George Lucas and Lars von Trier at Cannes
by Andre Soares
Cannes Film Festival News:
The Parisian daily Le Monde calls Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas’s Batalla en el cielo / Battle in Heaven — no, this is not the Mexican version of Stars Wars — "a magnificent film about the mystical erotic pleasure of lost souls in the megalopolis of Mexico City." The controversial (for its explicit sex scenes) Batalla en el cielo is the first Mexican film in fifty years to take part in the official competition, and, along with Michael Haneke’s Caché / Hidden, is the odds-on favorite for the Palme d’Or.
…
American filmmaker George Lucas, whose eagerly awaited (especially by desperate U.S. theater owners) Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith was shown at Cannes, explains that parallels between his film’s inter-galactic wars of the future and the earthbound wars of the present are mostly a coincidence. "When I wrote it, Iraq didn’t exist," Lucas said at a press conference. "We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn’t think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam. . . . . The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we’re doing in Iraq now are unbelievable." Source: Associated Press.
…
At Télérama, you’ll find some harsh words (in French) for Lars von Trier’s Manderlay, which reviewer Frédéric Strauss accuses of being both pretentious and simple-minded. Manderlay features Bryce Dallas Howard as a kind-hearted woman (played by Nicole Kidman in von Trier’s Dogville) who arrives at a plantation in 1933 Alabama only to discover that slavery is alive and well at the place.
MATCH POINT and WHERE THE TRUTH LIES at Cannes
Aishwarya Rai to Star in PROVOKED
Cannes Film News - May 11, 2005
Comments
Leave a Reply
Note: All comments are moderated. Different views and opinions are welcome, but abusive/bigoted/flaming comments will NOT be approved. Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has NO contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog or any information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
