Michael Mann hasn’t been in the director’s seat since 2009’s “Public Enemies,” save for his involvement in HBO’s short-lived series “Luck.” He’s a guy with a stack of potential projects lined up, but it seems he’ll take a little bit of a break from the fray to head up the jury of the 69th annual Venice Film Festival later this year.

Newly installed artistic director Alberto Barbera made the recommendation to the fest’s board of governors, chaired by Paolo Baratta, and they jumped at the opportunity. It will be the first time Mann has ever chaired a jury, interestingly enough. What of this year’s eventual line-up will spark for the man behind such modern classics as “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Heat” and “The Insider?” Better yet, what can we expect to see at the fest?

Earlier this week Barbera dropped a few clues as to what we might see at the Lido this year. In remarks to Italian journalists, as reported by Eric Lyman at The Hollywood Reporter, Barbera mentioned Brian De Palma (“Passion”), Terrence Malick (“To the Wonder”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“The Master”) as possibilities, as well as Italian talents Silvio Soldini (“The Commander and the Stork”), Marco Bellocchio (“Dormant Beauty”) and Gabriele Salvatores (“Siberian Education”).

Mann’s taste is interesting to me. His unranked (as it seems it’s alphabetical) list of the all-time greatest films when polled by Sight & Sound Magazine featured F.W. Murnau’s “Faust,” Alain Resnais’s “Last Year at Marienbad” and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” among others, as well as westerns from John Ford (“My Darling Clementine”) and Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch”). He also included “Apocalypse Now,” “Citizen Kane” and “Dr. Strangelove,” three films firmly on my own such list.

He seems like the perfect kind of guy to head up a jury. In fact I’m surprised this will be his first go at it. And I’m sure his presence will make the proceedings all the more thoughtful.

Recent Golden Lion winners at Venice fest have included “Faust” (Sokurov’s, that is, awarded by Darren Aronofsky’s jury), “Somewhere” (awarded by Quentin Tarantino’s jury), “Lebanon” (awarded by Ang Lee’s jury) and “The Wrestler” (awarded by Wim Wenders’s jury).

Speaking of Ang Lee, he has walked away with the fest’s top honor twice in the last 10 years, for “Lust, Caution” in 2007 and “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005. Should he take “Life of Pi” to the fest, perhaps we’ll have to start considering the possibility of a third.

The 69th annual Venice Film Festival runs August 29 – September 8. Guy Lodge will be on the ground covering for In Contention for a fourth straight year. Greg Ellwood and I, meanwhile, will be filing from the Telluride Film Festival the very same weekend, so it’ll be another busy kick-off to the fall festival season!

(By the way, last year, Mann’s daughter, Ami Canaan Mann, brought “Texas Killing Fields” to the festival. Dad, who produced, was along for the ride, proud and supportive. Here is the Venice press conference for that film from the 68th annual.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW6AGuKp9cg&w=640&h=360]

“As a designer, you have to solve a lot of problems. Even though people are wearing clothes that are supposed to look beautiful, they’ll have to do all kinds of things.” So says leading Hollywood costume designer Colleen Atwood, and she knows whereof she speaks: among the many things her overachieving clothes have done over the years, they’ve won her three Academy Awards, three BAFTAs and an unmatched six Costume Designers’ Guild Awards. Whatever the problem facing a designer may be, she appears to have solved it. And we get to see her in action in two of this summer’s releases: Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows” and Rupert Sanders’s “Snow White and the Huntsman,” for which Kris interviewed her a couple of weeks ago. 

Even at their most lavishly decorative — the busily printed, crinoline-molded Red Queen ensembles in “Alice in Wonderland,” for example, or the copious ruffles and bows of “Little Women” — Atwood’s costumes are almost always active, moving, doing.

Rarely do they hang serenely still upon clotheshorse actors for the camera to admire, though that’s partly because she favors such restless filmmakers as collaborators: Jonathan Demme, Rob Marshall and, of course, Tim Burton have required Atwood’s costumes not merely to prettily drape their mise-en-scène, but to run with scenes, informing and enabling actors’ physicality.

Not for nothing did Atwood get her big break designing stage outfits for a Sting tour in the 1980s — an arena she returned to for My Chemical Romance a couple of years ago. Atwood understands costumes as performance wear, as she also demonstrated with her flashy-but-unfussy dancers’ garb in “Chicago,” which won the designer her first Oscar. And much of her best work is infused with a touch of rock-star excess and drama: check out the glam beetle-wing detailing on one of Charlize Theron’s “Snow White” outfits, as revealed in the gallery accompanying Kris’ interview.

With Atwood’s creativity so prominently on our screens this month, it seemed appropriate to make it the focus of this week’s Top 10 list, as we round up some of the greatest film wardrobes from a career spanning four decades. It turned out to be more difficult to narrow down than I had anticipated: I was surprised to find myself leaving out some of her most ornate (and awards-honored) work in favour of subtler ensembles that serve their films in equally exciting ways. Atwood’s contemporary costuming is particularly underappreciated: amid her sundry period and fantasy explosions, not everyone remembers that, between “Manhunter” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” she created the indelible first impression of Hannibal Lecter for film audiences.

Another unexpected outcome of the list: while Atwood is most famed for her many wild collaborations with Tim Burton, which naturally occupy more than one spot on the list below, her partnership with another filmmaker scored even more prominently. Meanwhile, the most regular of all Atwood’s partners in crime is Johnny Depp, whom the designer has dressed not only for Tim Burton, but in “Public Enemies,” “The Rum Diary” and “The Tourist” too — so the actor scores as many spots on the list as any director.

Check out the list in the gallery below and feel free to rate the selections as you go. Be sure to share your own thoughts, or even your own list, in the comments below.

So, it was the favorite all along. Michael Haneke’s “Amour” looked, on paper, the film to beat before this year’s Cannes Film Festival started. The rapturous critical reception that greeted its unveiling solidified its position as the frontrunner. Only concerns like “too obvious” and “he already has one” prevented some pundits (myself included) from predicting it for the Palme d’Or, and we were clearly overthinking matters.

Tonight, Nanni Moretti’s jury handed Haneke the Palme, making him the seventh filmmaker to win the award twice — and only the second to win for consecutive films. Between the predictability of the decision and the director’s existing laurels, there’s a temptation to complain that the jury has made a safe choice here, an anticlimactically conservative one. (And not just with the Palme: all five of the Competition filmmakers rewarded by the jury tonight have won at Cannes before. It’s a members’ club, all right.) The ideal way to ward off such petty feeling, however, would be to take an immediate second look at “Amour” — to remind oneself of its immaculacy of construction, its delicacy of performance, its simple strength of feeling.

I shall elaborate on this in a full review that I’ve been stalling over for days, but “Amour” is in many respects a remarkable film, and a superior effort to Haneke’s first Palme winner, the not-inconsiderable “The White Ribbon.” That it’s not his boldest or his best is more a tribute to his filmography than it is a slight on this individual work. If not a particularly exciting choice for world cinema’s most elevated honor, it’s a creditable and sure-to-be-enduring one.

Moreover, given the other films from this year’s less-than-vintage lineup that evidently floated the jury’s boat, I’d say the win for “Amour” represents the best possible outcome. Of course I, along with a sizable band of critics at Cannes, had been holding out hope that Leos Carax’s astonishing “Holy Motors,” the most inventive, most stimulating, most beautiful and flat-out best film in Competition this year, would find its way to an award. But Carax’s wildly surreal vision never seemed a likely fit with the sensibility of a mild, humanist filmmaker like Moretti, and sure enough, rumors started circulating days ago along the Croisette that the Italian strongly disliked “Holy Motors,” and that “Amour” and Cristian Mungiu’s strenuous study of faith and friendship, “Beyond the Hills,” were rather more up his alley.

Today’s awards ceremony proved the rumors true: “Holy Motors” was entirely shut out, scoring not even the Best Actor award that even critics less high on the film admitted Denis Lavant deserved for his elastic inhabitation of 11 different personages. (The jury preferred Danish superstar Mads Mikkelsen, who, playing a schoolteacher false accused of paedophilia, anchors Thomas Vinterberg’s melodrama “The Hunt” with dignity and authority. Lavant’s performance, however, is a next-level achievement.) Team Carax can console themselves with the knowledge that “Holy Motors” is now parked with some very fine company: what an opportune time to link to my list of the festival’s greatest losers.

“Beyond the Hills” did indeed turn out to be a jury favorite: it was the only film to take two awards, winning Best Screenplay for Mungiu and a joint Best Actress prize for its young leads, Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan — both first-time actresses. It’s an outcome that vaults Mungiu clear of the feared post-Palme slump, though I have yet to speak to a critic who thinks that his latest — as rigorously composed as you’d expect, but distinctly lacking in dramatic urgency or surprise — is on the level of 2007’s festival darling, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”

The two newcomers are strong, though there were other, more arresting female performances in contention. Also, though neither of them won an award, Moretti made special mention of the outstanding contribution of “Amour” leads Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant to the film, as they took to the stage with Haneke to accept the Palme. One suspects either or both of them would have been directly rewarded were it not for finicky rules, preventing extra awards for Palme winners, that festival organizers appear to have concocted in recent years. 

