Camping in Angelina's dress

Elizabeth Renzetti, 20/05/08 at 2:01 PM EDT

I'm still trying to get over Angelina's red-carpet dress. What was that tent? It looked like as if there might be a couple of Bedouin and a camel hiding underneath. Lovely to see her fella holding an umbrella over her.

One word of advice, Brad: Pretty soon you're going to need a bigger umbrella.

 

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Maradona's pretty woman

Elizabeth Renzetti, 20/05/08 at 1:32 PM EDT

You're going to have to wait a minute to find out who Diego Maradona thinks will win tomorrow night's Champions League match in Moscow, because first you're going to find out who is the object of his crush. I'd say “highly improbable” crush, but since every day here is like a big old sundae of weirdness with a candy-coated weird cherry on top, it seems almost normal that the Argentine soccer wild man has a deep fondness for … Julia Roberts.

“I would do anything to see her walk down the Croisette,” Maradona said after a screening of a documentary about his life by Emir Kusturica. “I would cut off my hand, the hand that scored against England, to see Julia Roberts.” His wiry body was practically bouncing; I thought he was going to draw an hourglass shape in the air.

Maradona's looking good, having lost the bloat of his druggie days. The film doesn't avoid his dark side, but Kusturica's more interested in the cult of Maradona, the way that his life has become an object of veneration for some Latin Americans. Kusturica told a story about how Maradona and his daughter were on a plane when it hit bad turbulence. A fellow passenger, seeing that the daughter was frightened, pointed to Maradona and said, “Don't worry – God is with us.”

There are striking similarities between this film and James Toback's documentary about Mike Tyson, which screened here last week, not least in the relationship that developed between the directors and their subjects, and the way that both are shown in a cost-benefit relationship with their demons. For Maradona, though, there was one crucial difference: “He lives in suffering and I live in joy.” Iron Mike might have something to say about that.

As for tomorrow night's game, Maradona went out of his way to praise both teams and their strong players, but, if forced to choose, he thinks Manchester United's going to win. Sorry, Chelsea fans.

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Happy birthday, laser eyes

Elizabeth Renzetti, 20/05/08 at 9:25 AM EDT

The movies don't lie: Clint Eastwood really does have a gaze that can boil water from 30 paces. A Japanese journalist wished him a happy birthday at a press conference for his film The Changeling (he turns 78 on May 31) and he gave her a mock furious look.

“It's not for at least another week,” he said, “So leave me in peace.” Eastwood is at Cannes, where he's previously been head of the jury, with a period movie about a mother (Angelina Jolie) searching for her missing son.

The director also put to rest any notions that he'd once again be bothering punks about the state of their luckiness – Eastwood said he had no plans to play Dirty Harry Callahan again. “No, I am,” Jolie said. “Dirty Harriet,” Eastwood shot back.

Someone tried to ask about comments Spike Lee apparently made earlier this morning, criticizing movies like Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers for not including enough black soldiers (I didn't actually hear Lee's comments.) The moderator cut the question off, though, so we didn't hear Eastwood's response. Too bad – I'd like to have felt the nuclear after burn of that look.

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Lucky break, in Catalan and Hebrew

Elizabeth Renzetti, 19/05/08 at 1:07 PM EDT

Not too long ago Mark Peranson (of the Vancouver Film Festival and Cinemascope magazine) got a cheery text from his friend, film producer Montse Triola: “Albert would like U to perform Saint Joseph. What do U think? Fancy?”

Peranson's not an actor, he's a film journalist and programmer, but who could turn down the opportunity to make his acting debut playing the patriarch of Christianity's first family? So he got on the next plane to Barcelona, where he slept on the floor of director Albert Serra's apartment before embarking on a weird filmic adventure.

To say “weird” doesn't really sum up El Cant Dels Ocells (as it's called in Catalan; in English it's Birdsong). Birdsong is the story of the three kings who went in search of Jesus, but filmed in Iceland and the Canary Islands, using only natural light, with a cast of nonprofessionals speaking an improvised script.

