Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian has a nice recap of this year's Cannes Film Festival, saying "This was a very good year for Cannes in its 60th anniversary, only just short of vintage level. There were no real disasters (excepting perhaps the clunker My Blueberry Nights by Wong Kar-Wai) and plenty of outstanding films." Bradshaw was thrilled to see The Palme d'Or -- the fest's highest honor -- go to a low-budget Romanian film about abortion called 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.
Sounds like a fun one, no? Bradshaw, like most, loved the film, and calls the award "a magnificently insouciant gesture showing that Cannes is still capable of being unimpressed by established reputations, even the reputations of its own stalwarts. Decisions like these make Cannes look, in the best possible way, like a heavily besieged city state, stubbornly holding out for world cinema against the mighty forces of Hollywood-globalization."

Not making Bradshaw happy is that the Coen Brothers were snubbed at Cannes this year. Many are saying the Coens' new movie, No Country for Old Men, ranks among their best, which is extremely high praise indeed. Says Bradshaw, "the big disappointment was that no gongs of any shape or size were handed to the Coens - especially exasperating, given that Gus Van Sant won an award for his disappointing slacker movie Paranoid Park, a real cut below his previous movies, Last Days and the Palme d'Or-winning Elephant. When the Coens' No Country for Old Men is released here in the UK, I'm confident that it will be regarded as one of their best films. It's weird that Cannes, which has so greatly sponsored the Coens' reputation over the years, should be so obtuse as to pass over such an excellent film." Read Ryan's Cannes recap here and for more on these movies, be sure to check out James' Cannes reviews of No Country for Old Men, Paranoid Park, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.

From almost any perspective, My Blueberry Nights is the perfect pick to open the 60th Cannes Film Festival: A noted international director (Wong Kar-Wai) making his English-language debut, with a cast of international stars (Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman) and exciting memories of past appearances at the Festival as part of the bargain – in 2004, Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 was such a fresh work that the screenings of the film had to be pushed back, as the print was literally still wet. At this morning's press screening, you could hear cineastes sigh in rapture from the opening titles – blue-glazed visions of pie and cream, indigo skies with neon-glow cityscapes leaning lazily against them.

My Blueberry Nights follows Elizabeth (Norah Jones), as her recent fresh breakup sends her down into the depths of loss and then across the country. Elizabeth lives in New York, but after friendly café owner Jeremy (Jude Law) unintentionally informs her that her boyfriend has been out with another woman, she's at a loss – spending late nights in his café, eating blueberry pie and taking comfort in his gently bruised romantic philosophies. Jeremy's place has, over the years, become a bit of a depot for broken-hearted lovers to leave their keys – why, exactly, this tradition came about is never fully explained in Wong and Lawrence Block's screenplay, but still – and he's able to share with Elizabeth some of the tales of loss and love connected to each set.

Elizabeth isn't consoled by those tales, though, and sets out rambling – we see her stop in Memphis and Nevada, get a glimpse of time spent in California and Arizona – working waitressing jobs along the way. When it was announced that Jones would be taking the lead in Wong's film, the question arose: Would Jones make the leap from pop stardom to the silver screen, as many others have tried? There's certainly no doubt that Jones has a certain presence on-screen – Wong and cinematographer Darius Khondji love to show her face, framed with a lush corona of pitch-black hair – but her skills as an actress are occasionally shaky; early in the film, she's a flat and unmoved presence; she doesn't seem to be speaking from the life of a character, but, rather, reading from the lines of a script.

After a lot of guessing and hoping (some of which turned out to be correct, and some of which did not), the line-up of films for the 60th Annual Cannes Film Festival has been released. Leading off the fest? Wong Kar-Wai's My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a young woman looking for love, will play opening night; closing the fest will be David Fincher's Zodiac. Other highlights in competition include Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men, which recently had its international and domestic distribution duties split up and is aiming for an Oscar-friendly fall release. Emir Kustirica's Promise Me This will play at Cannes, and, intriguingly, so will Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof in a stand-alone one hour and fifty minute-long version, with no Robert Rodriguez zombie movie to gum up the works.