While many speculated that this year’s Palme race promised a repeat of 2009’s Michael Haneke-Jacques Audiard showdown, it would now appear that Audiard wasn’t even in the running. “Rust and Bone” premiered early in the festival and, while more divisive than “Amour,” garnered some keen critical support, but like fellow French title “Holy Motors,” it was left on the sidelines. (Another prominently frozen-out Frenchman? 90-year-old Alain Resnais, foiled on his sixth attempt at the the Palme.)

Instead, most of the runner-up prizes went to films that hadn’t really been in the critical conversation. For the Grand Prix, effectively the silver medal, Moretti looked to his homeland, handing the prize to Matteo Garrone for his reality-TV satire “Reality.” Garrone took the very same prize home for “Gomorrah” four years ago, and “Reality” was politely reviewed, but few were considering it a major contender.

An even less expected winner was Cannes fixture Ken Loach, whose lightweight, whisky-soaked comedy “The Angel’s Share” snagged the Jury Prize, despite many festival-watchers grumbling about the British veteran receiving his umpteenth Competition berth. As bad luck would have it, I haven’t seen either film — though I’ll catch up with the Loach when it opens in the UK next week. (I caught 18 of the 22 Competition titles: sod’s law dictated that the first and second runners-up would come from the unseen quartet.) 

As predicted, Un Certain Regard favorite “Beasts of the Southern Wild” added the Camera d’Or for best debut feature to its growing trophy cabinet. The most avant-garde win, meanwhile, came in the Best Director category: “Post Tenebras Lux,” Carlos Reygadas’s non-narrative scrapbook of virtual home videos, throbbing orgy scenes, animated devils and schoolboy rugby footage, befuddled most critics at the festival, earning a smattering of boos at its press screening. Handing it a major prize is a gutsy move, one I’d be happier to endorse if I didn’t think the film was mostly unbearable myself.

At this stage, however, who has the energy to argue? You’ve probably already heard that “Post Tenebras Lux” ends with a shot of a man pulling off his own head — so if nothing else, the film deserves props for providing weary critics with their most accurately self-descriptive metaphor of the festival. Au revoir, Cannes. 

Palme d’Or: “Amour,” Michael Haneke

Grand Prix du Jury: “Reality,” Matteo Garrone

Prix du Jury: “The Angel’s Share,” Ken Loach  

Best Director: “Post Tenebras Lux,” Carlos Reygadas 

Best Screenplay: “Beyond the Hills,” Cristian Mungiu 

Best Actor: Mads Mikkelsen, “The Hunt”

Best Actress: Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur, “Beyond the Hills” 

Best Short Film: “Silence”

Camera d’Or: “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” Benh Zeitlin

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We’re only a few hours away from hearing what Nanni Moretti and his motley crew of jurors have decided is the best of the Cannes Film Festival, but in the meantime, a slew of smaller awards announcements have dropped — some more surprising than others.

The most significant of these are the selections of the FIPRESCI jury, a rotating panel of international film journalists whose awards effectively represent the critics’ choice of the festival lineup. As such, their Competition pick tends to fall in line with the established festival buzz that has, by and large, been created by critics. (Sometimes, however, they surprise: “On Tour” wasn’t a critical darling of the fest two years ago, but took the prize anyway.) Rarely, however, do they tap the eventual Palme d’Or winner: they last time they did so was with “The White Ribbon” in 2009, while last year’s FIPRESCI pick, “Le Havre,” received nothing from the festival jury.

This year, one might have expected Michael Haneke’s “Amour” to be a near shoo-in for the FIPRESCI Prize, which has gone to the Austrian twice before at Cannes. His old-age drama is still the critical toast of the festival, topping every poll going — yet the critics instead opted for a lower-profile title, Sergei Loznitsa’s “In the Fog.”

The Belarussian documentary director’s second narrative feature after “My Joy” — which competed here two years ago — is a stately, classical, exquisitely lensed World War Two drama that has received strong reviews since premiering in the later days of the fest. I found it admirable but disappointingly conventional after the spikier black-comic rhythms of “My Joy,” but it’s not hard to see why pundits are now talking it up as a potential Palme spoiler. (My predictions have it taking the Grand Prix.) 

The FIPRESCI jury’s selection from the Un Certain Regard strand was more predictable. In a lineup that didn’t match last year’s for critical hits, established Sundance favorite “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was one of the few titles generating any chatter at all — so it’s no surprise to see it add another trophy to a cabinet that’s going to be very crowded even before it reaches US awards season. (It’s a strong contender for tonight’s Camera d’Or award too.)

Benh Zeitlin’s magical-realist post-Katrina story, however, received no love from the festival’s Un Certain Regard jury headed by Tim Roth, which instead handed its top prize to Mexican director Michel Franco’s “After Lucia,” a study of teen bullying that has been extremely well-reviewed, though I regret to say I haven’t seen it. Indeed, the Un Certain Regard awards are dominated by films I missed (or, in one case, was shut out of): the runner-up Jury Prize went to “Le Grand Soir,” an offbeat comedy from noted Belgian pranksters Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, while Bosnia drama “Children of Sarajevo” received a special mention.

The Un Certain Regard jury doesn’t regularly hand out acting awards, though this time, two Best Actress citations were handed out. One of them was for Emilie Dequenne (who took the festival’s main Best Actress award 13 years ago for “Rosetta”), as a mother-of-four driven to shocking measures in Joachim Lafosse’s highly acclaimed true-life drama “Our Children” — the film I most regret missing at this year’s festival. The second, which can sincerely applaud this time, went to Suzanne Clement, whose performance as a woman in love with a male-to-female transsexual is the standout element of Xavier Dolan’s “Laurence Anyways.”

Finally, we have the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury — a body of Christian film professionals whose award purports to recognize “works of artistic quality which witnesses to the power of film to reveal the mysterious depths of human beings through what concerns them, their hurts and failings as well as their hopes.” That’s another prize you might have thought would be an easy get for the Haneke film — but instead it went to Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s comeback effort “The Hunt,” a drama about a schoolteacher falsely accused of paedophilia, that I happen to be catching up with in exactly half an hour.

Join us later today as I’ll be posting the main award winners as they’re announced, along with some commentary. I’m also not done with festival reviews: I’ll be writing up my thoughts on several titles, including “Amour” and my personal festival highlight, “Holy Motors,” in due course.

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Right, we’re almost there. All 22 Competition films have been screened, the crowds are starting to thin out and France’s rosé reserves are in urgent need of refilling. In less than 24 hours, the 65th Cannes Film Festival will be but a beautiful/punishing/hazy memory, but before we can get to the post-mortems and dissections of what standard of fest it was — my snap verdict: not as good as last year, but contrary to what some doom-sayers will tell you, attending Cannes still beats coal-mining — there’s the small matter of the awards to get through. I say it every year: predicting the jury’s choices is an entirely foolhardy business. Something else I do every year? Predict the jury’s choices.

Are we headed for a repeat of 2009’s Cannes ceremony, where Jacques Audiard and Michael Haneke fought it out for the top prizes? The relative thinness of this year’s Competition suggests that might be the case, with most pundits favoring the happy-go-lucky Austrian to come out on top once more. After the jump, check out my best guesses for which way Nanni Moretti’s posse will lean tomorrow, as well as which films and individuals would get my vote. 

(EDIT: Thanks to Nick Davis for valuable information about the history of the Technical Grand Prize, now called the Vulcain Prize, at the festival. This paragraph has been rewritten accordingly.) The jury doesn’t award a technical prize, but an alternative jury is in charge of the technically-focused Vulcain Prize. Hopefully, this is the place to reward cinematographer Oleg Mutu’s staggering work on two Competition titles, “In the Fog” and “Beyond the Hills.” Moving on to official jury business… 

Best Screenplay

Less often a reward for actual screenwriting prowess than simply the festival’s smallest consolation prize, this tends to go to a film that has only mustered a portion of the jury’s keen support — so it could go to any one of the lineup’s qualified successes or near-misses, as long as it’s reasonably wordy. Rewarding “On the Road” simply for the sheer gumption of finally getting Jack Kerouac’s supposedly unfilmable novel on the screen at all is quite possible, but I’m putting my money on Abbas Kiarostami’s arch, highly conceptual script to “Like Someone in Love,” an inferior companion piece to “Certified Copy.” The film hasn’t set the Croisette alight, but it’s well known that Nanni Moretti is a Kiarostami devotee, so he may push to give the man something. 

Will win: Abbas Kiarostami, “Like Someone in Love”

Could win: “Beyond the Hills,” “The Hunt,” “On the Road”

Should win: Michael Haneke, “Amour”

Prix du Jury 

Officially, this amounts to the bronze medal of the festival, though it’s debatable whether it carries more weight than the Best Director prize, which tends to go to more illustrious names. The Jury Prize, by contrast, is often the likeliest place for newer talents (recently, the likes of Andrea Arnold, Maiwenn and Samira Makhmalbaf) to receive recognition. With that in mind, following the warm reception for “Mud” this morning, I’m betting on the Competition’s youngest director, 33-year-old Jeff Nichols, to triumph here, representing for the five US films in the lineup.

