This morning James and I and a couple thousand other press folks took in a screening of the Opening Film at Cannes 2008, Fernando Meirelles's Blindness, starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal. You can check out James' review here, and tomorrow I'll be attending a luncheon/roundtable for the film. And in related Cannes news, Jack Black arrived at the 2008 Festival de Cannes in style. He's here to promote Kung Fu Panda, which premieres later in the week. Check out our gallery of Black and tons of panda bears down below.

Meantime, though, my take on Blindness is that it's ambitious and good, but falls short of being great. In part, I think, this is because the source material was challenging to adapt to a visual experience, but it's also due to some clunky expositional voiceover that detracts from the experience more than it adds. I don't want to be told how this or that person feels or reacts, I want to see it.

Fernando Meirelles's new film Blindness begins with the rush and push of urban life; traffic, crowds, activity, purpose. And then, one man cries out: "I'm blind." He eventually makes it to an ophthalmologist, but there's nothing physically wrong with his eyes; he simply can't see. "It feels like I'm swimming in milk," he explains, and we see, through his eyes, the blank, empty swirl of what used to be the world. And then another person says they are blind, and then another, and soon those few, frightened voices form a chorus of chaos as "the White Sickness" spreads like wildfire and leaves a ruined world in its wake.

Adapting Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel, Blindness feels like a curious mix of highbrow literary aspirations and lowbrow genre fiction; as the White Sickness spreads from person to person in a clear chain of connection and things fall apart, it'd be easy to dismiss Blindness as Dawn of the Dead for NPR listeners or Outbreak for grad students. Meirreles has taken a similar two-pronged approach before -- The Constant Gardener is an excellent critique of the failings of modern capitalism that also works as a strong, suspenseful thriller -- and while Blindness may not work as well as that film, it's also a clear case of a film, and filmmaker, failing to hit the mark occasionally only because they've set the bar so high for themselves.

Cinematical has received two brand new exclusive Blindness images ahead of the film's world premiere tonight at the 2008 Festival de Cannes. Directed by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener), Blindness was selected as the opening night film for this year's Festival de Cannes, and it stars Julianne Moore as the wife of a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who suddenly becomes the only one who can see in a town where everyone is struck with a mysterious case of blindness. Based on the novel by José Saramago (adapted by Don Mckellar), Blindness also stars Gael García Bernal, Alice Braga and Danny Glover.

Cinematical is on the ground in Cannes, and both James and Kim have already seen Blindness. We'll have our review of the festival's opening night film later on in the day. Check out our second exclusive photo below, then head to the gallery for more. Blindness arrives in theaters on September 19.

We thought this looked awesome last summer, and now we have some confirmation. MSN has posted a teaser trailer for Blindness, Fernando Meirelles' apocalyptic thriller based on the novel by José Saramago, and it creeps me out. The movie is about a blindness epidemic that sweeps through a city, afflicting everyone except one woman (Julianne Moore) who is apparently immune. She's then forced to feign blindness (Why? If no one else can see, what's the difference?) to care for her husband (Mark Ruffalo) as everything around them goes to hell. The tonal shift at the beginning of the teaser is genuinely startling, maybe because the upbeat music doesn't stop playing as you'd expect, or maybe because it deals with something that is one of this cinephile's worst nightmares.

I like Meirelles' City of God as much as the next guy, but the real reason I'm excited for this is that the screenplay is written by Don McKellar, whose previous stab at depicting the end of the world, Last Night, is one of my favorite films (with one of the most perfect endings of all time). Blindness is expected to play the Toronto Film Festival this September, with a US release slated for October. Can anyone who's read the book give us some (non-spoiler) hints of what to expect?

[hat tip: comingsoon.net]

Less than a month ago, I brought you word that Julianne Moore was going to star in a new horror thriller called Shelter -- a project that has been in the works for a good 4 years now. With a star in place, and production to begin late next month in Pittsburgh, Variety reports that she's got a co-star; none other than Henry the VIII himself, Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Now Variety says that the logline (one-sentence film summary) is "being kept under wraps," but as I mentioned last time, this project has been around for ages, and MovieWeb put up a summary back in 2004 (the original THR link is dead). Unless there's been a major rewrite, Michael Cooney's script "follows a female forensic psychiatrist who specializes in debunking multiple personality disorder. When she discovers that her latest patient's various personalities are all murder victims, she struggles to find a logical explanation for the man's delusion."

