Page 7 of 7
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 9:52 pm
by Tommaso
domino harvey wrote: I can't argue quality, I haven't seen the films, but no one predicted almost any of these wins, apparently often for good reason
Me neither, of course. But I've seen most of the Cannes reports on the local TV with the usual short snippets from the films, and I must say that from those short excerpts I think that the prizes going to Mungiu and Assayas seem to be very well deserved, from a quite basic/first impression about the films' cinematic quality. Obviously in my country Maren Ade's film got a lot of coverage in these TV reports, and I still tend to believe in all the praise and I am definitely going to watch her film, but hell, the goddamn thing looked like a well-made comedy for television to me, and certainly not like something anyone would rave about from a cinematic point of view (admittely, the same goes for the Loach). But perhaps the jury decision reflects this a bit? And trust me, I'd really, really would have liked to see a German film win something at such a prestigious festival.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 10:50 pm
by colinr0380
ianungstad wrote:The Loach film got very good reviews with just about everyone saying it's Ken Loach's best film in years.
The thing that has been making me feel cautiously optimistic about this latest Loach film is presumably the same thing that critics have found lacking: that it hasn't got a marketable 'hook' like someone with a good nose for whiskey or an imaginary Eric Cantona providing the 'way in' to the drama.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 11:38 pm
by yoshimori
ianungstad wrote:... The Loach film got very good reviews with just about everyone saying it's Ken Loach's best film in years.
I wonder how one can write this. If one looks at
this poll brood_star linked above, he or she'll see that
I, Daniel Blake got a quite low 4.98 out of 10 average rating from 28 esteemed international critics, making it 15th out of the 21 films in the competition. Only 2 of those 28 critics gave it an even "good" rating; none, zero, ranked it "very good". Now, one may love the film when one sees it, and one can probably dig up some positive reviews -- 4 out of 97 critics in the rurban poll gave it 10/10 and 6 gave it 9/10, but the average there was still a mediocre 6/10, and the film ranked 11th out of the 21 in the competition. It was 11th out of 21 on the Screen jury grid too with a mediocre 2.4/4 average. So, it hardly got generally very good reviews.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 12:19 am
by domino harvey
Cahiers du Cinema weighs in:
Toni Erdmann de Maren Ade, Elle de Paul Verhoeven, The Neon Demon de Nicolas Winding Refn, Ma Loute de Bruno Dumont, Aquarius de Kleber Mendonça Filho, Julieta de Pedro Almodóvar ou encore Rester Vertical d'Alain Guiraudie... Il y avait, de l'avis général et du nôtre, tout pour dresser un palmarès inoubliable.
Celui concocté par George Miller et ses complices restera mémorable pour une toute autre raison : on aura rarement vu un jury aussi à côté de la plaque.
La palme d'honneur à Jean-Pierre Léaud et le grand prix à Xavier Dolan consolent à peine d'un immense sentiment de gâchis.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 12:25 am
by mfunk9786
So if I read that correctly, they thought Dolan and the honorary Palme were consolations and the rest of the awards were wasteful?
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 1:02 am
by knives
I think it is more that two deserving awards are consolations for an otherwise useless ceremony. I don't understand exactly what they mean by Miller being at the plate though. I assume its some sort of colloquialism?
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 1:56 am
by nosy lena
Film Society's Dennis Lim's top 5 ("zero prizes among them"):
1 Toni Erdmann
2 The Death of Louis XIV
3 Elle
4 Staying Vertical
5 Sieranevada
Looking forward to seeing them all at NYFF then
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:14 am
by tenia
knives wrote:I think it is more that two deserving awards are consolations for an otherwise useless ceremony. I don't understand exactly what they mean by Miller being at the plate though. I assume its some sort of colloquialism?
Being "à coté de la plaque" means missing totally the target, being a mess, usually in terms of understanding.
In this case, it means the jury basically got it all wrong.
The cahiers say : "the honorific Palme and Dolan's grand prix compensates for a palmares leaving otherwise a great sensation of waste."
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:24 am
by knives
Good to know. Thanks.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:52 am
by Cold Bishop
Loose translation
Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, Paul Verhoeven's Elle, Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon, Bruno Dumont's Ma Loute, Kleber Mendonça Filho's Aquarius, Pedro Almodóvar's Julieta, as well as Alain Guiraudie's Rester Vertical ... There was, among the general opinion and our own, all the ingredients for an unforgettable prizelist.
The one concocted by George Miller and his accomplices remains memorable for another reason entirely: we have rarely seen a jury so miss the mark.
Jean-Pierre Léaud's honorary prize and Xavier Dolan's Grand Prix is small comfort in face of such a waste.
Interesting to note that they seemed to like the Dolan.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 7:22 am
by Finch
tenia wrote:What was fantastic was Gibson's speech. "I hope this prize changes the winner's career as much as Miller changed mine".
Winner : 80 years old, 13 nominations, already 1 Palme and many other Cannes prizes. What a revolution. What a ballsy result.
What if Gibson didn't know in advance who was going to win?
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 10:57 am
by MichaelB
Finch wrote:tenia wrote:What was fantastic was Gibson's speech. "I hope this prize changes the winner's career as much as Miller changed mine".
Winner : 80 years old, 13 nominations, already 1 Palme and many other Cannes prizes. What a revolution. What a ballsy result.
What if Gibson didn't know in advance who was going to win?
It's a racing certainty that he didn't. Presenters usually don't - and it's unlikely that he'd have said that if he knew.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 11:32 am
by tenia
Oh, I have always been quite certain Gibson didn't know who the winner was, but the speech and the result were nevertheless visibly away from each other, a bit like if even internally, the expectations and the results were very different from each other.
