Notes on the NYFF Main Slate

The full lineup of the New York Film Festival's Main Slate was released today. Though the film festival is famously curated and thus exclusionary (I still haven't forgiven them for thinking Rachel Getting Married, the best movie of 2008, was beneath us) this year's lineup is quite a bit larger than usual. Are their standards loosening or was there just too much quality to deny? In honor of the bigger than usual lineup, I thought I'd attempt 35 thoughts on the lineup but I ran out of time. Herewith 29 bullet points...

• Can The Wind Rises save this year's sure-to-be-dismal Best Animated Feature race that Oscars? It's been over ten years since the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki won the Oscar for Spirited Away (2001). His newest film is a biopic, excuse me a "visionary poem", about Jiro Hirokoshi, the man who designed the Zero fighter. 

• Some titles just roll off the tongue. Consider... When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, a film from the director of Police, Adjective, which is about the life of a film director when the cameras aren't rolling. Except, we hope, the camera filming this movie because staring a blank screen wouldn't do.

• They describe that one as "fascinatingly oblique" which could well be film festival speak for "__________" (that's for you to fill in in the comments)

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TIFF13 Lineup Announced

Amir here, with a sore throat after a few hours of screaming in excitement. Like Oscar nomination morning, 'TIFF lineup announcement day' (what a mouthful)  is marked on my calendar in prominent colours every year. It's a day that brings a combination of excitement, endless 'what-to-watch?'  dilemmas, and the dread of having to plan a 40 film a week schedule while still attending to unwanted obstacles like eating and sleeping and day jobs. If you followed this morning's press conference by the festival's directors, you know that only about a quarter of the films that will eventually grace the screens were named and the actual schedule isn't even out yet, but such is the nature of festival going. It gets you going long before the curtains are raised.

TIFF's opening night film: Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate

Naturally, for a festival that screens nearly 300 films every year, the list is an eclectic mix of hotly anticipated Oscar players, critically acclaimed titles from other festivals earlier in the year and auteur titles that have slipped under the radar so far. It is among this latter bunch, for instance, where my most anticipated film of the year, Sylvain Chomet's live action debut Attila Marcel, showed up in the announcement this morning, greeted by a shriek that had my poor co-workers jumping in their seats.

One mild surprise came in the words "World Premiere" that preceded the not-so surprising inclusion of 12 Years a Slave. [more...] 

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Cannes Closing Ceremony. Which Actress Do *You* Own?

I've been watching the Cannes closing ceremonies with Glenn and having a laugh or five. My favorite bits are many but include...

 ...host Audrey Tatou's chirpy "oh la la" before the Palme D'Or

...president Steven Spielberg's weirdly nervous reveals of the winners

...Bérénice Bejo's surprise at winning Best Actress (damn is she ever looking gorgeous). Well, she was getting so good at losing.

...Ang Lee's entrance (why does the mere sight of him always fill me with joy?)

Awesome female directors, stage orgasms and actresses we now own (???) after the jump...

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Cannes, Chastain, Critics

More Cannes prizes to discuss. We'll illustrate with Jessica Chastain at Cannes because.... she pretty! Always prizeworthy

Mmmmmcccchastainy!

poll by twiigs.com

FIPRESCI -International Federation of Film Critics
COMPETITION  Blue is the Warmest Colour by Abdellatif Kechiche (France, 2013)
This three hour lesbian coming of age drama stars newcomer Adele Exarchopoulos and the ever more impressive Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Midnight in Paris ...and many more recently). It's considered a threat for tomorrow's awards from the competition jury, too. Wouldn't you just love to listen to Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Christoph Waltz and Nicole Kidman arguing about its graphic 20 minute lesbian sex scene and whether that's just exploitative titillation or artistically justified storytelling?
UN CERTAIN REGARD  Manuscripts Don't Burn by Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran, 2013)
PARALLEL SECTIONS Blue Ruin by Jeremy Saulnier (USA, 2013), a noirish revenge thriller, which played in Directors Fortnight. Radius/The Weinstein Co. picked it up for distribution

CANNES Ecumenical Jury
WINNER The Past by Asghar Farhadi (Iran, 2013)
COMMENDATIONS Miele by actress Valeria Golino (her directorial debut!) and Like Father Like Son by the acclaimed Hirokazu Kore-eda

Cannes Endeth. Who Picks Up The Laurels?

Mr & Mrs Polanski hit the red carpet for the premiere of their picture VENUS IN FUREach year round about this time I find it greatly amusing that people think they have even the slightest idea who will win the Cannes prizes. It's a mystery - though Guy Lodge does a beautiful job of summing up the possibilities here.

You can tie yourself into absolute knots coming up with scenarios and discarding them. But buzzy frontrunners there are so watch out for the sapphic Blue is the Warmest Color, the Italian entry The Great Beauty, Asghar Farhadi's latest The Past (like his masterpiece A Separation, it's said to be an intricately scripted divorce drama), and the Coen Bros - who have great luck at Cannes -  for Inside Llewyn Davis... and watch for someone french-speaking to win Best Actress: Cotillard (The Immigrant), Bejo (The Past), Seigner (Venus in Fur), Seydoux and Exarchopoulis (Blue is the Warmest Color)

Do you have any hunches? I'm too busy fantasizing about what Nicole Kidman thinks of the competition films to make any guesses but I will admit to great curiousity as to whether the jury will feel any sentimental pull to give Soderbergh something for his final film Behind the Candelabra considering that he began his career with a Palme for sex, lies and videotape (1989). What a story that would be, right?