Second half of shorts listing from Cannes 60th anniv. celebration (first half is here):

It’s A Dream by Tsai Ming-liang
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Occupations by a hatchet-wielding Lars Von Trier
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The Gift, more weirdness by Raoul Ruiz
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The Cinema Around The Corner, happy reminiscing by Claude Lelouch
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First Kiss, pretty but obvious, by Gus Van Sant.
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Cinema Erotique, a funny gag by Roman Polanksi with one of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s large-faced actors.
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No Translation Needed, almost too bizarre to be considered self-indulgent, first Michael Cimino movie since 1996.
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At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World by and starring David Cronenberg, one of his funniest and most disturbing movies.
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I Travelled 9,000 km To Give It To You by Wong Kar-Wai.
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Where Is My Romeo? – Abbas Kiarostami films women crying at a movie.
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The Last Dating Show, funny joke on dating and racial tension by Bille August.
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Awkward featuring Elia Suleiman as himself.
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Sole Meeting, another gag, by Manoel de Oliveira and starring Michel Piccoli (left) and MdO fave Duarte de Almeida (right).
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8,944 km From Cannes, a very pleasurable musical gag by Walter Salles.
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War In Peace, either perverse or tragic, I don’t know which, by Wim Wenders.
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Zhanxiou Village, supreme childhood pleasure by Chen Kaige.
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Happy Ending, ironically funny ending by Ken Loach.
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Epilogue is an excerpt from a Rene Clair film.
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Not included in the DVD version was World Cinema by Joel & Ethan Coen and reportedly a second Walter Salles segment.

Not included in the program at all was Absurda by David Lynch (reportedly he submitted too late, so his short was shown separately). I saw a download copy… some digital business with crazed sound effects and giant scissors.

A program of shorts that played at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to mark its 60th anniversary. Pretty terrific bunch of 3-5 minute shorts by possibly the best group of directors ever assembled… worth watching more than once. Each is about the cinema in some way or another, with a few recurring themes (blind people and darkness, flashbacks and personal stories). Katy watched/liked it too!

First half of shorts (second half is here):

Open-Air Cinema by Raymond Depardon
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One Fine Day by Takeshi Kitano, continuing his self-referential streak.
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Three Minutes by Theo Angelopolous is a Marcello Mastroianni tribute starring the great Jeanne Moreau.
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In The Dark by Andrei Konchalovsky
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Diary of a Moviegoer by Nanni Moretti
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The Electric Princess Picture House by Hou Hsiao-hsien
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Darkness by the bros. Dardenne
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Anna by Alejandro González Iñárritu
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Movie Night, the first of two gorgeously-shot outdoor movie starring chinese children, by Zhang Yimou.
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Dibbouk de Haifa, annoying business by Amos Gitai.
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The Lady Bug by Jane Campion.
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Artaud Double Bill by Atom Egoyan.
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The Foundry, comic greatness by Aki Kaurismäki.
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Recrudescence, stolen cell-phone bit by Olivier Assayas.
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47 Years Later very self-indulgent by Youssef Chahine.
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Movies: now more than ever!

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Maybe I’ve seen The Player enough times that I don’t really need to write about it. One of the only movies that I like Tim Robbins in (besides Mystic River, Shawshank Redemption, and presumably Howard the Duck).

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Things I forgot:
Whoopi Goldberg as the smartass detective
The Swedish artist who Robbins picks up was the dead guy’s girlfriend
Dead guy was Vincent D’onofrio
The author and his brother as the excited pitch men at the end

The only other place I’ve seen Robbins’ cute coworker / ex-girlfriend is Happiness, although she’s been on TV recently.

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Katy liked the movie but not the character.

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Still my #1 or #2 favorite documentary of the decade (grizzly man? same river twice? farmer john?). Saw Ross McElwee speak twice today. What I learned:

– His movies are all interconnected, which I’d know if I bothered to watch some of them.
– He considers Time Indefinite to be the sequel to Sherman’s March
– was impressed by DA Pennebaker docs but particularly by Fred Wiseman’s Titticut Follies, which he said made him want to make docs, but not the same way as DA and Fred… example of the crazy naked man staring back at the camera, put a human face behind the camera so it’s not as much a weapon (my words)
– tries to capture these little moments of feeling, of humanity in each picture. Showed us a scene of a mechanic discussing his daughter’s death, Ross says he once tried to find the exact frame where the man’s face flashes, changes, but he couldn’t find it. “The moment must have been between the frames”.
– question whether he’s considering the film, the big picture, while filming each small scene, he says “even while you’re having these conversations about life, death and god, you have to be thinking ‘how am I gonna edit this?'”
– Ross was once fired by Miramax (apparently, The Six O’Clock News deals with this)
– says his future films will have more old footage juxtaposed with the new stuff, will deal more with memory and pictures and how time and preservation change things.

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Favorite bits are still the film scholar wheeling Ross around (says he showed the movie to a group of self-important film scholars and they *howled* at that scene), the little revelations and plot twists, the cousin’s house of memorabilia, the beach / fish rescue ending.

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Ross films himself walking across a yard, pumpkins in the foreground, garden sculptures behind, with a little dog yapping at his feet. The dog has ruined his shot, the shot of himself contemplating all that he’s learned, so he gets rid of the dog and does the shot again, self-consciously narrating these facts and including both versions in the final film. That’s one of my favorite documentary scenes… the part where the narrative stops, and he reminds us that he’s making this movie, that we’re watching a movie that he made… it’s not Life Exactly As It Happened, it’s not The Pure Unedited Truth, it is Ross’s movie and he shows and tells us everything through his own filter. It’s a creation, a film, like The Godfather or Rushmore, a work of mostly non-fiction, but still a valid creative work. And usually, USUALLY (see: American Movie?) the minds behind this work are more important than the subject matter. Gotta remember that the next time I’m tempted to see dreck like Enron or Gunner Palace. Ross is my hero.

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Best Masters of Horror episode yet. Why? The story is outrageous and fascinating and twisty, the visuals are always exciting, and UDO KIER co-stars.

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Theater owner who owes big money to the father of his dead wife takes on job from eccentric millionaire UDO KIER to find the rarest film of all time, an angelic snuff film that makes its viewers go homicidally insane. The director’s wife gives up the film easily, and he brings it to Udo who, despite having already imprisoned one of the angels, is still unprepared for the film and signals this by feeding his intestines into the projector. The cigarette burns of the title are jolting, and our man loses track of things each time one hits. Only time besides Fight Club I can think of those things really being discussed. Never thought they’d be the title device in a horror movie.

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Katy wouldn’t have liked this one, though she expressed an unusual interest in it.