May 7, 2018 – Hollywood Elsewhere

Pre-Cannes Murmurs at La Pizza

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 by Jeffrey Wells

The Cannes jury press conference happens today (Tuesday, 5.8) at 2:30 pm, but there’s nothing to see until Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows screens this evening. It screened last week for Parisian press, and the loose talk during last night’s La Pizza gathering was that it might be on the “meh” side. One journo said he’d heard it was similar to Farhadi’s About Elly, another said something about it being Farhadi’s Personal Shopper or — I’m reaching here — possibly in the vein of Almodovar’s Volver. The general feeling is one of slight apprehension rather than excitement.

One of the above said he can’t be specific, but that he understands that a major American film is probably going to get booed. Which is not a difficult achievement here, and is sometimes not that meaningful in the long run. (The journalists who booed Personal Shopper a couple of years ago look like idiots now.)

If the “going to get booed” thing is correct, the likeliest candidates would be David Robert Mitchell‘s Under The Silver Lake, which runs 139 minutes, or Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman. They’ll debut roughly a week from now (Lee’s film on 5.14, the Mitchell the following day). The possible booing recipient could also be Ron Howard‘s Solo: A Star Wars Story.

The BlacKkKlansman rumor is that it’s a “buddy comedy,” but Lee did his best to shoot that notion down on Instagram [see above].

A friend who saw Under The Silver Lake some time ago: “Loved [Mitchell’s] Myth of the American Sleepover, and really like It Follows. I like some of Silver Lake” — presumed to be kind of an impressionistic cultural panorama of present-day hipster Los Angeles a la The Big Lebowski with a dash of Fellini Satyricon — “and I love Riley Keough, but Andrew Garfield is so flaccid and without any charisma or sexuality, and this movie really needs that. There are some great fun sequences and it certainly looks great, but all in all it just feels silly with a donut hole in the lead role.”

I’m making a point of catching Jim Cummings‘ Thunder Road, a father-daughter drama that was well received during South by Southwest 2018 and is screening on Saturday evening under the ACID Cannes program.

Wee Hour

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 by Jeffrey Wells

A fair amount of make-up sleep yesterday (two-plus hours on the Paris-to-Cannes train, close to three at the Cannes apartment) has resulted in another middle-of-the-night wakeup…yes! There’s nothing like the reassuring feeling of being loved and caressed by Almighty God as you lie stone-cold awake at 2:45 in the morning, contemplating your fate. I look outside at the pitch-black nothingness and feel the chill air sink into my bones. It’s too early even for the crying seagulls, but I can hear Ingmar Bergman‘s wee-hour wolves scampering around outside the building below, panting and whimpering as they lick arterial blood off the cobblestones.

Honest-to-God snap from living room window of the Cannes blackness — Tuesday, 5.8, 3:15 am.

Sparkly Rooster

May 7, 2018 by Jeffrey Wells

In Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (’75), there’s a scene in which the four brute fascists (Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti) are dressed in drag with particularly ornate women’s hats. Pasolini clearly meant this charade to seem grotesque and perverse. Flash forward 43 years to former Olympic figure skater, sports commentator and LGBT activist Johnny Weir dressed in similar fashion at the 2018 Kentucky Derby. Times change, context is everything.

Ooh! Ooh! Belloni!

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 by Jeffrey Wells

At 5:45 Cannes time an email arrived from High10 Media’s Jimmy Harney:

“Matt Belloni, Editorial Director at The Hollywood Reporter, will be at Cannes Tuesday 5/8 — Saturday 5/12, and is available and willing for any expert interview needs to talk about the festival.”

That’s ungrammatical, isn’t it? Correction: Belloni will be attending the Cannes Film Festival (“in” might work but “at” alludes to Belloni attending a single event). And he can’t be “willing for any expert interview,” etc. The idea, to clear things up, is that Belloni, a seasoned trade journalist who may know a bit more about the festival than, say, myself or Toronto Star critic Peter Howell or Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman or HE’s own Jordan Ruimy…Monsieur Belloni is hereby willing to comment, expound and generally ruminate about this, possibly the most underwhelming Cannes Film Festival in history.

And so, in Harney’s words, “please feel free to reach out for any opportunities you might need Matt’s expertise for.”

Tonight at La Pizza between 7:30 and 9 pm, Hollywood Elsewhere along with Howell, Gleiberman, Ruimy and several other critics will be available for comments, projections and sage thoughts about the 71st Cannes Film Festival.

We may not be able to shed quite as much light or share as much in the way of perception and perspective as Belloni, but we are nonetheless available and “willing for any expert interview needs,” etc.

Cry of Harbor Seagulls

May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 by Jeffrey Wells

Having slept two and half hours on the train, I arrived in Cannes at 12:40 pm. Right away I didn’t care for the vaguely misty, milky-ish light, as if everyone was seeing everything through the eyes of Janusz Kaminski (i.e., HE’s second least favorite cinematographer after Bradford Young). My usual pink-wth-yellow-pastille badge is now dark gray with a rectangular pink-plus-yellow-dot strip, and it’s slightly smaller than before. The official carrying bag is cool — dark-denim colored and lightweight.

I went right back to the Old Town pad and slept again, bagging another two-plus hours. Now I’m unpacking and preparing to head over to La Pizza for the annual Cannes journalist soiree, which will start around 7:15 or so.

Asghar Farhadi‘s Everybody Knows, which may have problems, will be the first film out of the gate. The first press-access screening happens tomorrow night at the Salle Debussy at 7:15 pm, about 75 minutes before the 8:30 pm public screening inside the Grand Lumiere. Follow-up press-access screenings will happen daytime Wednesday. If you have a high-grade badge (white, pink with yellow pastille, pink) you’ll definitely get into the first-look press screenings, but the blue and yellow badgers may have to wait. It would so much simpler if the festival would just stick to the old system with a demand that embargos on reviews and tweets (i.e., concurrent with late afternoon or evening public screenings) be respected.