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yoshimori wrote:

criterion10 wrote:Xavier Dolan's Mommy seems to be getting very positive remarks … Godard's latest Adieu au Langage seems to be eliciting the sort of response one would expect from a Godard film at this point, though many have praised his use of 3D.

Check James' link above again. As of now, the Godard is the consensus top-rated competition film.

Yes, the response to the Godard has been fantastic. A lot of people are gushing about it.

Slant's capsules for Winter Sleep, Wild Tales and Amour Fou. Only the Hausner gets a positive review.

Budd Wilkins also writes one of the few more critical reactions to Two Days One Night.

Campion is on record with loving Godard, too, so it could happen

Jane Campion wrote:No one today is as modern as Godard. There has never been a more daring conceptual, chic, and irreverent filmmaker.

Apparently Godard put loud baby crying and dog whining over the end credits of Goodbye to Language which must have enraged the few critics who didn't like the film (a German critic said there were a few boos in the press screening) all the more.

Gaddis wrote:

yoshimori wrote:The Dumont, on the other hand, was 200 minutes of whacky fun!

Tell us more if you can.

But please try not to spoil it if you can!

Judging by the reviews, Ferran's Bird People seems to be one of the more divisive titles this year. It's one I've been anticipating impatiently ever since reading her short production note published in Cahiers earlier this year; I loved Lady Chatterley, and while her starting points for this one were (by design) diametrically opposed to that film - swapping realism for fantasy, adaptation for original script, historical for contemporary setting - something about this really tickles my fancy. Hope to get a chance to check it out.

Mike D'Angelo on Goodbye To Language and Mommy

Gaddis wrote:Tell us more if you can.

May be best just to check out the trailer and imagine it all stretched out to 3 1/2 hours. It's quite amazing to me that even the detectives in the film are non-professional actors.

Had a long interview with Dumont today. Incredibly articulate, of course, and a man who is easily frustrated, defensive when having to talk about the most personal aspect of his work. He was, for example, very resistant to the idea that his casting was in any way selective for certain types, insisting - I'm translating and paraphrasing - that he simply used whoever happened to be available. Again, google the trailer.

Looks like a movie I saw this morning just now won the Critics Week prize. It's a Ukrainian first film called The Tribe. The plot is pretty generic: complications arise when one of a gang of high-school-age boys falls in love with a young girl he's supposed to be pimping out at a truck stop. What makes it interesting is the fact that all the characters - the boys, the girl, everyone else - are DEAF!

The movie contains no subtitles, no voice-over. Even more bold, the film is composed of mostly wide shots, so even folks who can theoretically understand the actors' furious signing may not be able to see it clearly. Fascinating idea for a film. I'd loved to have seen, though, a less clichéd plot, maybe some procedural or something, something even more mysterious.

Off the quote in a previous post: would love to see Campion award the Godard the Palme. Let's see if she's got the balls to go through with it!

Five stars from the Guardian for Russian film Leviathan

Andrei Zvagintsev's Leviathan is a sober and compelling tragic drama of corruption and intimidation in contemporary Russia, set in a desolate widescreen panorama. This is a movie which seems to be influenced by the Old Testament and Elia Kazan; it starts off looking like a reasonably scaled drama about a little guy taking on big government. Then it escalates to a new plane in which man is taking on the biggest, cruellest, and most implacable government of all, and the final sequence of devastation must surely be influenced by the final moments of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice.

It is acted and directed with unflinching ambition, moving with deliberative slowness, periodically accelerating at moments of high drama and suspense. It isn't afraid of massive symbolic moments and operatic gestures; I was fractionally sceptical about these at the time, but they live and throb in my head hours after the final credit-crawl. Leviathan incidentally features a horribly watchable performance from Roman Madyanov as a crooked mayor who resembles a hideous reincarnation of Broderick Crawford in the 1949 municipal graft classic All The King's Men — with a hint of Boris Yeltsin. I hadn't heard of this 51-year-old Russian performer before now. His excellent performance makes me think it's a pity Cannes doesn't have a best supporting actor prize.

Apparently, Warner Brothers may sell Ryan Gosling's Lost River, probably because of how people took it at Cannes.

http://www.slashfilm.com/warner-bros-ma ... ost-river/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

All the competition films have now screened, Assayas' only moderately engaging Sils Maria being the last. So here're the rankings of the hundredish critics polled in James' link.

