julian_craster

2007 Cannes FF shuns British films

Britons out of the running for big prizes at Cannes
By Thair Shaikh

The Independent
Published: 20 April 2007

A year, it seems, is a long time in film. Britain may have walked away triumphantly from Cannes at last year's film festival, with Ken Loach winning the prestigious Golden Palm for The Wind That Shakes The Barley, but home-grown films failed to get a mention on the shortlists for 2007, announced to much fanfare last night.
The news that British films have been shunned this year in favour of work mostly from the US will be a bitter blow to the local film industry. This year, new films by the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino and Gus Van Sant will be competing for the top prize at Cannes - but there are no recent British successes such as the Oscar-winning The Queen or The Last King of Scotland up for a major prize.
The Coen brothers, famous for the likes of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Barton Fink, are in the running for their new film No Country For Old Men. Tarantino, who won the prize in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, also has his new movie Death Proof on the shortlist. Gus Van Sant, a previous winner with Elephant, is in competition with Paranoid Park.
The festival strives for a line-up that hits the right balance of Hollywood blockbusters and small arthouse films, and the Cannes president, Gilles Jacob, said he strove to "mix heritage and modernity, great film-makers and start-ups." Of the 22 films in the line-up, 13 are by directors who have never appeared in the main competition before. The newcomer David Fincher (Fight Club) will compete with Zodiac, about the hunt for the serial killer who terrorised the San Francisco Bay Area in the late Sixties.
Michael Moore, who won the Palme d'Or for Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004, will be back with another irreverent documentary, Sicko, about health care in America.
Some of the most highly anticipated films are not in the running for prizes this year.
The cartoonist Marjane Satrapi will show the screen adaptation of her graphic novel Persepolis, a memoir of growing up in Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Out of competition, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen will screen, featuring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino and Matt Damon. Also showing is A Mighty Heart, directed by the Briton Michael Winterbottom, starring Angelina Jolie as the widow of the journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan.
Red carpet glamour at the famous French festival will be provided by the opening film My Blueberry Nights, which stars Jude Law and Rachel Weisz, and is notable for the movie debut of the singer Norah Jones.
The festival will also be showing, out of competition, the British short film For the Love of God and another title, Mister Lonely, which is part British, in a separate competition.
Stephen Frears, director of The Queen, is chairing the Cannes jury. A spokesman for the UK Film Council said: "We are delighted that Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart; Mister Lonely - a co-production from The Recorded Picture Company; and the National Film and Television School's short film, For the Love of God, have all been selected for the 2007 Cannes line-up.
"Britain dominated Cannes in 2006 with The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Red Road scooping the top two prizes and this year British talent has a starring role in deciding the winners."

The festival runs in the south of France from 16 May to 27 May.

Moor Larkin

Ah yes. A far cry from fifty years ago when Patrick McGoohan and James Robertson-Justice canoodled with Jean Cocteau:
Fifties Movies

also, Reuters quote:
CANNES. or the Festival -June Laverick, Anne Haywood, Betta St. John and Philip Leacock stroll along street. June and Anne go swimming from beach.. later with Mr and Mrs John Davis they visit the Aly Khan. at his home.. Jean Cocteau French Poet, dramatist, artist and Director welcomes James Robertson Justice and Patrick McGoohan to the roof of the Festival Cinema. to sample view.

Patrick McGoohan, in an interview many years later, spoke comically of his inability to *play the star* for the keen Rank executives at their soirees....