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.
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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