Cannes 2008 – ‘Synecdoche, New York’
Many of you will recognize Charlie Kaufman’s name from his unique screenwriting credits: Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.
The movie stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams and Samantha Morton.
Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway.
Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan’s theater district.
He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden’s own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany’s art scene, sneers at him from every corner.
Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele’s friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He’s helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire (Michelle Williams) into the ground. Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan), the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton).
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Hollywood and Cannes Film Festival
Clint Eastwood’s film “The Changeling“, starring Angelina Jolie as a woman searching for her missing son in 1920s Los Angeles and “Synechdoche, New York,” screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut.joins a competition list.
Steven Soderbergh, who took the top Cannes award in 1989 for “Sex, Lies and Videotape“, won a race against time to complete his four-hour epic “Che“, on the life of the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in time for the festival.
Steven Soderbergh’s inclusion looks like a last-minute decision. He competes with two pic ”Che” bio – “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla”
As predicted, Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” world preems down on the Croisette, possibly on Sunday May 18. It promises this fest’s must-attend, highest-glam event.
Thierry Fremaux, the festival’s head said the presence of Steven Spielberg and the stars of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, which will premiere outside the main competition, would ensure “a magnificent red carpet”.
Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and George Lucas are expected to join Spielberg on the steps outside the Palais des Festivals, guaranteeing the kinds of flashing cameras that add essential glamour to the festival’s arthouse fare.
Out-of-competition, DreamWorks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda,” an adventure, comedic chop-soc tooner, promises another Hollywood red-carpet cavalcade.
Also non-competing, as is Woody Allen’s custom, is the Spain-shot “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
After its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, the Hollywood satire “What Just Happened?” will get a second chance at Cannes – closing night, but we are not sure yet because organizers said they would announce the movies that open and close the festival in a few days.
Robert De Niro stars an embattled Hollywood producer whose life falls apart during one turbulent week. In a life-imitating-art turn, the film’s climactic scene takes place at the Cannes Film Festival, with the producer’s fictional movie-within-a-movie opening the event.
“What Just Happened?” also stars Catherine Keener as a tough-as-nails studio chief and features a number of stars, including Sean Penn and Bruce Willis, playing themselves in self-parodying roles. Barry Levinson directs from an adaptation of “Into the Wild” producer Art Linson’s memoir.
The film generated strong buzz going into January’s Sundance Film Festival, and was expected to sell for a significant seven-figure sum. But the movie received a mixed critical.
