Fan Fare
Entertainment behind the scenes
Cannes draws to close, reactions mixed
As the Cannes film festival headed toward it’s final weekend with a few films left to play on Saturday and awards to give away on Sunday, the reactions to films screening here seemed to be mixed and the star power decidedly low, which was what had been expected going into the world’s largest film gathering.
The frontrunner for the coveted Palme d’Or, the festival’s top honor, appears to be French film “Un Prophete” (“A Prophet”) from director Jacques Audiard, telling of a 19-year-old man who learns 
how to survive in prison. Read more about it here. Because Cannes is considered a festival where cinematic art is explored, winning the Palme d’Or does not always translate into commercial success, especially in the Hollywood-dominated United States. But Sony Pictures Classics acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film, and they are masters at luring U.S. audiences to foreign films. Perhaps their biggest success in that arena was Oscar nominee “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
The major starpower of the festival was, as expected, the Wednesday premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which brought Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to Cannes’ red carpet. You can read about that movie here. And if you want a peak inside their premiere party, just scroll down the Fan Fare blog, and we give you some video behind the velvet rope. The other major star on the carpet was Spain’s Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s “Los Abrazos Rotos,” (“Broken Embraces”). Click here for a story on that title. Both of those movies ended up with mixed buzz from their Cannes screenings.
The big bomb was “Antichrist” from Denmark’s Lars von Trier, mostly because people considered it excessively brutal to the point of being gross. Read about it here. But But von Trier is considered an artist of cinema, and the thing about art is that it is supposed to challenge people, make them think in new ways and see the world differently. Perhaps that is what “Antichrist” eventually will do. It was picked up for distribution in the U.S. by IFC Films.
