Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Cannes, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Celebrities and Controversy, Politics

Plenty of people are going to be talking about Steven Soderbergh's Che Guevara biographical films -- The Argentine and Guerrilla, screened at Cannes tonight as one presentation simply called Che -- over the next few months. There will be arguments about the politics of the films; there will be discussions of whether or not the films have any emotional center; there will be questions of if, when the film gets some kind of U.S. distribution deal, exactly how they should be released -- two films released staggered throughout the last half of the year or cut down to one three-hour film or shown as a long, big double bill that presents the separate films back-to-back. There will be talk of if Benicio Del Toro deserves a Best Actor nomination for his work as Guevara, or if Soderbergh's portrait of Che is too flat to engage us; I can easily imagine discussions of the look and feel of the film, shot in high-resolution digital with all the craft and care Soderbergh usually brings to shooting on film. I can't predict how all of these questions and possibilities will play out, but I can say -- and will say -- what a rare pleasure it is to have a film (or films) that, in our box-office obsessed, event-movie, Oscar-craving age, is actually worth talking about on so many levels.

Continue reading Cannes Review: Che

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Filed under: New Releases, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom

I loved the drinking and the waking up in the morning and finding I was in Mexico. It was part and parcel of being an idiot. -Peter O'Toole

Todays "idiots," so to speak, lack a certain finesse. There are lots a tabloids that capture their every move, but they don't really create the stories we'd want to read about later. Some of the old-school rabble rousers, however... Reuters reports that Robert Sellers is releasing a book on May 29 called Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed.

In the description on Amazon, it says: "It's a story of drunken binges of near biblical proportions, parties and orgies, broken marriages, drugs, riots, and wanton sexual conquests." Of course, I want to read it. It's funny how some talent and far-reaching charisma can make risque stories all the more intriguing. Perhaps that's the gauge of true talent -- will we still like them after they mess up? Again? And again?

Then again, the stories are also a little bit more interesting than racial slurs to cops or ladies showing their glory boxes to the world at large -- although the old tales are not all charming. But still, I can't resist a book full of My Favorite Year.

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Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Celebrities and Controversy, Movie Marketing

Not the act, or even the movie about performing the act in the city, but the word "sex" from advertisements in Jerusalem and Petah Tikvah (which is where the Egyptian musicians were trying to go in The Band's Visit, remember?). Apparently the large religious population of both cities isn't comfortable with the word appearing on ubiquitous billboards, which puts the Israeli distributor of this summer's Sex and the City in a tough spot. Advertising that includes the film's title is out.

Now, it is kind of funny that while the movie can be shown anywhere, ads for it are banned in certain cities because they include the word "sex." But it might not be as petty as it seems at first glance. After all, people have to make an affirmative choice to go see the movie in a theater, or rent it on DVD; billboard and poster advertising is invasive and inevitably confronts unwilling audiences. It's not necessarily irrational to let theaters show the film but ban certain forms of promotion that everyone will see. This sort of thing isn't unprecedented in the United States: we permit sales of tobacco, for example, but ban television advertising and, in many communities, billboards near schools; we permit pornography, but not always graphic advertising for same. The ban on "sex" strikes me as the same sort of thing. You can still argue that a sensibility that is offended by any mention of the word "sex" is itself silly, but that's a can of worms.

[story in USA Today, via Movie City News]

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Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, War

At a Cannes press conference for his WWII drama The Miracle at St. Anna, controversy hog Spike Lee took some swipes at Hollywood darlings Clint Eastwood and the Coen Brothers. Talking about the way he treated death in his first war film, Lee said: "I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't... Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that." And he targeted Eastwood for failing to put any black soldiers on screen in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima: "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

Continue reading Spike Lee Throws Punches at Coens, Clint Eastwood

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