According to the British trade paper Screen International, simmering feminist resentment about the absence of women directors represented in the main competition section at Cannes this year exploded over the weekend into a full-scale dispute over whether the festival is sexist. See full article here
Cannes-Bound Kerouac Adaptation Heads a Small Convoy of Road Movies
May 14, 2012, 8:13 pm
Road movies are back in transit. Walter Salles’s adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” which is playing in the Competition section at Cannes, was picked up for US distribution this week, says the Hollywood Reporter. And two new entries in the subgenre have been announced. Since one of them is French and stars Catherine Deneuve as a gallivanting grandmother, however, it would be wrong to suggest that the days of American existential drift, as once represented by “Easy Rider,” “Rain People,” “Two Lane Blacktop,” and “Five Easy Pieces,” are back again. See full article here
Roman Polanski to Direct “Relevant” Spy Thriller About the Dreyfus Affair
May 14, 2012, 8:02 pm
Roman Polanski yesterday announced that he is preparing to direct a film about the Dreyfus Affair, which scandalously exposed the extent of anti-Semitic corruption in French political and high-ranking military circles in the 1890s and early 1900s. According to Deadline, Polanski will direct a screenplay written by Robert Harris, with whom he collaborated on 2010’s “The Ghost Writer.” Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde, Polanski’s long-time producers, will finance the movie independently and shooting will start toward the end of the year in Paris. see full article here
Brian De Palma’s “Passion” Pits Naomi Rapace Against Rachel McAdams
May 10, 2012, 6:15 pm
Brian De Palma’s fascination with cruelty and manipulation should serve his new movie well.
Tommy Lee Jones to Steward Frontier Women, and the Western Itself, in “The Homesman”
May 10, 2012, 6:12 pm
Tommy Lee Jones, one of the last holdouts against the fading of the Western’s light, will direct, produce and star in his adaptation of “The Homesman.” The 1988 novel, which swept the Western genre book awards, was written by the late Glendon Swarthout, whose 1975 “The Shootist” became the last John Wayne film. See full article here
Will Michael Bay’s “Treasure Island” Prequel Prove to Be Pirate Heaven or a Rum Do?
May 10, 2012, 6:10 pm
The piracy fan craze triggered by the success of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series will soon be exploited on cable and television. Michael Bay, the visually grandiloquent director of “Pearl Harbor” and the “Transformers” movies, is to produce the neatly titled “Black Sails,” an eight-part prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” for the STARZ channel as it attempts to compete with Showtime and HBO. See full article here
Amanda Seyfried’s “Lovelace” Poster Leaves Feminism to the Imagination
May 10, 2012, 6:07 pm
The poster for the upcoming “Lovelace” doesn’t augur well for the upcoming independent biopic of the “Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace being a serious inquisition into the 1970s porn industry, or of the despoliation and exploitation of the young woman who became Lovelace. See full article here
HBO Nixes Pilot for Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections”
May 10, 2012, 6:04 pm
One of the most ambitious and sophisticated drama series attempted by HBO has fallen at the first hurdle: The pay-cabler has rejected the pilot for “The Corrections” and canceled the projected series based on Jonathan Franzen’s acclaimed 2001 novel. See full article here
When the Maestro Went Missing: A Movie Guesses What Federico Fellini Did While AWOL in L.A.
May 2, 2012, 1:49 pm
Remember “Agatha,” the 1979 Vanessa Redgrave movie that speculated what happened toAgatha Christie when she went missing in 1926? Now Federico Fellini is about to get the same mystery treatment. The Brazilian “Elite Squad” star Wagner Moura has been cast as the maestro in an independent movie that speculates what befell him when he went AWOL on his first visit to Los Angeles. Invited to the Academy Award ceremony as a Best Original Screenplay nominee for “La Strada” in March 1957, Fellini did a 48-hour disappearing act and made it to the RKO Pantages Theater only in the nick of time. See full article here
Cannes Spotlights Family Drama About the 16-Year-Old Girl Who Became Muse to Pierre-Auguste Renoir — and His Son Jean
May 1, 2012, 5:18 pm
It wasn’t likely that the Cannes film festival organizers would be able to resist scheduling a film about the Impressionist painterPierre-Auguste Renoir and Jean Renoir, the second of his three sons and the greatest French director of them all. Read full article here
