Alternative Film Guide

13th-Time Lucky: Veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a depiction of the early 20th-century Irish rebellion against British rule, won the Palm d’Or at this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Upon accepting his award, the 69-year-old British filmmaker - the oldest director with a film in competition this [...]

Cannes Film Festival Awards 2006
Cannes Film Festival 2006: May 17–28
Cannes Film Festival Awards 2006 Winners - Article
 

FEATURE FILMS

PALME D’OR
THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY by Ken Loach

GRAND PRIX
FLANDRES by Bruno Dumont
BEST DIRECTOR
Alejandro González Iñárritu for BABEL

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR
Jamel Debbouze, Samy Nacéri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, Bernard Blancan in [...]

When bigger isn’t better: Doctor Zhivago is no masterpiece. Bloated and overlong, it fails as both historical epic and love story. And this is a film directed by the man - David Lean - who handled one of the best romantic movies ever, Brief Encounter.
Anyhow, Doctor Zhivago is at best a middling epic, BUT. [...]

© A.M.P.A.S.
Press Release:
Neil Simon, the four-time Academy Award® nominee and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, will be the special guest at the "Monday Nights with Oscar" screening of Barefoot in the Park (1967) on Monday, June 12, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York City.
Directed [...]

According to South Africa’s News 24.com, Kenya’s parliament member Kihara Mwangi said "he would lead a revolt to force the government to pull [The Da Vinci Code] unless screenings ended immediately." Mwangi called the thriller "satanic" and "the most blasphemous movie ever screened." He has also sent an open letter of complaint to Information Minister [...]

Note: Sparrows, a sappy but surprisingly effective comedy-drama, has been available on video for years. It is not a “recently rediscovered” film.

© A.M.P.A.S.
Press Release:
Two recently rediscovered and restored silent films starring Oscar®-winning actress Mary Pickford, "Sparrows" (1926) and "Behind the Scenes" (1914), will unspool as part of the Academy [...]

The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Direction: Ron Howard. Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman; from Dan Brown’s novel. Cast: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, Alfred Molina, Jürgen Prochnow, Jean-Yves Berteloot
 
FALSE TRUTHS Vs. TRUE LIES
Paris, middle of the night. An old man is walking alone in a darkened gallery in the Louvre. He approaches [...]

Kinky Boots (2005)
Director: Julian Jarrold. Screenplay: Geoff Deane and Tim Firth. Cast: Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sarah-Jane Potts
 
THE CROSS-DRESSER WITH THE RED BOOT
Directed by first-timer Julian Jarrold from a screenplay by Geoff Deane and Calendar Girls co-screenwriter Tim Firth, Kinky Boots is officially a fictional motion picture inspired by a true story. Even so, this [...]

Via Reuters: "This film was not pornographic," U.S. director John Cameron Mitchell told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival. "I don’t think anyone got a hard-on watching this film." The film in question is Mitchell’s sexually explicit Shortbus, which has been shown out of competition at the festival.
Hmm… what if someone did get a [...]

In The Guardian, Chris Petit reviews James Mottram’s book The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood:
"James Mottram quotes Robert Evans, producer of Chinatown and The Godfather, saying that movies are no longer made for their ideas and their sole concern is with their marketable elements. One result of this is an obsession [...]

Walk Softly, Stranger (1950)
Direction: Robert Stevenson. Screenplay: Frank Fenton, from a story by Manuel Seff and Paul Yawitz . Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Spring Byington, Paul Stewart, Jack Paar, Jeff Donnell
 
A PLACE ON THE RUN
Walk Softly, Stranger was RKO’s biggest flop of the year. It became a blotch on Joseph Cotten’s resume, shortened [...]

Via CBC: "You are the champion of equality between men," France’s Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told American actor Sidney Poitier (The Defiant Ones, Lilies of the Field), this year’s recipient of France’s highest honor, the Order of Arts and Letters.
Chevalier Poitier was honored in recognition of his tearing down barriers for black [...]

