Few Brits to follow ‘Indiana Jones’ at this year’s Cannes fest
May 7th, 2008 Posted in Film, News, Places
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is the headliner at the Festival de Cannes next week but there’s no room In Competition for any British films although two more titles have been added since my preview was filed for Cue Entertainment’s May edition.
James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix (left), and Laurent Cantet’s “Entre Les Murs,” starring Francois Begaudeau, complete the competition lineup. Fernando Meirelles’ film “Blindness,” starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal, has been named as the opening.
British director Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” about the last six weeks of Irish republican Bobby Sands’ prison hunger strike, has been added to the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Michael Fassbender from British TV’s “Hex” and “Murphy’s Law,” who was also in the macho epic “300,” stars as Sands.
Barry Levinson’s “What Just Happened?” will close the festival as expected. It flopped at Sundance but it stars Cannes jury president Sean Penn and Robert De Niro, who has been tagged to present the Palme d’Or at the awards ceremonies.
Here’s how my Cue story begins:
No question about what film will get the most attention at this year’s Festival de Cannes. Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” came in atop a list of the summer’s most anticipated films with 82% declaring the picture the must-see movie of the year.
Filmmakers Spielberg and George Lucas along with star Harrison Ford will be on the Croisette for the Out of Competition world premiere of the Paramount film on May 18. It will also be screened in New York on that day and open in the UK and most of the rest of the world on May 22.
A lot more star power is headed to the Riviera for the festival’s 61st edition including Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie, Benicio del Toro, Penelope Cruz, Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino. Sean Penn heads up the Competition jury, which includes actress Natalie Portman and director Alfonso Cuaron (“Children of Men”).
While Ken Loach’s “The Wind and the Barley” and Andrea Arnold’s “Red Road” claimed top awards just two years ago, there are no British titles In Competition this year with two possible contenders headed elsewhere.
John Maybury’s “The Edge of Love” starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy is set for the Edinburgh International Film Festival on June 18 ahead of Lionsgate’s release. Julian Jarrold’s feature version of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” starring Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell, Felicity Jones, Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon is likely headed to the Venice International Film Festival in August with Disney releasing it in UK in October.
Another potential award winner, Ron Howard’s film adaptation of Peter Morgan’s West End and Broadway hit “Frost/Nixon”, will be released in the US by Universal and Imagine in December in order to qualify for the Academy Awards and then in the UK in January 2009. Martin Sheen and Frank Langella recreate their stage roles as, respectively, David Frost and US President Richard Nixon.
Two young British writer-directors have won places in important Cannes sidebars this year. Writer and director Duane Hopkins, whose short films “Love Me or Leave Me Alone” and “Field” have won prizes at various festivals including Edinburgh, has earned a spot in Critics’ Week sidebar with his first feature, “Better Things”, about growing up in the Cotswolds.
Brighton’s Thomas Clay, whose first film “The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael” was screened in Critics’ Week in 2005, will be in the Un Certain Regard sidebar with his second feature, “Soi Cowboy”.
Neglected British veteran Terence Davies will see his low-budget documentary about hometown Liverpool, “Of Time and the City”, screened Out of Competition. Artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Love You More”, written by playwright Patrick Marber and produced by the late Anthony Minghella, is entered in competition for short films.
Besides them and perhaps “Indiana Jones” costars such as John Hurt, Ray Winstone and Jim Broadbent, the only Brits likely to be on the Croisette this year will be Samantha Morton and Emily Watson who appear in “Synecdoche, New York”, the first feature to be directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”). It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in a tale of a parallel universe in New York.
Read my full Cannes preview, subscription to Cue required