Will win: “Mud,” Jeff Nichols

Could win: “Beyond the Hills,” “The Hunt,” “In the Fog”

Should win: “Paradise: Love,” Ulrich Seidl

Best Director

Flashy direction often impresses the jury when it comes to this award — recent winners include “Drive” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” — but so, often, do names they’ve already rewarded. Jacques Audiard, who checks both boxes, makes the most sense, but since I’m betting on him higher up the list, I’m going to bet on former Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu’s highly poised, methodical direction of moral drama “Beyond the Hills” — work that recycles many of the techniques that dazzled on “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” albeit to lesser effect. Word on the grapevine is that several jury members are highly enamored of Mungiu’s film, so I expect it to take something — this award makes as much sense as any.  

Will win: Cristian Mungiu, “Beyond the Hills”

Could win: Leos Carax, “Holy Motors”; Sergei Loznitsa, “In the Fog”; Jacques Audiard, “Rust and Bone”

Should win: Jacques Audiard, “Rust and Bone”

Grand Prix du Jury

The official runner-up award, this is often where the pre-ceremony favorite for the Palme winds up being recognized while the jury leans in a less expected direction. Jacques Audiard took the Grand Prix with his last film, “A Prophet,” in 2009, so it would be unusual (if hardly impossible) for the jury to keep him perched on exactly the same level three years later. The smart money is on one of the festival’s two most prominent critical darlings, “Amour” and “Holy Motors,” duking it out for the top two awards, but Sergei Loznitsa has been coming on strong since the late screening of his stately WWII drama “In the Fog” — which is admired by many (and just took the Competition FIPRESCI Prize), but might be seen as too austere for the Palme. 

Will win: “In the Fog,” Sergei Loznitsa

Could win: “Amour”; “Beyond the Hills”; “Holy Motors”

Should win: “Amour,” Michael Haneke

Best Actor

Not the strongest field this year, this was an award many had already ceded to veteran Frenchman (and former Cannes winner) Jean-Louis Trintignant for his finely shaded work in Michael Haneke’s two-hander — until his compatriot Denis Lavant burst in out of left field, wowing everyone with his furious inhabitation of 11 different personages in Leos Carax’s surreal provocation “Holy Motors.” This now feels like the safest bet of the night to me, particularly if the film itself is too eccentric to win the jury’s favor in the top categories. I’ve scarcely spoken to anyone who doesn’t want to see this happen.

Will win: Denis Lavant, “Holy Motors”

Could win: Mad Mikkelsen, “The Hunt; Matthias Schoenaerts, “Rust and Bone”; Jean-Louis Trintignant, “Amour”

Should win: Denis Lavant, “Holy Motors”

Best Actress

Trintignant’s chances are also affected by those of his co-star, fellow New Wave veteran Emmanuelle Riva, whose heartbreaking portrait of a proud woman succumbing to the indignities of dementia is both superb in itself and the Cannes equivalent of Oscar bait. There’s a strong possibility the jury could be sufficiently persuaded by “Amour” to recognize it with both acting prizes, but if it only gets one, this will be it. Riva’s competition, meanwhile, is not inconsiderable: crowd favorite Cotillard is outstanding in a similarly awards-friendly role, Margarethe Tiesel, unflatteringly naked for much of sex-tourism black comedy “Paradise: Love,” exudes the kind of “bravery” that routinely impresses juries, while Nicole Kidman’s juicy against-type turn in the otherwise roundly dismissed “The Paperboy” set more tongues wagging than any other actor’s work in the fest.

Will win: Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”

Could win: Marion Cotillard, “Rust and Bone”; Margarethe Tiesel, “Paradise: Love”; Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan, “Beyond the Hills”

Should win: Nicole Kidman, “The Paperboy” 

Palme d’Or

Honestly? I haven’t the faintest idea. The smart money is on “Amour,” which makes the most sense on paper, but I’m resisting the idea. If Michael Haneke hadn’t won for “The White Ribbon” three years ago, it’d probably be in the bag this time, but only one previous filmmaker has won two Palmes for back-to-back films — not that Haneke is unworthy of sharing a record with, uh, Bille August — and his latest, immaculately accomplished though it is, doesn’t represent any particular breakthrough for the director. (I’m reminded of when Mike Leigh, two years ago, was hailed by breathless critics as a frontrunner for “Another Year” throughout the festival, only to be rewarded with zilch from the jury.) “Holy Motors” would be the hip choice, but I have no idea how Leos Carax’s beautiful oddity played with Nanni Moretti, or indeed the majority of the jury. Which is why I’m settling on “Rust and Bone” as a compromise choice: it’s not universally loved, but it’s both stylish enough and emotionally forceful enough to unite two potentially opposed factions on the jury. Seems as good a guess as any — which is another way of saying I’m surely wrong. 

Will win: “Rust and Bone,” Jacques Audiard

Could win: “Amour,” “Holy Motors”; “In the Fog”

Should win: “Holy Motors,” Leos Carax 

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CANNES – A funny thing happened during this morning”s introductory press screening of “Mud” – a snafu that would make an already nervous filmmaker clutch his forehead and represents an unusual malfunction in the well-oiled machine of the Cannes Film Festival.

A little over midway through the screening of Arkansas writer-director Jeff Nichols” third feature, the digitally projected image was suddenly buried under a gaudy griddle of fluorescent green lines, before shots began to overlap and the sound veered out of sync. Swiftly corrected and rewound, the technical error didn”t harm anyone”s enjoyment of what turned out to be a robustly applauded Competition closer, but it did oddly highlight what had been bothering me about this enjoyable, evocative slice of contemporary American classicism: it was the only truly unanticipated moment of the film thus far.

To sling the word ‘familiar” at “Mud,” a languid coming-of-age tale bathed in wild honey and late afternoon light, is really only half a criticism. To some extent, the film wants to you to recognize it: it”s steeped in a rich tradition of American boy-to-man storytelling, its earthy values usually pinned to the rural landscape, that runs from Mark Twain to “Stand By Me.” Both are valid – and, as the film reaches critics beyond the Croisette, sure to be inescapable – reference points for Nichols”s essentially modest but rather self-indulgently extended study of Southern masculinity in both its formative and corrupted states. 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan), the film”s serious-minded but risk-favoring protagonist, is clearly constructed as a kind of modern-day Huckleberry Finn, from his river-dwelling explorer”s sense to his independent moral compass.

Nichols isn”t afraid to bind his narrative to such fixtures of American storytelling, not least because “Mud” is a celebration of certain universal rites of passage that can rarely be moved or bent. If the coming-of-age story seems especially vulnerable to cliché, that”s because there”s little they cover that isn”t immediately identifiable to those of us already – sigh – of age. Sometimes, growing up does come down to something as familiar as a first kiss or a first fight; sometimes, it is soundtracked (in our heads at least) with a musical montage. “Mud” nails such personal details with sweet specificity.

What”s disappointing about it, though, is that the director of a film as queasily questioning as “Take Shelter” – a thriller that provocatively threatened American domestic stability with its own protectiveness – seems here to be letting Hollywood supply the memories of his memory piece. An overblown, almost film-scuppering final act sets aside the subtler personal battles of its adolescent protagonist for broader, blander movie heroism, as the delicate, “Night of the Hunter”-echoing child-adult tensions of its woozily atmospheric first half fall prey to a hail of bullets and multiple happy endings. Like the old scriptwriting adage about not being able to place a gun in a story without eventually pulling the trigger, you can”t introduce Sam Shepard as a crusty ex-CIA marksman without letting him open fire at some point – but the film doesn”t much benefit from the payoff.

We”re introduced to Ellis on a typical summertime jaunt, escaping the house and rowing to an unpopulated river island with his best friend, the more skittish and perplexingly named Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), in tow. They”re in search of an abandoned boat allegedly tossed into the trees by a recently flood; they find it, but with it comes Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a convicted kille occupying the island as his hideout from the law. Despite Neckbone”s misgivings, Ellis agrees to help the shiftily charismatic fugitive engineer his escape, aiding the fixing of the boat and acting as a go-between for Mud and his burnt-out girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon).

Heeding neither Juniper”s warnings about Mud”s volatility nor some pretty pointed symbolism – neither the snake tattoo coiled around Mud”s arm nor the real-life serpents writhing in the waters suggest to him an influence to be avoided in this island garden of Eden – Ellis”s determined investment in this ill-qualified role model points to the child”s acceptance of un-ideal authority and compromised personal values, an adult realization fed in the background by his parents” impending divorce.

