Cannes 2009: Ken Loach, Ang Lee, Andrea Arnold, Jacques Audiard

Derek Elley on Looking for Eric (above, Ken Loach and Eric Cantona) in Variety:
"… helmer Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty’s ninth feature together is a curious hybrid: Three movies — boilerplate, socially aware Loach; personal fantasy; romantic comedy — wrap around a central core of a hopeless soccer fanatic who’s given a second chance to sort out his life. As in many of Laverty’s scripts, problems of overall tone and character development aren’t solved by Loach’s easygoing direction, though when it works, Eric has many incidental pleasures."
***

Anthony Kaufman on A Prophet at indieWIRE:
"If James Toback’s petty-criminal tale Fingers inspired Jacques Audiard’s previous The Beat That My Heart Skipped, it’s Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas [...]

César 2006 Winners

Romain Duris, Linh Dan Pham in The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Jacques Audiard’s curious but uninvolving psychological drama De battre, mon coeur s’est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped — a remake of James Toback’s Fingers (1978) — won eight César awards, including best film, best director, best adapted screenplay (Audiard with Tonino Benacquista), and best supporting actor (Niels Arestrup) at the 2006 César Awards ceremony.

Michel Bouquet, Jalil Lespert in Le Promeneur du champ de Mars (top); Nathalie Baye in Le Petit Lieutenant (bottom)

Two veterans took home the top acting prizes: Eighty-year-old Michel Bouquet – whose career spans more than fifty years — was chosen best actor for his star turn as former French president [...]

César 2006

2006 César Awards
2006 César du Cinéma winners: Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on February 25, 2006
2006 César Nominations
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Romain Duris in The Beat That My Heart Skipped
 

Meilleur film français / Best French Film
* De battre, mon coeur s’est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard)
Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas (Christian Carion)
Le Petit lieutenant (Xavier Beauvois)
L’Enfant / The Child (Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Va, vis et deviens / Go, See and Become (Radu Mihaileanu)
Meilleur film étranger / Best Foreign Film
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
Mar adentro / The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenabar)
Match Point (Woody Allen)
* Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
Walk on Water (Eytan Fox)
Meilleur [...]

SIGHT & SOUND’s Top Ten Films of 2005

Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain (top); Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence (middle); Tony Leung, Gong Li, Ziyi Zhang in 2046 (bottom)

Sight & Sound’s Top-Ten (actually top-fourteen) Films

1 Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
2 A History of Violence (David Cronenberg) and La Niña santa / The Holy Girl (Lucretia Martel)

4 2046 (Wong Kar Wai) and Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki)
6 Le Conseguenze dell’amore / The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino) and The Descent (Neil Marshall)
8 Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)
9 Sud pralad / Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10 De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard), Gegen die Wand / Head-On (Fatih Akin), Hauru no ugoku [...]

César 2006: Nominees

Romain Duris in The Beat That My Heart Skipped (top); Guillaume Canet, Daniel Brühl, Alex Ferns in Merry Christmas (middle); Roni Hadar in Go, See and Become (bottom)

This year’s winners of the French equivalent to the Oscars, the Prix César, will be announced on Feb. 25 at a ceremony held at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Best actress nominee Valérie Lemercier (for Palais royal!) will act as Mistress of Ceremony.
The best French film nominees are Jacques Audiard’s Bafta-winning psychological drama De battre, mon coeur s’est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which garnered nine other nominations, including best actor (Romain Duris); Christian Carion’s Academy Award-nominated war drama Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas, with a total [...]

BAFTA 2006

2006 BAFTA Awards
2006 Orange British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations: January 19, 2006
2006 BAFTA award winners: Odeon Leicester Square in London on February 19, 2006
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain
 

FILM
* BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – Diana Ossana / James Schamus
CAPOTE – Caroline Baron / William Vince / Michael Ohoven
THE CONSTANT GARDENER – Simon Channing Williams
CRASH – Credits TBC
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. – Grant Heslov
THE ALEXANDER KORDA AWARD for the Outstanding British Film of the Year
A COCK & BULL STORY – Andrew Eaton / Michael Winterbottom / Martin Hardy
THE CONSTANT GARDENER – Simon Channing Williams / Fernando Meirelles / Jeffrey Caine
FESTIVAL – Christopher Young / Annie Griffin
PRIDE & PREJUDICE – Tim Bevan / Eric [...]

BAFTA 2006 Winners

Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. Photo: Kimberly French / Focus Films

Brokeback Mountain was the big winner at the BAFTA 2006 Awards. Based on E. Annie Proulx’s short story about the doomed love affair between two Wyoming ranch hands, Brokeback Mountain won a total of four awards: best picture, best director (Ang Lee), best adapted screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana), and, surprisingly, best supporting actor for Jake Gyllenhaal. (While accepting the best film award, producer James Schamus jokingly complained that his film has been unfairly labeled “the gay cowboy movie,” when it actually is a “universal love story about two gay shepherds.”)

Two actors portraying real-life characters also came out on top: Philip Seymour Hoffman was chosen best [...]