Wearing his director's hat, Clint Eastwood returns to Cannes with Changeling, a 1920s-set kidnap thriller starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich. It has its world premiere here on Tuesday night, but won't open in Ireland until early January, as the awards season builds in the US.
Changelingis Eastwood's fifth film in competition at Cannes, following Pale Rider(1985), Bird(1988), White Hunter, Black Heart(1990) and Mystic River(2003), which earned an Oscar for Sean Penn, who just happens to be president of the 2008 Cannes jury.
Could this be the year when the indefatigable Clint, who turns 78 on May 31st, finally gets a Palme d'Or to put next to his four Oscars as producer-director of Unforgivenand Million Dollar Baby? Let's put it this way. Eastwood isn't rushing back home to Carmel, where he used to be mayor.
More Clint: Cannes is hosting a tribute to Warner Bros this year with beach screenings of selected Warner productions (from Looney Tunes cartoons to Bonnie and Clyde), along with critic Richard Schickel's documentary on the company, You Must Remember This.Not only will Eastwood participate in a press conference with Schickel next Thursday, he will take to the beach at sundown to introduce Warner's smash hit, Dirty Harry(1971).
That will make the day of all those who flock to the screening.
No-shows back at Cannes
Better late than never. Next Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of that momentous day when the May 1968 riots spread from Paris to Cannes, and François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard pulled down the screen and brought the 21st Cannes Film Festival to a halt. At long last, the competition films that remained to be screened in 1968 will be shown at Cannes in a commemorative event at this year's festival. They include Carlos Saura's Peppermint Frappé, which was about to be screened when the curtain came down, along with Alain Resnais's Je t'aime, Je t'aime, Claude Lelouch's 13 Days in Paris, Alexandre Zarkhi's Anna Karenina, and The Long Day's Dying, an anti-war drama made by the late Peter Collinson, the former RTÉ director best known for The Italian Job.
Edge's guitar doc will be electric
A year ago, U2 brought Cannes to a standstill when they performed a few numbers at the top of the Festival Palais steps before the late-night preview of footage from U2 3D. This year, The Edge is back on screen at Cannes in It Might Get Loud.
This documentary charts the history of the electric guitar from the point of view of three musicians from different generations: Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. The movie will be previewed for potential international distributors in private screenings at the Cannes market next week. Directed by David Guggenheim, an Oscar-winner for An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loudwas shot in London, Dublin, Nashville and Los Angeles, and promises a jam session between the three guitarists. That might get very loud.
Premiere for Figgis film
Carlow native Frank Mannion, who runs London-based Swipe Films, is selling several films in the crowded market at Cannes. One is the new movie from Leaving Las Vegasdirector Mike Figgis, Love Live Long, which was shot over seven days in London, Istanbul and Bratislava last year during the "supercar" event, the Gumball Rally. It stars Sophie Winkleman and Daniel Lapaine.
"Films such as Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songsshow that independent films can break out of the market in Cannes," says Mannion. True, but didn't 9 Songsbenefit from a rather different kind of voyeurism?
I will not be on a yacht
"Dear Michael," begins an e-mail from a company unknown to me. "While you're in Cannes for the film festival, what would be more luxurious, relaxing and enjoyable than a yachting excursion along the French Riviera? . . .
We will take care of everything from arranging the boat to planning the lunch and the champagne. Live life as it should be, aboard a yacht on the French Riviera."
Don't these people realise that it's hell for us ordinary media folk, with press screenings of the competition films starting at 8.30am every morning (Sundays included), thousands of words to file, and barely time to munch a baguette most days? They must think I'm a movie producer.
Penn: lighten up, not light up
The smoking ban introduced in France last year may be tested with Sean Penn in Cannes as jury president this year. At the Toronto Festival in 2006, Penn ignored the smoking restrictions and lit up during a press conference at the Sutton Place Hotel. Photographs of Penn puffing were all over the Canadian media, and the hotel was fined.
Joining Penn on the Cannes jury is Persepolis director Marjane Satrapi, who sneaked a cigarette when I interviewed her in a non-smoking room at a swanky London hotel a few months ago.