It”s a touching arc, supported in empathetic if slightly dewy fashion by the David Gordon Green-style romanticism the film adopts at the outset – Nichols and Green both attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and have shared below-the-line collaborators, but the connection between them has never been so obvious. It”s dissatisfyingly arrested, then, when Mud”s more gung-ho escape becomes the dominant story motor, reducing Ellis to an enabling role and critically defusing any sense of moral consequence at play. Gender politics go to ruin as well, as the film patently sides with the paternal influences in the boy”s life, rather vaguely writing off its female characters – Witherspoon”s justifiably wary collaborator, Sarah Paulson as Ellis”s loving but divorce-initiating mother and Kristy Barrington as the high-school crush who”s happy just playing the field – as selfish obstacles to his plans.

Not as regionally flavorful as Nichols” striking debut, nor as urgently ambiguous or socially nervy as “Take Shelter,” the often impressive “Mud” is the first of the director”s home-oriented dramas to come tempered with nostalgia – not just in the stories it references, but in the unobligated, paternalistic society it seemingly wishes to protect. (With a Beach Boys-bookended soundtrack and only fleeting glimpses of modern technology, you could be forgiven for thinking it”s a period piece.) Sensitively performed across the board – Sheridan, who rather aptly also starred in the thematically companionable “The Tree of Life,” is a real find – and serenely shot by Adam Stone, it is, when not not examined too closely, unexpectedly comforting cinema after the silent alarm of Nichols” previous film. That, however, is as far as its surprises go. 

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“Men in Black III””s U.S. release inspired Kris to post a list of legendary effects/makeup artist Rick Baker”s top 10 contributions to cinema earlier this week. With 12 Oscar nominations and seven wins, Baker is perhaps the most well known and revered man working in his field.

As Kris”s article indicates, the creature effects mastermind”s catalogue of work is both varied and prolific. Baker has run the gamut between horror (“The Ring,” “Cursed”), comedy (“Tropic Thunder,” “Ed Wood,” “The Nutty Professor” and, a personal favorite, “Coming to America”), fantasy (“Hellboy,” “Enchanted”) and of course, sci-fi comedy with the distinctive “Men in Black” franchise.

In his interview with Baker, Drew McWeeny mentions the transformation sequence in “An American Werewolf in London” as a moment that forever altered his perception of what is possible in the world of filmmaking. McWeeny is certainly not alone. For many, the thriller remains, if not the most successful, the most beloved on-screen rendering of the shape-shifting beasts.

Interestingly enough, however, in my own conversation with the artist, Baker confessed that “American Werewolf” makes him “cringe” each time he sees it. He stressed:

“I just know that we can do so much better now. I mean my crew was 18-years-old. They were kids; they were fans who’d never worked on a movie before. I brought one kid from Connecticut and another kid from Texas and we trained them and did stuff that nobody had ever done before, and there are a lot of mistakes. Colors don”t match, things don”t connect, but the concept was good.”

For Baker, the creature and film that stands the test of time is the sweet-natured, mythic Sasquatch Harry from 1987″s “Harry and the Hendersons” starring John Lithgow and Melinda Dillon, which of course topped Kris’ list. As he put it:

“You can look at Harry today and he still holds up. He’s a character in the movie and you feel for him even though he’s rubber. He’s the one I’m most happy with.”

Indeed, the combined efforts of the three puppeteers (including Baker), Kevin Peter Hall”s work inside the suit and Lithgow”s performance against the massive puppet yielded one of the more heartwarming and emotionally gratifying relationships between man and (created) beast on film.

For me, it had always felt that Harry”s face had been designed with Lithgow”s visage in mind as if we as an audience were meant to feel, at least subconsciously, that the two were in some strange way, brothers. Said Baker to that point:

“It’s funny because I designed Harry before I knew that Lithgow was going to be in the movie. The director gave me this whole spiel about how I give my characters souls and nobody else does that. He was kissing up to me and it worked. But we would watch dailies at lunch time and we would be so fascinated by what John Lithgow was doing acting wise that probably a lot of that came through in the performance that we were creating as well.”

Baker refers to his work on Harry as one of those magical moments in cinema where everything comes together. That same spark seems to find its way into the vast majority of his work; sometimes it highlights a strong story and occasionally it shines despite an otherwise weak one.

Audiences can glimpse the latest bits of genius to emerge from Baker”s brain (my favorite of which is Jemaine Clement”s biker-alien Boris the Animal) when “Men in Black III” opens in theaters today.

For year-round entertainment news and commentary follow @JRothC on Twitter.

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Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

It’s been about two and a half months since Oscar Talk went on hiatus. When we last left our heroes the 2011 Oscar season had drawn to a close. That season started in earnest with the premiere of “The Artist” at the Cannes Film Festival. This year’s fest is nearing its end. What clues has it offered for the upcoming awards season? Anne is there with our own Guy Lodge (I’m in Pittsburgh, so we’re kind of scattered). So, on the docket today…

Lee Daniels is back after the strong 2009 showing of “Precious” with “The Paperboy,” which was fresh on Anne and Guy’s minds when we recorded. It seems to be a film yielding split but interesting reactions.

We backtrack a bit to the start of the fest with the opening night premiere of “Moonrise Kingdom,” which I also saw (opening today) and quite liked.

The Palme d’Or seems to be leaning toward films like “Holy Motors,” “Amour” and “Rust and Bone.” There’s discussion on those, as well as Director’s Fortnight winner “No.”

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is also playing the fest in advance of its upcoming summer US opening and capitalizing on already sterling reactions out of January’s Sundance fest. It’s playing Un Certain Regard, but perhaps it’s a threat for the Camera d’Or?

And among other things, Harvey Weinstein is ubiquitous at the fest this year with films like “Killing Them Softly” and “Lawless” in tow and pick-ups aplenty, not to mention a screening of footage from TWC’s upcoming awards slate. But is it as strong a presence as he’s had at recent fests that yielded buzz waves for films like “Inglourious Basterds” and the aforementioned “The Artist?” Maybe not.

No reader questions this week. We’ll be back around the release of “The Dark Knight Rises” on July 20 with another off-season take, so we’ll solicit queries then. Have a listen to the new podcast below. Apologies for the audio issues, as Anne’s situation was less than ideal (and we even lost her for a bit mid-way through). If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. And as always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

“Killing Me Softly” courtesy of Fugees and Ruffhouse/Columbia.
Music from “Beasts of the Southern Wild” courtesy of Fox Searchlight.

Well, that was a, uh, no-brainer. As Cannes winds down, its numerous awards start getting doled out — and the most notable win so far comes for Pablo Larrain’s critics’ darling “No,” which has just taken the Art Cinema Award, the top prize in the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.

The film, a riveting political campaign drama starring Gael Garcia Bernal, was the obvious favorite for the award from its first screening way back on the third day of the festival, where it received rapturous applause and prompted many to ask why it wasn’t in a higher-profile strand of the festival. Since then, it’s had pretty much a dream festival run: reviews were glowing across the board, while word of mouth spread rapidly from that first screening, inspiring many more Competition-focused critics to give it some column inches.

Most thrillingly, US art-film powerhouse Sony Pictures Classics acquired the distribution rights a few days ago, assuring it a wider release than any of Larrain’s previous films and significantly upping its chances of Oscar attention — providing, of course, that Chile submits it to the Academy. All in all, a spectacular outcome for a film that might not have gotten its due in Competition — though you can bet the selectors won’t be caught napping the next time Larrain brings a film their way.

I haven’t been able to dig into Directors’ Fortnight as much as I’d have liked to this year, though I understand from colleagues that it was a stronger-than-average lineup. Still, nothing has eclipsed “No” as the breakout story of this year’s festival sidebars, so the award feels appropriate. The film remains one of my two favorites of the entire festival — if you’ll forgive the smugness, I’m pleased I listed it as one of my five most anticipated titles before Cannes kicked off.  

In other awards news, veteran Algerian director Merzak Allouache’s “The Repentant,” a reportedly deeply moving drama about Islamic fundamentalism, won the Best European Film prize in Directors’ Fortnight. (Before you complain that Algeria isn’t in Europe, it’s a French production.) Cannes regular Nuri Bilge Ceylan took the Fortnight’s Carosse d’Or award, a career achievement prize of sorts.

Meanwhile, over in the Critics’ Week sidebar — far less talked-about than the Fortnight this year, largely due to the prevalence of first-time filmmakers in its lineup — Spanish emigration drama “Here and There,” about a Mexican migrant worker returning home after many years in the US, took the Grand Prize, which went to Jeff Nichols’ “Take Shelter” last year.

Lesser awards in the same strand went to “Sofia’s Last Ambulance,” a comic documentary about paramedics in the Bulgarian capital, Israeli theological thriller “God’s Neighbours” and Argentinian juvenile-delinquent drama “The Wild Ones.”

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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CANNES – Eric Packer, the disaffected, boy-billionaire anti-hero of “Cosmopolis,” has an asymmetrical prostate. We”re told this no fewer than three times in David Cronenberg”s highly garrulous but bullet-cold adaptation of Don DeLillo”s compact 2003 novel, and it can”t just be to tease us with the reassuring prospect that there”s something imperfect about Robert Pattinson”s svelte, slicked, immaculately suited physique – nor just to amuse us with the notion that this sleek automaton of a protagonist has a prostate at all.