Films playing outside of competition - where the Festival tends to load up on paparazzi-bait to stroll the red carpet -- include Ocean's Thirteen and Michael Moore's Sicko, which is sure to bring the media in droves. Also named today is the Cannes Un Certain Regard slate -- which includes films from Harmony Korine, Barbet Schroeder and Lola Doillon. Special midnight screenings will include a new film from New Wave-era bad boy director Abel Ferrara and U2 3D. And this is just the top-level overview; for the full slate, you can go right to the source at the Festival's web site.

The Cannes Film Festival begins on May 16th, 2007; keep it here at Cinematical for all the news and reviews you'll want from one of the premier film festivals in the world.


*Notice of change. I, Ryan, originally added in some stuff about Cannes not letting me in the festival this year, but the writer, James, doesnt want that in his post, so I've changed it back to the way he originally had it.

For its 60th year anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival will premiere new films from many past winners of the Palme d'Or. It isn't known how many of these winners will have new material this year, but apparently festival president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Frémaux tried to get many of the living "Golden Palm" vets -- winners and nominees, both -- to contribute to a special project.

Each participating filmmaker has directed a short film of 2-3 minutes in length that will be shown together as a feature-length film at a gala event on May 20. Variety reports that those known to be included are Ken Loach ('06: The Wind That Shakes the Barley), Gus Van Sant ('03: Elephant), Lars von Trier ('00: Dancer in the Dark), Theodoros Angelopoulos ('98: Eternity and a Day), Abbas Kiarostami ('97: Taste of Cherry), Chen Kaige ('93: Farewell My Concubine), Wim Wenders ('84: Paris, Texas) and non-winners (though often-nominated) Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Cimino, Amos Gitai, Manoel de Oliveira, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. There are 30 shorts in all, so obviously a lot of other contributors are as yet unknown. Only Pedro Almodóvar (also a non-winner, and never a nominee) is known to have declined the offer.

It's been a while since we've had some news on My Blueberry Nights, so let's catch up: Martha Fischer started reporting about the film when it was announced, and then told us about the pic's growing cast. To review, Blueberry Nights is the new, and first English feature, of writer-director Wong Kar-wai. The film is a road trip love story that centers on a woman, played by first-time actress Norah Jones, as she travels across America meeting strange, new people. It is also based on a short film about a shopkeeper who falls for a blueberry pie fiend. Also making an appearance in the flick are Rachel Weisz, Jude Law (pictures of him in the film are now on imdb), and Natalie Portman.

Filming is now completed, and David Strathairn and Tim Roth were also added to the cast. There was some rumor that Ed Harris would be in that list, but no reports seem to confirm it. I would imagine that it never came to be if he wasn't mentioned in the new Hollywood Reporter blurb, which has announced that those Weinstein boys have picked up the rights to the movie.

These days, you can't throw a stick without hitting a Weinstein. However, every time I hear the name, I can't help but think of that Kevin Smith story about Harvey walking out of Clerks. Yet the Weinsteins acquiring My Blueberry Nights makes sense. Wong sees Harvey as an old friend, and sites him as having a "key role" in introducing Chungking Express to the US. The brotherly duo may have split from Disney/Miramax, but they still have one hell of a little black book.

According to StudioCanal, the production company that is shopping distribution rights for Wong Kar-Wai's English language debut My Blueberry Nights at Cannes, the movie is heading into pre-production right after its director gets done with that whole Chairing the Cannes Jury thing. Seeing as how we're talking about WKW here, the fact that two updates, two months apart are talking about the same start date is something of a minor miracle (that said, of course, if we don't see the movie until 2010, no one will really be surprised). In addition to the previously-announced cast consisting of Norah Jones, Rachel Weisz and Jude Law, Variety reported this morning that Natalie Portman is also on board. The film will center on Jones, who travels across the US to "find the true meaning of love, encountering offbeat characters along the way."

You'd think that Wong must be salivating over this project just as much as his fans are -- imagine what he'll be able to do with the lights of Las Vegas, or the wide open spaces of the American West (to help you conjure up the latter, check out the mind-blowing Ashes of Time). As long as he brings Christopher Doyle along to shoot the thing, the movie has the potential to be just incredible.