Competition films:

A: Dardennes, Ceylan, Godard
B: Dolan, Sissako, Zvyagintsev
C: Cronenberg, Leigh, Miller, Rohrwacher, Jones, Bonello
D: Kawase, Szifron, Loach
E: Egoyan, Hazanavicius

These seem reasonable. My only strong contrarian feelings are that the Ceylan is pretty weak, the Rohrwacher a bit better, and all of them not as good as they should be. The Assayas will likely come in in the C range.

Un certain regard films:

A: Alonso
B: Amalric, Ostlund
C: Hausner, Argento, Wenders, Ferran
D/E: all the rest

I'll see the Alonso in the repeat screenings tomorrow. Otherwise, the rankings seem reasonable to me except that I thought the Ferran was pretty insufferable, especially the first half.

Other films:

A: Dumont, Loznitsa doc, Ossama, doc, Takahata, Wiseman

The Dumont and the Godard were my favorites of the fest.

UCR Awards tonight; competition, tomorrow.

I assume you didn't get to see Takahata's Kaguyahime?

Missed Kaguyahime, and it's not playing in the repeats tomorrow. Got good reviews, obviously. But I've never been a terribly big fan of his work (or Miyazaki's for that matter).

D'Angelo on the Assayas, Leviathan and the Wenders

UCR: White Horse
Jury Prize: Turist
Special Prize: The Salt of the Earth
FIPRESCA: Jauju

Link

The main FIPRESCI prize goes to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep.

Love at First Fight by Thomas Cailley won best film in Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week sections.

The Ecumenical Jury awarded Sissako's Timbuktu, with commendations for Wim Wenders’ The Salt of the Earth and Jaime Rosales’ Beautiful Youth.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/winte ... 201190159/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Mike D'Angelo's look back on Cannes 2014

Mike D'Angelo wrote:Bear in mind, however, that even if the film loses, that may not be the end of the matter—Marion Cotillard might visit each juror in their hotel room and ask them if they’d be willing to change their vote.

At first I thought this was a a disgusting bit of casual sexism. Then the penny dropped.

Live stream for the currently ongoing Awards Ceremony.

Palme d’Or: "Winter Sleep"

Grand Prix: "The Wonders," Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Prix de la Mise en Scene (best director): Bennett Miller, "Foxcatcher"

Prix du Scenario (best screenplay): "Leviathan," Writers: Andrey Zvyaginstev and Oleg Negin

Camera d’Or (best first feature): "Party Girl," Directors: Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis

Prix du Jury (jury prize): "Mommy," Director: Xavier Dolan; and "Goodbye to Language," Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Prix d’interpretation feminine (best actress): Julianne Moore, "Maps to the Stars"

Prix d’interpretation masculine (best actor): Timothy Spall, "Mr. Turner"

And the Dardennes are shut out! JLG gets a pity Cannes win, Foxcatcher establishes itself as the Oscar film to beat, and several prominent awards go to women, as predicted

Very interesting choices. I personally predicted Leviathan for the Palme d'Or, and Mommy for the Grand Prix.

Does any U.S. distributor have the rights for Winter Sleep at the moment, or is that one still waiting to be picked up?

A few titles sound pretty good but overall this seems to be a fairly lackluster year for Cannes.

The only surprises in this are the Grand Prix for The Wonders and Miller winning Best Director. Very pleased for Julianne Moore personally.

criterion10 wrote:Very interesting choices. I personally predicted Leviathan for the Palme d'Or, and Mommy for the Grand Prix.

Does any U.S. distributor have the rights for Winter Sleep at the moment, or is that one still waiting to be picked up?

Winter Sleep hasn't been signed yet, but it'll be interesting to see who does get it. Sony Classics may be a frontrunner.

FrauBlucher wrote:

criterion10 wrote:Very interesting choices. I personally predicted Leviathan for the Palme d'Or, and Mommy for the Grand Prix.

Does any U.S. distributor have the rights for Winter Sleep at the moment, or is that one still waiting to be picked up?

Winter Sleep hasn't been signed yet, but it'll be interesting to see who does get it. Sony Classics may be a frontrunner.

Sony Classics actually just picked up Leviathan. (They also have Foxcatcher and Mr. Turner.)