Rather, the image – though lifted straight from DeLillo”s novel, like pretty much everything in Cronenberg”s exceedingly faithful adaptation thereof – seems principally an assertion of the hand of David Cronenberg. That is, the funny, fevered, corporeally obsessed Cronenberg of old, the Cronenberg who became his own best adjective and has been only intermittently present, if not always to detrimental effect, in his last three or four films. After his intellectually heady but almost perversely restrained psychology drama, “A Dangerous Method,” debuted only months ago to polite critical applause that nonetheless questioned his edge, the hinky, kinky, defiantly unlovable “Cosmopolis” lands in our laps with bristly self-assurance. “You asked for this,” it seems to be saying, one of the few things unspoken amid its torrent of thematically pointed verbiage. “Let”s see if you really want it.”

A structurally episodic but rhythmically homogeneous essay on our self-inflicted socio-economic decay, set in a Manhattan at once present-day and indeterminately futuristic – DeLillo”s novel was actually set three years before its publication date, but no year is specified here – “Cosmopolis” represents Cronenberg”s first visit to heightened reality since 1999″s “eXistenZ,” which is also, arguably, the new film”s closest tonal cousin in the director”s filmography. We”re not strictly in a fantasy zone (nor, despite the promise of R.Pattz”s dippy prostate, is body horror on the cards here), but the removal from reality is near-total, down to the frozen alien meter with which the cast have been instructed to deliver their scarcely reactive dialogue.

Packer himself appears to reside mostly in the cocoon on his tricked-out white limousine – coming on the heels of Leos Carax”s “Holy Motors” (more on that later), Cannes appears to be telling us that the white limo is where autonomous human identity goes to die. The vehicle’s interior resembles the inverted exoskeleton of a particularly Cronenbergian insect, a moving quarantine chamber in which even the view from the windows appears back-projected. Outside, New York heaves and riots in graffiti-ed disorder as the President visits, a renowned rapper is carried to his funeral, stock markets plummet and rats are hurled about like hand grenades. (Book and film alike open with a Zbigniew Herbert quote: “A rat became the unit of currency.”)

Packer isn”t as indifferent to this end-of-days destruction, and his capitalist complicity with it, as his fellow New York tycoon Sherman McCoy – or even Patrick Bateman – would be, but he does appear sincerely uncomprehending of it. That the life-in-a-day narrative runs on a mission as mundane as travelling across town to get a haircut (one his perfectly pomaded head doesn”t even require) may or may not reflect the head-in-the-sand self-orientation of first-world society that ultimately enables such chaos.

DeLillo”s novel and Cronenberg”s treatment of it are too opaque to warrant fully the terms ‘allegory” or ‘satire,” but their remote, stream-of-consciousness distortion of urban living”s least flattering actualities sound a piercing alarm bell. And not a subtle one, either. “A Specter is haunting the world,” reads a fleetingly glimpsed digital billboard. “The spectre is capitalism.” Within the Cannes Competition, “Cosmopolis” plays almost as a bizarro-world negative of Andrew Dominik”s similarly direct state-of-the-nation address “Killing Them Softly,” though the comic absurdities of Cronenberg”s story world better support such candor.

This is the richest, wittiest, most stimulating material Cronenberg has had to work with in a decade – not for nothing is it his first self-scripted feature since “eXistenZ” – but I’m not convinced the finished film, briskly paced and unapologetically talky as it is, quite makes good on the opportunity. As it stands, the permanently on-message postulating of “Cosmopolis” proves a little wearing, though perhaps more so to jaded Cannes patrons on their tenth day of festival viewing. Cronenberg”s keenness to cram as many of DeLillo”s words into a script that amounts to little more than a sequence of ornate two-person conversations threatens inertia, but the film is never quite dull.

Most surprising is that it”s the scenes within Packer”s limo (notably a febrile sex scene between Pattison and a luminously cameoing Juliette Binoche) that are tautest and most flammable. When the film ventures out onto the street, the energy – or, if not energy, the effectively slippery equivalent inherent in Pattinson”s compellingly blank screen presence – dissipates.

Longtime Cronenberg loyalist Peter Suchitzky”s camera certainly responds best to claustrophobia, its invasive too-close-ups and just-too-high angles lending the whole film the sense of a security surveillance tape from purgatory. Matters are made no less disconcerting by the compressed silent yawns of the sound design and the hovering insinuations of Howard Shore”s spare, electro-influenced score, all of which recall smaller, nastier works from the director, dating all the way back to “Stereo.” Even when we can”t quite decipher its message, there”s a hint of the didactic about “Cosmopolis” that speaks to its late place in the director”s canon; its emptily chaotic environment, however, is classic Cronenbergia, as invigoratingly and reassuringly strange as can be.

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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CANNES – Here are a few things you should know about “The Paperboy,” the humid, lurid and exuberantly ludicrous new thriller from Lee “Precious” Daniels — that is, if the swarm of dumbfounded Twitter chatter about the film hasn’t informed you already. It features Nicole Kidman bitch-fighting a group of sunbathers for the privilege of urinating on Zac Efron’s jellyfish sting, triumphing with the immediately immortal line, “If anybody’s gonna piss on him, it’s gonna be me!” It features Zac Efron dancing in the rain clad in nothing but a pair of tighty-whiteys rapidly losing their opacity. It features a close-up of Nicole Kidman’s panty-covered crotch, as she publicly masturbates in front of three other men during a prison visit. It features Macy Gray as a weary, sass-talking Southern maid, her omniscient narration musing idly on the inappropriateness of a Kidman/Efron sex scene. Another sex scene, meanwhile, is punctuated with cutaways to alligators and grazing hogs.

By this point — and make no mistake, I’ve scarcely skimmed through my notes here — you’ve either made a mental note to be doing charity work in Eritrea when the film hits theaters, or you’re already on the advance-booking hotline. On either score, you should probably trust your instincts. Critics can argue back and forth as to the level of knowingness at play here, but “The Paperboy” is a film built on its distended absurdities and polyester styling – certainly more than Pete Dexter”s cracking, tonally far slinkier, source novel, which comes in for some brutal renovation here, presumably more at Daniels” hand than his own. (Both are credited as co-writers.)

The lusty boos that greeted its Cannes press screening were easily anticipated from the opening credits onward, in which the director”s haphazard shot construction and breathy over-sexing of material that doesn”t much want for kink in the first place come as a virtual taunt to critics not willing to acknowledge much in the way of irony. Daniels”s previous work hasn”t given them much reason to do so, after all: his incomprehensible 2005 thriller “Shadowboxer” remained almost heroically dour in the face of its own extreme stupidity, while his 2009 awards-guzzling breakthrough, “Precious,” assaulted the audience with hopped-up misery porn while weeping over its own humanity.

As a filmmaker, Daniels has therefore managed to forge rather a dramatic career arc while keeping his batty, brazenly ripe signature remarkably consistent. For many the gut-punch realism of “Precious” is a more effective foil for his heightened stylistic hysterics. For this hitherto skeptical viewer, however, such excess commands excess: nasty Southern Gothic noir is as apt a canvas as any for his specious talents, unleashing his latent high-camp sensibility without disingenuously dignifying it. True camp classics tend to be adopted by audiences rather than conceived as such; whatever its failings as genre piece or character study – and in an ugly, waftily resolved final act, Daniels does seem to lose authority over his own bad taste – “The Paperboy” might be a rare, calculated exception.

The story, as if either the film”s pre-booked sympathizers or pitchfork-wielders could care less, is heavily spiced gumbo, pitched halfway between florid Tennessee Williams perversion and the more terse moral view of private-eye pulp: in the splendidly named town of Lately, Florida, seemingly slack-jawed bimbo Charlotte (Kidman) enlists a trio of investigative reporters (most prominently, and implausibly, Efron) to clear the name of convicted-killer penpal Hilary (John Cusack) she has just agreed to marry. Things get messier when Efron”s unseasoned kid reporter falls hard for Charlotte, as his cynical maid Anita (Gray) watches gloomily from the sidelines, her voiceover adding more in terms of zonked atmospherics than enabling of the simple-enough plot. (“So Hee-lary took Charr-lotte to the shwaaamp,” she explains huskily, as if recounting gossip rather than telling a story.)

This uncluttered narrative allows ample storage space for the pungent clutter of Daniels”s own fetishes, which appear to range from synthetic fabrics to late-1960s Hollywood cinema in the cautiously experimental, post-Antonioni vein – Joe Klotz”s choppy, roulette-wheel editing rhythms make a lot more sense here than they did in “Precious” – to Zac Efron himself, who accepts his rather inflexible role as Vexed Ken Doll with markedly good grace. There”s also some thick commentary on racial and sexual discrimination in immediate post-MLK America that acquires a kind of burlesque resonance through sheer blunt repetition, despite (or perhaps because of) the way they curdle with the more salacious trivialities of the A-narrative.