 Each of the “actors” playing the kings – a tennis instructor, a construction worker and the construction worker's father - is called Lluis. In the film, the kings speak Catalan and Peranson speaks Hebrew.

Triola, the producer, also plays Mary.

There's actually one line of English: “At one point, Mary was holding this lamb and I looked over and said, ‘The lamb just pooed on you,'” Peranson said. “I think that made the final cut.”

 As for reviews of his first on-screen performance, Peranson says someone who saw an early cut of the film asked, “Were you deliberately acting stoned?”

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The horror, the horror

Elizabeth Renzetti, 19/05/08 at 11:22 AM EDT

Okay, move over, Liam.

Like Karen Black I'm taking control of this jet, so be prepared to be frightened. Although not as frightened as you might be if you had to watch some of the movies I've seen advertised here – not the ones in competition, but the thousands seeking financing or distribution, which you'll see only if you happen to spend a lot of time in motels or on budget airlines.

These movies invariably have lurid posters bursting with guns, fireballs or zombies – all three and it's the holy trinity. Desert of Blood, Alive or Dead, Alphabet Killer, Fall Down Dead … they're all sensitive, coming-of-age dramas set in the Belgian countryside. Or not.

So far, my favourite poster accompanies a movie called The Baby Doll Night. It features a silk nightie – yes, a baby doll – hanging off a tank, and asks this question: “Can one night of pleasure mend sixty years of pain?”

Sometimes these budget flicks are beyond comprehension.

I saw an advertisement for The Red Awn, and, after staring at it for a while I spent a happy couple of hours trying to decide if it was a typo, and if so what was actually intended.
Red Hawn – the story of Goldie's days as a Siberian double agent?
Red Prawn – a mutant shrimp returns to wreak vengeance on the chef who boiled him alive?
It's more fun than Boggle.

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When the kids have sway

Elizabeth Renzetti, 19/05/08 at 9:07 AM EDT

Think of the bragging rights in the schoolyard if you could say your mom starred in the new Indiana Jones movie - and even better, you got to tell her to work on her motivation.

  Cate Blanchett said that not only were her sons welcome on the set of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but that Steven Spielberg let them direct her one day.

 'They were highly critical.'

For parents wondering how old their kids should be before seeing the film, here's the view of the man throwing the punches. Talking about girlfriend Calista Flockhart's seven-year-old son, Harrison Ford said: 'In Liam's case, I think it will be another year or so before I want him to see this movie.'

 Sorry, kids. Indy has spoken.

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Villeneuve back? From where?

Elizabeth Renzetti, 19/05/08 at 8:48 AM EDT

Hi Liz. Liam Lacey here. I want to hijack your blog for a bit to talk about the new short film from Quebec director, Denis Villeneuve, which I saw at Critics' Week.

"Le retour de Denis Villeneuve" said one French headline about the recent re-emergence of the Quebec filmmaker. And your first thought, is "Return from where?"

Then a quick check reveals that, amazingly, it has been eight years since Quebec's most promising filmmaker made his last feature, Maelstrom, a film narrated by a fish that won more than 25 international awards, including five Genies.

His new film, Next Floor, an 11-minute short in the Critics' Week competition, was based on an idea from his friend, Phoebe Greenberg, who had acquired a dilapidated former glass factory that she wanted to turn into a cultural centre. Major renovations were required, including knocking out a floor, and she had an idea for a film.

The film, written by Jacques Davidts, is set in a decrepit warehouse, a group of men and women in fancy clothes, grimly devouring large plates of meat – piglets, deer, rhinoceros, armadillo and many more. A host of waiters stands by ready to serve them more and a chamber orchestra plays. Then the maître d' announces "Next floor." The table collapses through the floor to the floor below. The surviving diners pull themselves together and begin consuming again. The process repeats again and again as the waiters look on dispassionately. Gorgeous and grotesque, the film plays with notions of privilege, consumption and disaster.

