05/13/2008
The world's biggest film festival kicks off in Cannes on Wednesday, bringing Hollywood A-listers, obscure arthouse directors, international media and fans together for 12 party-packed days on the French Riviera.
Posters are up around the resort town in southern France, marquees line the seafront, yachts are gleaming despite unseasonal drizzle and hotels await their famous guests. It only remains for the red carpet to be rolled out.
The main competition of 22 films begins with a star-studded premiere of Brazilian entry "Blindness", appropriate for a festival that is showcasing South American cinema.
The movie directed by Fernando Meirelles of "City of God" renown stars Julianne Moore and Gael Garcia Bernal in a story of a civilisation crumbling as it is hit by a blindness epidemic.
At the same time as the morning press screening, a few hundred yards (metres) along the palm-lined Croisette beachfront, the studio behind animation comedy "Kung Fu Panda" has organised a stunt to publicise the picture.
The combination of hard-hitting cinema and brazen blockbuster promotion, which some critics argue is a sellout to Hollywood, is typical of the festival, which ends on May 25 when the coveted Palme d'Or for best film is awarded.
Critics were wary of making early predictions. "I don't anticipate because it doesn't do any good," said Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt.
"The guy whose film you really want to see is the one who disappoints you most and someone you've never heard of is the one that just leaps off the screen at you."
Joining Meirelles in competition is another Brazilian entry "Line of Passage", by Walter Salles, and two Argentinian productions -- Pablo Trapero's prison drama "Leonera" and thriller "The Headless Woman" by Lucrecia Martel.
They are up against Clint Eastwood's "Changeling", starring Angelina Jolie, and Steven Soderbergh's "Che", a two-part, four-and-a-half hour epic on Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, with Benicio del Toro in the title role.
The other two U.S. entries are James Gray's "Two Lovers", featuring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix, and Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" with Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Submit this story to:
Digg
Del.icio.us
Technorati
