Yesterday Just Jared ran pics of Evan Rachel Wood and Larry David shooting scenes for Woody Allen‘s latest, which marks a return to Manhattan home turf. Here’s a shot that suggests Allen may be considering a slight plug for Tom McCarthy‘s The Visitor (as he did in Match Point with a shot of a London marquee announcing the showing of Walter Salles‘ The Motorcycle Diaries).
“Despite some criticism, Pastor Roger Byrd says that the message will stay on the sign. He took the issue before his congregation Sunday night, and they decided unanimously to keep it.” There’s a small-screen video report that accompanies the WYFF news story.
The official 2008 Cannes Film Festival announcement went up just after 3 am this morning, and the ambiguity about Steven Soderbergh‘s two-headed Che Guevara drama — The Argentine and Guerilla — has been removed. It will definitely play there (possibly with The Argentine in some kind of not-quite-finished form, but whatever) and glory friggin’ hallelujah!
Once again it feels as if the festival will have an ambitious centerpiece — a long-haul piece de resistance by one of our country’s finest filmmakers that journos can argue about and pick over and send messages home about and piss off the Miami Cubans with. All is now well with the world except for the sociopathic fiendishness of Hillary Clinton.
As reported last night by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling (is there a “The” in the title or not?) is also locked in.
As predicted earlier, Steven Spielberg‘s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda will play there out of competition, as will Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Walter Salles‘ Linha de passe, an urban road movie, will play in Cannes — “mostly set in Sao Paulo’s high-rise hell, about four soccer star wannabe brothers,” says Variety’s report.
Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne willl bring The Silence of Lorna. France’s Arnaud Desplechin returns with A Christmas Tale, a family drama with Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric. Atom Egoyan will arrive with Adoration. Wim Wenders will bring The Palermo Shooting, and Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan will deliver Daydreams, a kind of detective drama.
James Toback‘s Tyson, a doc about the controversial former heavyweight champion, will play in Un Certain Regard.
Jia Zhangke‘s 24 City “may well be the only major Chinese film at Cannes,” says the Variety piece, due to “a current bottleneck in the Chinese censorship process, which includes authorizing overseas travel.”
James Toback, Mike Tyson
In Competition:
24 City, China, Jia Zhangke
Adoration, Canada, Atom Egoyan
Changeling, U.S., Clint Eastwood
Che (The Argentine, Guerrilla) Spain, Steven Soderbergh
Un Conte de noel, France, Arnaud Desplechin
Daydreams, Turkey, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Delta,Germany-Hungary, Kornel Mundruczo
Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino, Italy
Gomorra, Italy, Matteo Garrone
La Frontiere de l’aube, France, Philippe Garrel
Leonera, Argentina-South Korea, Pablo Trapero
Linha de Passe, Brazil, Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas
La Mujer sin cabeza, Argentina, Lucrecia Martel
My Magic, Singapore, Eric Khoo
The Palermo Shooting, Germany, Wim Wenders
Serbis, Philippines, Brillante Mendoza
The Silence of Lorna, U.K.-France, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Synecdoche, New York, U.S., Charlie Kaufman
Waltz With Bashir, Israel, Ari Folman
Out of Competition:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, U.S., Steven Spielberg
Kung Fu Panda, U.S., Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
The Good, the Bad, the Weird, South Korea, Kim Jee-woon
Vicky Cristina Barcelona, U.S.-Spain, Woody Allen
Midnight Screenings:
Maradona, Spain-France, Emir Kusturica
Surveillance, U.S., Jennifer Lynch
The Chaser, South Korea, Na Hong-jin
Special Screenings:
Ashes of Time Redux, China, Wong Kar-wai
Of Time and the City, U.K., Terence Davies
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, U.S.-U.K., Marina Zenovich
Sangue Pazzo (Crazy Blood), Italy-France, Marco Tullio Giordana
Screening of the President of the Jury:
The Third Wave, U.S., Alison Thompson
Un Certain Regard:
A festa da menina morta, Brazil, Matheus Nachtergaele
Afterschool, U.S., Antonio Campos
De Ofrivilliga, Sweden, Ruben Ostlund
Je veux voir, France, Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
Johnny Mad Dog, France, Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
La vie moderne (profiles paysans), France, Raymond Depardon
Los Bastardos, Mexico, Amat Escalante
Milh handha al-bahr (Salt of This Sea), Palestine, Annemarie Jacir
O’ Horten, Norway-Germany, Bent Hamer
Soi Cowboy, U.K., Thomas Clay
Tin Che, (Parking), Taiwan, Chung Mong-Hong
Tokyo!, France-Japan, Bong Joon-ho, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax
Tokyo Sonata, Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Tulpan, Germany, Sergey Dvortsevoy
Tyson, U.S., James Toback
Versailles, France, Pierre Schoeller
Wendy and Lucy, U.S., Kelly Reichardt
Cloud Nine, Germany, Andreas Dresen
Yi ban haishui, yi ban huoyan, China, Fendou Liu
The Reel Geezers hit it out of the park again with this review of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
I’m in hell…we’re all in hell tonight with the Hildebeast having won Pennsylvania by a solid 10%. I know Obama’s seeming flirtation with Adlai Stevenson-ism is frightening to many of us (it certainly has been to me), but the two bedrock reasons for the persistence of the Clinton campaign are, face it or not, (a) gender loyalty among the less-well-off, somewhat less-educated women who can’t let go of the momentousness of a woman making a super-serious run for the presidency, and (b) primal tribal resistance among the working grunts — under the skin, only slightly acknowledged ** — to the idea of an African-American president. Very few will cop to it, but it’s been there all along. Don’t lie. Don’t deny.
