CANNES - Just as I was going to sleep this morning, there was, for no reason I've been able to discern, a full-blown, window-rattling fireworks display over the harbour. At one am. Went on for more than 10 minutes, and it was spectacular - the view from my hotel was ringside. Just what they were doing setting it off an hour after midnight in a town that basically rolls up the streets at eight, aside from the bars and restaurants catering to the festival, is a mystery.
I'd just gotten back from the Toronto Film Festival's welcome bash, a one of a kind Cannes event thrown in TIFF's apartment where they have home made food and not enough space and everything is very casual. (And full compliments to the fest's Gabrielle Free, who spent two days cooking to make this thing work. I suggested to festival director Piers Handling that Gabrielle cater all festival events. From the look she gave me, I don't think I'll eat anything she might cook for me in the next little while.
SCHEDULING RELOAD With the shortened competition - a bare 20 films - they've actually moved the awards ceremony to Saturday night, though the festival will continue through Sunday. Which means, apparently, two days of catch-up screenings at the end of the festival, with the Palme d'or winner being screened Sunday night. I think.
And, though it hasn't shown on the schedule, Quentin Tarantino has publically said that on Sunday there will be a one time only screening of Kill Bill One and Two with an intermission. Why is that more exciting than anything on the schedule? Except, of course, for a restored presentation of a 168-minute cut of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One. Oh, and a rare theatrical screening of Bertolucci's Before The Revolution.
If Cannes really wanted to convince us of the new and shiny future presented in the competition and the fortnight, they should stop showing old movies - the two best films I saw last year were Chaplin's Modern Times and Fellini's 8 _.
And speaking of unusual scheduling moments, for years, the festival has issued a one sheet foldout schedule. Competition, Out of Competition, Un Certain Regard, retrospectives. This year, for the first time ever, the schedule acknowledges the existence of and includes schedules for the Director's Fortnight and The Critics' Week. (We think of Cannes as one big festival, it's actually four - the Festival, the Fortnight, the Week and the Market, each with its own highly territorial bureaucratic apparatus. We in the press are just lucky that the two sidebar events recognize the main festival's accreditation.)
Gambler's Blues - I skipped the competition film last night to hit the market screening of High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story. This very independent film has been floating around the third-tier U.S. festivals for a few months without finding distribution, but I'd wanted to see it - we all have our priorities, and as someone who was in Vegas playing in the World Series of Poker ten days before Cannes, I was more interested in a biography of Ungar, perhaps the greatest no limit Texas Hold'em player ever and the only player to win the main event at the World Series of Poker three times, than in a movie about Japanese children abandoned by their mom.
The principal reason to see the film is Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), who gives a furious performance as Ungar, a tornado of barely contained nervous energy and self-destructive behaviour.
The problem is with the dramatic structure - Ungar in his last seedy hotel room, telling his story to a barely seen intruder. Writer/director A.V. Widmer can't quite decide what story he's making. Is it a rise/fall/rise story about overcoming addiction? A junkie porn movie recording every snort? a poker story? He's unwilling to quite commit and so the dramatic focus is diffused. Worth seeing for Imperioli, though, and to see how tightly one has to control the art direction to created Vegas in 1973 and 1986 without resorting to expensive art direction. (Oddly, the Horseshoe Casino, where some of this was filmed before the recent change in ownership, looks exactly the same now as it did over a decade ago.) Not enough poker is my other complaint.
Condescending pun of the day: "Indian filmmakers hope to curry favour on the Croisette" - headline from Screen International
Just turn left at the old Despair place - "Two boys take a detour into the heartland of evil" - market synopsis of the New Zealand film The Locals.
