Cannes. Lineup.

Competition:

• Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Three Monkeys.
• Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne: Le Silence De Lorna.
• Arnaud Desplechin: A Christmas Story.
• Clint Eastwood: Changeling.
• Atom Egoyan: Adoration.
• Ari Folman: Waltz With Bashir.
• Philippe Garrel: La Frontière de l'aube.
• Matteo Garrone: Gomorra.

Updated through 4/29.

• Charlie Kaufman: Synecdoche, New York.
• Eric Khoo: My Magic.
• Lucrecia Martel: La Mujer Sin Cabeza.
• Brillante Mendoza: Serbis.
• Kornél Mundruczó: Delta.
• Walter Salles: Linha De Passe.
• Paolo Sorrentino: Il Divo.
• Pablo Trapero: Leonera.
• Wim Wenders: The Palermo Shooting.
• Jia Zhangke: 24 City.
• Steven Soderbergh: Che (comprised of Guerrilla and The Argentine).

Out of Competition:

• Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
• Mark Osborne and John Stevenson: Kung Fu Panda.
• Ji-Woon Kim: The Good, The Bad, The Weird.
• Woody Allen: Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Special screenings:

• Marina Zenovich: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
• Wong Kar-wai: Ashes of Time Redux.
• Daniel Leconte: C'Est Dur D'être Aimé Par Des Cons.
• Marco Tullio Giordana: Sangue pazzo.
• Terence Davies: Of Time and the City.

Midnight Screenings:

• Emir Kusturica: Maradona.
• Jennifer Lynch: Surveillance.
• Hong-Jin Na: The Chaser.

Special Jury President's Screening:

• Alison Thompson: The Third Wave.

Main Jury:

• Sean Penn, president.
• Sergio Castellitto.
• Natalie Portman.
• Alfonso Cuaron.
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
• Alexandra Maria Lara.
• Rachid Bouchareb.

And Barry Levinson's What Just Happened? will close the festival, which runs May 14 through 25.

Updates: The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw offers first impressions of the lineup.

Via Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa, the lineup for Un Certain Regard:

• Pierre Schöller: Versailles.
• Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire: Johnny Mad Dog.
• Raymond Depardon: La Vie moderne.
• Thomas Clay: Soi Cowboy.
• Andreas Dresen: Wolke 9.
• Bent Hamer: O'Horten.
• Rubin Ostlund: De Ofrivilliga.
• Bong Joon-ho, Michel Gondry and Leos Carax: Tokyo!
• Sergey Dvortsevoy: Tulpan.
• Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige: I Want to See.
• Annemarie Jacir: Le sel de la mer.
• Amat Escalante: Los Bastardos.
• Matheus Nachtergaele: A festa da menina morta.
• Antonio Campos: Afterschool.
• Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Tokyo Sonata.
• Chung Mong-Hong: Ting Che.
• Liu Fendou: Yi ban Haishui, Yi ban huoyan.
• Kelly Reichardt: Wendy and Lucy.
• James Toback: Tyson.

How is that Che's in the lineup after so many reported it wouldn't be? "Some conspiracy theorists might not be wrong in smelling a hand behind the bait and switch," writes Michael Jones. Karina Longworth looks into it at the SpoutBlog.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir looks into a slew of titles that leap out at him.

Glenn Kenny's getting fired up, ready to go.

Nathaniel R pores over the lineup.

Updates, 4/24: "After its strong Latino flavor last year, Cannes sidebar Critics' Week largely focuses on European pics for its 47th edition," report John Hopewell and David Hayhurst for Variety, where they've got that lineup.

Once again, Variety's John Hopewell: "Vet Pole auteur Jerzy Skolimowski's comeback movie, Four Nights With Anna, will world preem as the opening film of the Cannes Film Festival's 40th Directors' Fortnight.... Directors' Fortnight's full program will be announced Friday. Speculation is running rife in Paris about which films will make the cut, given that the Directors' Fortnight will be the last Cannes section to be announced this year... There's a question mark over a clutch of films that were being talked up for Official Selection but as yet have to find a berth at the festival."

"Italy's robust presence at the upcoming 61st Cannes Film Festival was front page news Thursday in the country's top dailies, which are hailing the three Italian titles unspooling in the Official Selection as a sign of the local industry's new vitality." Nick Vivarelli reports in, yes, Variety.

Paul Clark at ScreenGrab: "Meet the Jury!"

Updates, 4/25: John Hopewell and David Hayhurst have the Directors' Fortnight lineup in Variety: "Twelve of the 22 films are either French pics or co-productions."

The Toronto Star's Peter Howell talks with Atom Egoyan: "His new drama Adoration, the sole Canadian contender for this year's Palme d'Or, is set in a Toronto high school. And for once, the city won't be pretending to be somewhere else." Via Movie City News.

Updates, 4/27: "During much of the Gilles Jacob era of Cannes, regions such as Latin America and Southeast Asia were usually ignored," writes Robert Koehler at filmjourney.org. "Now, it's Thierry Fremaux's Cannes - the 2008 edition will be his first in which he has full rein over all aspects of the program - and, as we've seen during recent Cannes festivals, programming seeks to reflect the reality that filmmaking is exploding on every continent." Still, "It may be Thierry's Cannes, but it's Olivier [Pere]'s Quinzaine," and "Olivier's Quinzaine, celebrating its 40th year as the Croisette upstart, looks to be a whole lot more interesting than Gilles' Cannes. Just look at some of the filmmakers in the roster, and you're looking at a window on the future of cinema: [Lisandro] Alonso and his Thierry del Fuego-set Liverpool, Albert Serra and his Three Wise Men odyssey El Cant dels ocells, Claire Simon's Les Bureaux de Dieu, Raya Martin and his five-hour Now Showing and the best Romanian you haven't heard of - Radu (The Paper Will Be Blue) Muntean and Boogie." As for Alonso, Serra and Martin, "Few younger filmmakers matter more than these three, and any program that contains all of them unveiling major new work is an event of the highest magnitude." He then sorts through the competition.

"There are six British films in Cannes this year," notes Agnès Poirier at the Guardian. "Yet, instead of making champagne corks fly, grumpy observers have been whining and sneering."

Anne Thompson's got a still from Synecdoche, New York and notes that Charlie Kaufman "plays the game of being very shy and press-averse, but he's actually just as canny about getting attention paid to him as most successful people on Hollywood."

Updates, 4/29: "The Cannes Film Festival has officially announced that Fernando Meirelles's Blindness (Miramax, 9.12) will open the festival," and Jeffrey Wells has news of other films that have been added to the slate as well: Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs and James Gray's Two Lovers in the competition lineup; Steve McQueen's Hunger will open Un Certain Regard; and Jeanne Balibar and Marjane Satrapi have joined the jury.

Andrew O'Hehir comments on the additions, including the confirmation that Barry Levinson's What Just Happened? will indeed close the festival.

"Being a subjective, not entirely well-informed, and hopefully not pre-judging bunch of observations on the pictures in competition at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival, May 14-25..." Glenn Kenny.

Posted by dwhudson at April 23, 2008 5:37 AM