This year’s Cannes will begin and end in ways to make us meditate on the themes of property and theft. Ridley Scott’s new Robin Hood film will launch the festival with what we all hope will be a beefy and resounding twang; the closing film will be Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2.
Both are out of competition, emphasizing the Cannes habit of showcasing Hollywood movies in this relaxingly non-judgmental way. Glitzy American pictures will bring in the star names and red-carpet glamour, but my first recognition has to go Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds.
Mike Leigh is a great British auteur and former Palme D’Or winner, back with a new ensemble drama, Another Year, starring Lesley Manville and Jim Broadbent. Leigh’s relationship with Cannes has been checkered. The festival famously turned down his 2005 film Vera Drake — Leigh took it to Venice where he won the Golden Lion and thumbed his nose at the French.
There is a strong Asian and Russian presence with films from Im Sang-soo, Lee Chang-dong and Nikita Mikhalkov — the latter returns with Burnt by the Sun 2, a follow-up to his most popular film.
The French presence looks interestingly low-key. Veteran filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier presents his period costume drama The Princess of Montpensier, and the actor and recent Bond villain Mathieu Amalric makes his directorial debut (in the main competition, no less) with Tournee, about American burlesque girls on tour in France.
Abbas Kiarostami is the Iranian director with impregnable status and esteem and respect will be paid to his new film Certified Copy starring Juliette Binoche, his first made outside Iran.
Perhaps my favorite director in this year’s lineup is the visionary Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul who returns with his intriguing sounding Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu returns with another drama of chance encounters and fate: Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem.
There is no doubt who is the biggest name. Fifty years after his first movie (Breathless), the great man is back to put in a distinctively grizzled and inscrutable appearance. Jean-Luc Godard comes to Cannes in the Un Certain Regard, with a contribution to the portmanteau film Socialism. It will be a hot ticket. And the legendary Portuguese director, Manoel de Oliveira, at 101 years old, has made a new film, The Strange Case of Angelica.
A list with big names and well-established egos: as ever, the fascination is in seeing who will triumph and which upstaged by the always unguessable tide of younger talent.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist