Tag Archives: Cannes Film Festival

I, Daniel Blake Wins At Cannes And Americans Ask, “Who Is Ken Loach And Who Does He Play For?”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The winners of this year’s Cannes Film Festival have just been announced!

As I look over these winners and think about the rather muted reviews that came out of Cannes this year, I have to ask: Is it just me or is 2016 shaping up to be a fairly blah year for the movies?

I mean, just think about last year at this time.  Everyone at the Cannes Film Festival was excited over Carol.  People were still talking about how much they loved Brooklyn and End of The Tour at Sundance.  Both Mad Max: Fury Road and Ex Machina were playing in theaters.  Inside Out was on the verge of being released and people were whispering that Straight Outta Compton might actually be a great movie.  There was a lot to be excited about!

This year, however, it’s just like, “Who cares?”  Even the excitement that some people have for Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation and Martin Scorsese’s Silence feels more obligatory than sincere.

(Did Sasha Stone go to Cannes this year?  I know I could check the Awards Daily web site but, as of late, reading Awards Daily has become almost as tedious as reading the Daily Kos.  But I mention Stone specifically because she epitomizes something that I’ve noticed about almost all of the big names in the online film community. They are currently more concerned with bitching about this meaningless and stupid election than in talking about movies.  Even when they do talk about movies, it’s always in relation to this election.  BLEH!  Political situations are only temporary.  Movies are forever.)

Anyway, just from what I did hear back from Cannes, I’m looking forward to seeing Personal Shopper, Elle, The Neon Demon, Toni Edrmann, and American Honey.  I doubt I’ll get a chance to see the Palme D’or winner because it’s a Ken Loach film and Ken Loach films rarely get much distribution in the U.S.

In fact, when Ken Loach won the Palme d’Or (and this is his second time to win), he immediately started trending on twitter.  In the UK, he was trending because people were saying, “Ken Loach won!”  In the US, he was trending because everyone who is not a member of Film Twitter was saying, “Who is Ken Loach and who does he play for?”

(As for how this will affect the upcoming Oscar race, it probably won’t.  With the exception of the year that Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or and then went on to to score a best picture nomination, Cannes is usually ignored by the Oscar voters.)

Anyway, here’s the winners!

COMPETITION

Palme d’Or: “I, Daniel Blake” (Ken Loach, U.K.)

Grand Prix: “It’s Only the End of the World” (Xavier Dolan, Canada-France)

Director (tie): Olivier Assayas, “Personal Shopper” (France), and Cristian Mungiu, “Graduation” (Romania)

Actor: Shahab Hosseini, “The Salesman” (Iran)

Actress: Jaclyn Jose, “Ma ‘Rosa” (Philippines)

Jury Prize: Andrea Arnold, “American Honey” (U.K.-U.S.)

Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi, “The Salesman” (Iran)

OTHER PRIZES

Palme d’Honneur: Jean-Pierre Léaud

Camera d’Or: “Divines” (Houda Benyamina, France-Qatar)

Short Films Palme d’Or: “Timecode” (Juanjo Jimenez, Spain)

Special Mention – Short Films Palme d’Or: “The Girl Who Danced With the Devil” (Joao Paulo Miranda Maria, Brazil)

Ecumenical Jury Prize: “It’s Only the End of the World” (Xavier Dolan, Canada-France)

UN CERTAIN REGARD

Un Certain Regard Prize: “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” (Juho Kuosmanen, Finland)

Jury prize: “Harmonium” (Koji Fukada, Japan)

Director: Matt Ross, “Captain Fantastic” (United States)

Screenplay: Delphine and Muriel Coulin, “The Stopover” (France)

Special Jury Prize: Michael Dudok de Wit, “The Red Turtle” (France-Japan)

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Art Cinema Award: “Wolf and Sheep” (Shahrbanoo Sadat)

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: “The Together Project” (Solveig Anspach)

Europa Cinemas Label: “Mercernary” (Sacha Wolff)

CRITICS’ WEEK

Grand Prize: “Mimosas” (Oliver Saxe)

Visionary Prize: “Album” (Mehmet Can Mertoğlu)

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: “Diamond Island” (Day Chou)

FIPRESCI

Competition: “Toni Erdmann” (Maren Ade, Germany-Austria)

Un Certain Regard: “Dogs” (Bogdan Mirică, Romania-France)

Critics’ Week: “Raw” (Julia Ducournau, France-Belgium)

The Winners At Cannes And What It Means For This Year’s Oscar Race

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

poster_tn_sicario

Well, that shows you how much I know.

