The Death Proof press conference is going to happen at 12:30 pm — 45 minutes from now — and I’m thinking of blowing it off. What’s Quentin Tarantino going to say? “Sorry, but self-referential masturbatory cinema is what I do, and who I am. Every guilty, lowdown cinema-watching impulse that you, the audience, harbor within yourselves, I epitomize and celebrate and in fact have made a wild, rollicking career out of.

The press guide listing for Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof press conference…

“My movies are about nothing from my own personal, deep-down self because I have no personal, deep-down self except for a love of ’70s and ’80s exploitation fringe cinema, exploitation-level actors and adrenalized Hong Kong action aesthetics, which makes me happy but obviously eludes people who aren’t on my elitist, beyond-hip wavelength. But I’m Mr. King Shit so what do I care?
“I am not about absorbing and translating and reconstituting real-life experience, but resuscitating stylistic imitations of life made by genre filmmakers of two and three decades ago. But hey, nobody does stylistic wank-offs better than me. No one has revived more moribund acting careers, and nobody writes trash- talk dialogue with quite the same zing. And I’m pretty damn good at shooting car chases.” (Which is true.)

…and the press conference listing in today’s daily bulletin. Notice the festival’s willingness to go along with Tarantino’s little joke and announce that director Andrei Zviaguintsev will be in attendance, and not himself.

Another Michael Moore q & a, this one with Variety editor Peter Bart at the American Pavillion.

Peter Bart, Roger Durling prior to today’s Michael Moore discussion (moderated by Bart) about Sicko — Monday, 5.21.06, 2:25 pm

Here’s a portion of today’s A Mighty Heart press conference, which included producer Brad Pitt, director Michael Winterbottom, costars Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi and Irfan Khan (who’s the standout supporting actor in this film).

A Mighty Heart star Angelina Jolie and costar Dan Futterman (i.e., Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Capote) at this afternoon’s press conference — Monday, 5.21.07, 1:05 pm

Brad Pitt

The agreeably shocking thing about Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart, which had its first-time-anywhere press screening this morning inside the Grand Palais, is that it’s not a Michael Winterbottom film. Not, I mean to say, a film that has seemingly emerged from the palette and the sensibility of the director of The Road to Guantan- amo, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, 9 Songs, Code 46 and 24 Hour Party People…all but one of which I had problems with to varying degrees.

Instead, A Mighty Heart is a Michael Mann film — a tight, absorbing, sharply assembled investigative procedural. It summons memories of the pacing, the underplayed performances and the sense of swiss-watch exactitude that have come to be associated with Mann’s films. I can’t recall another film in which a name-brand director has so totally abandoned a signature style (wait…does Winterbottom have one?) and just become, in a sense, “someone else.”
A Mighty Heart is about the kidnapping and murder ofWall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), as experienced by his distraught widow Mariane Pearl (Angelina Jolie). It’s handsomely shot (especially surprising given the generally meh photography in Winterbottom’s previous films), intricate and yet surprisingly easy to keep track of, and very deftly edited.
And in it, Jolie has given a completely satisfying and quite admirable performance which feels to me like the best thing she’s ever done. More mature and less showy than her nutter turn in Girl Interrupted (for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. The role of Mariane Pearl isn’t exactly a showboat thing (although there’s a very strong grief-venting scene in the third act that everyone will remember). It’s not about histrionics as much as just getting it right and staying with the truth of it — but Jolie’s carefully measured emoting plus her aural and physical resemblances to the Real McCoy make this performance a fairly safe bet for a Best Actress Oscar campaign later this year.

There’s a lot more to discuss here, but I have to get to the longer version of Quentin Tarantino‘s Death Proof, which starts in less than 40 minutes. I’ll try and complete this later tonight, or certainly by tomorrow morning.

HE to Ethan Coen (at today’s press luncheon): “The only speed bump for mainstream audiences in No Country for Old Men, as you know, is your decision to not allow audiences to share in Josh Brolin‘s final fate, as it were.”

Coen to HE: “And that’s a perverse decision, isn’t it?”

HE: “Well, that’s one of the things that give the film artistic authority and distinction, and it either makes people respect it or…”

Cohen: “Or dislike it.”

No Country for Old Men co-director and co-writer Ethan Coen at today’s Miramax press luncehon — Sunday, 5.20.07, 1:55 pm

HE: “Well, we all know that there’s a certain expectation [out there], that when you’ve spent the entire movie with a guy, you wanna…but for me, this is what makes the film extra-special.”

Coen: “And for us too. I mean, it’s just from the novel and [garbled]. But when you get to this point you say, ‘Okay, the movie’s not ultimately about this guy…so what is it about?'”

HE: “About the end of the world, about the good old stuff really coming to an end, about being engulfed by waste and annihilation.”

Coen: “Uh-huh!”

Here’s a sound file of the conversation.

A fast follow-up on the Duelling Bielinski Brothers projects (i.e., Phillip Noyce‘s vs. Ed Zwick‘s). I’ve recevied the following statement from Noyce, to wit: “Historical facts should not be owned or bartered, but it would appear that the life rights of surviving family and Bielski brigade members that our lawyers have maintained for the past several years could mean the following:
“Any other film about the Bielski Brothers” — Zwick’s — “might have to tell the story without retelling any of the incidents described in the personal statements of these real-life characters made exclusively to our research team or contained exclusively in the source material to which we hold the rights.
“Nonetheless, a fiction film inspired by the Bielski Brothers will still leave plenty of room for the remarkable real story to be told.The bravery of the Bielskis should be celebrated over and over. — Phillip Noyce.”

It was hard to hear for all the restaurant clatter, but four No Country For Old Men guys — director-writers Joel and Ethan Coen, and costars Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin — sat down at a press luncheon early this afternoon at the Noga Beach eatery. The mp3s — here’s Bardem’s and here’s Brolin’s — are discernible if you wear earphones and/or turn the sound up.

No Country for Old Men costar Javier Bardem at this afternoon’s Miramax press luncheon at the Noga Beach– Sunday, 5.230.07, 2:20 pm