Cannes Film Festival Official Lineup

Kieran, here. The Cannes film festival is a peculiar animal. Its relation to the Oscar race (it's April, so I'm allowed to mention it again) is nebulous. While the festival raerly fails to deliver at least a few titles that will net multiple nominations, it's hardly the launching pad into awards season in a way similar to Toronto or (in more recent years) Telluride. And truthfully, that's one of the things that makes it so compelling to follow. Regardless of whatever criticisms one can levy against Cannes, it's hard to deny that it clearly has its own rich history and identity with different motives on its mind compared to many high profile festivals.

The lineup for the festival is replete with interesting cinematic offerings. There are certain directors who can always garner a slot on the roster (*uses quiet voice* regardles of the quality of the actual film). Even still, it's such a thrill every year when they announce the list, quibble as we may at the inclusion of the usual suspects. Below is the official lineup for the 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival in full.

Opening Night Film

 Cafe Society – directed by Woody Allen

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in Woody Allen's latest

Doesn't it seem strange that it took this long for Woody Allen to put Kristen Stewart in one of his films? Woody Allen is definitely on the list of aforementioned directors who can always land a spot on the Cannes roster. Whether it's a rapturously received Midnight in Paris or a more tepid You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger level offering. Which will this be?

Competition 

Toni Erdmann – directed by Maren Ade
Julieta – directed by Pedro Almodóvar
American Honey– directed by Andrea Arnold
The Unknown Girl– directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Personal Shopper – directed by Olivier Assayas
It’s Only The End Of The World – directed by Xavier Dolan
Ma Loute – directed by Bruno Dumont
Paterson – directed by Jim Jarmusch
Rester Vertical– directed by Alain Guiraudie
Aquarius– directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho
Mal de Pierres – directed by Nicole Garcia
I, Daniel Blake– directed by Ken Loach
Ma’Rosa – directed by Brillante Mendoza
Loving – directed by Jeff Nichols
Bacalaureat – directed by Cristian Mungiu
Agassi– directed by Park Chan-Wook
The Last Face – directed by Sean Penn
Sieranevada – directed by Cristi Puiu
Elle – directed by Paul Verhoeven
The Neon Demon – directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Elle Fanning in Nicolas Winding Refn's THE NEON DEMON

The announcement of the lineup has dovetailed nicely with the release of the trailer for Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon, which has the internet buzzing. Have you watched yet? Seeing the haunting, enigmatic stills of Elle Fanning I opted not to and hopefully go into the film cold when it reaches stateside. Seriously, though...how absolutely amazing does this lineup of in-competition features look? Bacalaureat directed by Cristian Mungiu (Beyond the Hills and the fantastic 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) is the title that most has me wishing I could attend the festival. There's no guarantee it'll reach the United States in a timely manner. 

Un Certain Regard

Varoonegi – directed by Behnam Behzadi
Apprentice– directed by Boo Junfeng
Voir Du Pays – directed by Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin
La Danseuse– directed by Stephanie Di Giusto
Clash– directed by Mohamed Diab
La Tortue Rouge - directed by Michael Dudok de Wit
Fuchi Bi Tatsu – directed by Fukada Koji
Omar Shakhsiya – directed by Maha Haj
Me’Ever Laharim Vehagvaot – directed by Eran Kolirin
After The Storm– directed by Kore-Eda Hirokazu
Hymyileva Mies– directed by Juho Kuosmanen
La Large Noche de Francisco Sanctis– directed by Francisco Marquez and Andrea Testa
Caini – directed by Bogdan Mirica
Pericle Il Nero – directed by Stefano Mordini
The Transfiguration– directed by Michael O’Shea
Captain Fantastic – directed by Matt Ross
Uchenik – directed by Kirill Serebrennikov

Viggo Mortensen in Matt Ross' CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

Captain Fantastic, the second feature by actor turned director Matt Ross (American Psycho, TV's "Big Love" where he was excellent as a gay serpentine polygamist cult zealot) already played Sundance to good notices. Will it also impress the Cannes audience?

Midnight Screenings

Gimme Danger – directed by Jim Jarmusch
The Train to Busan – directed by Yeon Sang-Ho
A Chad Tragedy – directed by Mahamat-Saleh Aroun
The Death of Louis XIV – directed by Albert Serra
L’Ultima Spiaggia – directed by Thanos Anastopolous and Davide Del Degan

Outside Competition

The BFG – directed by Steven Spielberg
Money Monster – directed by Jodie Foster
The Nice Guys – directed by Shane Black
Gok Sung – directed by Na Hong-Jin

Jodie Foster directs George Clooney in MONEY MONSTERThe premiere and subsequent reception of Jodie Foster's Money Monster (which will be released in the US the following day) will be interesting to watch for several reasons. Foster, while obviously accomplished as an actor, has never really broken through with unanimous critical acclaim for any of her outings as a director (though Home For the Holidays is excellent). This is also the first film produced by George Clooney with a female director. He has previously only produced white-male-directed films--an odd bit of trivia given his reputation as a bastion of forward-thinking politics in Hollywood. He was one of the louder critics of the Academy's lack of diversity this past season, so perhaps we're seeing Clooney going beyond rhetoric (which does have value when you're a star of his reach and influence) and putting his money where his mouth is. 

What are you most excited to see?

Andrew Garfield: free from Hollywood's web

For our impromptu and informal Actors Month, members of Team Experience were free to choose any actor they wanted to discuss. Here's David on Hollywood's outgoing Spider-Man.

