The Cannes Film Festival is a big deal; probably the biggest deal for avid, true-blue cineastes the world over, definitely bigger than the celebrity skifest that is the Sundance Film Festival. No Country for Old Men’s Oscar campaign started in Cannes last May, where it actually received lukewarm reviews and was overshadowed by the acclaim for the Romanian masterpiece 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which ran away with the Palme D’Or, or Best Film prize, and Best Director honors, respectively), two of the best-reviewed films of 2007. The 2008 Main Competition slate was unveiled last Thursday for the Festival that will run from May 14-25, and amongst the high-profile films competing for the Palme D’Or, such as Clint Eastwood’s period piece, Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie; Steven Soderbergh’s four hour opus about Che Guevarra, Che, with Benicio del Toro in the title role; Charlie Kaufman’s sure-to-be-eccentric-but-cool debut movie, Synecdoche, New York; former Cannes winners’ the Dardennes brothers’ La Silence de Lorna, and Wim Wender’s multi-lingual The Palermo Shooting, which sounds really perplexing (I mean with the lead singer of the German punk band Die Toten Hosen and Milla Jovovich as headliners, you gotta wonder what kind of medication Wenders is now on), is….Serbis, directed by Brilliante Mendoza of the Philippines! Yes, after more than a quarter of a century, the much maligned Philippine film industry, which continues to demonstrate more lives than three dead cats, is going to be represented in the Main Competition of the most prestigious film event in the world. Yay!
Apr 27
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