincere” about Mussolini’s secret marriage was broadly popular. Ken Loach’s “Looking for Eric,” featuring former football star Eric Cantona also is one of this festival’s most popular entries.
Quentin Tarantino is thought to be an outside prospect for Cannes’ biggest prize, as his film “Inglourious Basterds” received a mixed reaction when it was shown in competition but we’ll see, because even Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” is a contender despite offending and angering many who watched it.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Reviews
Heath Ledger’s final performance in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” directed by Terry Gilliam has been presented at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.
Ledger died after completing the real-world portions of the film. Gilliam finished the film with Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell taking Ledger’s role in three trips to make-believe realities. Gilliam’s first thought when Ledger died in New York was to ditch “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which was only half finished.
“The choice I made was to close the film down,” Gilliam told reporters at the Cannes film festival, where the out-of-competition movie has its world premiere.
“I couldn’t see how we could finish it without Heath because we were in the middle of production. Fortunately, I was surrounded by really good people who insisted that I shouldn’t be such a lazy bastard and I’d better go out and find a way of finishing the film for Heath. That’s what we did.” I started calling friends, Johnny Depp, and he said ‘I’m there’. And I basically was just calling people who knew and loved Heath.
“Everyone in the cast and everyone in the crew was determined that this film would be finished and everybody worked longer, harder and somehow we got through. It was really … people’s love for Heath that propelled this thing forward.”
The movie closes with the dedication: “A film from Heath Ledger and friends.”
The fantasy adventure is orchestrated by the ageless Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who has the power to project people into their own imagination. However, the fascinating journey always ends with a choice, which can lead to the best or the worst. And Parnassus, as an inveterate gambler, has his own problems. Having won a wager with the Devil, he has made two successive deals with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) over the ages. Granted immortality first and eternal youth next, he once agreed to deliver his first-born to the Devil when he or she reached the age of 16. And now that Valentina (Lily Cole) is only days away from the fatal age, the Devil is already prowling in the vicinity.
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New Images From The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” directed by Terry Gilliam will be finally shown at Cannes Film Festival tomorrow morning, out of competition. So, today some photos from the movie have hit the web. Take a look also at “Doctor Parnassus” Preview Clip shown at the opening of Cannes below.
Take a look at Heath Ledger as Tony, Christopher Plummer as Dr. Parnassus, Lily Cole as his daughter Valentina, Verne Troyer as his sidekick Percy, and here’s a shot of Tom Waits as Mr. Nick.
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day. It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary ‘Imaginarium’, a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom.
Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick, in which he won immortality. Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr Nick…
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Cannes 2009: The White Ribbon By Michael Haneke
UPDATE May 24, 2009 – CANNES 2009 WINNERS
Michael Haneke’ “The White Ribbon” (”Das Weisse Band“) won Palme d’Or!
“The White Ribbon” (”Das Weisse Band“) directed and written by Michael Haneke is in competition for Palme d’Or at 62nd Cannes Film Festival.
The movie stars Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur, Theo Trebs, Michael Schenk, Leonie Benesch, Josef Bierbichler, Rainer Bock, Christian Friedel, Burghart Klaussner, Steffi Kuhnert and Ursina Lardi.
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Cannes best director winner Michael Haneke’s (“Cache,” 2005) latest focuses on a rural German school in 1913, which seems to be the sight of ritual punishment.
The story of the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families: the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, the tenant farmers.
Strange accidents occur and gradually take on the character of a punishment ritual. Does the ritual punishment have an affect on the school system and is this a precursor to the rise of fascism?
Reviews sound fantastic so this could be easily Palme d’Or winner.
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Tarantino Introduces New Inglourious Basterds Clip
“Inglourious Basterds” director Quentin Tarantino introduces, from Cannes for Yahoo, a brand new clip – never seen scene before, about Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and the Basterds breaking out a German Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), who has been named a serial killer of Nazis.
