General Movie Thread

[TKz]

"Oh, you like the bird now? Take his bird. And his pillows. And his shoes."

[Ant]

Anyone seen The Bay? I'm supposed to be having a movie night with a few friends next week and they have chosen this film. All i know is it's a horror by the guys from Insidious which can go one of two ways for me.

[Benjamin]

This looks so, so good.

[TKz]

Man, it kills me that I'll forget these films exist by the time I'll be able to see them.

[livid]

This looks so, so good.

Yeah it does. It's playing at the local film festival next week so I might be going.

Don't worry, I'll remind you ticklez!

[apsham]

Holy shit.

That does look good.

[TKz]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/318676760/darcis-walk-of-shame?ref=live

Haven't figured out if this is adorable or pathetic. I'll probably know by the time it's bombed.

[apsham]

Ohhh.. that is rather sad. At least it's one of those 'fully funded only' things.

[Damian WayLNKe]

Just found out that Shane Carruth (Primer) is releasing another movie soon. I thought he had just dropped off the face of the Earth in terms of making a second film so I'm pretty excited.

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn podcast with him: http://www.maximumfun.org/bullseye/bullseye-jesse-thorn-shane-carruth-upstream-color-and-rodney-ascher-room-237

[Jimmy]

A nice article on the new Cannes line-up.

More than the first cuckoo, the announcement of the Cannes competition list is the first sign of spring; always an exciting moment and even more so as in recent years Cannes has consolidated its primacy among the film festivals of the world. There look to be no major or startling omissions: Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac is reportedly not ready, although I was disappointed not to see Steve McQueen's Twelve Years a Slave. There are, in fact, no British entries in competition, but Stephen Frears's Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight – an HBO project about Ali's opposition to Vietnam – has a Special Screening slot. (A small footnote here: young British film-maker Ana Caro, from the National Film and Television School, has a short film in the Cinéfondation section.)

There is the expected parade of heavy-hitters and some former Palme d'Or-winners: Roman Polanski, Nicolas Winding Refn, Paolo Sorrentino, Steven Soderbergh, Alexander Payne, Joel and Ethan Coen, François Ozon, Takashi Miike, Hirokazu Kore-eda, James Gray, Abdellatif Kechiche and Asghar Farhadi.

And of course there are the competition openers, shrewdly chosen, surely, with an eye to delivering the red-carpet glitz that is so vital for international media coverage and big-ticket sponsorship. Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby features Leonardo DiCaprio as the charismatic and mysterious Gatsby himself. The trailer will feed both the hopes and the gravest fears of those who have followed Luhrmann's career so far. Can Luhrmann respond to the quieter, gloomier notes of Fitzgerald's book? Let's hope so. But as one prominent producer put it to me: "If they can't lay on a big after-party for that film, then when can they?"

The opener for the Un Certain Regard sidebar section — the "alternative" selection Cannes purists whimsically insist is the soul of the festival itself — is Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring. It's based on the true-crime story of delinquent teens who broke into celebrities' houses to steal their stuff and generally indulge in a weird, fetishist homage – and stars Emma Watson. In the hands of Bret Easton Ellis, who knows what this movie would look like, but judging from Coppola's previous work, such as Lost in Translation and Somewhere, her attitude tends to be far less astringent and more indulgent. The trailer hints that Lena Dunham's HBO TV hit Girls might be an influence.

What is the sexiest and most hotly anticipated choice in competition? Without a doubt it is Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, starringRyan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas. The trailer has some sleek and dazzling scenes in Thailand, and Gosling smoulders radioactively. It looks sensational. The shock factor and the violence is bound to be pretty high: will it be a prizewinner? Second-guessing the assumed tastes of the jury president (this year Steven Spielberg) has proved to be futile in the past.

The Coen brothers are among this festival's favoured auteurs, the equivalent of the Mafia's "made guys", and it is no surprise to see their new movie Inside Llewyn Davis on the competition list. Oscar Isaac plays the difficult, talented folk singer in 60s New York, and Carey Mulliganand John Goodman co-star. At first glance, it promises to be a "serious" Coen film, like No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man, rather than fluff such as Gambit or The Ladykillers.

This is a great festival for Japan, and two very different Japanese auteurs are represented. Takashi Miike's Straw Shield is a high-stakes crime thriller about a police squad tasked with protecting a murderer who has turned himself in after the grandfather of his victim has announced a billion-yen reward for anyone who kills him. Hirokazu Kore-eda's Like Father Like Son could not look more different. Kore-eda is a director who has become renowned for superb and reflective family dramas in the tradition of Ozu, and this looks like something in the same vein. The father of a six-year-old boy receives a phone call from the hospital to say that there was a mixup when his son was born and he took home the wrong baby. How does he react?

One of the hottest tickets in competition must surely be Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra, an HBO project that has blossomed into feature-film status and shown that his previous movie, Side Effects, was not in fact his last. Michael Douglas plays Liberace and Matt Damon is Scott Thorson, his young companion/chauffeur/adopted son, and this is set to be one of the confectionery treats of the competition list.

The same thing cannot exactly be said about Asghar Farhadi's

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, selected for competition, although this director is widely respected and admired and his last movie, A Separation, commanded a remarkable consensus of critical acclaim – further amplified in this country when his previous movie About Elly was brought out for release. The Past stars Bérénice Bejo (from The Artist) and revisits some of the themes of A Separation. An Iranian man leaves his French wife and children to return to his homeland, opening personal and political wounds.