Wah-Wah (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Richard E. Grant. Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, Miranda Richardson, Julie Walters
 
ADULTERY AND BOOZE, PLEASE: WE’RE ENGLISH
A heartfelt (semi-) autobiographical piece set in a part of the world that’s rarely been seen on screen, and boasting a cast that includes Gabriel Byrne, Emily Watson, and Julie Walters. Those [...]

Legendary Broadway producer Cy Feuer, 95, died this morning at his home in Manhattan. In addition to producing a number of award-winning Broadway musicals during his fifty-plus year career, Feuer also worked as a director, composer, musician, and was a longtime president of The League of American Theatres and Producers.
His feature film credits include [...]

From The [London] Sunday Times: "Jane Birkin, whose career highlights include simulating sex in the song ‘Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus’ and appearing naked in some questionable films, has never been noted for modesty.
"Now the British-born actress-singer has decided to make her own biopic in which she is writing, directing and starring as herself. For [...]

"The £63m flop: Or why the media is on a mission to bury Tom Cruise " - From The [London] Independent:
"All this [anti-Tom Cruise backlash] might have made sense if M:i:III had been a flop along the lines of, say, The Island, last year’s non-blockbuster. But the film took in $120m (£63m) at the [...]

Reuters reports that "the crew of China’s most expensive movie, [Wu ji /] The Promise by Oscar-nominated [sic] director Chen Kaige, has been criticized for damaging the environment in a beautiful county called Shangri-la while filming."
The Promise was shown out of competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. It has received mostly negative reviews [...]

German Film Academy’s 2006 Lola Award Winners: Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others, a quite timely political drama about a government eavesdropping on its citizens, won seven Lola Awards at a ceremony held yesterday at the Palais am Funkturm in Berlin.
Besides the Golden Award for Best Film (worth €500,000/approx. US$640,000), Das [...]

Cannes may have the controversy, the p.r., and the Almodóvar, but the Shanghai Film Festival has 702 films - reportedly a record - from 52 countries.
The Official Competition Jury: French director, screenwriter, producer Luc Besson, President; Chinese director, screenwriter Feng Xiaogang, Vice President; Spanish director, screenplay writer Manuel Gutiérrez Aragon; Mexican actress Diana Bracho; [...]

Cannes 2006: The police is supposed to go on strike, Brad Pitt may not show up, and The Da Vinci Code may spark Christian protests - but the festival must go on. (That is, unless there’s another student-led nationwide shutdown.)

In any case, here’s the list of jury members:
Feature [...]

Ray Richmond in the May 9 issue of the Hollywood Reporter:
"I’ve never seen entertainment writers and movie pundits take greater glee in a purported sub-par opening than they did while assessing the weekend performance of Mission: Impossible III, whose disappointing returns were essentially seen as a ‘That’ll teach Tom!’ triumph."
…
"But it’s unlikely [the film's [...]

More on the upcoming Cinesation festival: Among the new additions to the Cinesation film line-up mentioned here several days ago, are The Grub Stake (1923), an adventure tale set among the Yukon gold mines, and starring pioneering female filmmaker Nell Shipman (who also wrote, co-produced, and co-directed - with Bert van Tuyle - the film); [...]

On the Sundance Channel: In Guy Maddin’s short film My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2005), Isabella Rossellini pays "a unique personal tribute to her father, director Roberto Rossellini, in observance of the centenary of his birth. Far from a conventional documentary tribute, this is a stylized, witty meditation on Roberto Rossellini’s cinematic aesthetic and [...]

The Stevens Orchestra Project has a page with links to photographs of bandleader Wayne King’s family at a reunion in Savannah, Georgia, in 2004.
King’s widow, former actress Dorothy Janis, was Ramon Novarro’s leading lady in one of Novarro’s best and most successful films, The Pagan (1929). Janis (b. 1910) was 94 years old at [...]

Films in competition:
L’Amico di famiglia / Friend of the Family (Paolo Sorrentino)
Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Il Caimano / The Caiman (Nanni Moretti)
Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater)
Flandres (Bruno Dumont)
Indegènes / Days of Glory (Rachid Bouchareb)
Iklimer / Les Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Juventude em Marcha (Pedro Costa)
El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro)
Laitakaupungin valot / Lights [...]