It's France/Belgium/Canada/UK but it is a French director. "Amalie" and "Man on the Train" are recent great French films.
Lightwizard wrote:I think the politics is showing in the reaction against the film which nobody here has seen.
Lol! Yes - it is funny that politics is seen in lauding an unseen film, but not in assuming it is only politics that led to the lauding!
The Triplett's theme song was catchy.
ehBeth-- Are you suggesting that the articles I brought have no place here? Why would you say I should wait? I haven't reviewed the film; I've only commented on the buzz aspect which wasn't mentioned here.
LW said that he didn't think Moore won because of politics. Should he wait as well, and see all the films before commenting?
LW-- I thought a view other than your overwhelmingly positive one should be forwarded. If you hadn't been so singularly gushing about it--I wouldn't have felt compelled to take the other vein.
But, this is not a good enough reason to fuss.
I do think I may try to see them all. Not a useless, or boring endeavor, I don't imagine.
I don't gush by I think you are hemorrhaging.
<smiling>
All that from a little paper cut...
Sure you didn't get a finger caught in the keyboard? Better lay off those sunday brunch bloody marys. Excuse me, I have to get a fresh stalk of celery.
BTW, I did forget to mention that two of the other big prizes went to French filmmakers for Direction and Writing.
I haven't even had my alcohol today.
<fumes>
What were the other winners, LW? Did they have one for Screenplay (is that Writing, at Cannes?)?
Here's a good brief rundown of all the winners:
CANNES, France(AP) The Cannes Film Festival made up for last year's lackluster lineup with a solid range of engaging movies examining themes of self-image, revenge, doomed love, childhood trauma and political outrage.
Here are highlights of the 57th festival, which wrapped its 12-day run Sunday:
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The festival's top prize winner was much the same story other opponents of President Bush have been telling. But Michael Moore's post-Sept. 11 critique packages it with cheeky humor and gut-punch sorrow as he examines the human toll of the U.S. war on terrorism.
LOOK AT ME: French director Agnes Jaoui's clever comedy feels something like early Woody Allen set in the Paris. The main character is a cranky but lovable 20-year-old (Marilou Berry), who thinks the people she loves ignore her because she's overweight. Yet every character is vying for someone's attention even her father, a successful and self-absorbed writer, and her beautiful singing teacher, played by the director.
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS: An artful epic from China's Zhang Yimou, who spins a sumptuous romantic triangle involving a ninth-century rebel (Zhang Ziyi of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") and the two men whose love for her leads to tragedy. The director applies a painter's eye to his images, which erupt from stylish stillness to dazzlingly choreographed fight scenes, drawing hearty applause from tough-to-please Cannes crowds.
LIFE IS A MIRACLE: Emir Kusturica's film, set in wartime Bosnia, is a love story between a Muslim hostage and her Serb captor. Yet it's fantastical and joyous, not bleak. There's plenty of slapstick, with raucous drunken parties, hilarious soccer brawls and misbehaving animals. The soundtrack by Kusturica's No Smoking Orchestra a zany Balkan brass band gives the movie extra oomph.
DEAR FRANKIE: British filmmaker Shona Auerbach delivers a tender gem about a deaf boy (Jack McElhone) in Scotland longing for the father he's never known. Emily Mortimer radiates sturdy heartache as the boy's mother, who concocts a well-intentioned ruse with a stranger (Gerard Butler) to give her child a few moments of happiness. The film's quiet, happy-sad resolution is a touching lesson on how the child can be father to the parent.
BAD EDUCATION: Pedro Almodovar's movie is a complex puzzle about a scheming drag queen, an innocent choir boy, a pedophile priest and a ruthless actor. It has a film-noir feel, but since it's Almodovar, there are wacky comic touches. Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, the dark-eyed star of the sexy "Y Tu Mama Tambien," plays the film's object of desire and he's also stunning in drag.
OLD BOY: South Korea's Park Chan-wook takes on the revenge thriller with a vengeance. Park creates a blood-soaked, blazingly original tale of a man held 15 years in a makeshift cell, then abruptly freed and challenged by his tormentor to figure out why he was imprisoned. Lead player Choi Min-sik brings tragic savagery to the role, and Park springs a plot twist that challenges the scenes of violence and torture for shock value.
This is from the USATody review Lightwizard posted
It looks like Tarantino is not the Moore partisan he is being accused of being.
"In short, it was a year made for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11: The film's Golden Palm victory epitomizes the spirit of this year's festival. The award came despite jury president Quentin Tarantino's preference for Old Boy. Call it Fahrenheit zeitgeist".
It also looks like theire could be distribution problems.
"Though Fahrenheit still has no U.S. distributor, Lions Gate and ThinkFilm were in Cannes trying to make the numbers work. There are hurdles to overcome. The film is almost a long-form campaign commercial, and many believe its DVD and TV revenue could shrink to zero the day after the election, no matter who wins. That has put a damper on distributor enthusiasm".
MICHAEL MOORE'S CANDID CAMERA
Published: May 23, 2004
New York Times--Frank Rich
But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer."
— Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America,"
March 18, 2003
SHE needn't have worried. Her son wasn't suffering. In one of the several pieces of startling video exhibited for the first time in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we catch a candid glimpse of President Bush some 36 hours after his mother's breakfast TV interview — minutes before he makes his own prime-time TV address to take the nation to war in Iraq. He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Mr. Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut.