Finally, Daniels again proves that even with his mind seemingly on his own shopping list of affectations, he can tease some remarkable performances out of his actresses in particular: Kidman, relishing the chance to allow most of the character to the surface for a change, is more sexually strident and earthily funny than she”s been since “To Die For,” but in her subtly brokered exchanges with Efron, smartly avoids patronizing Charlotte as a gone-to-seed Lolita. Gray, meanwhile, adds another spacily timed, implication-heavy, hazily sad character sketch to her growing gallery of striking miniatures – you”d say it”s a performance in search of a more coolly accommodating movie, but the ballsy, bonkers, sporadically dreadful but obnoxiously alive one Daniels has made thrives on all the conflicting textures it can get.

CANNES – “The only people that interest me are the mad ones,” mumbles Sam Riley’s Sal Paradise on more than one occasion in “On the Road” — directly lifting, of course, one of the most quoted lines from Jack Kerouac’s insistently quotable novel of the same title. A one-time manifesto of sorts for independent living that railed against authority, capitalism and good old-fashioned punctuation in equal measure, the book has, for its pains, been appointed the bible for shiftless college students the world over, most of whom would claim to share Paradise’s (and, by extension, Kerouac’s) disdain for the the functional, the rational, the balanced. 

It’s hard not to wonder, then, what Paradise and Kerouac would have made of Walter Salles’s assiduous, attractive and somewhat airless adaptation of “On the Road,” none of the virtues of which — its methodical loyalty to the material, its meticulous visual construction, even its strategic demographic tailoring — come from the repertoire of the mad. Salles and his “Motorcycle Diaries” screenwriter Jose Rivera have fashioned a distinctly unspontaneous film from a text about going where the road takes you, a paean to madness that never once loses its mind.

That’s not to dismiss the risks that have been taken in realizing this project at all — a structurally elastic 140-minute film about driving, drifting and indiscriminate fucking is no “Twilight” sequel, even if it does star Kristin Stewart — but watching the finished result 44 years after executive producer Francis Ford Coppola first set the wheels of an adaptation in motion, you wonder if the outcome could ever have been worth the bother.

To their considerable credit, Salles and Rivera have politely — perhaps too politely — silenced the widely prevalent if largely unsupportable notion that this particular novel is “unfilmable”: here, before our very eyes, is something that sounds very much Kerouac and, ye gods, looks very much like a film too, with common rhythms and textures tying together both those obligations. Hollywood has, after all, inadvertently adapted “On the Road” for the screen countless times before, given how extensively Kerouac’s Beat philosophy has moulded the politics and structure of the classic American road movie: the adventure-seeking bikers of “Easy Rider” are really just Dean Moriartys with more fringe on their jackets, while the final-straw feminists of “Thelma and Louise” may be forced into their escape more than Dean and Sal, but are equally driven by an anti-domestic epiphany. 

Perhaps it’s the book’s general bleeding into any number of pop-culture avenues, then, that makes the final arrival of a straight adaptation feel so much less totemic than this faintly self-awed film purports to be: even if it weren’t quite as lacquered and anachronistically nostalgic as Salles’s involvement always suggested it would be, could it ever feel truly vital or dangerous? Between intervening revolutions like feminism, civil rights and simple rock-and-roll, much of what was once incendiary about Kerouac and his peers’ stance has passed into the accepted liberal ideal. That doesn’t make it irrelevant, but it does require closer contextual examination and contrast to spark it into rhetorical life.

Rivera’s faithful if judicious paring of the novel offers only teasing flashes of such thinking — most of them evident in its cheerful approach to sex. Its concern with the fluid sexuality of dimly yearning social malcontent Dean (Garrett Hedlund) feels particularly contemporary, frisky even, with the scarcely-concealed strain of homoerotic desire between him and Sal still a malleable point for contemporary audiences. It’s no surprise that the opaquely charismatic Dean powers the film more than Sal and his irksomely overdetermined narration (which some of us would argue Kerouac laid on a bit thick even in 1951), though that has at least something to do with the casting: the loose-limbed, heavy-lidded Hedlund may be working less hard than British actor Riley (here adopting the same flailing affectations and perma-sneer that scuppered his work in “Brighton Rock”), but his performance demonstrates a better ear for jazz.

The supporting cast is an asset: Viggo Mortensen repeats his recent party trick is livening up inert prestige fare with independent eccentricity, Kirsten Dunst provides some real unvarnished feeling as Dean’s forever-abandoned good girl and, yes, Kristen Stewart acquits herself well as his livewire child bride. Still, the enjoyable parade of famous faces suggests Salles himself is in need of distractions on this episodic trip; daunted by the freeform possibilities of Kerouac’s “purity of the road” celebration, he’s opted for something a little more pre-sliced.

The overarching chaos of Kerouac’s narrative, with its multiple unfinished trips splintering their participants a little more each time, registers merely as pedantic structural crowding here, its stops and starts too closely sequential for the characters’ building anguish to make itself felt. Without a hint of unruliness in Salles’s direction or even Eric Gautier’s exquisitely honeyed cinematography, watching other people’s freedom becomes about as unrewarding a practice as hearing about other people’s dreams. “On the Road” can be filmed, and faithfully at that; transferring Kerouac’s treasured madness to the screen may take another go or two.

http://players.brightcove.net/4838167533001/BkZprOmV_default/index.html?videoId=4913915643001

I have a feeling the freshly debuted trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” is going to draw a line in the sand. On one side, those a bit stricken by the apparent tone and visual direction the “Moulin Rouge!” director has taken the F. Scott Fitzgerald story. On the other, those who feel the material is getting a unique and vivid spin that could be good for it.

Or maybe there’ll be in-betweeners. Because now that I think about it, I’m kind of on both sides of things. Maybe if you liked what Luhrmann did to Shakespeare in “Romeo + Juliet” (I did), you’ll be on board for this. Maybe it’s not so reductive. But I’m intrigued.

And this is the note the director plays. I actually thought he might play a different one this time, but nope, this is definitely a Baz Luhrmann joint. The (melo)drama is high. The people are pretty. The set and costume designs from his wife, Catherine Martin, are eye-popping. This will be a feast for the eyes.

DiCaprio is teaming up with Luhrmann for the first time since the aforementioned 1996 Bard adaptation. Best buddy Tobey Maguire is in tow this time, along with Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton, among others.

Warner Bros. is distributing, and already the studio looks to have a full plate of potential offerings this season. In addition to Luhrmann’s film, there is Ben Affleck’s “Argo” and Ruben Flesicher’s “Gangster Squad,” which debuted trailers recently; Robert Lorenz’s “Trouble with the Curve,” which might as well be called Clint Eastwood’s “Trouble with the Curve”; Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which drew a lot of harsh skepticism at the recent Las Vegas CinemaCon for its use of 48 fps technology; and, oh yeah, “The Dark Knight Rises,” Christopher Nolan’s superhero denouement that already has high awards season expectations in the wake of “The Dark Knight”‘s 2008 success.

So how will “The Great Gatsby” fit into all of that? We’ll see in December, as the film opens on Christmas Day — the same day as another DiCaprio vehicle, in fact: Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”

Check out the new trailer for “The Great Gatsby,” courtesy of Apple, via the embed at the top of this post.

Hitting theaters this weekend is “Men in Black III,” the latest installment of a sci-fi comedy franchise that has been box office gold the world over. This one has been mired in whispers of behind-the-scenes crises and near shut-downs, but what matters is what’s on screen. And what’s on screen is another showcase from film makeup designer Rick Baker.

Baker is seemingly the face of film makeup, his rockstar look and landmark-laden portfolio adding to the mythic image of one of the medium’s top tier talents. But Baker is a fan like the rest. His accomplishments in the industry stretch back to second unit work in “Star Wars” (post-production additions on the famous Cantina scene being his big moment) and further.

Oh, and he has 12 Oscar nominations and seven wins to show for himself. Naturally, then, there’s plenty of fodder for a new installment of the lists!

Baker’s creations have shaped modern genre filmmaking to a significant degree. How does one even begin to count the ways? Indeed, for me, this has been one of the more difficult collectives to narrow down for this feature as of late.

Left out of the equation are top-notch, Oscar-nominated aging assignments in films like “Life” and “Click.” Superhero prosthetics in “Hellboy” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” deserve attention but nevertheless have significant reference sources (something that ended up also counting slightly against Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” probably the #11 entry on the list).

Then there are intriguing accents to films like John Carpenter’s “Starman” and David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome,” which show Baker hard at work pushing the boundaries, finding a rhythm in his craft and learning along the way through powerful, one-of-a-kind expressions. They can’t go without at least an honorable mention.

But there have to be 10. Well, 11, actually, since a tie seemed appropriate in one slot, but enough foreplay. Let’s see how things panned out for the master of makeup.

Check out the list in the gallery below and feel free to rate the selections as you go. And as always, offer up our thoughts and/or your own list in the comments section below if you like.