You might remember that back in October, a new project started to gear up called The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Based on Arthur Miller offspring Rebecca Miller's upcoming novel (that she adapted and will direct), the pic will focus on "a dutiful wife whose husband falls for a younger woman, freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a very quiet nervous breakdown."

I was ouching just at the thought of sensual exploration leading to a nervous breakdown, but now I have two reasons: along with the added cast just posted by The Hollywood Reporter, it's been confirmed that Robin Wright Penn is the wife, and Winona Ryder is the younger woman. For frak's sake, there's only a handful of years between the two women. Are they planning to age Wright Penn, or do they just think she looks that much older?

Anyway, adding to the tasty cast is Keanu Reeves, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Alan Arkin, and Monica Bellucci. Arkin will, of course, play the husband who leaves Wright Penn in the dust, and Bellucci will play his first wife -- so he's a dude who loves those May-December romances. Gyllenhaal will get the honor of appearing in flashbacks as Pippa Lee's "diet pill-addicted mother." Julianne Moore is some "lesbian novelist." And finally, Reeves gets to explore Wright Penn's sexuality. Now it all makes sense -- fool around with Keanu and you'll go crazy!

Once everyone finishes up their current gigs, production will kick into gear this April in Connecticut.

I think what I like best about Julianne Moore is that she is this reliable actress that never really changes -- in a good way. She's usually in good movies (only some stinkers now and then); she gives great performances; she's comfortable in her own skin (her lips haven't double in size, nor has her skin gotten really taut*); and she's known but not sensationalized. Now she's headed for Shelter.

Variety reports that she will be starring in the upcoming supernatural horror thriller, which is being produced by Nala Films. Film details are being kept under wraps, but the project is coming from a script by Michael Cooney (Identity), and will be directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein (Storm) this March in Pittsburgh -- for a solid $22-$25 million price tag.

Now, while they're trying to keep plot details a secret, the project has been around for years and according to MovieWeb back in 2004: "Shelter follows a female forensic psychiatrist who specializes in debunking multiple personality disorder. When she discovers that her latest patient's various personalities are all murder victims, she struggles to find a logical explanation for the man's delusion." As long as it's better than Hannibal, I'll be happy.

*Typo corrected thanks to Cath.

One of the more controversial films at Sundance, Savage Grace dramatizes the real-life story of Barbara and Tony Baekeland, a bizarrely intertwined high-society mother and son whose Oedipal relationship ended in tragedy. Screenwriter Howard A. Rodman, who adapted the script from the book by Natalie Robins and Stephen M.L. Aronson, plucks five key periods in Barbara and Tony's lives from the wealth of source material to sketch out the broad strokes of the path that led to Tony stabbing his mother to death with a kitchen knife in their London penthouse in 1972.

Barbara married above her class to Brooks Baekeland, heir to a sizeable family fortune generated by his grandfather, who invented Bakelite plastic, one of the first artificial manufacturing materials, and a consumer product whose possibilities made it both far-reaching and wildly lucrative. The Baekeland's wealth allowed them to move in high society and to live around the globe. The film focuses on Barbara (Julianne Moore), who was known in their social circle for her outbursts of temper, bouts of depression, and risque sexual encounters. Barbara's relationship with her son Tony (Eddie Redmayne) was tumultuous and crossed boundaries, ultimately resulting in Barbara seducing her son into an sexual relationship, which ultimately led to Tony's breakdown and murder of his mother.

The germs are coming! The germs are coming! Life pretty much took the lead this week in determining what would make a good double feature. For the first time in eons, I've been sidelined with a hellish cold, while some other friends suffer colds and fevers, and two tykes I know fight off pneumonia. This just hasn't been a healthy holiday season. So, in honor of colds, coughing, and other temporary maladies, I give you two films about dastardly killer germs. One is serious, one is goofy, and both should make you feel better about your present sickly condition. On the one hand, we've got a woman allergic to life in Safe, and on the other, a young cutie with no immunities with Bubble Boy. So, grab your popcorn and tissues, curl up, and let your body fight off the killer common cold while you watch these flicks.

Safe



The trailer certainly amps up the camp, but Todd Haynes' 1995 film is a smidge more serious than its retro trailer would have you believe. Julianne Moore stars as a soft-spoken California housewife, Carol White, who becomes increasingly ill. While her doctor finds nothing wrong, her symptoms get worse and she discovers that she's environmentally ill. Basically, everything about our chemical life is making her sick. Or, that is what she believes. In an attempt to get better, she moves to a New Age center housed in the desert for people like her.