The 68th Annual Cannes Film Festival came to a close earlier today.  If you’ve been following news from the festival over the past two weeks then you’ve heard that Gus Van Sant’s Sea of Trees is no longer considered to be an Oscar contender.  (That’s putting it gently.)  You’ve heard a lot of acclaim given to Todd Haynes’s Carol.  You have also seen Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario and the Hungarian film Son of Saul emerge as a potential Oscar contenders.  Michael Caine’s performance in Youth was acclaimed, as was the work of Tim Roth in Chronic and Marion Cotillard in MacBeth.

One film that you probably did not hear about was Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan.  As far as coverage of Cannes over here in the states is concerned, Dheepan was ignored.  And yet — once again proving that nobody can predict Cannes — Dheepan is the film that ended up winning the Palme d’Or.  The acting prizes also went to actors who have been under the radar, with the possible exception of Rooney Mara.

(Some day, I will be able to forgive Rooney Mara for playing Lisbeth Salander is David Fincher’s insulting interpretation of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  But not today…)

As far as what the past two weeks have meant for the upcoming Oscar race: Well, I think it’s safe to say that we can forget about Sea of Trees.  As for my insistence that Sea of Trees would be nominated … well, we’ll all have a good laugh about it someday.  Carol appears to have emerged as an early front-runner and I think that Sicario could come on strong as well, especially if one of the nominal front runners — like Bridge of Spies, for instance — doesn’t live up to expectations.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see Caine and Cotillard nominated as well.  Everyone loves Michael Caine and, as he gets older, we are more and more aware that a day is going to come that he won’t be around to appear in any more movies.  As for Cotillard, she is everything that Meryl Streep is supposed to be and more.

Anyway, here are the winners!

68th Cannes Film Festival top awards:

Palme D’Or: Dheepan

Grand Prix: Son of Saul

Jury Prize: The Lobster

Best Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien for The Assassin

Best Actor: Vincent Lindon for The Measure of a Man

Best Actress: Rooney Mara for Carol and Emmanuelle Bercot for My King

Best Screenplay: Michel Franco (Chronic)

Camera d’Or (Best first feature): La Tierra Y la Sombra

Emily Blunt in Sicario

Emily Blunt in Sicario (No, actually, that is Emily Blunt in Looper.  My mistake…)

Here Are The Winners of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Winter Sleep

It’s debatable what type of effect a victory of Cannes will have when it comes to the Oscars.  Indeed, because of the festival’s international nature, it’s often the case that some of the most acclaimed films at Cannes aren’t even eligible to be nominated.  Blue Is The Warmest Colour was one of the best films to released in the United States last year but its victory at Cannes certainly did not translate into Oscar nominations.  However, at the same time, there’s probably some truth to the theory that winning the Palme d’Or allowed some of the more mainstream-minded Academy voters to consider The Tree of Life as a legitimate Oscar possibility, as opposed to just an art house indulgence.

So, in other words — who knows?

One thing is for sure.  Winning at Cannes will definitely not hurt the Oscar chances of Bennett Miller, Timothy Spall, and Julianne Moore.  In fact, the only film that truly seems to have been knocked out of Oscar consideration by its Cannes reception would appear to be Grace of Monaco.  (Well, okay — Lost River, too.  But was anyone expecting Lost River to be an Oscar nominee before it premiered at Cannes?)