"In your wildest dreams you couldn't imagine Franklin Roosevelt behaving this way 30 seconds before declaring war, with grave decisions and their consequences at stake," said Mr. Moore in an interview before his new documentary's premiere at Cannes last Monday. "But that may be giving him credit for thinking that the decisions were grave." As we spoke, the consequences of those decisions kept coming. The premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" took place as news spread of the assassination of a widely admired post-Saddam Iraqi leader, Ezzedine Salim, blown up by a suicide bomber just a hundred yards from the entrance to America's "safe" headquarters, the Green Zone, in Baghdad,
For the complete Frank Rich (NY Times) article go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/arts/23RICH.html
It occurs to me that there is great deal of relationship to political cartoons in Moore's work. They are also documentary and interpret the facts in a creative and humorous way. Although I did some of the reasoning behind the statements about the distribution of the film in the USA Today it's more journalistic supposition than absolute reality.
Some more detail on the win for Moore and other prizes:
Palms up for Michael Moore
By MARY CORLISS/CANNES
Monday, May 24, 2004 Posted: 2:06 PM EDT (1806 GMT)
He won't be welcome at the Republican National Convention this summer.
Even some Democrats are made nervous by his cheerfully inflammatory rhetoric. But last night, at world's largest annual movie get-together, Michael Moore could have been nominated, and elected, President for Life.
Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," a passionate, well-constructed indictment of the Bush Administration's foreign and domestic policies, won the Palme d'Or, or top prize, at the 57th Cannes Film Festival.
When the award was announced, the huge crowd erupted in cheers and applause. As he mounted the stage, this self-described outsider seemed nonplussed by his new status as Minister of Film Information. In mock outrage he turned to Quentin Tarantino, the President of the Cannes Jury, to demand, "What have you done?" and "You just did this to mess me up."
In his acceptance speech, Moore exhibited his usual showmanship. He joked about the Walt Disney Co.'s decision to forbid its subsidiary, Miramax Films, from releasing the film in the U.S.: "I'm happy to announce we have a distributor in Albania. So you can now see this film in every country but one." He quoted "a great Republican President" -- Abraham Lincoln -- on how important it is to "give the people the truth
Link to balance of article:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/24/moore.tm/index.html
Moore Film Is Held Up by Questions About Rights
By Sharon Waxman
Published: May 25, 2004 (NY Times)
LOS ANGELES, May 24 — Tense relations between Disney and Miramax are complicating a deal to find a distributor for Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is still without American representation two days after winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival.
Lions Gate, Focus Features and Newmarket have all expressed strong interest in releasing the film, which criticizes the president's launching of the war in Iraq and details ties between the Bush family and Saudi Arabia's upper class, including the bin Laden family.
But executives at those companies, many of whom signed confidentiality agreements over the film, acknowledged privately that negotiations had been stalled because it is unclear who has the rights to it.
"The deal hasn't been struck, with us or anyone else," said one leading executive at a distributor. "I think it's because of all the complications with Disney. Miramax is more consumed with dotting the i's and crossing the t's on the Disney equation."
A Disney spokeswoman, Zenia Mucha, said there was no delay in transferring the film rights to the Miramax co-chairmen, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, who will make a deal with another distributor as private individuals.
"We have been working diligently to do anything humanly possible to transfer the interests to Harvey and Bob," Ms. Mucha, said adding that the transfer might be imminent. Still, executives at Miramax confirmed that Disney had not yet worked out a deal for the Weinstein brothers to acquire the film privately, though they refused to discuss the issue in more detail.
The controversy over the film and the maneuvering over the transfer of the rights is just the latest problem between Michael Eisner, the Walt Disney chairman, and the Weinsteins, who are in rancorous negotiations with him to renew their contract to run Miramax, an art-house division of Disney. The Weinsteins have hired prominent Hollywood lawyers, which is unusual for such negotiations.
Mr. Eisner was said to be furious over news reports just before the Cannes festival that Disney had prohibited Miramax to distribute the film for political reasons. The news stoked a controversy that ultimately drew more attention to the movie, embarrassing Mr. Eisner and possibly raising the price for the film.
Last week in New York Mr. Eisner told friends that Harvey Weinstein had made the movie despite his objections a year ago and had hidden the $6 million budget in loan financing documentation.
That was why, Mr. Eisner told friends, that when Harvey Weinstein asked in recent weeks to see the film to consider its distribution by Miramax, the Disney chairman was angry to learn that the film had been made.
A Miramax executive did not dispute that Disney opposed the film's distribution by Miramax, but the executive pointed out that Disney was fully aware that Miramax had provided a bridge loan to Mr. Moore to make the film, because distribution of the money required Disney's approval.
Meanwhile, despite Mr. Moore's prediction over the weekend that the film would find a distributor within 24 hours, "Fahrenheit 9/11" now has distribution in every major international territory except the United States, and the frustration within Miramax at being unable to make a deal is palpable, with one executive there calling the current standoff ridiculous.
In the past when Miramax has been forced to relinquish a film because of Disney's objections, such as with the Roman Catholic satire "Dogma" or the sexually disturbing "Kids," the Weinsteins have been permitted to buy the movie rights themselves and find independent distribution.
In this case Mr. Moore and the Weinsteins have been making complex demands on competing bidders. Mr. Moore insists that whoever distributes the movie do so in July, presumably when it can still have an impact on the November election. A DVD release before November would double that impact.
The Weinsteins, meanwhile, are looking for separate distributors for theatrical and DVD release and will certainly sell the DVD rights for more than the theatrical release, say those close to the negotiations, if the film rights are transferred as expected.
Distributors say any delay will make it harder for them to promote the film properly, with just over a month to create a marketing campaign and materials.
Meanwhile Mr. Eisner looks out of step in rejecting a film that has been embraced by the Cannes audiences and the festival jury and that seems certain to be a moneymaker. He was skewered in a column in Variety on Monday in which Peter Bart wrote: "Now that 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is becoming arguably the season's hottest item, Michael Eisner and his cohorts will be asked gain why they dumped what will surely be a very profitable film and why they did so in a manner designed to maximize Michael Moore's exalted profile as the artist as victim?"
