Cannes review: Ari Folman turns to sci-fi with “The Congress”
Ben Kenigsberg reviews the new sci-fi reverie from the director of “Waltz with Bashir.”
Festivals & Awards
Breaking and Entering: Cannes Day Two
Michał Oleszczyk catches up with two takes on troubled youth: François Ozon’s “Young & Beautiful” and Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring.”
To “Heli” with “Gatsby”: Cannes Day One
Michał Oleszczyk contrasts the opulent excess of opening night film “The Great Gatsy” with the grimmer realities of Amat Escalante’s “Heli.”
Opening Night: Cannes Report, May 15, 2013
Power is rarely discussed at Cannes, and it’s ostensibly all about
art, although careers can hang on critics’ approval, and whether films
are sold here, and to how many regions of the world. The annual jury
press conference on the opening day is the first and foremost love-fest
in which the concept of competition is downplayed and jurors find novel
ways to sidestep the question of comparing one film to another in order
to award the Palme d’Or in ten days.
Rival tendencies: As Steven Spielberg gets ready to chair this year’s Cannes jury, we prepare for an alterna-Cannes.
Ben Kenigsberg looks forward to the parallel programs at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Tilda Swinton’s Ebertfest dance-along
Tilda Swinton leads 1,500 people in a dance-along to Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” during Roger Ebert’s Film Festival in the Virginia Theater on April 26, 2013.
Seduced by Sonoma
As Roger Ebert noted in February, film festivals have become so ubiquitous that there’s almost certainly one within driving distance of most film fans in the US. And lots of them are sprouting world-wide. Three years ago, I’d pitched Roger with an “FFC” piece on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. He advised that I provide a sense of the town and its atmosphere, the people, as well as what the festival itself was like.
Follow the official Ebertfest blog
Follow the goings on at Ebertfest (April 17 – 21, 2013) with the official festival blog by RogerEbert.com contributor Steven Boone.
Hot Tickets: “Lovelace” and “Before Midnight”
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Lovelace” tells the story of the eponymous porn star who stunned the world with her sexual talents in “Deep Throat” (1972), only to pay a dear price for her brief flash of celebrity. Linda Lovelace, as played by Amanda Seyfried, was a love-hungry, innocent young girl led astray by Chuck Traynor, a manipulative pimp of a husband, whose affection quickly turned into exploitation.
Dancing the Sundance sadhu dance
Why is it that the culture surrounding art is so far removed from the process of making that art? I suspect this week is hell for many filmmakers here. The world you have to exist in as a great artist (one that values the interior over the exterior, the spiritual over the corporeal) is directly opposed the world you have to exist in to get your movie made. I wonder how many other people here are wondering what’s wrong with them. How many people are pretending they love partying in order to not feel like a weirdo.
All hooked: Porn addiction and computer chess
The goodies are in! After a slow start, Sundance Film Festival 2013 has begun to offer real discoveries, even if the wait for that elusive game-changing masterpiece is by no means over. Still, there’s stuff to enjoy in Park City and appetites seem pleasantly whetted.
Fresh cinematic air at 7,000 ft.
Today at Sundance I wandered aimlessly around a supermarket picking up different cheeses and putting them back down. I can never decide on a brie.
Cheese-less I journeyed to a bustling main street (a very steep hill) where altitude-acclimated rich ladies breezed by me in furry hats and sunglasses. They were having a good time.
Slippery Slopes in Park City
At night, the ski slopes of Park City, Utah, are lit so beautifully they look like screens awaiting a projection from the sky. A moviegoer attending Sundance Film Festival couldn’t wish for a better backdrop for a long trek home after the final movie of the day is over. Even if the film happened to be lousy, those huge mid-air patches of white seem to hint that the good stuff is yet to come.
A couple too frail to last?
At Sundance, going to the movies is a way of taking shelter from the surrounding snow and cold, and I find it amusing to see scores of cinephiles arguing about movies in their full winter attire. It’s as if skiing wasn’t enough: the real fun over here is to slide down the slopes of filmmakers’ visions — even if every now and then pain and bruises may result.
A comedy beyond time and space
Paul Rudd walked by me on Main Street in Park City wearing reflective sunglasses so I couldn’t see if his eyes could see that my eyes saw him and were staring. I knew it was him from the way he walked. I can recognize a gait a mile away. But I didn’t know yet that “Prince Avalanche” was a masterpiece or I could’ve had a good conversation starter.
Disney magic: The terror of constant entertainment
The Disney mystique is a secular religion so global, powerful and self-contained — not to mention litigious — that it practically courts desecration. Randy Moore’s “Escape from Tomorrow,” which just premiered at Sundance and is unlikely to come to a theater near you any time soon, is the boldest act of cinematic violation at least since the “Mickey Mouse Club” finale of Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (in which scores of American soldiers in Vietnam adopted the show’s anthem as a deranged battle cry).