It's Easter weekend, and for a lot of us that means easter egg hunts, church services, and dinner with the extended family. After stuffing yourself silly with chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks and ham and listening to Uncle Bert's war stories for the 89,000th time, you'll be ready to escape -- and where better to escape to than the movies? If you live in Seattle, count yourself lucky. You'll have more to choose from than Scary Movie 4 or The Wild.

UW Film Club 

This week at UW brings us a showing of Academy Award-nominated Brazilian film City of God. Tuesday, April 18 @6PM, Electrical Engineering Auditorium. Also this week at  UW:

Beautiful Boxer shows as part of International Queer Nights, Tuesday, April 18 @7PM, Q Center

ASUW A&E Movie Spring Series - every Weds. at the HUB Ballroom.

April 19 - Memoirs of a Geisha @5:30PM; Chronicles of Narnia @8PM

 

According to a roundup at Monkey Peaches, several Hong Kong newspapers this morning are reporting that Wong Kar-Wai's My Blueberry Night - his first film shot in English, and first on American soil - is scheduled to go into production in June. Reassuringly, it's NOT going to be about Hurricane Katrina, despite earlier rumors that mistakenly combined this film with Wong's stated interest in making a movie about Katrina's effects. Instead, the film, which stars Norah Jones, Rachel Weisz and (this one's new) Jude Law, is going to be a road movie, "shot on multiple locations from New York to California, including Las Vegas." Yes, I'm a huge WKW whore who will love pretty much anything he does, but I still think this sounds fantastic, particularly if Christopher Doyle is involved - just imagine how he'd shoot Vegas, or the deserts of the American southwest. That thought actually just gave me chills.

The Monkey Peaches report also confirms that The Lady from Shanghai has been delayed, and will be shot after both Blueberry Night and Baz Luhrmann's untitled Aussie epic, in which Wong's star Nicole Kidman is appearing alongside Russell Crowe.

In addition to the two new movies about which we've already heard  - The Lady from Shanghai (thankfully not a remake) and his Katrina-except-in-NYC flick - Wong Kar Wai is reportedly working on a third film called Blueberry Nights. Like both Lady and the Katrina film, it will be shot in New York, and is expected to be Wong's first English-language project. The film is set to star Norah Jones, and Rachel Weisz, too, might be involved - she's told the press that she is going to appear in Wong's "next film," but it's unclear which project she's talking about (or, indeed, if she even knows). The movie will be based (at least right now - who knows what will happen once Wong starts filming) on a short in which "a shopkeeper falls for a mysterious female client who eats blueberry pies."

Call me crazy, but that sounds awesome - after all, half of Chungking Express revolves around a guy eating canned pineapple, and that movie is practically perfect. Blueberry Nights has a budget of about $10 million and is expected to start shooting in New York sometimes before The Lady from Shanghai, which was recently pushed back, goes into production in 2007.

Okay, so, earlier today, we were absolutely dumbfounded to learn that Nicole Kidman was set to star in the next Wong Kar-Wai film, The Lady of Shanghai. Now we feel silly, because a proper investigation reveals that this news has been readily available on the web for at least a year - although, as far as we can tell, details are still extremely sketchy. Here's what we've been able to find out:

Reports of the project apparently started circulating in Spring of 2004, around the time Wong started doing press for 2046. Shooting was originally scheduled to begin that June, but Kidman's schedule got complicated; this report suggests they'll now go before cameras in July of 2005. Knowing that Wong tends to work slowly (2046, for instance, took five years to complete), Kidman reportedly has agreed to work on Lady on breaks from other projects. As of January 2005, the project had no completed script, but Wong was quoted by a Chinese newspaper as saying the film would "mainly feature English" - a first for the Hong Kong-born director. Kidman will play a "woman of mystery", in all likelihood stylishly moping around 1930s Shanghai. There is no indication that this project bears any direct relationship to the 1948 Orson Welles film of the same title, although one imagines the coincidence isn't completely accidental.