Movie Review: People Like Us

Sorrentino, Bruni Tedeschi bring Italy to Cannes Associated Press Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 10:49 am, Tuesday, May 21, 2013 Bruni Tedeschi — the only woman among the 20 directors competing for Cannes' Palme d'Or and the sister of former French first lady Carla Bruni — focuses on a Franco-Italian clan facing the loss of its crumbling mansion, its art treasures and possibly its future. Bruni Tedeschi, who stars and co-wrote the script, incorporated many elements of her own family's life into the story, including her brother's death from AIDS. "A Castle in Italy," whose mix of family drama and almost slapstick comedy charmed some viewers and bemused others, is a tragicomedy partly inspired by the plays of Anton Chekhov. The most obvious point of reference for Sorrentino's film is "La Dolce Vita," Federico Fellini's 1960 portrait of a Rome's wealthy, beautiful and absurd. The film contrasts bacchanalian revels and vapid dinner parties with soaring music and excursions through the gorgeous squares, churches and palazzi of the Italian capital. The film is suffused with an air of melancholy and sense of spiritual emptiness, which Sorrentino explained by quoting a character in the movie, a Mother Teresa-style living saint.

Toback, Baldwin eye Cannes movie-making underbelly Associated Press Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 10:36 am, Tuesday, May 21, 2013 The commercial underbelly of the Cannes Film Festival is a nonstop frenzy of deal-making in luxury hotels along the Croisette promenade and aboard yachts moored offshore. Films are pitched with various ingredients — a director, a script, a few stars — as agents and talent pursue international investors and domestic distributors to bankroll their movies. For director James Toback, any claims about the running of "the numbers" — of treating moviemaking as an analytical science — is blatant "pseudo research." Even for Toback, a veteran director whose career has ranged from his 1974 debut "The Gambler" to the 2008 Mike Tyson documentary "Tyson," and Baldwin — both of whom know well the ways of Hollywood — witnessing today's financing process was a sobering experience. Baldwin, who has contemplating reentering the film business full-time following his run on the successful NBC TV comedy series "30 Rock," also finds the current film business daunting. "Seduced and Abandoned," which HBO picked up ahead of its Cannes premiere, begins with a quote attributed to the late director Orson Welles: that 95 percent of his life is spent trying to raise money for movies, and 5 percent is actually making them. Interviewed about their irrational love of film are Francis Ford Coppola (who says cinema is "given by the gods"), Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, Ryan Gosling, Bertolucci and Cannes director Thierry Fremaux. "Seduced and Abandoned" takes on an elegiac tone of nostalgia — complete with a booming score by the late Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich — for the older, more daring days of the movie business.

Muppets creator's items head to NYC museum Muppet creator Jim Henson's family is donating about 400 puppets, costumes, props and other items to the Museum of the Moving Image. The 1984 film "The Muppets Take Manhattan" depicted the fuzzy crew striving to stage a Broadway musical.

A family is in crisis with the patriarch dead, but the murky world Claire Denis creates seems to intrigue rather than deliverClaire Denis's pictures inhabit the eye of the storm: a hushed, watchful centre; raging passions round the rim. The French writer–director is the maestro of the elliptical edit, the words not said and the threat in the wings. At her best (on Beau Travail, say, or 35 Shots of Rum), Denis is one of the most distinctive and challenging voices in contemporary cinema. At her worst, her excessive control tips into contrivance. Les Salauds (aka The Bastards) is not Denis at her best.The mood of foreboding is established right away, as 80s electronica squalls on the soundtrack and Lola Creton picks her way, naked, through the dark streets of Paris. The family factory is in crisis, the patriarch is dead and the finger of blame points at Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor), a sulphurous little businessman who resides nearby. But the way ahead is fraught with shadows, secrets and shifting sands. Students of Chekhov should also take note of the gun on the mantelpiece.If there is such a thing as a hero in this murky, compromised world, it comes in the rumpled form of brother Marco (strongly played by Vincent Lindon), who quits his job on the oil tanker to keep tabs on Laporte. Marco keeps insisting that he would rather not get involved. But each time he says it, the sand sucks him down further. He's embroiled with the factory and he fears for his niece (Creton). Worst of all, he's involved with Mrs Laporte (Chiara Mastroianni), a trophy wife who appears to hate her husband almost as much as he does.The Cannes organisers raised a few eyebrows when they chose to screen Les Salauds in the Un Certain Regard sidebar as opposed to the main competition. The decision was a snub; a cruel slap in the face. The problem, though, is that Denis's drama intrigues more than it actually delivers. Where are we going and what lies at the end? For perhaps the first time ever, I had the sense that Denis's painstaking approach was little more than an act of concealment; that her actual story was thin and tacky and that her elaborate style was precisely that. Sleight of hand is all well and good. But sooner or later a film must pay up.Rating: 2/5Cannes 2013Cannes film festivalFestivalsXan Brooksguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

This restoration of a 1972 documentary about racing driver Jackie Stewart is an intriguing insight into the cheesy glamour of the motor sport of the era, but is perhaps a little too in thrall to its subjectHere's an unlikely item. The 1972 up-close-and-personal documentary by motor-racing fan Roman Polanski about Jackie Stewart, and his performance in the Monaco grand prix over one rainy weekend, has been restored for this Cannes film festival, with a new 10-minute coda added in which the present-day Polanski and Stewart sit in the same Monte Carlo hotel suite where Stewart stayed at the time and chew the fat amiably about their movie, and the way in which motor-racing has changed. The movie has some real archival value and the simple juxtaposition of Polanski and Stewart – the oddest couple in Cannes, surely – has a surreal impact. But I wonder if there isn't something a little bit placid and self-satisfied about the film, which is paced remarkably slowly, given the subject matter.Stewart is certainly an intriguing figure: a legendary sportsman seen at the very top of his game, but really without much preening or ego. He seems to be a down-to-earth and even dour guy, but very forthcoming and relaxed in front of Polanski's camera, lounging around in his suite in his underpants, while explaining at some length his Zen-ish theory how drivers must be "slow" in order to win the race: that is, they must brake and accelerate gradually and not fight with the car. Stewart incidentally uses the interesting term "quick" to describe a naturally gifted driver: not flashily "fast", but "quick", with the instinctive competitor's knack of getting from A to B with the least possible effort.It's a very different proposition to, say, Asif Kapadia's movie about Ayrton Senna: this is a cautiously, even sluggishly paced film which only really gets on to the subject of how very dangerous it is at the every end, in the final coda, showing the kind of horrific accidents, which Stewart was spared, and talking about the safety measures he helped to introduce. (To be fair to Polanski, he could hardly ask Stewart about the possibly of dying in a horrendous fireball in 1971, just as he was climbing into his car.) There is some fascination in the faintly cheesy glamour of the Cote d'Azur at the grand prix, and it is fun to see Princess Grace, along with Ringo Starr and Joan Collins. Perhaps one above all for motor racing fans.Rating: 3/5Cannes 2013Cannes film festivalFestivalsRoman PolanskiDocumentaryMonacoMotor sportJoan CollinsRingo StarrPeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds