Critic at workI can't wait to read what critics from around the world think about their hotel room, the color of their accreditation badge, the waiting time before the projection, the elitism of art films that lost touch with the mainstream entertainment-consumers, the lameness of the selection (so much worse than what they usually review every week on their domestic distribution market!), the length of the standing ovations, the number of screenings they walked out of, the made up controversies, the irrelevance of the palmarès, the trivia about the stars' little whims, the wildness of the yacht parties...
...anything to fill the void of film culture, the absence of criticism, and the blindness of viewers who ignore what to look at on the screen.
Abbas Kiarostami, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jia Zhang-Ke, Takeshi Kitano, Hong Sangsoo, Lee Chang-dong, Manoel de Oliveira, Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN, IM Sangsoo, Wang Xiaoshuaï, Lodge Kerrigan, Cristi Puiu, Pablo Trapero, Christoffer Boe, Frederick Wiseman... more all the potential discoveries in the debut films.
This sounds like a good sample of the filmmakers creating the best cinema at the moment.
Not just this year (or this quarter, since Berlin and Venice take the other seasons of the year). Not a grandiloquent statement about the cinema of a decade, or the future of cinema. Not a comprehensive survey of the totality of the best films of 2010. Not a flawless selection without disappointments.
A festival is a showcase of great cinema, a good glimpse at the cream of the crop. You won't see that many films with excellence brought together anywhere else... and if you still feel like whining about something, you probably don't know what art means in cinema.
11 commentaires:
OH Harry do you have that down right!
the sophistry of some of the film critics at Cannes!
"anything to fill the void of film culture, the absence of criticism..."
Though we have lost touch, you are still par excellence one of the most eloquent spokesmen of cinema art!
"A festival is a showcase of great cinema, a good glimpse at the cream of the crop. You won't see that many films with excellence brought together anywhere else... and if you still feel like whining about something, you probably don't know what art means in cinema."
What do you know about newbie Sergei LOZNITSA, I heard he was a genius?
Greetings from Stockholm
What do you do these days in cinema?
Loznitsa sounds pretty good--may be a Cannes newbie, but no newbie--montage for Tjarkovsky, moved from newsreel doc to feature in debut film
Hi Moira, how have you been? Are you in Cannes this year?
No I don't know that guy yet. This film might take a while before hitting Paris... If it was at Un Certain Regard I could see it within a month. That's why I'm happy that half of the best ones are in that section.
Press conference with Manoel de Oliveira (102 yold) : someone asks what he thinks of 3D Hollywood cinema! Is that all you want to ask to the surviving dean of a century of cinema???
Robert Koehler tells his readers back home about his backpacking trip to Old Europe, so exotic : train and hotel room... as predicted.
I am sorry but I could not help posting a response to Robert's boring TGV train ride and hotel travelogue instead of full throttle Cannes assault on cinema...maybe he is paid by SNCF? or the hotel, or both?
but he won't publish it.....
Jean-Marc Barr (Cannes 2010) : "Moi j'ai été élevé d'une certaine manière, et pour moi le cinéma c'était Godard, c'était Tarkovsky, c'était Kubrick... y'avait une éthique dans la communication. Aujourd'hui de plus en plus cette éthique n'est plus dans la politique, n'est plus dans la société, et elle n'est plus dans le cinéma. Et c'est parce que tout est mesuré par le fric. C'était pas comme ça y'a 30 ans. Mais je pense que c'est un des problèmes fondamentaux de notre époque. On a perdu cette responsabilité communautaire, cette éthique entre humains. Moi je vais plus au cinéma. Y'a rien qui m'intéresse. [..] J'ai chez moi 500... 1000 films que je ressorts 10, 12... 20 fois. Et c'est la seulle chose qui me donne... Peut-être que je suis bloqué dans le passé."
Mike Leigh's press conference for "Another Year"
Journalists complain about a vision too pessimist of life, about the hopelessness of a female character because she's single (!), about the the older couple because they are too happy... they don't seem to respect the creative liberty of an author. Always questions about plot points and character psychology.
Mainly Korean journalists ask questions at Im Sangsoo's press conference, Chinese (or Asian) journalists interested in Wang WiaoShuai's film, and the British pres interested in Mike Leigh's film...
Apparently critics fail to take advantage of the opportunity this festival offers to create a borderless community of cinephiles where cultural exchanges could overcome language barriers and stereotypes... :(
Voilà quelqu'un qui réfléchit sur son rapport au cinéma, sur son approche de Cannes, l'objet festival:
Eugenio Renzi, pour sa revue éléectronique Independencia, née l'an dernier à Cannes après la secession d'avec les Cahiers.
Encore une vraie réflexion sur le monde du cinéma, sur les manques et les oublis, sur la vitalité des films dans le monde extérieur. Une pensée englobante, bienveillante, protective.
Michel Ciment [Positif] avec Frédéric Boyer [Quinzaine] et Jean-Christophe Berjon [Semaine internationale de la critique] (France Culture)
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