Cannes Film Festival | Cannes 2011 Special

Day 2: Thursday, 12th May 2011

Sleeping Beauty

Cannes (Official Selection) – Australian writer/director Julia Leigh's debut film takes the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty and transforms it into a tale of self-effacement and sexual perversion. Emma Rowley finds herself wooed but not won over.

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Good Cannes-ers

For all its merits, the Cannes Film Festival is also a nexus where a number of the cardinal sins meet, have a few beers, and then go on a little rampage. Pride is perhaps the main offender, but that's primarily because the offence of rudeness was as inexplicably overlooked by the original compilers of the seven deadlies as Stanley Kubrick continually was by the Oscar voting drones.

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Day 1: Wednesday, 11th May 2011

Midnight in Paris

Cannes (Opening film) – The French adore the little tyke, in spite of some of his more recent cinematic snooze-fests, and now Woody Allen is all ready to let them know that he hearts them too, as he sends a love letter to their capital city and its artistic heritage. Paul Martin horns in on the mutual appreciation society – could this tête-à-tête become a ménage a trois?

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Tuesday, 10th May 2011

Smurfs and Pirates of the Caribbean posters on the Carlton Hotel in Cannes.

Cannes 2011: Beach-front billboards

Awesome as it is to have touched down in Cannes ahead of the 2011 festival whirring into full activity, it does mean that we've been forced to walk the Croisette – the occasionally hellish seafront stretch where you can feel under siege from jeans 'n' jacket-sporting grey-hairs, neighing poshos, and whiney bloggers (oh wait, that's us). At least there are plenty of new movie ads to check out down there too.

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Monday, 9th May 2011

Spectre from the Void, the new project from director James Eaves.

Cannes 2011: From an indie filmmaker's POV

Remember when I asked for movie-types to get in touch if they were off to Cannes? Well, a Craigslist ad from an Alsatian-faced war criminal seeking a buxom young millionairess for friendship and fornication would have yielded a better response. And yet [warbles like Collins and Brookstein combined] against all odds [stops warbling], a few hardy souls dared enter my web of sin.

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Friday, 6th May 2011

Cannes 2011: Indie's coverage starts here

Or here, to be more precise – our custom-built Cannes Film Festival mini-site, which even has a picture of the seafront as a background (er, depending on the dimensions of your monitor), making you feel as if you're really there. And if you want to crank up the verisimilitude a further couple of notches, then why not drink a £12 pint of lager while you peruse?

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Thursday, 5th May 2011

Candid about Cannes

Hi, hello, and welcome. I journey to Cannes this coming Monday, the film festival commences on Wednesday, and I’ll be a drooling wreck from lack of sleep most likely by about lunchtime on Friday. Plus, thanks to a clamour as entirely silent as the one for Anne Widdecombe to appear on a new BBC show called Strictly Come Exotic Dancing, my blog is back.

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Wednesday, 4th May 2011

The Tree of Life trailer

Just director Terrence Malick's fourth film since Badlands broke out for him in 1973, The Tree of Life arrives at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival saddled with some weighty expectations (it's the bookies' fave for the Palme d'Or; 11/4 reckons Paddy Power). If the trailer is owt to go by, then Pitt and Penn look set to be playing decidedly second fiddle to some grandiose visuals (video comes via Apple).

Wed, 04/05/2011 @ 10:58

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Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai trailer

Just the briefest of Japanese-language teasers for this nth movie from the the ever-prolific Takashi Miike. But with swords, samurai and stereoscopic 3D, hopes are high that his entry in the official selection at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival can match up to the director's Venice 2010 triumph, 13 Assassins.

Wed, 04/05/2011 @ 09:26

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Melancholia trailer

When Bruce Willis found out the world was going to hit by a big lump of space rock, he jetted into space to show that crumby boulder who was boss. When Lars von Trier pits humanity against an impending cosmic collision, everyone gets a bit gloomy. Listen to Return of Bruno, Lars, it might cheer you up. Meanwhile, we'll watch the trailer for your Melancholia, part of the official selection at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Wed, 04/05/2011 @ 09:24

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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Screening out of competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, here's the trailer for the fourth film in Disney's money-spinning Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Johnny Depp is, of course, back as Captain Jack Sparrow, and Geoffrey Rush also returns as Barbossa, in a tale which sees them do battle with a famed nautical presence from history. And no, it's not Cap'n Crunch.

Wed, 04/05/2011 @ 09:19

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The Yellow Sea

Look, there's only one way any body of water, be it a sea or otherwise, gets yellow, and that's via an outpouring of urine. Screening as part of Un Certain Regard at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, here's the teaser trailer for the (seemingly pee-free) new movie from Korean director Na Hong-jin.

Wed, 04/05/2011 @ 09:15

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The Conquest trailer

Pundits reckon this account of the feuding between Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy is going to be particularly embarrassing for the latter, now of course French president. However those who've been following the little one's political career might conclude he is already beyond shame. Check out the trailer for The Conquest, screening out of competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Wed, 04/05/2011 @ 09:14

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Tuesday, 26th April 2011

Cannes 2011: the really big preview - part five

The start of the working week signals the end of Indie's Cannes preview for 2011. So far 60 features have been told to come in, remove their trousers, lie down on the bench, and brace themselves for insertion of a cold, rubber-clad finger, and today we wrap up with examination of the further 25 full-length movies screening under the Directors' Fortnight banner.

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Friday, 22nd April 2011

Midnight in Paris, the new film from Woody Allen, which is opening the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes 2011: the really big preview – part four

The Indie preview of Cannes 2011 reaches part quatre of an ultimate cinq, and today it's all about those films that're showing outside of the main competition. Oh sure, they might be a too vulgar and anarchic to compete against those highfalutin types for the big prizes, but they're also the movies which hacks and industry types alike will be rushing to see because, well, they're vulgar and anarchic.

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