Red Carpet Lineup: Cannes '17, French Actress Heaven

It's been a little overwhelming looking at all the gowns on display at Cannes but before we get 10 whole days behind, let's celebrate the Gallic glory of French actresses. The 70th Anniversary Cannes party that the festival threw itself in the middle of its week long party had the biggest collection of international stars imaginable including these nine giants of French cinema after the jump...

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Beauty vs Beast: All About Ellen

Jason from MNPP here with this week's All Sigourney edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- everything should always be All Sigourney, don't you think? Most especially Alien movies. I can't tell you how much I missed the grounding presence of Ellen Ripley this past weekend, whiplashing around Ridley Scott's scattered Covenant. If only we were getting Neill Blomkamp's proposed sequel, I kept thinking. An Alien without a Ripley is a body without a heart or a brain - an exo-skeleton full of acid.

So that's where I stand on Covenant. And even if they're more positive than I am most (if not all?) reviews continue to point to the first two films as the franchise's high-water mark. But instead of facing Ripley off with Giger's literal Beast I thought it would be more interesting to do a variation on the eternal "Alien or Aliens" question, and face off Scott's Ripley against James Cameron's Ripley, as the low-key smartypants of the first movie is in many ways quite a different beast altogether from the ass-kicking maternal Cassandra of the second. Which Ripley's your jam, and why?

PREVIOUSLY We tackled Alfred Hitchcock's personal fave Shadow of a Doubt (1943) last week for Joseph Cotten's birthday and it was Cotten's Uncle Charlie who triumphed over his niece Charlie (Teresa Wright), although it was close (as it ought to be with such doubling going on). Said Dancin' Dan:

"This is impossible, pitting one of my favorite Hitchcock heroines against one of my favorite Hitchcock villains. But I'm going to give an EVER SO SLIGHT edge to Young Charlie, for the sole reason that, as much amazing work as Cotten does in the role, Hitch helps him with Uncle Charlie's creepiness much more than he helps Wright (never better) in building Young Charlie's character."

Cannes Days 7-8: "The Beguiled" and "Rodin"

Another day in May, more cheers and jeers for the competition films. Only five competition films are yet to screen: Fatih Akin's In the Fade (starring Diane Kruger), Good Time from the Safdie brothers, Sergei Loznita's A Gentle Creature, François Ozon's L'Amant Double  (with two of his favorites Marine Vacth and Jérémie Renier), and Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here (starring Joaquin Phoenix). 

Previously: Day 1, Days 2-4, and Days 5-6
And Don't Miss: Nicole in Cannes Pt 1 and Pt 2

So it looks like the frontrunners for the Palme d'Or, barring any of those five landing in a major way, are France's 120 Battements Par Minute, Sweden's The Square, or Russia's Loveless. But with Cannes and the mysteries of the group dynamics of juries, you never really know until the awards are announced. Pundits always forget that. People who assume that the Palme is a given for ___ are wrong nearly every year. That's half the fun.

Day 8 brings us one of the longshot possibilities for the Palme from the great Sofia Coppola...

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Soundtracking: "American Honey"

NEW SERIES ALERT: Chris Feil will be talking soundtracks and music in movies every Wednesday! The first installment is on last year's Cannes winner American Honey:

Last year at Cannes, Andrea Arnold won her third Jury Prize for American Honey. The film follows Star (breakthrough star Sasha Lane), an Oklahoma teenager who leaves her rural life to sell magazines with a van full of forgotten youths. It’s a compassionate and condemning road movie, Arnold using music to provide a distorted reflection of the limits of the American Dream. You wouldn’t immediately think of Honey as defined by its soundtrack, but it is in so many rich ways.

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