Coming from Haynes, who also directed Moore in Far From Heaven, and is generating a lot of Oscar buzz with his Bob Dylan flick, I'm Not There, this isn't a germy thriller with a typical path and neatly wrapped-up ending. It's a movie of maybes and strangeness, with an eerie buzz to remind you that there's always something to make us sick out there.

A Barbie video introduction to the film by Todd Haynes.

Carol White chokes on all those darned toxins.

And for something a bit different...

Haynes' Barbie-riffic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story Pt. 1

Todd Haynes is one of the most intelligent filmmakers our country has to offer. The question remains, however, whether his intelligence allows for any emotion to come through in his films. I think it does, but it's not an obvious, worn-on-your-sleeve type of emotion; it's the type that takes a little self-analysis to discover. For example, his great film Safe (1995), which was voted the best film of the decade in the Village Voice poll of 1999, left me feeling queasy and unpleasant, and my initial reaction was to blame the film for it. But those were precisely the types of emotions I was supposed to be feeling after seeing a story about a sick woman. Haynes deliberately designed the film with a kind of emptiness -- and refused to answer the question as to whether or not his heroine was actually sick, and when the lead character joins the "cult" in the film's final stretch, Haynes does not invite us to go with her, so we're left in the lurch, so to speak.

Jean-Luc Godard, another intelligent filmmaker, once said that the best way to critique films was to make one. Haynes did precisely this with Far from Heaven (2002), which more or less used a Douglas Sirk framework to discuss Sirk's films as well as a more modern look at racism and homophobia. (The critics' group I am a member of, the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, gave our 2002 Best Director award to Haynes.) Now Haynes does it again with his exceptional new I'm Not There, a deconstruction of the biopic as well as a fascinating look at the cult of celebrity, and, on a deeper level, the celebrity as a godlike being with answers to all our questions. Whereas most biopics are made solely for the purpose of providing a rich centerpiece role (and, hopefully, an Oscar) for an ambitious actor, Haynes deliberately subverts this by casting seven different actors -- of all different ages, races and even sexes -- to play Bob Dylan.

We're not going to overload you with writers strike news because it's shaping up to be a marathon, not a race. Here are some delicious new updates (including a video up top which uses colorful little pie charts to help better explain the writer's point of view):

Day 4. The rebels have set up a new base on planet New York City, and when a young Jedi by the name of Robin Williams shows up with free bagels, folks begin to question his loyalty ...

Yes, the celebs were out in full force today showing Los Angeles that New York is perfectly capable of providing some top notch talent to walk the picket lines too. The writers have now set up camp in Columbus Circle, in front of the Time Warner building, and a number of NY-based stars showed up to lend their support. The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Robin Williams was there with free bagels! Free f**king bagels! Joining him were fellow Justice League SAG members Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Seth Myers (SNL) and Sopranos creator David Chase (who, unfortunately, turned down the chance to write an ending for the strike). Gone was the inflatable rat, which has been replaced by an equally-as-large (and meaner) "greedy" pink pig. Next up, an inflatable Jabba the Hutt. Watch for it!

No new talks between the WGA and AMPTP are scheduled, but Variety claims both sides were close to a deal before talks fell apart last Sunday. What would it take to get them both in the same room again? Personally, I'd start with some Tequila and a hug. But that's me. Blogger Nikki Finke continues to pound the pavement, digging up quotes, photos and information that she publishes, non-stop, daily. By the time the strike is over, she'll either a) wind up with a daytime show on Fox or b) explode. Either way, she'll need a lot of help when it comes time to kick that strike addiction.

[video via The Hot Blog]

Three of Hollywood's most beautiful and talented actresses -- Winona Ryder, Robin Wright Penn, and Julianne Moore -- are teaming up for a comedy/drama called The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. That title makes it sound like a sitcom doesn't it? According to Variety, the story "centers on a dutiful wife whose husband falls for a younger woman, freeing her to explore her buried sensuality and leading to a very quiet nervous breakdown." Explore her buried sensuality? OK, now this sounds like something you'd see on Cinemax.

