Day 3 Cannes News

Today @ Cannes

Official Competition: The Housemaid by Im Sang-soo, the remake of Korean cinema milestone film by Hanyo, remakes are remakes not much more, but from trailer and clips seems visually stunning.

Out of Competition: Premiere of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Photocall with Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan is up at fest site. If something I'm really curious about this film are performances by the young actors as previous work is very good (I'm talking about LaBeouf serious works and extraordinary Mulligan's performance in An Education).

Special Screenings: Visconti's restored Il Gattopardo, gosh wish I could see it again. Abel by Diego Luna, will watch with no expectations. Nostalgia de la Luz by Patricio Guzman, must be seen for me and I know will be hard-to-watch even when is a very poetic film.

Un Certain Regard: Another must be seen for me Romanian film Aurora by Cristi Puiu. Also, Chatroom by Hideo Nakata.

Cannes Classics screens restored 1946 Au Petit Boneur (Happy Go Lucky) by Marcel L'Herbier and yesterday's screening was restored version of infamous Babenco's Kiss of the Spiderwoman.

Cinema de la Plage has a puzzling documentary The Two Escobars by Jeff and Michael Zimbalists; Escobar and soccer, hmm will watch when comes to cable.

The Atelier of the Cinéfondation meetings opened this morning; shorts programs start on Wednesday May 19 until Friday 21 when they have the award ceremony. By the way, the Cannes Shorts competition starts and ends on Saturday, May 22.

Quinzaine: Today two films that I'm curious about Quillevere's Un Poison Violent and Lerman's La Mirada Invisible. Also Berghe's Little Baby Jesus of Flandr.

Semaine de la Critique: Cheol-soo Jang's Bedevilled and the short film Vasco by Sebastien Laundenbach.

The Not so serious notes

Still very handsome Alain Delon talks about Visconti's Il Gattopardo with film clips plus old footage from when film won the Palm d'Or at Canal+!!! s Also very young Claudia Cardinale. Click the right video or you will end up watching nonsense by Eva Longoria (lol!)

This should be more serious but I'll leave it here. Is about the Jury press conference and I do agree with Cecile Magne from arte.tv. Check the comments and video here.

Hotel Majestic has up at their youtube site their version of the other Cannes fest opening, the one that happened at night, la soirée officielle d'ouverture du 63è Festival du Film de Cannes. Check it here.

India Pavilion at Cannes opened to showcase the country's cinema to the world audience. You know which movie had NO poster exhibit inside the pavillion? Yes, Udaan by Vikramaditya Motwane that's in competition for the Palm d'Or. Talk about omissions (or cinema politics?), this one is remarkably unaccepted even when the pavilion main interest is to promote India as a film destination.

According to what I read the Cannes Marche opened last night with never seen before fireworks display sponsored by China Movie Channel (from China, hmm probably true never seen fireworks display); what marveled me are the unofficial figures (source is not official): 1,500 screenings -65 in 3D-, 4,500 projects on offer and films combined, 450 international sales agents licensing films to 2,500 distributors from some 100 countries doing business to a tune of approximately 1 billion US dollars.

To continue learning about those A and B-movies that populate the Cannes Marche check this 7 min video with info about films like Titanic 2, Cinderella 3 (a deer!), vampire, zombies, etc. etc.

Plus Information about Films

If you want to watch clips from Manoel de Oliveira's Angelica check article and video at arte site here.

Not Cannes related

Marion Cotillard and Colin Farrell (!?) in a new David Cronenberg film, Cosmopolis. An Irish-Italian coproduction. Hmm!

So this is for today. Let's close by saying that today English Cannes related articles abound in the net, it took them one day to start pouring out in tons. So, it's not the boycott (remember the news boycott??) it's just that they take their time.

Cheers!!!