Villeneuve, who shot the film over four days (only one floor actually collapsed; the rest was computer-generated) said he was convinced the actors were going to rebel from the heat, the meat and the constant eating. Periodically, the mounds of meat had to be changed before they started to spoil.

The filmmaker first earned attention with Cosmos, as one of six young directors assembled by producer Roger Frappier, to make a series of interconnected stories about a Montreal taxi driver. It appeared at Cannes's Directors' Fortnight program, where it won a prize. In 1998, he made his first feature, Un 32 aout sur terre (August 32 on earth), steeped in the conceits and look of the French and Italian new wave cinemas. That film, included Cannes's Un Certain Regard.

Maelstrom (2000) was the confirmation of his talent. Then, Villeneuve suddenly backed off and took a break from feature filmmaking: "It was the best thing I ever did in my life," he said. "I spent more time with my children. I worked on becoming a better writer and gaining experience to be a better filmmaker. With my two features, I did nothing but work. I didn't want to make a film about filmmaking – Maelstrom 2, or something."

Next Floor is a stylistic and emotional break from his current film, a naturalistic docudrama called Polytechnique, about the murder of 14 young female engineering students at Montreal's École Polytechnique in 1989. He told interviewers that filming it gave him nightmares. He'll begin editing it when he returns from Cannes. He's also currently working on Incendies, a screen adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad's award-winning play,

"I'm strongly drawn to naturalism but there's a part of me that also moved by surrealism. So Next Floor was more than a break for me. It felt like a necessity."

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Where are my meds?

Elizabeth Renzetti, 18/05/08 at 8:18 AM EDT

I'm hearing echoes everywhere, which either means filmmakers are all addressing similar concerns or I've forgotten to take my medication.

Pregnant women, prisons (often in the same movie), families that are unhappy in different ways - it's all here. In James Toback's documentary about Mike Tyson, the boxer complains about his mother's promiscuity (a word he can't pronounce, which just makes it sadder). Moments later he reveals that he fought a major heavyweight bout while suffering the effects of gonorrhea, having not been too discriminating in his choice of prostitutes. The hand of fate delivers a mean uppercut.

Then in Walter Salles's deeply affecting Linha de Passe, four brothers in workingi-class Sao Paolo try to deal with the fact that they've all got different fathers. The youngest is a foul-mouthed, charming little guy who gets in a fight at school after being racially taunted. At first you think his mother - pregnant by a fifth mystery dude - is going to punish him with a slap across the chops, but she hugs him instead and says proudly, 'My little Mike Tyson!'

Time to go take my medication.

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hype

Elizabeth Renzetti, 17/05/08 at 5:56 PM EDT

By Elizabeth Renzetti

I thought there was one magic name I could drop to impress my six year old. “Guess who I'm going to meet,” I asked him when I phoned home. “Indiana Jones.”

“Hm,” he said.

I asked if he couldn't work up a bit more enthusiasm, but he had more important things on his mind than summer's tentpole movies and the actors in them. “I'm putting together my new Indiana Jones Lego,” he said. “It's got a crocodile!”

 There's no escaping the man in the hat, especially on the Croisette: Posters in shops, ads everywhere, and a supremely tacky temple façade stuck to the front of the Carlton Hotel.

What there hasn't been yet is a movie. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is screening tomorrow only once for press. The producers may want to prevent advance word leaking out (some websites have already run unfavourable reviews).

George Lucas addressed the question frankly when he met reporters this afternoon: “People have strong opinions and they express them. Star Wars and Indiana Jones have not been reviewed in superlative fashion most of the time, these are not films that get Academy Awards. We knew that going in. There's a reason for us doing this movie. We don't need the money and people are going to throw tomatoes at us. But it was a fun movie to make, we love it, and in the end this one turned out fantastic.”

 We'll have to wait till tomorrow to find out if there's a treasure buried in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hype. I'll keep you posted.

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