The 65th annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off tomorrow and we have two writers that just hit the shores of France. To start things off, we’ve got two intro pieces from both and a slew of photos as we look forward to more coverage including reviews and interviews. Check them out below, followed by new posters from the festival, including Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, Brian De Palma‘s Passion, Nicole Kidman‘s Before I Go To Sleep, Gerard Butler‘s White House Taken and more.
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Still relatively calm and mostly quiet, Cannes, a small port town in the South of France, is bubbling with anticipation. As one promotional movie poster after the other is lifted up in front of the ritzy, glitzy hotels that populate the Mediterranean coast, the locals dread as the non-locals excite for the premier film festival event of the year.
Among the many films to get excited for, there are a few that stand out above the rest for yours truly. These include Lee Daniels’ crime thriller The Paperboy, which features a reportedly very out-of-character performance from John Cusack. Though I was underwhelmed by Precious (Daniels’ last offering), any film promising a new kind of Cusack as well as rare indie turns from heartthrobs Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey, has got my attention. There is also David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, starring Robert Pattinson. Adapted from Don DeLillo’s superb novel of the same name, this looks to be a strange return to form for the filmmaker who made his name off high-brow horror.
And finally, and in staying within the Twilight alumni (a strange phrase to write while at Cannes I realize), we have Walter Salles’ film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s seminal wandering novel On The Road, starring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart, with Viggo Mortensen putting on his best William Burroughs. Francis Ford Coppola is here as executive producer, this project one he’s been trying to bring to the screen for years now. Salles hasn’t done too much in the feature world since his impressive The Motorcycle Diaries (let’s try to forget his English debut Dark Water), so this could very well be worth the wait.
Though we have stuck to the films in competition here, there are plenty playing at the festival’s other factions to be enthused for, including Michel Gondry’s new film The We and the I, Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways and Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, following up his cult hit Kill List.
– Daniel Mecca (@djmecca)
There’s something undeniably magical about arriving on the shores of the Mediterranean and soaking up its cinematic sunlight. Massive yachts signpost the amount of wealth that descends upon the small town of Cannes every May to celebrate the best filmmakers in the world, while the festival simultaneously moonlights as the biggest international marketplace for acquisitions and distributors. This year’s lineup of films in the official competition, Un Certain Regard, Director’s Fortnight and Critics Week are as varied and diverse as the different countries they hail from.
Last year’s headlines could be hard to top, from Von Trier’s controversial Nazi comments to the premiere of Terrence Malick’s highly-coveted The Tree of Life. But Cannes is no stranger to making waves in the movie whirlpool and this year promises some truly fantastic films. Such as Rust & Bone, Jacques Audiard’s follow-up to the internationally-acclaimed A Prophet, starring Marion Cotillard and Bullhead’s Matthias Schoenaerts.
Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami makes his second non-Iranian film Like Someone in Love as the follow-up to last year’s marvelous Certified Copy. Another well-established auteur and previous Palme D’Or winner for The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke returns to his favorite festival with Amour. These are just handful of the many films premiering at Cannes, so for insider information straight from the Palais stay up to date with us as we deliver reviews, interviews and impressions of Cannes 2012.
– Raffi Asdourian (@zaffi)
