NEW films by Atom Egoyan, Zhang Yimou, Wim Wenders and Wong Karwai, along with the first features directed by Johnny Depp and Gary Oldman, are among the 20 movies selected to compete at next month's Cannes Film Festival. The event, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year, opens on May 7th with Luc Besson's mega-budget The Fifth Element, starring Bruce Willis and Gary Old man, and closes on May 18th with the thriller, Absolute Power, directed by Clint Eastwood who Co-stars in it with Gene Hackman.
Representing Canada, the Egoyan film is an adaptation of the Russell Banks novel, The Sweet Hereafter. The Wenders film, The End Of Violence, which is the German entry although it was filmed in Los Angeles, features Gabriel Byrne, Bill Pullman and Andie McDowell. From Hong Kong comes Wong Karwai's Happy Together, the story of two gay men (Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung) in Argentina. The Chinese entry is Zhang Yimou's Keep Cool, and the Taiwanese entry is Ang Lee's The Ice Storm with Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver and Joan Allen.
Two British directors are in competition - Gary Oldman with Nil By Mouth and Michael Winterbottom with Welcome To Sarajevo starring Woody Harrelson, Stephen Dillane and Marisa Tomei.
The US entries are Nick Cassavetes's Call It Love, with Sean Penn, Robin Wright and John Travolta; Curtis Hanson's adaptation of James Ellroy's LA Confidential, featuring Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger. Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe; and Johnny Depp's The Brave.
France has three films in competition - Philippe Harel's The Banned Woman, Manuel Poirier's Western and Mathieu Kassovaitz's eagerly awaited Assassins - while Italy has two - Francesco Rosi's The Truce, with John Turturro and Marco Bellocchio's The Prince Of Homburg. Completing the line-up are Michael Haneke's Funny Games (Austria), Idrissa Ouedraogo's Kiny And Adams (Burkina Faso), Shohei Imamura's The Eel (Japan) and Samantha Lang's The Well (Australia).
Showing out of competition in the official selection are Abel Ferrara's Blackout with Matthew Modine, Dennis Hopper, Beatrice Dalle and Claudia Schiffer; Stephan Elliott's Welcome To Woop Woop; Youssef Chahine's Al Massir; Gabriele Salvatores's Nirvana; Maunel de Oliveira's Voyage To The Beginning Of The World, Stan Winston's Ghosts; and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.
This year's Cannes jury is chaired by Isabelle Adjani and the members are actors Gong Li, Mira Sorvino and Patrick Dupond, writers Michael Ondaatje and Paul Auster, and directors Tim Burton, Mike Leigh, Nanni Moretti and Ltic Bondy.
LAST week's BAFTA crafts awards ceremony was a disgrace, to judge by the edited highlights shown by BBC 2 on Monday night. The opening was built around the selection of Julian Clary as emcee for the evening, and Clary behaved as if the whole show revolved around him. He made David Letterman's cringe-inducing presentation of the 1995 Oscar ceremony seem humble and modest by comparison.
The awards for achievements by such key creative professionals as cinematographers, editors, composers, art directors and production designers were demeaned by the attitude of Clary and some of the presenters. "Let's get another award out of the way," was Clary's dismissive introduction to one of the most prestigious prizes, the Alan Clarke Award for services to television, which went to Michael Wearing, the producer behind such major series as Boys From The Blackstuff, The History Man, Pride And Prejudice and Our Friends In the North.
"It's nice to give the crew something," droned another presenter, Leslie Phillips, condescendingly. The Michael Balcon Award for outstanding British contribution to cinema went to Channel Four Films and the acceptance speech by David Aukin, the station's film surpremo, was slashed in the editing suite. Clearly there's a great deal of room for improvement at next Tuesday's BAFTA performance awards. Highlights will be shown on BBC 1 at 10.45 p.m.
