Jane Campion's Gorgeous Cannes Jury

Cannes is but 17 days away and we'll have a TFE team member there this year! Alas it's not me so I'll have to be envious of Diana as she jets off to France in two weeks. We already knew that the brilliant auteur Jane Campion, who regained some cultural caché recently with Top of the Lake (she never lost it with us: Bright Star, hello!) would preside over the jury but this morning the full nine member panel was announced.

Joining Campion this year is a great mix of onscreen talent that happens to include a few people The Film Experience is generally just gaga for from left to right: TFE's favorite Mexican actor ever since Amores Perros, Gael García Bernal;  the future reinterpreter of The Little Mermaid, one of our favorite ladies Sofia Coppola (USA);  former Bond Girl Carole Bouquet will represent the hometeam of France; A Touch of Sin/Platform director Jia Zhangke (China) who I was literally just talking about at brunch yesterday; TFE's favorite Korean actress Jeon Do-Yeon (Secret Sunshine, The Housemaid); the other Mad Dane Drive's Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark); Hollywood star, experimental indie fixture, and Wes Anderson repertory company player Willem Dafoe (USA); and Leila Hatami, the beautiful Iranian star of A Separation.

 I am in a puddle for this jury. LOVE. 

Top Ten: Lars Von Trier's Actors

Jose here with your weekly top ten.

Visionary. Lunatic. Nazi. Enfant terrible. Misogynist. Genius. Poseur.

Lars Von Trier is called so many things that we often forget that he's a terrific director of actors. With his strange sense of humor and world views, his films are often as alienating as they are enlightening, but actors seem to die to work for him. He's led three of his actresses to wins at the Cannes Film Festival and has injected new life into the careers of actors like Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe and now Uma Thurman. Whether you're a fan of his films or not, his contributions to directing actors are incomparable. Now that both of his Nymphomaniac volumes are out in theaters (reviewed), it's a great time to look back

Ten Best Performance in Lars von Trier Films
(after the jump)

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Burning Questions: Does Last Temptation Still Have the Power to Outrage?

Michael C here to reflect on a cinematic milestone. This month marks twenty-five years since the release of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Growing up Catholic I was taught that Jesus was both human and divine, yet the depictions of Jesus I was presented with invariably paid minimal lip service to his human side while emphasizing the holy. Flicks like King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told presented a Christ with all the humanity of a figure on a stained glass window. The Jesus in these movies is forever staring off into the distance, beatific smile on his face, arms outstretched, making proclamations in the gentle tones of an easy listening DJ. Even his words seem to be walking on water.

It wasn’t until college when I saw Scorsese’s version that I finally grasped what it meant for Jesus to have the same frailties as the rest of us, rather than have a Jesus who appears human but who has none of the weaknesses of humanity. The troubled, doubting savior portrayed by Willem Dafoe in Last Temptaion bears little resemblance to the star of those comforting but shallow Biblical pageants. [more...]

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Oscar Horrors: "Max Schreck"

HERE LIES... The actor-or-is-he Max Schreck, brought to vivid undead-or-is-he life by Willem Dafoe in 2000's Shadow of a Vampire, nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

JA from MNPP here. When I started rewatching E. Elias Merhige's 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire the other day for the umpteenth time I was convinced that we first see Willem Dafoe's Max Schreck is when he's first being filmed by Murnau & Company - when he emerges from his deep dark tunnel, aka the hole where Murnau says he found him. I was wrong. The first time we see Schreck is a few minutes earlier when Murnau leaves a caged mink sitting outside said hole as tasty bait and Schreck's hands - white as moles, fingers long and sharp as stalactites - appear in the background and snake their way around the bars, enveloping their innocent prey.

Now I'm not one to talk about how an actor uses their hands - it makes me feel like Guy Woodhouse telling Roman Castavet about that "kind of an... involuntary reach" - but Dafoe's performance demands it...

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Nic's No Nympho

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JA from MNPP here with some sad news - Nicole Kidman has dropped out of her reunion with Danish dare-monger Lars Von Trier for his next flick, the sexually explicit Nymphomaniac. She's too busy playing a Princess to mime unspeakable acts with Shia LaBeouf, it seems. The assumption is that the recently added Uma Thurman is her replacement, but (nothing against Uma) I'm hoping it's another name just added to the cast instead - let's see Willem Dafoe fill in Nicole's shoes!

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