2 days to Cannes.

"[T]here's a curious trend at this year's special anniversary event: a preponderance of Hollywood and American indie cinema." To balance the coverage Tarantino, the Coens et al will surely be generating, Anthony Kaufman offers "a list of ten full-fledged foreign-language productions (in alphabetical order) generating buzz and anticipation among critics, distributors and festival programmers" at indieWIRE.

Meanwhile, why not anticipate those American entries? Focusing on Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, Dan Calhoun does just that for Time Out.

Variety's Anne Thompson gets a few words with Michael Moore regarding Sicko: "[T]he forces I'm up against this time are a lot more sophisticated and well-funded than on Fahrenheit 911."

Even so, don't expect anything radical this year, advises the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. Still, "Cannes can create a stir. Even in the eight years I have been going, its movies can make a kind of impact, if not the Left-ishly political one expected by Godard et al in 1968."

"However high-minded the Festival gets, however much the auteurs think they own the joint, Cannes doesn't belong to the earnest old men in tuxes, or even to the hip young guys exposing their silk suits to Mediterranean salt water. The Festival's preoccupations have always been fetishistically female," writes Jonathan Romney, looking back on "some of the art-house heroines who have made Cannes' history, and whose history Cannes has made."

Also in the Independent, with Control opening the Director's Fortnight, Andy Gill revisits the story of Ian Curtis, Joy Division and, of course, New Order, which seems to have officially broken up once and for all now.

In the German papers: Marcus Rothe talks with artistic director Thierry Frémaux for the Berliner Zeitung and Sven von Reden looks back over the festival's history for Die Welt.

Posted by dwhudson at May 14, 2007 4:14 AM