cannes: Celebs Rumors

Let’s catch up on all things Cannes Film Festival. For one, if you haven’t seen it, Cannes recently revealed its 2024 poster, featuring a scene from “Rhapsody in August,” directed by the great Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, 81 at the time (see it below in full).

Of King Henry VIII’s six wives, his final marriage to Catherine Parr is perhaps the most ignored. The others are rife with tragedy: there are the two he detested the most that he bent the will of God to legalize divorce; there’s Jane Seymour, who died soon after giving birth to an heir; and most notoriously of all, there are the wives he beheaded.

With all the headlines dedicated to the #MeToo movement over the past few years, it can sometimes feel like the industry has made progress — certainly, enough to launch several biopics and television shows about its own misconduct. But this is still a time when “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” actress Adèle Haenel feels compelled to quit the French film industry in protest, and when the director of the Cannes Film Festival feels the need to say, out loud, that Cannes is not a “festival for rapists.” READ MORE: Cannes Director Says Event Is Not “A Festival For Rapists” Needless to say, there’s still work to be done, and it’s good that these conversations continue to happen – especially when they involve an icon of the French film industry, Marion Cotillard.

Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” playing in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, begins with an interview between a writer and a student interested in her work. It’s a lighthearted, almost flirty discussion where double entendres are part of a seemingly harmless game.

In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first feature, “Ilo Ilo,” won the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered around the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a specific lens — a family weathering the 1997 Asian financial crisis — to tell a universal story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity.

In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first feature, “Ilo Ilo,” won the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered around the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a specific lens — a family weathering the 1997 Asian financial crisis — to tell a universal story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity.

I am still searching for my words; my thoughts first ran dry in the opening minutes of the shattering and evocative “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It begins with the Osage tribal elders mourning the loss of their language and customs as they bury a sacred pipe. The scene breaks, next revealing these Indigenous folks — forcibly moved from Missouri to present-day Oklahoma (thought to be terrible, barren land) — discovering oil as psychedelic music erupts with the splash of the black liquid.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been a Cannes regular since his debut short, “Koza,” in 1995. An assured auteur from the very beginning, Ceylan made a name for Turkey on the festival circuit, and every year he brings a new title to the Croisette, critics and audiences alike already know what they’re in for.

God, what a terrible thing it is to be a teenage girl. A body once free to roam and run and be transformed by the unforgivable rush of hormones, cunning little tricksters pumped through blood in a mad rush to reach the anti-climatic cusp of adulthood.

reports Deadline. “Did I feel boycotted by Hollywood,” said Depp repeating the reporter’s question after being half an hour late to the panel and citing traffic issues for his delay.

Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest gem, “Monster,” begins on an enormous inferno. The facade of a hostess club is engulfed in flames of mysterious origin, attracting everyone from curious neighbors to squealing children chasing down roaring fire engines to witness the chaos.

At its best moments, the extremely straightforward construction of Cédric Kahn’s “The Goldman Case” allows for fascinating dynamics and images to occur apparently unforced, as if by themselves, for the viewer to seize on their own. The film, which has just opened the Directors’ Fortnight section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is refreshing for this bared-down, almost documentary-like approach — especially because it focuses on an incredibly complex man who needs all the space he can get to show everything that he is, in all his apparent contradictions.  READ MORE: 2023 Cannes Film Festival: 21 Must-See Movies To Watch This revelation takes place progressively, over the course of the almost surgically precise and aggressive trial that takes up most of the film’s runtime.

