None of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival prediction pieces have even toyed with the possibility of James Toback and Alec Baldwin‘s Seduced and Abandoned, a documentary about the film business and financing in particular, being one of the attractions. Shot during last year’s festival and featuring encounters with numerous industry hotshots, the now-completed film sounds to me like a semi-likely inclusion. Perhaps in some kind out-of-competition slot or under Director’s Fortnight or Un Certain Regard.
James Toback, Alec Baldwin.
“The movie business is the worst girlfriend in the world,” Baldwin said in Simon Dang‘s 5.31.12 Indiewire article about the film. “You go back again and again and again. You go back with another chance to do something that you want to do in moviemaking or moviegoing. You are seduced and abandoned over and over again.”
I’ve been hearing this and that person say “I obviously don’t know anything but this is starting to feel like a bit of a weak festival.” The only way to shake that feeling would be to bring in a major fall awards contender, and that would be Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska…right? Remember that No Country For Old Men vibe when Joel and Ethan Coen‘s film debuted at Cannes six years ago? That “whoa, stand back” feeling? That’s what we need to lift things up this year.
I’ve already indicated a general lack of enthusiasm for Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling‘s Only God Forgives, which is looking like a likely inclusion. I’ve written so much about Joel and Ethan’s Inside Llewyn Davis (including a March 2012 script review) that it almost feels like I’ve seen it.
Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind the Candelabra is said to be likely. Ditto Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring and Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past.
I wouldn’t mind catching JC Chandor‘s All is Lost, the Robert Redford survivalist drama. Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Diana would be welcome. Ditto Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin, Guillaume Canet‘s Blood Ties and Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive.
I was really hoping for Alfonso Cuaron‘s 3D Gravity but that won’t be completed until sometime this summer, I’m told by a top-dog source. Yes, even though it test-screened early last November at the Sherman Oaks Arclight.
I would be down with Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale (which I still haven’t seen), Spike Jonze‘s Her, James Gray‘s Lowlife, Luc Besson‘s Malavita and/or Roman Polanski‘s Venus in Fur.
My “Dream Cannes” picks include Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips (wny not?), Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day (which was test screened two or three months ago), and Spike Lee‘s Oldboy.
Nobody in the U.S. press pack will express great enthusiasm much about Baz Luhrman‘s The Great Gatsby as it will have opened commercially in th U.S. five days earlier. The period drama will open the festival.
The 2013 Cannes film festival runs from 5.15 through 5.26.
