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

Variety‘s Sicko review, written by Alissa Simon. She’s calling it “an entertaining and affecting dissection of the American health care industry that documents how it benefits the few at the expense of the many. Pic’s tone alternates between comedy and outrage, as it compares the U.S system of care to other countries. Given Moore’s celebrity and fan base, plus heightened awareness of pic resulting from the heated battle between left and right already ongoing in cyberspace, returns look to be extremely healthy.”

Myself and maybe nine or ten other journalists were driven out to the Hotel du Cap at 11:45 this morning for some brief cabana sit-downs with Leonardo DiCaprio,the producer, co-writer and narrator of a down-to-it doc about global poisoning and not just global warming (which the film only focuses on for only 7 minutes) called 11th Hour (Warner Independent, October), as well as co-directors Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen.

11th Hour producer-narrator Leonardo DiCaprio at the conclusion of today’s Hotel du Cap round-table interview, which took place in an airy bungalow a stone’s throw from the rocky coast of the beautiful Mediterranean — Saturday, 5.19.07, 1:45 pm

Two 11th Hour talking heads also participated — David W. Orr, an envirornmental issues authority and a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, and Kenny Asubel, founder and co-executive director of Bioneers, a nonprofit outfit that focuses on solutions for restoring imperiled ecosystems.
Here‘s a recording of our group’s chat with DiCaprio and Orr.
The general consensus among the journos is that Michael Moore‘s Sicko is a more engaging and persuasive piece of agitprop than 11th Hour, which offers a very dense and thorough assessment of how we’re fucking the planet every which way, but at the same time is a little too crammed with information.
There’s no argument at all from this corner about the alarming things it says (and shows) about what amounts to a kind of mass global suicide, but it’s a movie, and the fact is that it doesn’t breathe and engage the way a piece like this should. After 20 minutes or so it makes you feel like you’re being hammered. It needs to pull back and relax and…I don’t know, throw in some jokes or something. A little more heart and soul and meditation.
11th Hour has exactly one laugh moment — a quote from Winston Churchill that says Americans “always do the right thing…unfortunately they only do the right thing after exhausting every last wrong possibility.” Or words to that effect.

DiCaprio, David Orr at the Hotel du Cap — Saturday, 5.19.07, 6:25 pm; under the umbrella trees; the Du Cap cabanas where the interviews took place; MPRM’s Jessica Kimiabakhsh leading journalists (including Variety‘s Anne Thompson) to their respective cabanas; Kenny Asubel (l.) and 11th Hour co-directors Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen.

I hate saying this about a film I respect and that I want people to absorb for the content alone, but you can’t expect well-honed information and slam-bang visuals alone to do the trick. A movie needs to generate human warmth and aroma…some kind of emotional connection that really sinks in. As it is now, 11th Hour is too dry and didactic, and it doesn’t even try to generate the amiable personality that An Inconvenient Truth had by way of the reborn Al Gore.
But it won’t open until the fall so there’s obviously time for some re-shoots and touch-ups. Leo, Nadia and Leila should consider what I’m saying here. I’m not the only one, trust me.

Here’s a recording of the first half-hour of Michael Moore‘s Sicko press conference, with moderator Andre Behar asking the first question. It started just after 11 a.m. I had to bolt at 11:30 in order to get on a press shuttle for the Hotel du Cap and a sitdown with Leonardo DiCaprio and the 11th Hour principals. I still don’t have my sound editing software up and running, so it’s a little raggedy. Behar’s introduction of Moore to the press throng comes about ten seconds in.

Sicko director Michael Moore (r.) and press conference moderator Henri Behar at this morning’s press conference — Saturday, 5.19.07, 11:12 am