Saturday, April 25, 2009

62nd Festival de Cannes

The line up for this year's Cannes Film Festival features some interesting U.S. and International films. Last year's winner of the top prize, the Palme d'Or, went to France's own Entre les murs/The Class. It was France's first win since 1987s Under the Sun of Satan. The Class got a proper US release and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film. Now the Cannes winners have always been a little odd, but other than the Foreign Film Oscar, they shine the strongest spotlight on international cinema.

For this year's festival, Quentin Tarantino was able to finish Inglorious Basterds based on a timetable that would allow him to premiere the film at Cannes-- so let's hope he doesn't get any criticisms for rushing the job. What I'm mostly interested in this year is the reception of Inglorious Basterds , Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, and Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces, as well as "sidebar" film Tales from the Golden Age (from Cristian Mungiu and three other directors) and out of competition films Drag Me to Hell from Sam Raimi, L'Epine dans le Coeur from Michael Gondry, and Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (forever to be known as the last film of Heath Ledger).

Notably among the out of competition films is Pixar's Up (which opens the festival). Other films competeting include: Looking for Eric (Ken Loach) [according to the Los Angeles Times, this is Loach's ninth film to compete], Antichrist (Lars von Trier), Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe), The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke), Les Herbes Folles (Alain Resnais), Spring Fever (Lou Ye), and Bright Star (Jane Campion), among others.

Link to Los Angeles Times article.

Official site.

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