It’s been another heady year of giant stars and wooden actors, great films and terrible turkeys at the Cannes Film Festival. Here are the highlights and lowlights from the world’s premier film fest on the French Riviera:
TEAR FACTOR
Several films got the crowds blubbing at this year’s festival, especially Amy, a documentary about the tragically short life of singer Amy Winehouse, and the moving lesbian love affair at the heart of Carol starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Plenty of soggy eyes also emerged from My Mother about a female director’s struggles with love and family.
Photo: AFP
DAD-BODS
A generous gut proved to be a hit with the critics, with Colin Farrell, Joaquin Phoenix and France’s larger-than-life icon Gerard Depardieu sporting flabby “dad bods” in their well-received films, while movies starring more toned stars such as Matthew McConaughey and French heartthrob Jeremie Elkaim took a mauling in the press.
STILETTO-GATE
Photo: AFP
A social media storm erupted after reports that some women had been turned away from the red carpet for not wearing high heels. Actress Emily Blunt called it “very disappointing.” Her director Denis Villeneuve and co-stars Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin vowed to wear heels to the premiere of their film Sicario, though sadly they turned up in flats in the end.
MICHAEL CAINE
As well as delivering an iconic scene conducting a field of cows in competition entry Youth, Michael Caine also stole the show with hilarious comments at the press conference during his first trip to Cannes since Alfie was shown here in 1962. “Alfie won a prize and I didn’t so I never came back. I’m not going all that way for nothing,” he said. Asked about playing roles at the age of 82, he dead-panned: “The only alternative to playing elderly people is playing dead people. So I’m quite smart, I picked elderly people.”
3D PENIS
The biggest crowds of the week were seen at the midnight showing of Love, a hyper-sexual 3D film which featured dozens of ultra-explicit sex scenes and some wince-inducing close-ups in director Gaspar Noe’s tale of “blood, sperm and tears.” Sadly, critics said the tears were mostly the result of boredom, not controversy.
B-MOVIE MOCKBUSTERS
You’ve seen Black Swan, but what about White Swan? Or Darker Shades of Grey? Or Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies? You won’t catch these features at your local movie theater, but they and other B-grade flicks did booming business in a market that runs parallel with the festival, thanks to rising demand from China and video-on-demand companies.
MCCONNAISSANCE STUMBLE
The seemingly unstoppable “McConnaissance” — the astonishing transformation of Matthew McConaughey from romcom jock to Oscar-winning thespian — hit its first obstacle when his new film The Sea of Trees received loud boos and open derision. The story of a man wandering in a Japanese forest where people commit suicide received a slew of one-star reviews. A slightly ashen-looking McConaughey tried to put on a brave face, offering the grammatically questionable: “Anyone has as much right to boo as to they do to ovate.”
WHAT SELFIE BAN?
Several stars defied festival director Thierry Fremaux’s ban on “ridiculous and grotesque” selfies. Tom Hardy, pushing his action extravaganza Mad Max: Fury Road posed on the red carpet for selfies with fans. Salma Hayek also snapped herself during a press conference for Tale of Tales. Lots of other stars whipped out their smartphones, forcing Fremaux to pretend he had never called for a ban in the first place.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated