Speculation about what will appear at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival has almost reached a fever pitch and the announcement is due next week on April 23. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have written many a speculative and educated guesses piece (and sometime armed with info they pretty much know, but can’t say), but Todd McCarthy’s Variety article from yesterday seems the most informed.
The most recent news? Apparently Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock” has been officially accepted.
In addition to this most recent “announcement” (sort of buried in McCarthy’s piece), so far we already know that Pixar’s “UP!” will kick off the festival and also premiering will be Quentin Tarantino’s audacious, almost 3-hour WWII flick, “Inglourious Basterds,” and Lars Von Trier’s psychological horror, “Antichrist” (that is unless the trades jumped the gun).
Films that appear out of the running are Jim Jarmusch’s “The Limits Of Control,” which now comes out May 1 in the U.S. (so you can cross that one off the list, and evidently a trio of big-name auteur driven pictures, the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant” which apparently will not be completed in time.
What gives McCarthy’s article insight is that he’s privy to what the Cannes organizers are screening in consideration for the festival. Films that have been mentioned almost ad nauseum and that Variety now basically confirm are Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” Johnnie To’s “Vengeance,” starring aging French rock icon Johnnie Hallyday, Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” and Austrian Minster of cinematic fear/ sociopath, Michael Haneke’s “Das Weisse Band” (The White Ribbon), Ken Loach’s “Looking For Eric” (his 2006 film “The Wind That Shakes The Barley” won the Palm d’Or that year)
As noted by FirstShowing, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro” has evidently been shot all in black and white and is up for serious consideration (Haneke’s picture is apparently all B&W too). Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” featuring Heath Ledger’s final performance has been rumored for some time (and leaving some Gilliam fan sites to report the film’s inclusion as official), but the trade calls this “less confirmed,” i.e., they’re screening it and it’s still under consideration. It also sounds like Park Chan-wook’s vampire film, “Thirst,” and Bong Joon-Ho’s “Mother” are shoo-ins as well.
Jockeying for midnight slots (probably not in award contention) may be Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant,” starring Nicolas Cage (which is good news because it still has no U.S. distribution and we’ve barely heard a peep from it this year) and Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me To Hell.” Overall, it doesn’t sound like there’s going to be a lot of big American fare at the festival, much like last year, but that’s fine with us.
The 2009 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 13-24. And guess what? The Playlist has been accepted as press (now all we need to do is beg for change and or shamelessly point you towards a paypal account). That’s pretty great for a film blog that’s been only running for two years and is still 100% independent and doggedly ad-free. It’s a labor of love and no one gets a paycheck here. That may change at some point and we hate to underline the obvious or chestpuff, but we do think this is pretty decent validation.