s’il vous plaît!Over at the French film festival on the Cote d’Azur, which wraps up this weekend, it’s long been popular to give comical and undeserved standing ovations to just about anything that could be feasibly called a film. Next year the Claudes and Claudettes will be hopping to their feet for a dancing toad on TikTok (more deserving, honestly, than Lars von Trier.)The trade publications time these performative participation prizes like they’re Olympic runners.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Deepika Padukone were among the Bollywood starlets who worked their magic at the 75th annual Cannes Film Festival this week.MORE: The best beauty looks on the Cannes Film Festival 2022 red carpetAishwarya, who is married to fellow actor Abhishek Bachchan, looked utterly divine in a billowing black gown as she attended the screening of Top Gun: Maverick on Wednesday.WATCH: Tom Cruise arrives at Cannes Film FestivalThe striking gown, by Dolce and Gabbana, featured pink, crimson and white floral motifs with pops of yellow that cascaded down from the shoulder to the floor.MORE: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan stuns in rare photo with lookalike daughter AaradhyaREAD: Aishwarya Rai calls her beautiful daughter a 'blessing'With her dark tresses left loose in sleek waves with a centre parting, the 48-year-old actress showcased statement sapphire and diamond-encrusted earrings. She rounded off her outfit with some glamorous makeup, consisting of dramatic eyeliner, a hint of blush and bright pink lips.

Ever since Michel Hazanavicius’ Oscar-winning tribute to silent cinema “The Artist,” the French filmmaker has continued to focus his work on the process of filmmaking itself, for better and, mostly, for worse. After “Redoutable,” centered on the relationship between Jean-Luc Godard and Anne Wiazemsky during the filming of “La Chinoise,” he again explored la magie du cinéma in “The Lost Prince,” where Omar Sy (the biggest star on French Netflix and, maybe, in French cinema tout court) saw the rich fantasy film-set world he had created for his daughter begin to crumble as she started to outgrow his fairytales.

When Julia Ducournau‘s last film, 2016’s “Raw,” premiered in the International Critics’ Week section of that year’s Cannes Film Festival, it generated massive amounts of buzz. That translated to a bump up to the main competition for her new film, “Titane,” and in the end, taking home the big best picture prize, aka the Palme d’Or.

Since it opened the Cannes Film Festival in July, presumably by now you’ve heard all about “Annette,” the avante garde rock opera musical by the great Leos Carax (“Holy Motors“) featuring the music of the avante-pop band Sparks (featured in Edgar Wright‘s recent documentary “The Sparks Brothers“) and featuring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. READ MORE: ‘Annette’: Leos Carax Warps The Star Is Born Vision Into An Ironic, Dark Pop Musical Fantasia [Cannes Review] Reception at Cannes was a bit muted and or all over the place, from puzzled faces to raves.

Andrea Arnold is aware that cows roaming the countryside is an image cut straight from the cloth of pastoral English iconography, the stuff of Victorian novels and Renaissance paintings. “[For] a lot of our modern lives, our sort of view of nature is a very romantic one,” she says.

The cinema of filmmaker Gaspar Noé tends to skew toward the younger, stickier parts of life. Since the name-making controversy of his second feature, “Irreversible” (2002), the Argentinian filmmaker has become synonymous with a world of parties, loud music, drug-taking, and sex.

While the internet IRL is drenched in morbidity and toxicity, Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda imagines a brighter semi-utopia in “Belle.” Five billion users have signed up to a virtual society called “U,” a vast chasm of lights and screens, and is populated by algorithmically generated avatars that supposedly bring out the person’s inner strengths. For Suzu, a shy high school student, she enters U as an ethereal pink-haired songstress called Belle, whose angelic voice and inspiring songs quickly go viral.

Well, that’s a wrap on the 2021 Cannes Film Festival; 56 reviews and counting (there might be one or two more stragglers to come, but we are basically done). It was a pretty great festival and strong year despite the COVID-19 protocol confusion, those changing rules, and Spike Lee spoiling the Palme d’Or prize early (Spike!!).

Conspiracy theorists have spent more time researching their subjects than you have and have facts ready at their disposable with which to bury you in. Take filmmaker Oliver Stone, for example.

“This stuff is junk, what we’re doing,” Bill Murray deadpans in the middle of “New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization.” The live audience onscreen—a strange sight after a year and a half of social distancing and no live performances—laughs. Murray hams it up: “Is it too late to get some moussaka?” Then he smiles knowingly and nods.

Though “Nitram” never depicts the unspoken horrific massacre that its protagonist commits, the entire film queasily pulses in the anxious anticipation of the unspeakable event. It’s not an easy film to watch, knowing what’s coming but remaining completely powerless, not unlike watching a car crash in motion and being unable to stop it.

