Devastating projections are contained in a two-day-old Cannes ’16 spitball piece by Variety‘s Peter Debruge and Elsa Keslassy. Every year I hope and pray that Cannes will be great on its own terms but will also debut some award-season contender along the lines of No Country for Old Men, the Best Picture winner that debuted in Cannes eight years ago, or Carol or something that will quicken pulses a bit next fall.
Nope!
For one thing they claim that Paramount is “reportedly withholding” Martin Scorsese‘s Silence, which almost certainly means, of course, they’re afraid that the Cannes critical response might contaminate the well. It’s been an article of faith for months that Silence would almost surely play Cannes so this, for me, is shattering news.
They’re also reporting that Steven Spielberg‘s The BFG will play out of competition. So now I have to sit through and review a family-friendly Spielberg film? Costarring Mark Rylance, Rebecca Hall and Bill Hader? This is truly grotesque. Really, this feels awful.
On top of which Amazon Studios “is supposedly trying to keep Kenneth Lonergan’s critically acclaimed Manchester by the Sea under wraps until the fall” so there goes that pleasurable scenario.
Worse, it has been “strongly suggested” that Terrence Malick‘s Voyage of Time or Weightless will appear in the official selection…terrific. Unless he wakes up and changes course the man is over, and yet Cannes attendees may have to sit through another film that will probably contain the same meditative whispery dreamscape scheme that constituted Knight of Cups and To The Wonder.
And forget Oliver Stone‘s Snowden, Debruge and Keslassy are reporting. Open Road has apparently decided to keep that film under wraps until sometime closer to its 9.16 release date (i.e., right smack dab in the middle of the Toronto Film Festival).