When journalists and jurys disagree, it's something quite common, but showing this internally was even funnier.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:06 pm
by Omensetter
Credit to Fremaux for taking some risks (one of them not being finding a slot for Laura Poitras Risk) this year on most of these competition newcomers and avoiding disasters like last year's rejection of Desplechin and slotting Weerasethakul's Palme follow-up in UCR. Hopefully Puiu, Ade, Guiraudie, and Filho keep returning to the water. I don't know what crime Pablo Larraín's commited---perhaps he rejected UCR for some of his earlier films and thus didn't warm himself to the fest, something political like that.
This year's slate of awards feels particularly uninspired---Best Director aside---but festival juries are always a crapshoot. Loach gave a great and vital speech and I'm glad he's continuing to make films, but if the jury wanted to go the politically important route then Filho's warmly received film on what appears to be gentrification could have done the job. They even protested the coup in Brazil on the red carpet.
Cannes will be Cannesing, I suppose. The only films without U.S. distribution: Penn, Mendoza, Puiu, and Mendonça Filho. Penn will find it, but hopefully The Cinema Guild will take on the latter two; they distributed their previous films.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:27 pm
by Finch
Omensetter wrote:Penn will find it.
Reviews for Last Face have been even less kind to his film than for Gus Van Sant's Sea of Trees which is still struggling to get distribution in many countries a year after. The Last Face may struggle too, even with Theron and Bardem.
Amazon might feel a bit peeved: several films in competition, including Paterson, which was one of the best reviewed of the entire festival, and none of them won anything. Still, The Neon Demon will keep people talking.
Re the Loach: I don't think much of Mike D'Angelo myself but I think his description of I Daniel Blake sums up my feeling about recent Loach films pretty well:
Did someone say “struggle”? That’s Ken Loach’s cue! I, Daniel Blake (Grade: B-) marks Loach’s 14th time in Competition here (he won the Palme D’Or 10 years ago for The Wind That Shakes The Barley), and he’s still making scrupulously naturalistic, often heavily didactic paeans to the proletariat. (The preachiness has increased significantly since he started regularly collaborating with screenwriter Paul Laverty.) Stand-up comic Dave Johns plays the film’s title role: a middle-aged widower recovering from a serious heart attack, whose doctor has forbidden him from returning to work as a carpenter. British social services, however, in its infinite wisdom, has somehow determined that Dan is fit for work, so his welfare claim has been denied. Dan’s efforts to secure an appeal (while also pretending to look for a job he can’t accept, so that he can receive unemployment in the meantime) introduce him to a single mum named Katie (Hayley Squires) who’s having similar troubles of her own, and I, Daniel Blake is at its best when it’s chronicling the impromptu, completely platonic friendship that develops between two people with nothing in common except decency and being in a tough spot. It’s at its worst during its home stretch, when Laverty rains down indignity to a degree that turns the movie into a pity party. “Please let this be anything but prostitution,” I silently pleaded when a security guard who catches Katie shoplifting offers to help her with a job, and was ignored. Loach’s heart is always in the right place, but when he and Laverty made the similarly titled My Name Is Joe nearly 20 years ago, Peter Mullan’s Joe was more than just a victim of an uncaring bureaucracy. Movies can and should rail at injustice, but if that’s all they do, they’re the dramatic equivalent of those tepid documentaries that conclude with a URL viewers can visit to learn how they can help.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:57 pm
by Soothsayer
Finch wrote:Omensetter wrote:Penn will find it.
Reviews for Last Face have been even less kind to his film than for Gus Van Sant's Sea of Trees which is still struggling to get distribution in many countries a year after. The Last Face may struggle too, even with Theron and Bardem.
Charlize Theron has a bigger cache than anyone involved in The Sea of Trees. Not to mention that the subject matter is a much easier sell to a non-critical U.S. audience who wants star-power. That film will get funding unless Penn has burned more bridges than people realize.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 6:05 pm
by domino harvey
Theron was in last year's Dark Places, which had the added cachet of being based on a bestselling book by the author of Gone Girl and it still only went straight to VOD, which is prob the best case scenario here as well
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 6:39 pm
by mfunk9786
VOD would be an ironic destination for sure, as there will be no demand for this film
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 6:05 pm
by doh286
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:45 pm
by roujin
The article also mentions Anurag Kashyap's latest, Raman Raghav 2.0, which is exciting, but probably means there won't be a theatrical release.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2016 10:50 am
by JamesF
Worth noting that I thought
Divines was wonderful, but can imagine it won't have half the impact sitting alone at home; it was electric with an audience. If you have the opportunity to see it in a crowded cinema, please do.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 5:13 pm
by Perkins Cobb
So what happens with the physical media releases for these?
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 5:22 pm
by mfunk9786
Insofar as they exist, I'd imagine they'll be put out through the same channel as the physical releases for Netflix's original series.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2016 1:19 pm
by Aunt Peg
To ever make true sense of Cannes awards until one has seen everything for ones self. Critics reviews only tell some of the story so to speak.
But having seen Dolan's It's Only the End of the World & Jarmsuch's Paterson I'm stunned. How Paterson, Jim Jarmuschs most beautiful realized film to date can get passed over for anything whilst Dolan's worst film to date wins second prize is beyond me. Actually everything else was more deserving of 'second prize' than Dolan's mess of a film. Personal Shopper, Julieta, Aquarius….
See a few more over the next couple of days but this year is looking like a real head scratcher as far as awards go.
Re: Cannes 2016
Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2016 2:54 pm
by hearthesilence
Seriously, what happened on that jury? And did George Miller really single-handedly ensure that the best reviewed film went home empty handed or is that a nasty, baseless rumor?