In the mid-Cannes checkup piece I posted yesterday, I wrote that the festival sidebars (Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, plus a handful of stray special selections) haven’t produced much in the way of a word-of-mouth sensation. The clear exception I noted was Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s “No” — my own favourite film of the festival thus far — which I saw on the third day of the festival and was far from alone in admiring. (When even self-confessed sidebar sceptic Jeff Wells has checked it out and is singing its praises, you know word has officially got round.)

So I’m thrilled to hear that the positive buzz for “No” has paid off handsomely in the distribution racket, as the US rights to the film have been picked up by arthouse major Sony Pictures Classics, whose record of shepherding foreign-language fare Stateside currently stands second to none. (For starters, they’ve been behind five of the last six winners of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.) That’s a major profile boost for Larrain, whose last two films, “Tony Manero” and “Post Mortem” (with which “No” forms a thematically-linked trilogy), were distributed in the US by the far lower-profile outfit Kino Lorber. (“Post Mortem” hit theaters only last month on a highly limited release.)

In my review of “No” last week, I noted that the film, a sly, moving study of the ad men behind rival political campaigns in the crucial 1988 referendum that ended Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, was a more accessible proposition than either of Larrain’s previous jet-black comedies, and not just because it features a star name in leading man Gael Garcia Bernal. (Bernal, incidentally, does his best work in years here.) As a celebration of democratic victory, “No” is far the more rousing and optimistic work, though it’s still colored by Larrain’s smart, offbeat humor — so good on Sony for taking a chance on a work that still isn’t the easiest of arthouse sells.

Meanwhile, if Chile submit the film as their Academy Award entry this year — and they’d be foolish not to — its blend of the personal and political is something that could well appeal to more adventurous voters in the foreign-language branch, particularly with Sony’s promotional powers on its side.

For my part, I’m just glad to see Larrain getting the platform he deserves, particularly after the Cannes selectors’ baffling exclusion of the film from either the Competition or Un Certain Regard lineup. After “Post Mortem” played in Competition at Venice two years ago, we had reason to think he’d earned that status — so the relative demotion of his follow-up to the Directors’ Fortnight provoked fears that the film was somehow a disappointment. (Not that I let that stop me from placing it among my five most anticipated films of the festival. I’m a firm fan of both “Manero” and “Mortem,” having placed the latter among my top 10 films of 2010.)

As it turns out, “No” looks certain to be the most well-received and widely-seen film of Larrain’s career to date — a happy outcome for all concerned, and a necessary reminder to Competition-fixated media that it’s worth venturing to the other end of the Croisette occasionally. 

Check out my “No” review here.

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CANNES – “I like to kill them softly,” Brad Pitt rumbles midway through Andrew Dominik’s efficiently blood-dampened thriller, his thumb and forefinger taking a rare vacation from the trigger to indulge in some hitman-Zen chin-stroking. “From a distance, too far away for feelings.” It’s the most immediately quotable line in a screenplay knotted with knowingly flavorful dialogue, and not just because it inadvertently supplies the film with its title, changed late in the game from “Cogan’s Trade” — the well-regarded 1974 pulp novel by George V. Higgins at its source. 

Rather, it’s the line that most neatly encapsulates the poised pop poetry and, thanks especially to its eventual eponymic status, the on-the-nose emphases of “Killing Them Softly” as a whole, its musical connotations handily underlining the film’s scuffed-suede 1970s textures into the bargain. (Make no mistake: Dominik may have ostensibly updated Higgins’s story to the present — or rather, the not-yet-unpacked period of 2008 — but his melancholic-chic tone here, modulated to just the desired degree of rawness, is all Roberta Flack and no Lauryn Hill.) What it doesn’t evoke, however, is the filmmaking itself. Nothing in this coldly enjoyable and relentlessly classy genre trip is killed softly at all: not the broken-bone crunch of the sound design, not the uproariously ripe work of its dream supporting ensemble and certainly not Dominik’s bewilderingly literal makeover of Higgins’s genre runaround into a portentous essay on capitalist failings in cusp-of-Obama America.  

Between its hat-in-hand referencing of the output of such tough-guy stylists as Michael Mann and William Friedkin, its balletically orchestrated explosions of the red stuff and, of course, that cred-boosting Cannes Competition berth, it seems inevitable that collective critical shorthand will come to label “Killing Them Softly” this year’s “Drive,” but those already forging the connection seem to be missing a crucial rift in the films’ sensibilities.

Where Nicolas Winding Refn’s kandy-kolored fast-car fantasia was actively, even abrasively proud of the fact that it had nothing going on upstairs — that it was about nothing so much as the movies themselves — “Killing Them Softly” doesn’t miss a single moment to tell us how much more is on its mind than its nasty little kill-list narrative and expert, storm-colored styling. Dominik purposefully announces that the film is About Things as early as the disorienting opening title sequence, blunt blackouts slicing its establishing shot of a young hoodlum sauntering through concretest Orleans, with archive audio of yet-to-be President Barack Obama announcing his plans for social and economic reform forming the broken soundtrack. A glimpse of an election campaign billboard in the background assures us that Obama’ voice is no incidental atmospheric presence: whatever unsavory gangster carnage lies ahead in the 100-odd minutes to come, it’s a safe bet that it’ll reflect on the still-festering wounds of Bush’s capitalist America, and whether or not any significant help has been at hand in the intervening Obama presidency. There will be blood. Oh, and there will be Metaphors.

As an opening gambit, this is ballsy and forthright enough to hold skepticism at bay for the film’s vastly entertaining opening act, which teasingly delays the arrival of star Brad Pitt’s hired-killer protagonist to immerse us in the wry foolery of his eventual targets. The wiry opening-credits figure turns out to be Frankie (Scoot McNairy, unrecognizably nasal and nervous after his “Monsters” breakthrough), a dumb miscreant recruited by Johnny (Vincent Curatola), a heavy in Tony Soprano leisurewear, to execute a mob poker-game heist that will frame Ray Liotta’s rival boss as the culprit. Joining Frankie for the ride is walking-bedsore Australian junkie Russell, deliciously played by Ben Mendelsohn in a manner that suggests his “Animal Kingdom” brute somehow faked his death, escaping across the Pacific on a raft of matchsticks and meth.

Frankie and Russell’s deadbeat chemistry as they shoot the breeze about girls, drugs and goat-fucking is so grimly engaging that it’s rather a shame when they actually have to set the plot in motion by pulling off the heist, whereupon the film’s dour political agenda comes once more to the fore. This time it’s outgoing President Bush who gets an inadvertent cameo, spouting his bullish belief in the American economy via a TV screen as the dirty rob the dirty, the irony almost too thick to qualify as such. It’s here, followed by the wincingly obvious musical cue that accompanies the introduction of Brad Pitt’s inverse law-keeper — Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around,” possessed of the lyric, “And behold, a white horse” — that Dominik’s thematic directness reads less brazen and more tone-deaf, a surprising miscalculation from a director whose previous film, the impossibly lovely anti-Western “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” erred on the side of the opaque.

Pitt’s arrival actually signals a downturn in narrative momentum, as his predictable picking-off of hapless lowlifes comes accompanied by a series of doomily philosophical if wittily written two-character exchanges about the general nothingness of everything, with yet more election-year references underlining its nihilistic political surtext. It’s crisper and punchier than its talkiness might suggest — again, unexpected after the luxuriant dawdling of “Jesse James” — but its one-note pessimism is a mite wearing. Compensation comes in the many-headed form of the film’s untethered male supporting players, for whom Pitt’s blandly menacing lead turn acts as an effective shock absorber: alongside Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini takes best-in-show honors as a fellow hitman gone grossly to seed, but Ray Liotta, Sam Shepard and Richard Jenkins all maximize their minimal screen time.   

This distasteful, wholly male company of thieves get more sheen than they deserve from Dominik’s expectedly immaculate mise-en-scène, their deaths dignified by somewhat derivative slow-motion bullet aerobics, the exquisite spray of blood and glass accompanied by the kind of ironically genteel music choices (“Love Letters,” “Paper Moon”) none of these guys would make themselves.

Working in an infinite palette of slate, gifted Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser (“Bright Star”) isn’t required to conjure the doll’s-house beauty Roger Deakins created for “Jesse James,” settling instead on a more grubbily gorgeous urban aesthetic that supports the film’s narrative and stylistic nods to the hard-edged, masculine America of the 1970s, evident too in such details as Pitt’s slimy pompadour and safari-cut leather jacket. Indeed, were it not for the discreet presence of cellphones and the ceaseless hammering of the 2008 electoral context, it’d be easy to assume the film is located in the 1974 of Higgins’s novel. Quite how Dominik’s split instincts of period homage and contemporary allegory are intended to serve each other is hard to gauge: “Killing Them Softly” pleases as an exercise in both surface style and tangy verbiage, but it’s the rare genre entertainment one wishes would think a bit less. 

