Cannes 2004

[The Silver Bullet]

from indieWIRE.com:

"The 57th edition of the Cannes Film Festival opened Wednesday night with Pedro Almodovar's latest, the narratively inventive but emotionally tepid La Mala Educacion (Bad Education). While always watchable – and a qualitative quantum leap over last year's fest opener, the ghastly French costume drama Fanfan La Tulipe – the Spanish filmmaker's most recent effort comes nowhere near the heights of recent triumphs like All About My Mother and Talk to Her."

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[SoNowThen]

NOTRE MUSIQUE

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/awards/cannes/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000496911

Jean-Luc Godard's new film is part melancholy contemplation on the impact of war and part learned disquisition on the essence of cinema and how the two have entwined to become the music of our lives.
The film is beautifully shot and edited and largely accessible. Lovers of cinema will like it for its insights into the melding of text and images, and it will find a broader audience for its contribution to the debate on modern war.

The film is in three parts, each named for a Kingdom: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The first is a shattering montage of clips, still shots and bits of film showing the full catastrophe of war from a wide variety of sources including such pictures as "Kiss Me Deadly," "Zulu" and "Apocalypse Now."

To the sound of a pounding piano, Godard mixes film textures, colors, close-ups and myriad images of everything from chariots to tanks, arrows to rockets and horses to jet fighters. The 12-minute masterpiece of filmmaking is an explosive display of war's carnage, banality and suffering. A young voice on the soundtrack needlessly observes, "It is terrible here."

The melancholy approach to the subject extends to the self-portrait Godard provides. The firebrand of old is here a genial companion who smokes cigars and calls for champagne. In our last sight of him, he's tending his garden.


Variety:

"Our Music," from veteran provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, is rigorously shot, but with an interior mellowness that's far from the scatter-gun, guerrilla mentality of even his last movie, "In Praise of Love" (2001). Pic is a philosophical meditation on man's inability to reconcile the contrary forces in his makeup -- here, seen through the savagery and pointlessness of war. Recognizably Godard with its playfulness and wordplays, but deeply human at the same time, this won't go any further commercially than his recent works, but will delight upscale viewers in festivals and other niche situations.

At 73, the French-born Swiss filmmaker ranks as one of the few of his generation with a cohesive moral position tied to a stubborn love of cinema -- and, more importantly, fresh ways of conveying both. Essentially elegiac in flavor, film carries an emotional power in its final stages that is all the more moving for its simplicity.

Godard, playing himself, is among the guests at a series of European Literary Encounters taking place in the once-ravaged city. Mixing other real writers and thinkers with fictional characters, section immediately uses Godardian word games and declamations as soon as the guests are ferried into town in taxis.

[cron]

Cannes screening for most sexually explicit British film


Charlotte Higgins in Cannes
Monday May 17, 2004
The Guardian


Nine Songs: Winterbottom says of the most graphic scenes; 'We can always take that out'
 
The most sexually explicit film in the history of mainstream British cinema, containing unsimulated sex scenes including fellatio, ejaculation and cunnilingus, many in close-up, yesterday had its first screening at Cannes. Michael Winterbottom, the Lancashire-born director of Nine Songs, a love story, said: "I had been thinking for a while about the fact that most cinematic love stories miss out on the physical relationship, and if it is indicated at all everyone knows it is fake.
"Books deal explicitly with sex, as they do with any other subject. Cinema has been extremely conservative and prudish. I wanted to go to the opposite extreme and show a relationship only through sex. Part of the point of making the film was to say, 'What's wrong with showing sex?'" *

The film revolves around a young couple in London, Matt and his American girlfriend Lisa. The sex scenes, which occupy more than half of the film, are intercut with scenes of bands playing, including Franz Ferdinand, the Dandy Warhols, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Super Furry Animals. The story is framed by shots of Matt flying over the desolate plains of Antarctica, as he remembers the relationship from afar.

The screening yesterday was at 10am, too soon after breakfast for many viewers. The grunt and huff-and-puff factor in the film is notably high, and the language is strong.

