Cannes '14 line-up announced

Tim here. It's Christmas morning, everybody: the Cannes Film Festival announced its line-up today for this year's edition, running from May 14-25.

Opening Night
Grace of Monaco (dir. Olivier Dahan; starring Nicole Kidman)

Official Selection
Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)
Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonelo)
Winter's Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg) Yes No Maybe So
Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Mommy (Xavier Dolan)
The Captive (Atom Egoyan)
Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Search (Michel Hazanavicius)
The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones) Yes No Maybe So
Still the Water (Naomi Kawase)
Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
Jimmy's Hall (Ken Loach)
Foxcatcher (Bennett Miller) We Can't Wait
Le Meraviglie (Alice Rohrwacher)
Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
Wild Tales (Damian Szifron)
Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Channing Tatum & Mark Ruffalo as brothers in "Foxcatcher"

Un Certain Regard
Opener - Party Girl (Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis)
Jauja (Lisando Alonso)
The Blue Room (Mathieu Amalric)
Misunderstood (Asia Argento)
Titli (Kanu Behl)
Eleanor Rigby (Ned Benson)
Bird People (Pascale Ferran)
Lost River (Ryan Gosling, directorial debut) formerly How to Catch a Monster, We Can't Wait
Amour fou (Jessica Hausner)
Charlies Country (Rolf de Heer)
Snow in Paradise (Andrew Hulme)
A Girl at My Door (July Jung)
Xenia (Panos Koutras)
Run (Philppe Lacôte)
Turist (Ruben Östlund)
Beautiful Youth (Jaime Rosales)
Fantasia (Wang Chao)
The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado)
Away from His Absence (Keren Yedaya)

Above: the first still from Ryan Gosling's LOST RIVER

All told, a nice mix of established auteurs, up-and-comers, and just enough new names that the Festival can't be accused of too much imagination (though the representation of women directors is still pretty grim). For myself, Winter's Sleep (over three hours long!), Leviathan, and Timbuktu leap out as being the films I'm most interested, by directors whose careers I'm excited to keep following; but what films are you all most excited to see?

Happy Binoche Day

Our favorite French Oscar winner celebrated the big 5-0 today.

Better news:  Several movies on the way!

In both the would be blockbuster Godzilla and Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria, both arriving this year, she has potential talent imbalance problems with co-stars (CGI Monster, Kristen & Chloe respectively) but both films might be great, fingers crossed.

She's also currently filming the true-story The 33 with Antonio Banderas and Rodrigo Santoro which is about that Chilean miners who were trapped for weeks.  Three more movies have been announced but announcing and actually happening are two different things with movies. We'll see. Hollywood has lost interest (Hollywood only allows one French lady at a time so Marion Cotillard has to watch her back with Léa Seydoux rising) but we shouldn't!

Juliette Binoche's last team-up with Olivier Assayas was the terrific "Summer Hours"

What's your favorite Binoche? Mine is 100% Trois Coleurs: Bleu though she's perfection in quite a few others, like ahhhh Flight of the Red Balloon. Just gorgeous. 

Cesar Academy Nominates French President's Mistress! (Who cares about movies anyway?)

Julien, your french correspondent, here to discuss the César nominations.

OUTRAGE ! Twitter was in uproar this morning when the nominees for the Best Actress César were announced, and the name Adèle Exarchopoulos was nowhere to be seen. While Léa Seydoux made the cut for her arguably supporting role, Adèle’s astounding lead performance in Blue is the Warmest Color was relegated to the Most Promising Actress category.

Before you raise your pitchforks, consider this perfectly logical explanation: since Tahar Rahim won both the Best Actor and Most Promising Actor gongs for A Prophet in 2010, the rules were altered so that a single performance can only be nominated in a single category -the one which collects the most votes. Fair enough César, but when a category which is supposed to promote new talent prevents the year’s most celebrated performance to be nominated in its rightful place, you’re clearly doing something wrong.

All the nominees and a lot of gay drama and political mischief after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Gold is the Most Coveted Color

Léa Seydoux & Adele Exarchopoulos at the Governor's Ball

Let's see Léa & Adèle at all the Oscar-courting events. S'il vous plaît. Werk that circuit, ladies.

AFI: Agnes and "Cleo"

The film is called Cleo From 5 to 7, but it’s actually Cleo From 5 to 6:30 Exactly”

Agnes Varda states with a chuckle. Varda is the Guest Director for the 2013 AFI Fest, so four of her films are being screened at the festival, starting with her most famous film, Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962). The woman who has been rightfully called the Godmother of the New Wave practically bounces in her chair, which is surprising for a woman her age. I hope I age half as well. Filmmaking and boundary-breaking agree with her.

Cleo From 5 to 7 takes place over a single afternoon. A young singer (Corinne Marchand) waits for results from her medical exam to tell her whether she has cancer. More surprisingly, the story takes place in real time; starting at 5pm and ending at 6:30pm. The film has the hallmarks of many French New Wave films: the preoccupation with cinematic form, the unflagging coolness that comes with good sunglasses and disaffected youth, the filmic experimentation. Cleo From 5 to 7 is different from Breathless or Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Agnes Varda’s unique voice has been attributed to her gender (the New Wave could be a talented boys club), but she attributes it to her background in art instead of film.

Varda says during the discussion that she purposely watched as few films as possible before becoming a filmmaker. Her purpose was to create something totally new and from scratch. Other New Wave auteurs were film lovers first (think of the fantastic book Hitchcock Truffaut). Varda speaks with the same rapture about Picasso and the artists in other mediums that inspired her. Of specific importance to Cleo From 5 to 7 is a painting by a 16th century German artist named Hans Baldung. In the painting, called The Three Ages Of The Woman and The Death, a young woman gazes into a mirror while a ghastly skeleton whispers into her ear.

Varda observes that the picture seems almost scandalous because beauty and death aren’t supposed to go together. Certainly that’s Cleo’s belief in the film. She worries constantly through the film that illness will ruin her beauty. Like the woman in the painting, Cleo constantly looks at herself, and the many people she meets look at her too. This, Varda states, is her feminist message: “Women become real when they stop looking at themselves and start looking at other people.” Cleo is an object to be stared at. The singer’s moment of revelation happens at 5:45pm, during this haunting song:

Agnes Varda sets the song as a midway point: from 5:45pm on, Cleo actively observes instead of passively being observed. The act of observing and the looming question of death make every moment precious. The challenge of making the story seem to unfold in exactly ninety minutes makes it not only a technical marvel - there are a lot of clocks in frame that need to be set precisely - but also inspires deeper examination of moments that might otherwise be missed. As Agnes Varda winds up the discussion, the bubbly auteur tells the audience that this is the theme of the film: fear gives texture to reality.