Alexander Payne is a film-maker who, for me, allowed himself to become a little too sucrose with his last movie, The Descendants, but he gave Jack Nicholson one of his most satisfying and interesting roles in the desolate About Schmidt, which was in competition at Cannes in 2002. In a sense, this is another of his road movies: Bruce Dern is the ageing alcoholic who is travelling across country with his estanged son to claim a million-dollar lottery prize. It seems to be a restatement of a classic Payne theme: beautifully expressed in such movies as Schmidt and Sideways. His fans (including me) are hoping that this will be another winner.

by Paolo Sorrentino is a competition entry that provokes mixed emotions. Sorrentino's appearances in Cannes have been stunning, probably most notably with Il Divo, his study of the controversial former prime minister of Italy Giulio Andreotti, in 2008. But his collaboration with Sean Penn, This Must Be The Place, was very much less interesting: a superstar project which didn't entirely come off. The Great Beauty stars Toni Servillo — that mesmeric Italian actor who has worked with Sorrentino so often in the past — as an ageing writer who recalls his vanished youth in Rome. It certainly will be different to Woody Allen's view of the city.

The Life of Adele, by Abdellatif Kechiche (formerly known as Blue Is The Warmest Colour) is an exciting Competition pick. Kechiche's Couscous, five years ago, was a lovely and rich film, and anything from this director has to be of interest. A 15-year-old girl, Adèle, seems to have found love with Thomas — but then becomes overwhelmed with erotic fantasies about a blue-haired girl that she has met in the street.

Roman Polanski actually has two films at Cannes. One is a revival of his 1970s documentary about Jackie Stewart, Weekend of a Champion — shown as a special screening — and it will be interesting to see if Stewart will share a red carpet moment with this controversial director. Polanski's new film, in competition, is Venus in Fur, starring Mathieu Amalric, and based on the Broadway stage play about a director who wishes to mount an adaptation of the novella of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch about erotic submission. All but despairing of finding the right actress, he is astonished when one shows up at his door, begs to be allowed to audition, and then establishes psychological and sexual mastery over the man. It looks like a chamber piece comparable to Polanski's four-hander Carnage.

If ever there was a director who owed his position to Cannes it is James Gray, an American auteur that this festival has doggedly promoted – but whose prestige at Cannes has never quite translated elsewhere. His The Immigrant (variously known as Lowlife) stars Marion Cotillard as an immigrant woman in the US, tricked into a disreputable career in burlesque, but rescued by a magician who intends to reunite her with her sister. It could almost be the plot of a Woody Allen movie – and it sounds fascinating.

Claire Denis's Bastards was a film that many expected to see in competition – as it happens, it is in Un Certain Regard. Could this supply a shock factor greater than Nicolas Winding Refn? Perhaps. A container ship captain returns to Paris to sort out a family crisis. His brother-in-law has been driven to ruin and suicide by a man on whom the captain vows to take a terrible revenge, by targeting the man's mistress – but then falls in love with her. It looks to me as if the final 10 minutes will deliver something ripely explicit, which will have us reeling around the Croisette afterwards.

Is there anything we're nervous about seeing? The actor-writer-artistJames Franco is appearing at Cannes as a director, with his As I Lay Dying, a version of the William Faulkner novel, adapted by Franco himself. Franco rubs people up the wrong way a bit, but no-one can doubt his energy and creativity.And back in Competition, the actor Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi is appearing as director, with her A Castle in Italy, about a family forced to sell their ancestral home. Will that be the kind of homegrown French whimsy that Cannes occasionally serves up?

What a fascinating festival lineup, and as ever the best stuff will almost certainly be the unheralded movies that we don't even realise are there. I can't wait.

[KONGO]

James Franco doing As I Lay Dying? Would not have thought of that from him, but I'll have to look out for it.

[livid]

Zach Braff is using Kickstarter to fund his next film.

I really enjoyed Garden State so this is great news to me. It seems like it'll be pretty easy to reach the goal too since it's already at almost $300,000 and hasn't even been available for 24 hours.

[Ant]

When i saw Zach Braff and Kickstarter, i was hoping for a Scrubs film

[livid]

Because they didn't beat the show to death enough already?

[LL!]

Because they didn't beat the show to death enough already?

Serious.

[Ant]

Fair point.

I'd rather have lesser-quality Scrubs than most of the crap on TV now though

[Jimmy]

I'm interested to see what he can come up with next, but I really didn't rate Garden State. I mean it was okay, but I can't see where all the praise comes from. It was decent enough though, so I'm glad to see he's having another crack at something.

[livid]

I'd rather have lesser-quality Scrubs than most of the crap on TV now though

Ugh, I really hate it when people say shit like that. Sure, there's crap but we're also living in era where there is a tremendous amount of great TV being aired and making blanket statements that only acknowledge the shit devalues the current state of TV.

[TKz]

Fair point.

I'd rather have lesser-quality Scrubs than most of the crap on TV now though

I find this hilarious coming from someone with a picture of Dexter in his avatar.

[Ant]

I know the quality has dipped a lot since the first five seasons but still it's a favourite of mine. I have read all the novels too.

I'm a fan of the character regardless of the execution. After all, TV is subjective.