Note to self: do not get old. The alternative, i.e., death, may not be very pleasant but, sedate and dignified and swathed in vaguely biblical white sheets, it doesn’t get anything like the bad press that old age does in Gaspar Noé‘s “Vortex.” Let’s not forget that in “Enter the Void,” this same director made death seem like quite the trip – infinitely preferable to the progressively demeaning ravages of dementia or the Sword of Damocles that is a dodgy ticker.

Not even a global pandemic could stop prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo, but his latest film deals with ideas and tensions that echo questions and perspectives brought to the surface by this global health crisis. Playing in the Cannes Premiere section of this year’s Festival de Cannes, “In Front of Your Face” only slowly reveals its hand.

While the internet IRL is drenched in morbidity and toxicity, Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda imagines a brighter semi-utopia in “Belle.” Five billion users have signed up to a virtual society called “U,” a vast chasm of lights and screens, and is populated by algorithmically generated avatars that supposedly bring out the person’s inner strengths. For Suzu, a shy high school student, she enters U as an ethereal pink-haired songstress called Belle, whose angelic voice and inspiring songs quickly go viral.

Director Vincent Maël Cardona uses western Europe in the early-1980s as the canvas upon which he paints his layered and achingly genuine portrait of young love, familial bondage, artistic aspiration, and universal chaos. Unburdened by a firm connection to any one genre or narrative archetype, “Magnetic Beats” tells a simple story with a full arsenal of source music, thoughtful set design, and crisp acting at all levels to pull off this love letter to a particular moment in time.

French cinema’s favorite enfant terrible is back at the Cannes Film Festival. Gaspar Noé returns to the French Riviera with his latest film, “Vortex,” to premiere out of competition this week in the Cannes Premiere section.

Bruno Dumont’s peculiar blend of the transcendental with a clumsy kind of realism was a natural fit to “Jeannette” and “Joan of Arc,” both films dealing with the same presumed miracle — an ordinary little girl claiming to be guided by Saints. That mix takes on a more ambiguous aura in “France,” which premiered in Competition at this year’s Festival de Cannes and centers on a news host going through a different but not entirely dissimilar sort of spiritual/existential crisis about what she does for a living and who she is.

It’s a good thing you can’t catch a virus from an image because if you could, just a few frames of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s fabulously yeasty, bilious, dank Competition title, “Petrov’s Flu” would bring all of Cannes‘ anti-Covid measures to naught. A feverish delirium of a film that rollicks through an apocalyptically bleak Yekaterinburg New Years’ Eve as though strapped to an out-of-control hospital gurney, its long takes go on for little eternities, as Serebrennikov weaves queasily into diseased reality and out of splintered memory, colliding bravura filmmaking with theatrical staging and an almost old-fashioned literary vibe.

A man asks the first woman who enters the room to marry him and then is surprised to find she does not respect him. This sums up “The Story of My Wife” from Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi, playing in Competition at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

Tatiana Huezo’s eye for lyrical truth has materialized in documentaries like “Tempestad” or “The Tinniest Place,” works that penetrate some of the most tenebrous corners in recent Latin American history with shimmering compassion. Her stance as an acute observer of the people that survive and persevere through tumultuous sociopolitical and economically disadvantaged contexts produces thought-provoking filmic meditations.

In one scene of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” Jessica (Tilda Swinton) and a friend browse refrigerated cabinets designed to preserve flowers. “In here, time stops,” the saleswoman says proudly, gesturing at the blue cupboards.

Few films have accurately captured the definitive Millennial experience—lovelorn, cash-strapped, self-absorbed, and tech-addicted—though a few have tried, and some even succeeded. Modern love is no joke, as films and shows like “Frances Ha” and “Girls” know, and neither is modern friendship, or any part of early adulthood these days.

It’s safe to say that director Sean Baker‘s latest film, “Red Rocket,” is one of the most anticipated of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “The Florida Project,” Baker’s last film, premiered during the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes 2017 and quickly became one of the most talked-about films at the festival.