• How did Rapunzel become “Tangled?” Directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard set the record straight. [Inside Movies]
• Peter Sciretta posts alternate, unused poster artwork for “Inception.” [/Film]
• Jenelle Riley talks “The Fighter” with the film’s prickly star, Christian Bale. [Backstage]
• Scott Cooper set to remake “Carancho.” [Deadline]
• Erik Childress looks forward to the self-aware “legitimate opinions” of critics groups. [Cinematical]
• John Lopez writes up Oscar’s longshots. [Little Gold Men]
Cannes Film Festival
The presence of Doug Liman’s name in the Cannes competition lineup has inspired many an unkind crack from an idle critic — this writer couldn’t resist a couple himself. There can’t have been many filmmakers to enter that lofty club immediately after a film as uniformly reviled as “Jumper,” an inept high-concept blockbuster that drowned Liman’s flip, clever-clever personality in lumbering effects and noise.
Coming to Cannes, then, he has a dual point to prove: not only that he can hold his own among arthouse titans, but that he can even stand up against his own previous (now rather distant) best work.
Has he succeeded? Well, yes and no. Liman has chosen something of a lazy shortcut back to respectability: a biopic, of an honorable-lefty martyr figure, with just enough Washington-thriller varnish not to frighten the horses. It’s certainly a curious choice as the lone representative of U.S. cinema in the world’s foremost international film contest, but it’s oddly appropriate, too: this is down-the-middle Hollywood craftsmanship, short on innovation and revelation, but effective and engrossing with it. For better or worse, there’s nothing else like this in Competition.
(This is the first of three Cannes preview pieces we’re running before my festival coverage begins on Wednesday. The first two will break down the 18 films in the running for this year’s Palme d’Or; the third will comb through potential highlights that lie outside the Competition, as well as listing my own most anticipated titles of the festival.)
The groans were almost audible from across the Atlantic as Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux unveiled this year’s Competition lineup, unusually trim at 16 (eventually 18) titles, and shorter than expected on big-ticket auteurs. Where was Terrence Malick, journos wailed. (Not yet ready, ran the simple answer.) Where were Julian Schnabel, Olivier Assayas, Darren Aronofsky? (Not wanted, not eligible, and not ready, respectively.)
As they looked down the very global-flavored list — only two English-language films, only one of them American — more than one blogger suggested that Cannes may not be worth the trip this year.
I say it’s too soon to be disappointed. Frémaux and his team have hardly been obscure in their choices: the list abounds with esteemed critical pets ranging from Mike Leigh to Abbas Kiarostami, Alejandro González Iñárritu to Apichatpong Weereasethakul. It is perhaps a more granola selection than last year’s all-star lineup of Almodóvar, Haneke, Campion, Von Trier, et al, but that one drew just as many accusations (justified, I think) of being too insular and unadventurous — 19 of the 20 directors chosen had been in Competition before. Frémaux, it seems, can’t win.
Okay, before you ask, “The Tree of Life” is reportedly not ready — though the Cannes selection has apparently seen a cut, so never say never. Four slots in the competition lineup have yet to be filled.
That aside, many of the expected names are present and correct, including former Cannes champs Leigh, Kiarostami, Mikhalkov, Tavernier, Weerasethakul and González Iñárritu. (Beefing up the veteran auteur quotient, Jean-Luc Godard shows up in the very appetizing Un Certain Regard strand, as does 101 year-old Manoel de Oliveira.)
On paper — which is all we have at the moment, after all — it’s the first two of the aforementioned directors that I’m most excited to see in competition: “Another Year” will mark Leigh’s first trip to Croisette since the undervalued “All or Nothing” in 2002, and boasts the almost unfeasibly Leigh-ian cast of Imelda Staunton, Jim Broadbent, Phil Davis and Lesley Manville.
Meanwhile, Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” — a romantic drama starring Juliette Binoche, and the director’s first film to be shot outside his native Iran — has had me curious for the better part of two years now. I sensed this might be afoot when Binoche was revealed as the official face of this year’s festival.
(More thoughts, and a complete list of films in the official selection, after the cut.)
This announcement will hit via press release in the trades tomorrow (EDIT: Strike that, it looks like the release has now gone out, maybe due to this early report.), but since the news has already appeared in the form of a blog post last month from director Doug Liman, and since I confirmed it with Geoffrey Fletcher during a telephone interview this afternoon, I don’t see the harm in jumping the gun.
The “Precious” screenwriter will follow up his Oscar nomination with a script based on the Attica prison uprising for Liman. The project was set up in December and is a personal endeavor for the director. Liman’s father, Arthur L. Liman, was the young lawyer who ran the investigation during the uprising.
The ultimate report was “a riveting page-turner,” Liman says in this 30ninjas blog entry. “But the people whose job it was to prosecute the crimes wanted my father to reveal who had admitted to what. When my father refused, they threatened to hold him in contempt of court and throw him in jail.”