May
22
Cannes Update
As the fest winds down, here’s an update:
Julian Schnabel’s intense tearjerker The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is being chased by distributors after its debut press screening this morning. It’s a French art film, so it will be interesting to see if any distrib comes up with the $5 million asking price for North America that Harvey Weinstein would have had to pay in order to take the film off the table in Paris pre-fest. I hear Pathe would have made that deal, but the filmmakers agreed to wait and see how the film played in Cannes.
A Mighty Heart: A modest success here, Michael Winterbottom’s well-paced, intense ensemble docu-style drama could be a marketing challenge stateside despite one of Angelina Jolie’s best performances to date. While the movie is a tough story well-told, it lacks a deeper resonance.
Paranoid Park: Gorgeously shot by Chris Doyle, Gus Van Sant delivers another small installment of his teenage trilogy. It should sell to a small distrib. After the screening last night, Geoff Gilmore, Steve Gaydos and our dates debated whether as parents we would want our child to tell us that they had killed someone accidentally. (In the movie, the teen skateboarder can't tell anyone.) What if they went to jail? I argued that I would want to know, in any case.
The Coens' No Country for Old Men: the best received movie of the fest on all fronts is the top contender for the Palme d’Or and a likely Oscar contender as well.
The fabulous-looking U23D marks the launch of a new motion picture genre: the 3D live concert film. Numbers of imitators will follow.
Leo DiCaprio’s earnest The 11th Hour is only one of the inevitable rash of coming environmental consciousness-raisers, but I hope I don’t have to sit through too many more of them.
Sicko: Michael Moore delivers a whiz-bang entertaining political call to arms. I can only hope it scores big time and does some good and gives Weinstein Co. some much-needed breathing room.
My Blueberry Nights: Modest but unassuming Wong Kar Wai, which I bet will play to women back in the States. It’s languorous, yummy fun.
Still to come: Oceans Thirteen and We Own the Night, which interestingly, sold to Columbia Pictures for $11.5 million before the press here had a chance to see it.
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