Tag: 61st-Cannes-Film-Festival
Cannes 2008 Winners
As we already wrote “Entre les Murs” (“The Class“) directed by Laurent Cantet won the Golden Palm (Palme d’Or) at 2008 Cannes Film festival.Other winners included Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time Palme d’Or recipients, who took the screenplay award for “The Silence of Lorna.”
Sandra Corveloni, who played a working-class mother in São Paulo in Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’s “Linha de Passe,” won the best actress award.
Benicio Del Toro, who played the title in Steven Soderbergh‘s “Che” won the prize for best actor.
The directing award went to Nuri Bilge Ceylan for “Three Monkeys,” a film about a disintegrating Turkish family.
Both the jury prize and the grand prix went to Italian films:
-the jury prize to “Il Divo,” Paolo Sorrentino‘s highly stylized portrait of former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti
-and the grand prix to Matteo Garrone‘s “Gomorrah,” a brutally realistic examination of organized crime in Naples.
The Caméra d’Or for best first feature went to Steve McQueen‘s “Hunger,” (Un Certain Regard) which unsparingly depicts the protests of imprisoned IRA militants in the 1980s.
Tarantino’s Cannes Masterclass
Quentin Tarantino delivered an expletive-laden Cinema Masterclass at Cannes Thursday in which he mixed tips on movie-making with reflections on his own greatness.
“At the end of the day if there’s one thing I’m doing it’s forging a new type of comedy,” he said, noting that his violence-filled oeuvre gave people a “thrill” because it made them “laugh at things that aren’t usually funny.”
“Trying to make a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do” he said, recounting how he spent three years making his first film during his weekends off work.
Spaghetti westerns, kung fu flicks and Brian da Palma were his inspiration, said Tarantino, who took home the Cannes film fest’s coveted Palme d’Or award in 1994 for “Pulp Fiction.”
‘Palermo Shooting’ – Wim Wenders – Cannes 2008
‘Palermo Shooting’ premieres on Saturday, the day before the winner of the festival’s coveted Palme d’Or is announced
Wim Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or for his 1984 movie, “Paris, Texas,” is to screen “The Palermo Shooting,” a romantic thriller with a multilingual, multinational cast, Dennis Hopper, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Milla Jovovich.
Maradona steals the show – Cannes 2008
Documentary film ‘Maradona by Kusturica‘ directed by the award-winning Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica had its premiere at 61st Cannes Film Festival, out of competition.
Maradona is at the festival to promote a self-titled docu.
Often considered as the best and most famous footballer in the world, Diego Maradona is also known for his cocaine addiction.
Gallingly for England fans, Kusturica portrays Maradona’s notorious handball in the 1986 World Cup as “a leap for justice”.
Another documentary about a flawed sporting icon, Mike Tyson, is doing the rounds at Cannes.
Maradona said there was little comparison between them:
“He lives in suffering, I live in joy. It is that which distinguishes us from one another.”
Of his one-time drug addiction, he said:
“I live my life in a different way now. I have abandoned those bad habits. Now I have a different life, I’m not living at 100mph as I used to. I’m taking it more gently.”
He explained why he agreed to the documentary:
“People have written a lot of books about me, made a lot of films about me. I have been portrayed as somebody evil, somebody bad, somebody mediocre. Emir was able to penetrate to my heart, to talk about what I have been through in the good and the bad moments of my life.”
‘Two Lovers’ – Two Clips and Reviews – Cannes 2008
U.S. director James Gray premiered “Two Lovers” Monday night, and it’s one of the most sensitive portrayals of the vagaries of love to hit the screen in recent years.
Gwyneth Paltrow portrays a confused woman who lives nearby and is involved in an affair with a married man. Vinessa Shaw stars as the daughter of family friends who is considered a nice match for him by his parents.
Much of the credit goes to Joaquin Phoenix, who stars as a depressed young man who moves back in with his parents after a failed engagement and becomes romantically involved with two women.
‘The Good, the Bad, the Weird’ – Cannes 2008
“The Good, the Bad, the Weird” directed by Kim Jee-woon (South Korea) will be present at 61st Cannes Film Festival, out of competition.
In the 1930s, the world is in chaos. In Northeast Asia, the Korean Peninsula has fallen into the hands of the Japanese Imperialists. Many Koreans have flocked to Manchuria, the vast terrain of horses and wilderness bordering their homeland and China. Some of them, inevitably, have turned into mounted bandits to earn their living in this barren wasteland.
Tae-gu (The Weird) is a thief. He robs a train of Japanese military officers, but the incident is not as simple as it first seems. In the middle of this fierce gun battle against the Japanese, he obtains a mysterious map that leads to a treasure from the Qing Dynasty, buried somewhere in Manchuria.
Watch the trailer and poster after jump
‘Indiana Jones 4′ – The Old Magic Still Works – Cannes 2008
Earlier today, the world’s press in Cannes finally got to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Here is a summary of the critical reaction:
Anne Thompson of Variety sets the scene outside the screening and says the film is ‘good enough’ and ‘fun’:
”Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had its world premiere at Cannes at 1 PM May 18; the press anxiously streamed into the Lumiere early, afraid they would be shut out-and many were.
There were whoos and whistles before the screening started.The movie unspooled without the usual Cannes logo. The first hour plays like gangbusters and is really fun.
Harrison Ford has Indy down, even as a grizzled “gramps” dealing affectionately with Shia LaBeouf as a 60s greaser with a pompadour.
Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ to be filmed by Laurence Fishburne and Harvey Weinstein
‘The Alchemist’, the best-selling book by Paulo Coelho will be turned into a film.
Laurence Fishburne will direct, write and star in the $60 million production, which is being made by Harvey Weinstein.
‘The Alchemist’ book has sold over 30 million copies worldwide and translated into 67 languages. Such is its enduring appeal, it is currently at number six on The New York Times bestseller list, 20 years after its first publication.
It tells the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who travels across the Egyptian desert in search of treasure, leading to an encounter with an alchemist who teaches him the meaning of life.
41 Kung Fu Pandas – Jack Black at Cannes
The animated movie Kung Fu Panda with voices of Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie had its premiere yesterday at Cannes Film Festival, out of competition, of course.