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It’s generally a sign of a lukewarm film festival when the principal point of conversation across the Croisette is not which A-list auteur just set the Competition afire, which out-of-competition sleeper is one to watch for future months, or even the surreal sight of ill-fated US “X Factor” judge Cheryl Cole walking the red carpet for, of all things, the new Michael Haneke movie, but the rather more mundane topic of the weather.

Admittedly, it’s quite some weather: where festivalgoers can usually count on catching a bit of a tan as they queue up in balmy Mediterranean conditions for the day’s hot ticket, this year we’ll merely settle for staying dry. It is, according to those in the know, the wettest Cannes on record — which makes the prospect of sitting in a dark room watching even the most gruelling festival fare a more appealing prospect than usual. If you can get into the room in the first place, that is. Whether it’s down to increased accreditation numbers or this year’s Hollywood-heavy lineup, the festival feels more crowded this year than in either of the previous years I’ve attended — a reality that hit yesterday as I was turned away from three consecutive screenings, as the white- and pink-badged elite filled the theaters before the lowlier classes could get a look-in. 

That, however, has merely been a side frustration to a festival that, so far, has been a tad short on truly buzz-worthy films. With today marking the midpoint of the 12-day festival, 13 of the 22 Competition films have now been unwrapped — and while several of them have been well-received, a bona fide sensation has yet to emerge. As indeed does a truly spectacular flameout, or a controversial lightning-rod of the variety that Lars von Trier or Gaspar Noe can be counted on to produce. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — the politeness of this year’s hits and misses so far has arguably resulted in friendlier, more measured critical conversation than usual — but with six days to go, we’re still waiting to be surprised.  

Certainly, the names currently leading the Palme d’Or conversation are very drawn from the pool of usual suspects. “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s supremely accomplished drama about the indignities of mortality, is the film that has most united critics thus far, prompting much speculation that it could land the austere Austrian formalist his second straight Palme, just three years after “The White Ribbon” scooped the same prize. I’ll save my thoughts on the film for a later piece, but based on what we’ve seen so far, it’d be a worthy if slightly safe winner: typically immaculate, and more humane than his recent run of works, it nonetheless doesn’t quite represent peak form for a director whose standards are higher than most. A likelier outcome, I think, is a brace of acting awards for its marvelous veteran stars, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva — which would be an appropriate way of rewarding the film without over-filling Haneke’s cup.  

Just behind Haneke on the chart of Palme frontrunners is Jacques Audiard — yes, it could be 2009 all over again, when “The White Ribbon” pipped Audiard’s “A Prophet” to the top prize. Audiard’s latest, dazzling, dark-hued misfit romance “Rust and Bone,” has more detractors than “Amour,” largely because it’s the more formally aggressive work — but its champions, particularly within the European critical community, are passionate and plentiful, and the film has retained its buzz since screening on Day Two of the fest. (It’s even supplied Cannes 2012 with its unofficial theme song in the chlamydia-catchy form of Katy Perry’s “Firework.”) At this point, it’s hard to imagine it leaving the festival empty-handed, whether the beneficiary is beloved star Marion Cotillard or Audiard himself.

Beyond those two giants, every other Competition film that’s screened so far comes with some caveat or another. “Moonrise Kingdom” is another of the festival’s most well-liked titles, and served its opening-night purpose dandily of getting everyone in a good mood for the tougher stuff to come — but it’s surely too lightweight for the Palme. (Already, it feels as if it screened a month ago.) The only other American film to have screened in Competition, “Lawless,” seems even less likely: mainstream genre films are rarely embraced by festival juries, and reviews haven’t been ecstatic enough to lift it out of that ghetto. (That goes for any potential Oscar attention too: classy late-summer hit status appears to be the ceiling on this one.)

A rumor was doing the rounds at a party tonight that the jury was wowed by Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt,” a drama about a kindergarten teacher  accused of paedophilia. I haven’t seen it yet myself, but while reviews have been mixed, those who like it are very keen indeed — even if talk of the jury’s affections are exaggerated, pencil in star Mads Mikkelsen as a Best Actor possibility.

The only other film about which I’ve heard word of the jury’s response is Cristian Mungiu’s “Beyond the Hills,” which apparently prompted a standing ovation from at least two of the nine jurors. The Romanian’s follow-up to the Palme d’Or-winning “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” has enjoyed a splintered critical reception, opinions ranging from “masterpiece” to “crushing disappointment” — but not a soul seems to think it’s in the same league as “4 Months.” (I’m just about in the pro camp myself, though more on the strength of its formal construction than its slightly self-regarding moral languor ) It’d be a perverse choice of Palme winner — but if the film does indeed have a small core of jury support, Best Director or a Jury Prize seems likely for a film in which Mungiu is really the star.

Abbas Kiarostami is another auteur who has, for many critics, put both feet wrong this time: his enigmatic, Tokyo-set puzzler “Like Someone in Love” was hyped by many as the film to beat before the festival (with many taking note of jury president Nanni Moretti’s on-the-record adoration for the Iranian’s work), but reportedly received the loudest boos of the festival so far. (As my Variety review explains, I found the film a bit of a trifle, though an extraordinarily well-made one.) Even if Moretti’s loyalty to Kiarostami sticks, it’s hard to imagine the majority of the jury agreeing with him.

This morning, 89 year-old Alain Resnais was the second straight veteran in Competition to receive a hard time from the press: the pedigree of “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” made it a mighty Palme d’Or threat until it actually screened, with the consensus this morning being that it’s too specialized, too archly rooted in French theatrical tradition, to win over many non-Gallic viewers. 

Other films already screened in Competition include such as Matteo Garrone’s “Reality,” Ken Loach’s “The Angels’ Share,” Hong Sang-soo’s “In Another Country,” Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Love” (for which I seem to have more time than others) and seemingly every Cannes critic’s default choice for worst of the fest, Yousry Nasrallan’s dreary political soap opera “Liberty.” None of them seems much of a threat for the Palme; indeed, it’s the Nasrallah name that has been bandied about most for the annual Cannes critics’ sport of saying who does and doesn’t belong in Competition.

If Nasrallah, most would agree, hasn’t earned a spot in future Competition lineups, one whom many critics would like to see there instead is Pablo Larrain, whose excellent political comedy “No” has been building positive word-of-mouth on the Croisette since its first screening on Thursday. It is one the few notable stories to have emerged from this year’s Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week selections, with critics emphasising the accessibility of its story and a return-to-form performance from Gael Garcia Bernal. Un Certain Regard, meanwhile, is particularly quiet this year — after last year’s impressive selection included “Miss Bala,” “Elena” and “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” only “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which already had heat from Sundance, is generating equivalent buzz. It’d be nice to see these strands, too, receive a jolt in the next six days, with a little sunshine to go with it. Until then.  

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A few days removed from seeing Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” and the Cannes brouhaha that came with its opening night premiere last week, I have to say, I’m looking forward to seeing it again. It’s just so charming in all the ways Anderson’s previous films are meant to be, but, for me, aren’t quite.

“The Royal Tenenbaums” is so far his most successful film financially and critically, but after giving it another look recently, I found I liked it even less than I did back in 2001 (which already wasn’t much). I’d put “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” on that lower tier as well. Both films are just overwhelmingly affected and don’t strike the balance his better works do.

I’m mostly okay with “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “The Darjeeling Limited.” The former is a fun romp and the latter has a lot of soul. But “Rushmore” and “Bottle Rocket” have always been tops for me, because the emotion just feels much more authentic. “Moonrise Kingdom” can count itself in that territory, I feel.

One of the stars of Anderson’s latest, Bill Murray, is no stranger to the director, having collaborated with him on all but one of his films. And in “Moonrise Kingdom,” he plays on the fringe with just the right accent, while Bruce Willis and, most especially, child stars Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, get the more substantial performance showcases.

With that in mind, Focus Features has released a nifty little featurette with Murray giving a tour of the film throughout a few of its various sets. It’s a great opportunity for some wry Murray humor. “I play a man in the film,” he says simply, before quipping that he still hasn’t seen “Bottle Rocket” (the one Anderson film that didn’t feature the actor).

In introducing some of the other actors featured in the film, Murray offers: “Edward Norton, he does a lot of psycho work. He’s playing against type. Bruce Willis, playing a policeman. Type cast, I guess. Tilda Swinton’s in this one, too. She’s tall. She’s Scottish. She’s pretty. She can do whatever she wants.”

What the three-minute clip is really great for, however, is showcasing Adam Stockhausen’s production design, which is some of the best seen on an Anderson film yet (and was also noted in Guy’s less enthusiastic review). There will be a lot of period pieces in play this year, so contemporary design will, as ever, have a tough time making a go of it. But I truly think Stockhausen’s work and Kasia Walicka-Maimone’s costumes deserve some serious consideration. The latter in particular does a great job of reflecting the characters visually.

And Murray himself might even pop up in the Focus awards mix, though not for this film. He’s playing FDR in Roger Michell’s “Hyde Park on Hudson,” which debuted a trailer last week.

Have a look at the Murray-guided tour below. “Moonrise Kingdom” opens this Friday, May 25.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-8OOvf1NPY&w=640&h=360]