Australian director Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge opened this year's Cannes International Film Festival yesterday, stunning audiences with the innovative musical featuring starlet Nicole Kidman.
The film is a steamy mix of 1940s Marlene Dietrich cabaret and decadent 19th century Paris. But the film also includes modern pop tunes, such as Madonna's Material Girl, Elton John's Your Song, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit and Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend by Marilyn Monroe.
As a fitting opening for the festival, Moulin Rouge packed in all the entertainment elements of the famous cabaret that gave the film its name, with abundant music, singing and dancing and stars. Kidman plays Satine, the Sparkling Diamond, star of the Moulin Rouge and the city's most famous courtesan. Ewan McGregor is a writer in the film, who falls in love with Satine, and the two embark on a doomed love affair.
PHOTO: REUTERS
McGregor said of the film, "it's a story about love," which basically sums it up. It is a simple story, in which Luhrmann's cinematic presentation, as opposed to the plot, is the driving force to the movie. He successfully depicts the tragi-comic, glamorous underworld through his ultra-modern lens of sharp, high contrast images and fast editing and zoom in/zoom outs.
Music and more precisely the songs are central elements of the film, as much of the romance "dialogue" is delivered in the actors' singing parts. For example, Kidman finds herself absorbed in McGregor's passion when she hears him singing The sound of music, or Elton John's Your Song and Come What May, a song written for the film by David Forster.
At the press conference after to the press screening, Luhrmann described the film as an "Australian way of storytelling."
"Most cinematic naturalism puts the audience into a dream state so that they may observe reality, if you like, through a key hole. Whereas we employ a constant device that awakens the audience and reminds them that at all times they are watching a film, in which they are impelled to participate. This constant reminder in Strictly Ballroom (Luhrmann's first feature film) is the use of dance; in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet it is the 400-year-old Shakespearean dialogue. In Moulin Rouge, our device to awaken [the audience] is the experience of song. Yes, Moulin Rouge is fundamentally a musical, perhaps an opera, but finally a story told through song."
Kidman was of course the focus of media attention yesterday. Luhrmann decided was the perfect woman for the part after seeing her singing and dancing in a Broadway play In the Blue Room.
"It's a film with a lot of physical challenge. We have to sing and dance a lot," said Kidman, who wore a red and white Chinese-style dress yesterday at the press conference.
Ewan McGregor takes on a new type of role in this film as man completely lost in love. The film also gives him a chance for him demonstrate his singing talent. "I was musical at school, and used to dance when I was a kid. And I've always had a passion for the old 1940s musicals," he said.
A list of the 23 films competing for the Golden Palm top prize at the Cannes film festival
*
*Moulin Rouge by Baz Luhrmann (US)
*Distance by Kore-Eda Hirokazu (Japan)
*Pau i el seu Germa (Pau and his brother) by Marc Recha (Spain)
*Kandahar by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iran)
*Shrek by Victoria Jenson and Andrew Adamson (US)
*No Man's Land by Danis Tanovic (Bosnia)
*La Repetition (The Rehearsal) by Catherine Corsini (France)
*The Man Who Wasn't There by Joel Cohen (US)
*Vou Para Casa (I'm Going Home) by Manoel de Oliveira (Portugal)
*Roberto Succo by Cedric Kahn (France)
*La Pianiste (The Pianist) by Michael Haneke (Austria)
*The Pledge by Sean Penn (US)
*Eloge de l'Amour (Eulogy of Love) by Jean-Luc Godard (Switzerland)
*Il Mestiere delle Armi (The Profession of Arms) by Ermanno Olmi (Italy)
*Va Savoir (Go Figure) by Jacques Rivette (France)
*Mulholland Drive by David Lynch (US)
La Stanza del Figlio (The Son's Room) by Nanni Moretti (Italy)
*Ni Nei Pien Chi Tien (What Time is it Over There?) by Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan)
*Taurus by Alexander Sokurov (Russia)
*La Chambre des Officiers (The Officers' Room) by Francois Dupeyron (France)
*Desert Moon by Aoyama Shinji (Japan)
*Millennium Mambo by Hou Hsiao Hsien (Taiwan)
*Akai Hashi Noshitano Nurui Mizu (Tepid Water Under a Red Bridge) by Imamura Shohei (Japan)
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Snoop Dogg arrived at Intuit Dome hours before tipoff, long before most fans filled the arena and even before some players. Dressed in a gray suit and black turtleneck, a diamond-encrusted Peacock pendant resting on his chest and purple Chuck Taylor sneakers with gold laces nodding to his lifelong Los Angeles Lakers allegiance, Snoop didn’t rush. He didn’t posture. He waited for his moment to shine as an NBA analyst alongside Reggie Miller and Terry Gannon for Peacock’s recent Golden State Warriors at Los Angeles Clippers broadcast during the second half. With an AP reporter trailing him through the arena for an
RSS