“Why can’t Obama put Clinton away?,” MSNBC’s First Read asked this morning “The AP’s Ron Fournier takes a stab at answering this, and he points to five reasons (race, working-class voters, friends in trouble, inexperience, and mettle). But to us, women seem to be the bigger reason. They continue to rally to her side; nothing has shaken their confidence in her. If Clinton continues to beat Obama by 30-plus points among white women, how can he knock her out?”
On top of which that Clinton won’t stop with the viciousness, and the bubbas seem to keep going for it.
“The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it,” says a N.Y. Times editorial called “The Low Road to Victory.”
“Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.”
** Fournier’s piece noted that “an AP-Yahoo News poll found that about 8 percent of whites would be uncomfortable voting for a black president. The actual percentage is probably higher because voters are shy about admitting a racial prejudice to pollsters.”
Variety‘s Todd McCarthy reported at 9:30 pm this evening that Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling (Universal, 11.8), a 1920s mystery drama with Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Amy Ryan and Colm Feore, will compete at next month’s Cannes Film Festival.
With the official Cannes announcement due tomorrow morning, McCarthy also revealed three other surprises:
(a) Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which stars Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem, “will appear in Cannes after all, with Allen attending the fest over the initial weekend.”
(b) There may be a sliver of sunshine peeking through the clouds regarding the reported not-quite-ready situation concerning Steven Soderbergh‘s two Che Guevara films, The Argentine and Guerilla. “No one is saying the situation has definitely changed, but the competition schedule is being left flexible enough to accommodate Soderbergh in case he decides the films are in shape to present to the public — a result for which Cannes programmers have evidently been given some reason to hope,” McCarthy wrote.
(c) Barry Levinson‘s widely reviled What Just Happened? may not close the festival, despite an earlier report that it would.
Due respect, but Michael Cieply‘s 4.23 N.Y. Times story about Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner‘s Valkyrie — twice-delayed and presumed to be troubled — adds next to nothing to the story.
All it does is (a) offer a cursory sum-up of the situation that followed the announcement of the second push-back on 4.8.08 (Cieply believes that negative web reaction was the most noteworthy aspect) and (b) allows Wagner to sound tough and resolute with statements like “we will not be daunted,” “anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn’t understand the business,” “nothing is going to stop us” and “we are determined to make this work.”
I obviously know what this sounds like, but I feel that the piece I threw together on August 9th provided a more interesting photograph of things as they seemed to stand 14 days ago than Cieply’s piece does now at looking back and reviewing the hoo-hah.
I was disappointed after missing a screening of OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, a French- produced James Bond/Austin Powers spy satire, at the Seattle Film Festival in June 2006. It had opened to great reviews and strong business in France two months earlier, and it seemed like all the rage. (As far as a French- made film can be said to be the rage of anything.) A year and a half later it played at the St. Louis International Film Festival.
And now it’s here…almost. But too late! A little more than two weeks hence (i.e., on May 9th), it will finally open commercially in this country. I’m sitting here and I’m going, “They expect me to feel enthusiasm about an ’06 movie?” It should have at least opened last summer. The current has wound down. Flatline.
Is there any guy in the civilized world who wouldn’t feel at least a slight twinge of concern if a woman he’s just met has confessed she doesn’t use deodorant?
5:52 pm Update: First it was “too close to call,” then “too early to call” and now Pensylvania has been called a Clinton win with — right now — a 10% margin, 55% to 45% in her favor. If the margin of victory doesn’t go down to 5% or 6% or 7%, it’ll be a bit of an Obama bummer. Were those exit polls indicating a 4% margin between Clinton and Obama — 52 to 48 — anywhere near accurate?
Answer the following after watching this trailer for The Wackness (Sony Classics, 7.3). Josh Peck obviously does well at playing young urban white guys who talk in a street argot that is part imitation “black” and part whatevuh but in any case suggests a total inability to convey an air of refinement and higher education. But answer me this…
Is there any circumstance in which any casting director, no matter how whacked, would use this guy to play a small-town cop in Oregon, an assistant to a U.S. Senator, a young suburban dad, a used-car salesmen from Cranford, New Jersey, or anything other than a what-up homie who sells tabs of ecstasy and dilaudid in Tompkins Square Park?
In other words, Josh Peck is basically Leo Gorcey. Nothing wrong with that, exactly, except that he has one trick and one rap and thassall.
If I were totally alone in my galumph-aversion to Forgetting Sarah Marshall‘s Jason Segel, would Universal have taken his face off the film’s posters? Segel told David Letterman last Friday night that “they tested posters with my face on them and there was an unfavorable reaction to my face. I’m not quite good-looking enough to be the good-looking guy, but I’m not bad-looking enough to be the hilarious guy.” Obviously there’s a silent majority out there that feels the same pain.
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