Rebecca Miller will direct the film, which will be adapted from her upcoming novel of the same name. The book's release date is listed as October 5th, 2008, and filming is scheduled to start this April. Maybe they're going for a simultaneous release? Miller also wrote and directed The Ballad of Jack and Rose and co-wrote the snoozefest Proof, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow. The Variety article doesn't give many plot specifics, but I'd imagine Ryder plays the younger woman and Moore's the one having the "very quiet nervous breakdown?" And perhaps she "explores her buried sensuality" with Penn? Wishful thinking? Here's hoping Ryder is bringing up the comedy side, I thought she was hilarious in The Ten.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, IFC Films is going to release two new star-driven movies in theaters and On Demand on the same day. The films will be released by First Take, the "day-and-date" division of IFC. Previous attempts at day-and-date films have been extremely controversial with theater owners, who often refuse to book the movies, claiming, perhaps rightfully so, "Why would anyone leave the house and come to our theater if they can get the movie in the comfort of their own home?" Currently, Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters are one of the few chains who will book day-and-date films, and even have their own day-and-date program, Sneak Preview. I'll stop saying day-and-date, I promise. You can read genius Cinematical writer Patrick Walsh's report on Steven Soderbergh's adventures with the distribution practice here, and Ryan's interview with Cuban right here.

What are the two new films? The crime drama Savage Grace, directed by Tom Kalin (his first feature-length film since 1992's Leopold and Loeb story Swoon) stars Julianne Moore and Hugh Dancy. Grace tells the "true story of socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland's 1972 murder," and was a $5 million production. Finishing the Game, a Bruce Lee mockumentary, was directed by Justin Lin (the very cool Better Luck Tomorrow, Fast and the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift). Game features cameos by James Franco and...uh...MC Hammer (how'd they get Hammer to sign on? Offer him a hot meal?), and "imagines the recasting of Lee's final role in Game of Death before filming was completed." You can read Scott's generally positive Sundance review of Death here. Grace will premiere in theaters and on IFC next year; Death next month.

We've been tracking Blindness, the upcoming Fernando Meirelles film, for months. To recap, Erik Davis first reported that Don McKeller had adapted the novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, which "revolves around a blindness epidemic that sweeps through a contemporary city, paralyzing its citizens to a point where society is on the verge of breaking down." Julianne Moore and Daniel Craig were in talks to star as a doctor and his wife, the only person unaffected by the epidemic. Two months later, Jessica Barnes told us that Craig dropped out. He was replaced by Mark Ruffalo shortly thereafter, as noted by Jennifer DeFilippo. Just a week after that, Monika Bartyzel enthused about the cast members who were added: Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal and Alica Braga. And now the point of the recap: Miramax has secured US distribution rights to the film, as reported by indieWIRE and The Hollywood Reporter. The deal was finalized Saturday morning in Toronto.

In his indieWIRE item, Eugene Hernandez says that Blindness has been shooting locally in Toronto before moving to Brazil. He reports Miramax's description, which adds a positive phrase to the otherwise dire premise: "A small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine." Well, that's certainly more cheery, isn't it? With so many fall/festival films described as depressing and dark, perhaps Miramax wants to set Blindness apart as more upbeat, though still serious fare. Will they change the title to Temporary Blindness?

All kidding aside, the dynamic and talented creative combination of Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener), McKellar, and that cast sounds irresistible. The purchase price was $5 million, according to Gregg Goldstein in his Hollywood Reporter story. If you can read Portuguese, you can follow along at the director's blog. Maybe we'll see the completed film next year at Toronto?

It's official, Mark Ruffalo will pretend to be a doctor with no sight in the upcoming film Blindness. See, he doesn't start out with no sight but is struck with the devastating ailment during the film -- actually, that's what the flick is about. Ruffalo takes over for Daniel Craig who dropped out of the project due to scheduling conflicts. Blindness is based on the novel by Jose Saramago, and revolves around a town that erupts with a blinding epidemic. Everyone is affected except Ruffalo's wife, played by the oh-so-wonderful Julianne Moore (someone please hand her an Oscar!)

Ruffalo's senses are far from taking a break anytime soon. He's been working non-stop since Zodiac (probably before that even) and will begin filming Blindness in Brazil following the three films he just wrapped. He is currently working with the likes of Terry George and Spike Jonze. Blindness will be directed by Fernando Meirelles who is responsible for 2005's Constant Gardner and the sad but beautiful film about Brazilian street gangs City of God. With the stellar cast and more than able director you would have to be blind not to see something good in the making.