he final line-up for this year’s Cannes film festival sees veteran directors Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Brazil’s Fernando Meirelles face off against lesser-known talent for its coveted Palme d’Or for best movie, organizers said Wednesday.
Bumping up the number of films to compete for the top prize from 19 to 22, organizers said in a surprise announcement that this year’s award will be handed out by Robert de Niro.
Canne’s mix of old and new, of Hollywood glitz and auteur fare, has proven a recipe for success as the film industry’s paramount festival gears up for its 61st edition from May 14 to May 25.
PHOTO: AP
After viewing 1,792 films from 96 countries, organizers selected 22 movies to compete for the Palme with the countdown per continent at Asia (three), Europe (eight), Latin America (four), the US (four), and a film each from Israel, Canada and Turkey.
A yearly 12-day extravaganza of exclusive parties, red-carpet screenings, and wheeling and dealing, the festival this year expects movie celebs Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, Penelope Cruz and Woody Allen — not to mention sporting giants Mike Tyson andDiego Maradona — to attend.
De Niro, apart from handing out the Palme, flies in for a red carpet ceremony as star of Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened, in which he plays a fading Hollywood producer. The film, also starring Bruce Willis and Sean Penn, closes the filmfest.
Kicking off the event is Blindness by Meirelles, best-known for his Oscar-nominated City of God or more recent The Constant Gardener. His new film, Blindness, stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover as residents of a city mysteriously struck by creeping blindness.
Also added at the last-minute to compete for the Palme is James Gray’s Two Lovers starring Joaquin Phoenix as a New Yorker torn between Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw, a first sentimental drama by the maker of mafia crime chronicles such as Little Odessa and We Own the Night.
Eastwood’s Changeling is a thriller set in the 1920s starring Jolie as a mother grieving for a kidnapped son.
Soderbergh, best known for his Ocean’s movies, will be presenting a four-hour two-part movie entitled Che about the revolutionary hero’s life and times that stars Benicio del Toro, who played in the director’s 2000 hit Traffic.
Much-awaited also are the movies selected to be screened out of competition and getting their world release, including the latest from top-name directors Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg will be bringing the year’s most-awaited movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — the fourth installment in the box office-busting series starring Harrison Ford as the archaeologist adventurer who had his first outing way back in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Woody Allen, a longstanding favorite at the Cannes filmfest, brings his Spanish-set Vicky Cristina Barcelona, along with its stars Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem, for a walk up the red carpet.
A kicking and punching Kung-Fu Panda — an animated comedy-adventure from Dreamworks with a voice cast boasting Jack Black, Jolie, Lucy Liu and Dustin Hoffman — has also been selected out of competition, along with The Good, The Bad, The Weird, a “kimchi” Western from South Korea’s Kim Jee-Woon.
High profile documentaries screening out of competition include an Emir Kusturica film about Maradona, a film on Tyson by James Toback and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired by Marina Zenovich.
In other festival news, organizers say Burn After Reading, the dark spy-comedy by Oscar-winning brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, will open this year’s edition of the Venice Film Festival.
The movie stars George Clooney, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins and Tilda Swinton.
Organizers said in a press release on Monday that the movie will have its world premiere on Aug. 27. The film tells the story of an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two Washington, DC, gym employees.
The festival culminates Sept. 6 with the awarding of the prestigious Golden Lion.
The official lineup will be announced in late July.
Mel Gibson, who has kept a low profile since his drunken anti-Semitic outburst in July 2006, is set to headline his first feature film since 2002, Daily Variety reported on Tuesday.
He apologized profusely soon after the incident, met with Jewish leaders, and underwent treatment for alcoholism. He is also serving a three-year probation term.
The 52-year-old Hollywood actor has committed to play a police investigator in Edge of Darkness, a thriller based on a 1985 BBC miniseries, the trade publication said.
Gibson’s last feature starring roles were in the 2002 pair Signs and We Were Soldiers. He went on to direct 2004’s The Passion of the Christ and 2006’s Apocalypto.
— AGENCIES
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March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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