Anyway, enough of me pretending to be an expert on how the Oscars work!  Here are the winners from Cannes:

In Competition

  • Palme d’Or – Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
  • Grand Prix – The Wonders by Alice Rohrwacher
  • Best Director – Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher
  • Best Screenplay – Andrey Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin for Leviathan
  • Best Actress – Julianne Moore for Maps to the Stars
  • Best Actor – Timothy Spall for Mr. Turner
  • Jury Prize – Mommy by Xavier Dolan and Goodbye to Language by Jean-Luc Godard
Un Certain Regard[39]
  • Un Certain Regard Award – White God by Kornél Mundruczó
  • Un Certain Regard Jury Prize – Force Majeure by Ruben Östlund
  • Un Certain Regard Special Prize – The Salt of the Earth by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
  • Un Certain Regard Ensemble Prize – The cast of Party Girl
  • Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actor – David Gulpilil for Charlie’s Country
Cinéfondation[40]
  • First Prize – Skunk by Annie Silverstein
  • Second Prize – Oh Lucy! by Atsuko Hirayanagi
  • Third Prize – Sourdough by Fulvio Risuleo and The Bigger Picture by Daisy Jacobs
Golden Camera
  • Caméra d’Or – Party Girl by Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis
Short Films[41]
  • Short Film Palme d’Or – Leidi by Simón Mesa Soto
  • Special Mention:
    • Aïssa by Clément Trehin-Lalanne
    • Yes We Love by Hallvar Witzø

Goodbye to Lanugage

Here’s some news from Cannes and the trailer for Mr. Turner!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As much as I wish I was in Cannes right now, I’m not.  I’m stuck here in the States while everyone else gets to pose for the photographers, walk around topless on the beach, and see movies.  Oh well, there’s always next year.  Until then, I’m keeping up with Cannes via social media.

The festival opened last night with Grace of Monaco and guess what?  The reaction would appear to confirm that the film is just as much of a misfire as I think everyone assumed it would be.  It’s not so much that the film sounds terrible as much as it just sounds like it’s remarkably bland.

However, no sooner had everyone dismissed Grace than everyone started to rave about Mike Leigh’s latest film, Mr. Turner.  I’ve been intrigued by Mr. Turner ever since I first heard about it, largely because it’s a biopic of the great landscape painter J.M.W. Turner and I’ve got a degree in art history.  The enthusiastic reaction that both the film and star Timothy Spall have gotten at Cannes have only served to make me even more excited about seeing this film once it’s released here in December.  (My friends in the UK will get to see it in October.)

(Not to brag or anything — because you know I would never do that! — but quite a few of the reviews from Cannes are speculating that both the film and Spall could be Oscar contenders.  That’s something that I predicted way back in March.)

As the film premiered at Cannes, the official trailer was also released.

And here it is!

 

Blue Is The Warmest Colour and Bruce Dern Win At Cannes

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bruce Dern in Nebraksa

Here are the official winners at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:

Palme d’Or – Blue Is the Warmest Colour by Abdellatif Kechiche
Honorary Palme d’Or – Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux for Blue Is the Warmest Colour
Grand Prix – Inside Llewyn Davis by Joel & Ethan Coen
Best Director – Amat Escalante for Heli
Best Screenplay – Jia Zhangke for A Touch of Sin
Best Actress – Bérénice Bejo for The Past
Best Actor – Bruce Dern for Nebraska
Jury Prize – Like Father, Like Son by Hirokazu Koreeda

Both The Tree of Life and Amour were nominated for best picture after winning the Palme d’Or and, in fact, it could be argued that neither one of those films would have had the momentum necessary to score an Oscar nod if they hadn’t first won at Cannes.  It’ll be interesting to see if this trend will continue with Blue Is The Warmest Colour.

As for Bruce Dern — a Hollywood veteran who has appeared in a lot of iconic films but who has never won an Oscar — I have a feeling that he’ll be winning a lot of other awards before the Oscar season has ended.

 

Cannes 2012: The Winners

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, the winners of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival were announced:

Palme d’Or — Amour by Michael Haneke

Grand Prix — Reality by Matteo Garrone

Best Director — Carlos Reygadas for Post Tenabras Lux

Best Screenplay — Beyond the Hills by Christian Mungiu

Best Actress — Cristina Fluter and Cosmina Stratan in Beyond the Hills

Best Actor — Mads Mikkelson in The Hunt

Jury Prize — The Angels’ Share by Ken Loach

Interestingly enough, considering that a whole lot of the coverage of this year’s festival centered on the large number of American films in competition, not a single American film won any of the competitive awards.  Even the widely acclaimed Moonrise Kingdom was shut out.  It’s also interesting to note that this is 2nd of Haneke’s film to win the Palme d’Or in less than a decade and that all Ken Loach has to do to win an award in Europe is show up.

