The 72 Greatest Gowns of the 72nd Cannes Festival (Part 1)

by Nathaniel R

How did we ignore the gowns from Cannes red carpets for the entirety of this year's run in the South of France? As penance we've collected our favourite gowns (i.e. anything that isn't pants) in two giant red carpet posts. Herewith the 72 greatest gowns from the Cannes Festival ranked in rough order of our appreciation. The order is for entertainment purposes only and we shan't stand by the arbitrary rankings if grilled about them. The order would change every five minutes as this was pieced together bit by bit over several days and our favourite color might be champagne in five minutes whereas at this very second it happens to be red (weird) and usually it's blue or purple.

72 ELLE FANNING 

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50th Anniversary: "Midnight Cowboy"

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Gay pride month is nearly upon us, so what better time to revisit Midnight Cowboy, the first LGBT-related Best Picture Oscar winner, which arrived in theaters 50 years ago this week. It remains, incidentally, the only X-rated film (for “homosexual frame of reference" and its "possible influence upon youngsters”) ever to win the Academy’s top award. 

Centering on Joe Buck, a wannabe hustler from Texas who finds himself entirely out of his depth in the big city (New York, that is), Midnight Cowboy succeeds poignantly, in the words of its director, as an “exploration of loneliness.” It also doubles as — and doubles down on — disastrous toxic masculinity: how men often are conditioned to (mis)treat others, not to mention themselves, as disposable, degradable objects of disaffection. 

In this ambling story, callousness reigns supreme, with humanity increasingly lost in the constant shuffle, on the streets of Manhattan...

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Cannes Winners 2019

With the 72nd Cannes Film Festival wrapped up in the beautiful south of France, it's time to see what the jury selected. Their winners were as such...

PALME D'OR

Bong Joon-ho receiving his Palme from Catherine Deneuve

PARASITE (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea)
Bong Joon-Ho already has major fans all over the world given the success of his Korean pictures like Memories of a Murder, The Host, and his internationally minded films Okja and Snowpiercer. Our favourite by him is definitely the mesmerizing Mother (2009). Can't wait to see this one! More on Parasite...

GRAND PRIX

ATLANTIQUE (Mati Diop, France/Senegal)
Diop, is as we've noted, the first black female director ever selected for the Cannes competition and her film walks away with the Grand Prix. That's quite a debut film experience...

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Celebrating Anne Heche at 50

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Today we celebrate the 50th birthday of one of the best, most criminally-underrated actresses in Hollywood/by Hollywood: Anne Celestia Heche. 

Born not far from Cleveland, Ohio on this date, Heche had an unfortunately troubled family life and a hardscrabble upbringing that have been well-chronicled, including in her own 2001 memoir. And while her much-publicized relationship with Ellen Degeneres is surely the first (if not only) thing many think of when thinking of her, this is a tribute to Heche as an actress—not a re-litigation of an awfully quaint, pre-social media public spectacle surrounding a 20-plus-year-old relationship. Call her crazy if you will, call her untalented you may not.

When did you (if you did) first take notice of her? For me, a noted stan, it must’ve been around 1989...

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Cannes: 'Un Certain Regard' and 'Cinéfondation' Winners

At Cannes the "Competition" titles get most of the press but there's another competition that runs parallel each year which often hides films that are just as strong --some years critics argue that they're stronger. Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) presided this year over the jury judging the 19 films in "Un Certain Regard." That's the program Cannes officials often throw distinctive or high quality films from newer filmmakers in since they reserve the main competition for (mostly) legendary auteurs or Cannes mainstays. 

UN CERTAIN REGARD PRIZE

THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF EURIDICE GUSMAO (Karim Aïnouz, Brazil)
We first started tracking this picture because it's from the queer Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz who made Futuro Beach, a movie that we liked at the time but obviously undervalued as it really lingers in the memory (I still find myself thinking about it regularly 5 years later). His new film, which won the hearts of Labaki and her jury, also features the legendary Fernanda Montenegro but hers is, alas, a supporting role...

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