Cannes: The Official Slate

It's afternoon in Paris but bright and early here in NYC and the official Cannes lineup has been announced. In 28 days Baz Luhrmann and his undoubtedly enormous Bazmark posse will be hitting the Croisette for the opening night film The Great Gatsby.  Immediately following that debut reactions will explode chaotically all over the web with unvariably less art-directed beauty than the fireworks in the film. 

But here's what'll actually be competing for the Palme D'Or and assorted main jury prizes. 

IN COMPETITION

• Behind The Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh)
• Borgman (Alex Van Warmerdam)
• Un Chateau En Italie (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi)
• La Grande Bellezza (Paolo Sorrentino)
• Grisgris (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
• Heli (Amat Escalante)
• The Immigrant (James Gray)
• Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Jeune Et Jolie (Francois Ozon)
• Jimmy P (Arnaud Desplechin)
• Michael Kohlhaas (Arnaud Despallieres)
• Nebraska (Alexander Payne) 
• Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn)
• The Past (Asghar Farhadi)
• Soshite Chichi Ni Naru (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
• Tian Zhu Ding (Zhangke Jia)
• Venus In Fur (Roman Polanski)
• La Vie D'Adele (Abdellatif Kechiche)
• Wara No Tate (Takashi Miike) 

Which of those films are you bullish on for prizes and/or your own impending fandom? Out of competition and more after the jump...

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Fringe! Interview: Alan Brown on 'Five Dances'

David here, with an interview from Private Romeo director Alan Brown on his latest film Five Dances, which opened this year's Fringe! Film Festival in London, a celebration of multiple queer films and artists.

Chip (Ryan Steele) and Theo (Reed Luplau)

‘I purposely wanted to test myself – I wanted to work in a freer environment. And it was terrifying -  purposely so!’ Alan Brown laughs as he describes the genesis of his latest feature. Five Dances received its European premiere as the opening night of the third London Fringe! Film Festival, a volunteer-run festival that has quickly grown in stature since 2011.

Five Dances is Brown’s fourth feature, following the great success of his homo-Shakespeare adaptation Private Romeo, currently available to watch instantly on Netflix. Brown slides together dance and drama as he tells the story of Chip (Ryan Steele), a young dancer who’s moved from smalltown Kansas to the bright lights of New York and joins a small dance company rehearsing Anthony’s (Luke Murphy) new choreography. [more]

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Hot Docs '13

Hi everyone! Amir here, to bring you exciting festival news at month's end. Nathaniel is heading to the Nashville Film Festival as a jury member and for the first time at The Film Experience, we’re also going to cover the Hot Docs Festival, North America’s largest documentary fest, which is held in Toronto. It’s a record breaking year for their ever-expanding programme: there are 205 documentaries screening, 44 of which are world premieres.

The Manor, Hot Docs' opening film

Hot Docs hits two important milestones this year. First, the festival turns 20: “It’s not a teenager anymore” as the director announced at the press conference; it's a major triumph for a niche festival to become a mainstay. Second, Bloor Cinema, the theatre that hosts most of the screenings turns 100! It’s one of Canada’s oldest and most nostalgia inducing cinemas. Had it not been for their incredibly cheap memberships and close proximity to my university, I’d never have seen masterpieces like The 400 Blows, A Space Odyssey, Talk to Her, Rear Window and many, many others on the big screen, so I personally hold it very dear. Hot Docs’ ownership of the theatre, however, means that in recent years the screenings have been mostly limited to documentary films, but I’m certain the festival will acknowledge the theatre’s long history.

For the Oscar-inclined, I should note that Hot Docs' relationship with the awards season isn’t a consistent one, which is understandable given the low exposure many documentaries receive outside the festival circuit. However there are films like The Cove and Hell and Back Again that premiere here and go on to march towards Oscar's red carpet. 

The festival runs from April 25th to May 5th and will open with a Canadian film called The Manor, directed by Shawney Cohen, about his personal experience of growing up in a Jewish family that run a famous strip club in Suburban Ontario.  

Thoughts I Had While Staring at the Cannes '13 Poster

• Does this mean Joanne Woodward is making an appearance at Cannes this year? If so... Yay!

• Not that it will matter to me as I never get to go. *sniffle*

• Rachel Rachel (1968), Paul Newman's directorial debut, is an awesome movie and it's kind of crazy that he didn't really catch the directing bug after it. It was nominated for best picture and it's probably his best (directed) movie... so maybe he knew it was downhill from there and we needed him as a movie star instead?

• Speaking of Rachel Rachel, Estelle Parson is SO much better in that movie than she is in her Oscar-winning role in Bonnie & Clyde.

• If God loved me he'd part the oceanic waters and let me get to Cannes... by which I mean he'd buy me round trip plane tickets and lux hotel accomodations. 

• I'm sure can buy this as a poster but forget that. I want it painted like a mural on my ceiling so I can fall asleep hypnotized by Paul & Joanne every night.

• Now I'm dying to see if there's any vintage photos of Paul & Joanne AT Cannes

• True story: I just finished a box of Paul Newman bran cereal the morning before this poster was released which is a really weird coincidence because I haven't bought a box in years before that one.

• It Newman's Own products helped you look like Paul Newman, I would eat nothing else. 

Berlin Announces Its Winners.

Jose here. The Berlin Film Festival came to its end a few hours ago and the big winners came from Romania and Bosnia. Călin Peter Netzer's Child's Pose won the prestigious Golden Bear, while Danis Tanovic's An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker picked up the Jury Grand Prix as well as the Best Actor award for Nazif Mujic.

The winners as selected by the jury headlined by Wong Kar-wai were:

• Golden Bear: Child's Pose by Călin Peter Netzer
• Jury Grand Prix: An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker by Danis Tanović
  
  Tanović's movie has a real life family recreate an event that almost cost them their son's life. Not only does this sound like an interesting project but it also shows a two year trend in the festival where real life people dramatizing events have taken the main prizes. Last year's Golden Bear winner, Caesar Must Die (which is great and just opened in NYC!) had real life inmates put on a Shakespeare play. Tanović has also had a great record with awards, remember his No Man's Land upset Amélie for the Oscar twelve years ago? We might be in the presence of the first Oscar-y movie of 2013...

Emile Hirsch and Paul Rudd in Prince Avalanche

• Silver Bear for Best Director: David Gordon Green for Prince Avalanche
• Silver Bear for Best Actress: Paulina García for Gloria
  
  García keeps on perpetuating the fantastic renaissance of Chilean cinema. Chile is having a great year so far, with No (which just opened in the US) being perhaps the only movie that could give Amour a run for its money in the Oscar race. Incidentally Pablo Larraín, who directed No is listed as a producer for Gloria.
   
• Silver Bear for Best Actor: Nazif Mujić for An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker

A still from Closed Curtain.

• Silver Bear for Best Script: Jafar Panahi for Closed Curtain
  
  Panahi, who is still banned from film making, shot this in his own beach house and once again managed to smuggle the film out of Iran! Just two years ago, his brilliant This Is Not a Film (which was shamefully left out of the Oscar documentary race) caused a commotion in Cannes after it arrived via birthday cake! Is it just me or is Panahi's life much more interesting/politically inspiring than Argo? Sigh.

• Award for an outstanding artistic contribution: Vic and Flo Saw a Bear by Denis Côté
• Teddy Award: W imię... by Małgośka Szumowska (the Teddy, an LGBT-focused award, is chosen by an independent jury)
  
  On an interesting note, the Special Award winner - Vic and Flo Saw a Bear- also features lead characters who are gay, yet the movie wasn't featured in any of the Teddy selections. Makes for an interesting question on how different jury members vote for different things and spread out the wealth.
  
  
• Special Mentions:
  • Promised Land by Gus Van Sant (whatever happened to this movie Stateside?)
  • Layla Fourie by Pia Marais

In recent years, more than ever before, we've seen an overlap of Berlin and Oscar, particularly in the Foreign Language category. Just last year Berlin gave awards to War Witch and A Royal Affair, both of which ended up being nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category this year. Which of these movies are you dying to see? Have you kept up with Tanovic's work after his Oscar win?