CANNES FILM FESTIVAL: THE WINNERS

Photo: 2018 Fuji Television Network/Gaga Corporation/AOI Pro Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, about a family that survives on petty theft, has won the Palme d’Or at the 71st Cannes Film Festival, while U.S. director Spike Lee has won the second-place Grand Prix award for his satire about a black cop who infiltrates the KKK, BlacKkKlansman. […]

SPIKE LEE MAKES TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO CANNES

Until Spike Lee entered the room, the third-floor auditorium at Cannes’ Palais des Festivals where press conferences are conducted, had been virtually Trump free. Hardly any mention of the U.S. president had been uttered by the international filmmakers, several of them card-carrying radicals, as they sat for interviews following the screening of their films. And […]

FILM FEMS GIVE MOVIE BIZ A DRESSING DOWN

They are an accepted element of the annual Cannes Film Festival: protests and demonstrations, either involving those attending the festival or groups who are mindful of the fact that the international news media turn out by the hundreds to cover the event. Official security staff plan for the prospect of disruptive activities for months in […]

SOMETHING’S NOT HAPPENING HERE AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S NOT

The walkouts during the press screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book (Le Livre d’Image) at the Cannes Film Festival began at about 15 minutes into the film. One by one, several critics and working journalists covering the festival began rising from their seats, hunching over so as not to block the view of others, […]

AT CANNES, THE SOVIETS COLLAPSE AGAIN

At the Cannes Film Festival, two films, set in the waning years of the Soviet empire, have debuted to reviews so lukewarm that some critics attending the festival have wondered in print whether they’re not a portent of even inferior things to come. After all, the festival usually makes a noticeable effort to launch with […]

WILL TERRY GILLIAM FINALLY REALIZE HIS IMPOSSIBLE DREAM?

To dream the impossible dream To fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrong To love pure and chaste from afar To try when your arms are too weary To reach the unreachable star This is my quest, to follow that […]

ONE IRANIAN DIRECTOR HAILED AT CANNES; ANOTHER BARRED FROM COMING

Donald Trump’s decision to repudiate the nuclear weapons agreement with Iran was never brought up at a news conference for Iranian director Asghar Ferhadi at the Cannes Film Festival today (Wednesday), but Ferhadi did issue a controversial plea to the government of Iran that was not related to the nuclear pact. He appealed to it […]

KIDNAP DRAMA OPENS CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

If Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi had made his Cannes Film Festival opener Everybody Knows (Todos lo Saben) in Hollywood, he probably would have been compelled to accouter his kidnap drama with gunplay, chases, and assorted acts of violence. There is none of that here. He has made the film in Spain, in Spanish, with an […]

CANNES SANS WEINSTEIN

He used to be everywhere at Cannes. No one attending the world’s largest and most prestigious film festival could miss the rotund macher, who always seemed to sport a five-day (forget 5 o’clock) shadow on his chins. Harvey Weinstein came here carrying some of the most memorable independent Hollywood films produced in the last quarter […]