Cannes at Home: Days 2 & 3 – Blood, Sweat & Tears

by Cláudio Alves

WILD DIAMOND (2024) Agathe Riedinger

The first two days of competition screenings have whipped up a storm at the Cannes Film Festival. Things started normal enough with Agathe Riedinger's Wild Diamond, this year's only feature debut vying for the Palme. Reactions were a tad tepid, but the same can't be said about Magnus van Horn's Girl with the Needle, which has horrified some viewers. All hell broke loose on the second day of competition, when both Andrea Arnold's Bird and Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis had their world premieres. The British auteur earned general praise, though some found it confounding. As for the American master's long-awaited opus, opinions are so divided that a chasm seems to have broken open across the Croisette. Some say it's a catastrophe of epic proportions, while others see value in its epic mess. Whatever the case, it sounds like a fascinating watch, even as reports from the troubled shoot have enmeshed the picture in controversy. 

Since Riedinger has no previous features, she won't be included in the Cannes at Home fest. For the other filmmakers, let's revisit Sweat, Red Road, and Apocalypse Now…

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Parasite's loot and other Palme d'Or winner returns

Let's marvel again at the success of Parasite in US release, but this time in the context of Palme d'Or winners. Parasite is just one notch away from being the 10 highest grossing Cannes winner of all time (at least as far as contemporary box office reporting goes). It's already the most successful Palme d'Or winner of all time among the non-English language winners. 

Box office figures aren't readily available before the 1970s so we started in 1970 -- there are a few winners since then with no US box office results which means they either weren't ever released in the US or were somehow not reported. It's also worth noting that these numbers are not adjusted for inflation so we're assuming that either MASH or Apocalypse Now which bookended the 1970s would actually top the list as the highest grossing Palme d'Or winner ever. Figures are only domestic (USA) totals.

TOP GROSSING PALME D'OR WINNERS IN THE U.S.
figures as of January 26th, 2020

1. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) $119.1
2. Pulp Fiction (1994) $107.9
3. Apocalypse Now (1979) $83.4
4. MASH (1970) $81.6...

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Beauty vs Beast: The Kindness of Strangers

Jason Adams from MNPP here, using this week's brand new "Beauty vs Beast" poll to celebrate the 48th birthday of the great Sofia Coppola, which is tomorrow. We are so lucky to have her! Quite honestly I think the world's been under-valuing her directing career, which's given us one great film after another after another. Her last one, 2017's remake of The Beguiled, is where we're focusing today -- another entirely under-appreciated one if you ask me. While I've long been a fan of Don Siegel's sweaty 1971 version I consider Coppola's an improvement for how it spins itself off into a gothic fable of female empowerment gone to seed. It feels like a sister film to Nicole Kidman's other movie about haunted folks isolated during war-time, The Others -- seriously, go watch them back to back. That'll be an excellent evening at the movies. But until then...

bike tracks

PREVIOUSLY
Switching over to the Elder Coppola, it turns out it was too tough for us to vote for a war-mongering maniac with last week's Apocalypse Now poll, even when he's played by Marlon Brando -- Martin Sheen's "Captain Willard" managed to score 57% of your vote instead.

Summed up by Tom G:

"Shouldn't we NOT be voting for crazy people with too much power?"

Beauty vs Beast: Napalm Mornings

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now has been coming up in conversation a lot lately, and not just because my boyfriend kept accidentily getting the title of Gregg Araki's TV show Now Apocalypse backwards. The film is celebrating its 40th anniversary this Friday, and besides doing a screening and conversation about the film at the Tribeca Film Fest last week Coppola's putting out what he's calling a "Final Cut" in August, in theaters and on blu-ray. It falls somewhere between the original release and the 2001 Redux cut, apparently. But no matter the cut it's the tension between Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) that remains the the backbone of the film, and that's what we're investigating today...

picture polls

PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back most of us still hadn't seen Avengers Endgame, and now two billion dollars worth of us have. But all that money couldn't help Chris Pratt, who lost the contest against Thanos 70 to 30%. Suck it, Star-lord. Said Tom G:

"Just like Jennifer Lawrence ran circles around [Pratt] in Passengers, Brolin literally ran galaxies around him."

Tweetweek: Julieta, Dune, and Jaws Embroidery

took my grandmum to see FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS and yes, she brought her record from home pic.twitter.com/Nw1T6CEpSe

— Sales On Film (@salesonfilm) August 13, 2016

How sweet is that?

Almodóvar & Julieta, Apocalypse Now, Brie Larson and 80s nostalgia, Kyle Maclachlan and Dune, Lupita & co-star and more after the jump ...

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