Andrew Garfield wasn't made for Hollywood; an interview with Vulture last year saw him raging at the very convention of interviews themselves, tired of the constant insistence on self-analysis and invasion of privacy. He was, however, born in Los Angeles, with a father who dreamt of Hollywood - but the Garfield family moved back to his mother's English homeland when Andrew was just four years old. Now he is, by his own admission, firmly transatlantic, "equally at home in both places". He has fulfilled his father's latent dreams of movie stardom, but Garfield grew up on the British stage, an arena where character comes first and celebrity is a rare imposition. Many commentators have made note of how many British actors have taken on major roles in Hollywood franchises, but none seem so conflicted and contradictory about their place there as Garfield.

Click to read more ...

Who Wore It Best? 80s Adventure Hunks Edition

Dancin' Dan here with a little bit of Actor Month fun. Witness has already hit us with its best shots, but I'm not quite ready to let Harrison Ford go just yet. Watching Witness for the first time can make you yearn for younger Ford, because.... MAN was he so perfectly, ruggedly handsome in the 80s (and throughout most of the 90s). None of his roles captured that ruggedly handsome side of him quite so much as Indiana Jones, who is one of the best movie characters of all time.

But I'm unfairly stuffing the ballot box before the question. Who wore the "80s Adventurer Look" best? Tell us in the comments!

Harrison Ford's brilliant almost fearless (why did it have to be snakes?) archelogist/adventurer Indiana Jones is a prime hunk of man, but not exactly alone in the world of ruggedly handsome 80s franchise adventurers... There is also Michael Douglas's Jack T. Colton from Romancing the Stone.

There is also Michael Douglas's Jack T. Colton from Romancing the Stone / The Jewel of the Nile. A bit wilder than Indy, to be sure, but the loose canon aspect can be a turn-on, and he doesn't have a professorial day job to keep him buttoned-up at any point.

First Look: Battle of the Sexes

Murtada here. So you have a new movie about a very popular internationally recognizable person, what to do to announce that your film has started shooting? Why get Billie Jean King herself to tweet a photo of your two stars, right next to the two real life people they are playing. Get everyone talking about the uncanny likeness. Easy peasy, the internet ate it up!

THEN & NOW: #BobbyRiggs & me at #BattleOfTheSexes presser in 1973; @stevecarell and #EmmaStone as us, filming now!🎾 pic.twitter.com/5jTCsyoXAE

— Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) April 13, 2016

Battle of the Sexes is about the 1973 tennis match between King and Bobby Riggs that made headlines worldwide and still stands in the culture as encapsulation of 1970s changing social attitudes about sport and feminism. Emma Stone is King and Steve Carrell is Riggs and boy do they look the part. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) are directing, the supporting cast includes Sarah Silverman, Alan Cumming, Elisabeth Shue and in a Birdman reunion Andrea Riseborough as Marilyn Barnett, King’s girlfriend at the time. It was surprising to see Danny Boyle's name as a producer, although not so much when seeing his Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours partner Simon Beaufoy as the screenwriter.

Barnett during the alimony trial.

Riseborough’s casting hopefully means that the movie will explore the tumultuous relationship between King and Barnett. Their relationship became public in 1980 when Barnett sued for alimony, outing King and putting her in the path of LGBT rights advocacy. That was 7 years after the battle of the sexes, so we are keeping hopes tempered.

The film just started shooting, so we have a long wait before we can see it, perhaps in the second half of 2017. However since this is an awards site, it’s never too early to speculate. We know that playing a real life person - with that person making the campaign rounds alongside the actor - is a surefire way to win an Oscar. The movie has to be good of course, this one at least has the pedigree. Will this be Emma’s moment? 

Steven Spielberg and Mark Rylance's Shotgun Wedding

After two consecutive casting announcements from Amblin Entertainment, it’s official: Steven Spielberg and Mark Rylance are, like, totally BFFs! As if collaborating their way to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and finally bringing the Roald Dahl classic The BFG to the big screen weren’t enough, it looks like this dynamic duo – what are we calling them - Stark? Ryberg? Spylance? – are gonna shack up for two more big screen ventures. You won’t see us complaining. If Bridge of Spies was any indication, this fusing of sensibilities has the makings of a director-actor partnership for the ages.

While we’re on the subject of theatre and film titans merging, the plot thickens. As spilled on Twitter by Mark Harris, the entertainment industry’s atom-splitter emeritus, Lincoln’s dream team of Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize (and, in a just world, Oscar) winner Tony Kushner is triangulating with Rylance to bring The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara to theaters in 2017. Rylance will portray Pope Pius IX in this custody tale of a young Jewish yet baptized boy torn from his Italian family and thrust into a life in the Vatican. Giving Francis a run for his money in the saying a lot with a little department, one can expect Rylance to cheekily intone conflicts of dogma and birthright with a little more papal pomp and circumstance than his Academy Award-winning role. While the pedigrees will likely be polarized, one can’t help but think of the captor or savior complex of John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane …but with much more silver-tongued, gold-hatted gravitas, to be sure.

And then yesterday, the Hollywood Reporter filled us in on the fact that Rylance is set to join Spielberg’s sci-fi actioner Ready Player One as an “enigmatic figure with shades of Howard Hughes and Steve Jobs.” Get a room, you two! Per the chronological tradition of Indiana Jones, by the time the credits for Ready Player One are about to roll – this, the fourth in their series – expect the pair to tie the knot with guest Shia LaBoeuf awkwardly linking arms on the side. This fistful of rice is about to explode.

As Steven Spielberg and Mark Rylance prepare to team up in cinemas again and again and again, what are some of your favorite director-actor combos in film history?