Personally, just from the reports coming out of the festival, Beyond the Hills is the Cannes winner that I am most enthusiastic about seeing in the future.

 

Trailer: Sleeping Beauty (dir. by Julie Leigh)

Posted on by Arleigh

This coming October we get a small indie film from Australia which has caught my attention since I saw it had been one of the entries to the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film is Sleeping Beauty and it’s the directorial debut by Australian writer-director Julia Leigh and starring one of the industries rising young stars in Emily Browning.

Sleeping Beauty is described as an erotic drama which follows Browning’s university student who becomes involved in the hidden world of beauty and desire and those young women hired and trained to play a role in them. From what I could tell from the trailer and reading about reactions by audiences to the film at Cannes this film looks to have a similar tone and theme to British illustrator and erotic writer Erich von Götha (pseudonym used by Robin Ray).

With Cronenberg also exploring the more hidden corners of sexuality through psychoanalysis with his film A Dangerous Method it looks like the Awards season will have another sexually-charged film joining it around the discussion table with Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty. The film is set for an release in the US sometime this October 2011.

The Winners At Cannes

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The winners of this year’s Cannes Film Festival have been announced and it’s good news for Kirsten Dunst and Terrence Malick, the director of Palme d’Or winner Tree of Life..  I’ve seen the Tree of Life trailer about a thousand times at the Plano Angelika and to be honest, I haven’t been very enthused about it.  On the one hand, Terrence Malick is a legendary director and the film looks visually quite stunning.  On the other hand, the trailer also features a kid with a heavy country accent (and I’m not hating here, I’ve got quite a twang myself) going “Mother, Father, always you fight within me,” and when I hear dialogue like that, I’m just kinda like, “Uh-oh.”  The trailer itself features a lot of quite interesting and tense family scenes mixed in with a lot of scenes that seem rather New Agey.  I’d go into my feelings about new agey films but I don’t want to upset our readers in Vermont.

Kirsten Dunst (who may be on the verge of a comeback of sorts and good for her) won for a film directed by Lars Von Trier and I wonder if the award was, in any way, meant to protest Von Trier being previously declared a “non-person” at Cannes because of a press conference where he may or may not (I haven’t been following the story closely enough to take a side) have said he was a Nazi.  (While I can’t say whether or not Von Trier is a Nazi, I can say that I loved Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, and Zentropa and I hated Dogville and I’m scared to see AntiChrist.)

Anyway, here’s the winners:

  • Palme d’Or: The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
  • Grand Prix(a tie): Le Gaumin au Velo (Dardennes brothers) & Once Upon a Time in Anataolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
  • Best Director: Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive)
  • Best Actor: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
  • Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia)
  • Prix du Jury: Polisse (Maïwenn)
  • Prix du scènario / Best Screenplay: Hearat Shulayim (Joseph Cedar)
  • Camera d’Or (Best First Film): Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli)
  • Un Certain Regard : Prix Spécial du Jury / Special Jury Prize : Elena (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
  • Best Short Film: Cross Country

Just a heads up, Arleigh — next year, I’m going to get down on my knees and crawl all the way over to California just so I can beg you to send me to Cannes. 🙂

Rubber: Red Band Trailer

Posted on by Arleigh

This film called Rubber has been on the periphery of my radar for quite some time now. I’ve first heard of it when word trickled out of the After Dark Film Festival in 2010 where it was shown. From what I’ve heard of it the film wasn’t well-received when it was shown at 2010’s Cannes Film Festival. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t seen in a positive light over there. This film seems to be not the usual fare to get the applause and accolades.

Rubber seems to have gotten a more positive response outside of Cannes. This is especially true with the genre festival circuits.

From the looks of the trailer and synopsis of it on wiki I will hazard a guess and say that the tire is alive and looks to go on some sort of killing spree. The scene in the beginning of the trailer reminded me of the short film Treevenge! especially when the tire watched as a pile of rubber tires were being burned.

The film has been called a horror comedy and the trailer definitely gives it a dark comedy look to it. It comes out from Magnet Releases this April Fools Day.