Tarantino and Basterds cast are currently at Cannes Film Festival with “Inglourious Basterds” movie in the race for Cannes’ Palme d’Or.
More about the movie you can find at “Inglourious Basterds” FF Movie Page
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Inglourious Basterds Reviews
“Inglourious Basterds ” has been finally premiered on Wednesday May 20, 2009 at Cannes Film Festival.
Quentin Tarantino who has already won a Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994, and his new movie is in contention for the top prize at Cannes, has said: “I’m expecting this to be one of the high moments of my career. There is nothing like it in cinema… Directors in my situation don’t normally go this direction, especially when they’re doing something really big.”
“It’s like a Quentin Tarantino movie on steroids and speed. It’s a movie that takes place in World War Two, but this is not a World War Two movie,” Eli Roth said of the film.
We are not in Cannes, unfortunately, so we haven’t seen Quentin Tarantino’s “Ingluorious Basterds” but you can read the reviews from other sites – both the positive and the negative ones. You can read the two contrasting opinions just from Totalfilm, Screendaily is very mixed too, but Variety gives positive review. However, we must wait “Inglourious Basterds ” August US release.
“Given what the world expects from Quentin Tarantino – the man, the myth, the pastiche-driven movie machine – his latest feature, “Inglourious Basterds,” stands out for its seemingly low ambition. Talked about for years by the filmmaker as his epic “guys-on-a-mission” movie, the final product, unveiled this morning in Cannes, certainly meets those standards.
The story of Nazi-hunting Jewish soldiers delivers on the colorful brand of unserious entertainment implied by the plot, but no matter how much extreme contextualization and heavily stylized techniques Tarantino introduced to the production, “Inglorious Basterds” feels like a bubblegum sidedish to the heavy dinner plate of his career.” IndieWire
“An intermittently-inspired World War II epic which illustrates both Quentin Tarantino’s brilliance and his tendency towards indulgence, Inglourious Basterds is composed of a series of long-running vignettes strung together by a slender story thread. The problem is that no one character or set of characters runs through the entire two-and-a-half hour running time, and, with some of the scenes running up to half an hour each, the thread of the drama is left disjointed and the focus ever-changing.
Above-the-title star Brad Pitt plays the captain of a troupe of Jewish American renegades dubbed the Inglorious Bastards, but Pitt is far from the centre of attention and both French actress Melanie Laurent and German actor Christoph Waltz both have more screen time and juicier roles…” ScreenDaily
“…It’s an audacious, and, when it comes to timing, indulgent work – some sequences (the prologue, a lengthy interlude in a cellar) run to more than 20 minutes; this comes after what must have been drastic cutting, as Maggie Cheung does not appear at all in the finished product shown in Cannes today, Mike Myers only has one scene and even Michael Fassbender comes and goes with alarming alacrity…” ScreenDaily Blog – Fionnuala Halligan
Cannes 2009: Broken Embraces Trailer, Photos, Poster And Reviews
Pedro Almodovar’s latest film “Broken Embraces” (”Los Abrazos Rotos“) shown at Cannes Film Festival in competition, drops his distinctive comic melodrama for the best tradition of “film noir,” the dark and stylish film genre used in many crime dramas.
Oscar-winning director Almodovar (for foreign-language film with “All About My Mother” and original screenplay for “Talk to Her.”) described his 17th film and with the highest budget yet of 11 million euros ($14.16 million), as “the story of my love for the cinema.”
“The film noir genre is one of my favorites. The fact this film was really “black” was what was very satisfying.”
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The film stars recent Oscar winner Penelope Cruz in the role of a tragedy-dogged aspiring actress.
“Broken Embraces” centers on a quartet of characters in the movie business whose lives are interwoven in a torrid tale of love, power, secrecy, betrayal and vengeance. There is the actress Lena (Cruz), script writer and director Mateo (Lluis Homar), film producer Judith (Blanca Portillo) and unscrupulous financier Ernesto (José Luis Gómez).
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