Saturday, April 26, 2008

61st Festival de Cannes

The line up for this year's Cannes Film Festival features some interesting U.S. and International films. When I looked up last year's winner and found that it had been 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I was reminded at how shabbily that brilliant film was received in the U.S.— not even garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign language film. Now the Cannes winners have all been a little odd, but other than the Foreign Film Oscar, they shine the strongest spotlight on international cinema.

What I'm mostly interested in this year is the reception of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut: Synecdoche, New York. Will this be a Pulp Fiction-like debut? On the other side of the spectrum, could Clint Eastwood's Changeling give him a late career competitive win at the Festival (he won the Golden Coach award for Mystic River), with this, his fifth film in competition? And then there's Steven Soderbergh's epic Che Guevara film.

U.S.A. out of competition films include: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda, and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Official site.

Variety article.

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