Matt is played by Kieran O'Brien, with whom Winterbottom has worked on a previous film, 24 Hour Party People. However, the woman playing Lisa has asked that her name not be used in coverage of the movie, although it does appear in the credits. "She's not an actress," said Winterbottom. "She really likes the film but she is going back to university and I think she wants to keep a low profile."

Despite the intimacy of the subject-matter, shooting the film was straightforward, according to Winterbottom. Having cast the two leads, a rehearsal was staged, after which they were given the opportunity to leave the project. "After a couple of days it was a case of that was what we were doing, and everyone adapted," he said. It was a matter of going "one step further" than the requirements of conventional, simulated sex scenes.

The film has not yet been given a certificate, though Winterbottom is optimistic. Of the fellatio-and-ejaculation scene, the one likely to give the censors most pause, he said: "We can always take that out."

In the film the couple also attend Michael Nyman's 60th birthday concert, with shots of the composer playing the piano at the Hackney Empire in east London. "I'm very pleased to be in the most sexually explicit film in British film history," said Nyman from Berlin yesterday, "especially as I am not doing anything sexual. I can't wait to see it."

Derek Malcolm, the Guardian's veteran film writer, said: "Nine Songs looks like a porn movie, but it feels like a love story. The sex is used as a metaphor for the rest of the couple's relationship. And it is shot with Winterbottom's customary sensitivity."


-----

*Michael Winterbottom nailed it.

[Ravi]

"Books deal explicitly with sex, as they do with any other subject. Cinema has been extremely conservative and prudish. I wanted to go to the opposite extreme and show a relationship only through sex. Part of the point of making the film was to say, 'What's wrong with showing sex?'"

If that perspective on a relationship makes for a good movie, fine.  But if he's doing that just to go against the grain, I doubt it will be good.

[El Duderino]

woah, that's hardcore and will never be released in the US

[cowboykurtis]

one of the few times I can unequivocally agree with Kael (Brian de Palma being my other notable Kael concurrence).

What did she say about DePalma?

She is a longtime adorer of his work and his style, which has an extremely unique and individualistic sort of humor and idiosyncracy, the kind that happens to be exactly up Kael's alley.

On Blow-Out: "I think De Palma has sprung to the place that Altman achieved with films such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Nashville and that Coppola reached with the two Godfather movies- that is, to the place where genre is transcended and what we're moved by is an artist's vision."

just bought blow-out -- have been meaning to see it for years -- my #1 all time favorite film is The Conversation, so this is naturally interesting. not a big fan of depalma in general, but the anticipation has been picking at way at me for some time now.

[cowboykurtis]

one of the few times I can unequivocally agree with Kael (Brian de Palma being my other notable Kael concurrence).

What did she say about DePalma?

She is a longtime adorer of his work and his style, which has an extremely unique and individualistic sort of humor and idiosyncracy, the kind that happens to be exactly up Kael's alley.

On Blow-Out: "I think De Palma has sprung to the place that Altman achieved with films such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Nashville and that Coppola reached with the two Godfather movies- that is, to the place where genre is transcended and what we're moved by is an artist's vision."

just bought blow-out -- have been meaning to see it for years -- my #1 all time favorite film is The Conversation, so this is naturally interesting. not a big fan of depalma in general, but the anticipation has been picking at way at me for some time now.

[Vile5]

Cannes audience gives standing ovation to Michael Moore film
CANNES, France - (KRT) - Controversial movie maker Michael Moore shook the Cannes Film Festival on Monday by unveiling his anti-Bush documentary to a wildly cheering international audience.

Even those who question Moore's tactics and fact-checking were moved by portions of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and upset by footage of dead Iraqi babies and humiliation of civilians by American soldiers.

The movie - a potential powder keg in this fall's presidential election - got a clamorous 20-minute standing ovation at its first public screening here.

Please SoNowThen take it easy   ...

[SoNowThen]

[El Duderino]

why?  

[SoNowThen]

Cos now I'm getting pre-emptive "take it easy"'s.

[RegularKarate]

Whoa whoa whoa... take it easy there, SNT

[SoNowThen]

HEY!! Hey....

[pete]

don't these standing O records get broken like every year?

[Pubrick]

um, Antonio Banderas said on letterman that Shrek 2 got a 15min ovation.

so, whatever that means.