Here Comes Cannes

The world-renown Cannes Film Festival will open in Cannes, France, 13 May, and run through 24 May 2009, 16 days away at the time of this post. This year is the 62nd edition. Gilles Jacob is president.

Significant Festival history will be made beginning on opening day with the computer-generated animated movie UP (Disney-Pixar, directed by Peter Docter), opening the Festival with its international premiere. This is the first time an animated movie has opened the Cannes Festival, and UP is not just any animated movie, it is in digital 3-D. The top prize is the Golden Palm (Palm d'Or). It could make more Festival history if UP won it, but UP is screening out of competition. The movie is scheduled to release in the U.S. 29 May.

French actress Isabelle Huppert is the jury president at this year's Festival. Only three other women have helmed the panel in the six decades of the Festival. The other women so honored: Liv Ullmann, Jeanne Moreau and Françoise Sagan.

The director lineup in the main competition of 20 strong films will include directors Quentin Tarantino (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS), Ang Lee (TALKING WOODSTOCK), Pedro Almodovar (BROKEN EMBRACES), Jane Campion (BRIGHT STAR) [won as director of THE PIANO, the first woman to win the Golden Palm for directing], Ken Loach (LOOKING FOR ERIC), and Lars von Trier (ANTICHRIST).

Asian films are strong this year. Chinese movies joining Ang Lee's, are Hong Kong director Johnny To's VENGENCE, Park Chan-wook's (THIRST), and Ye Lou's and SPRING FEVER.

One of the Festivals' special screenings will be for HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR by French director Alain Resnais, one of the outstanding French New Wave directors. This year, the Festival commemorates the 50-year anniversary of the film's first screening at Cannes, and Resnais (86) brings his latest film, WILD GRASSES, to Cannes. Two of his fellow countrymen will join him to represent France, Jacques Audiard (A PROPHET) and Xavier Giannoli (IN THE BEGINNING).

Another showcase will be the last film performance of Heath Ledger in the Terry Gilliam fantasy THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS. Ledger died mid-shoot last year and his part was completed by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Ledger was awarded a posthumous Oscar® this year for his supporting-actor performance as The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT.

One of the biggest galas associated with the festival, is actually a benefit gala held outside the main Festival, but in conjunction with it - - the annual European fundraiser sponsored by the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR). American actress Sharon Stone will host it again on 21 May. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Carine Roitfeld, Michelle Yeoh and Donatella Versace will be among 800 personalities attending.

This year for the first time, the benefit gala will be held at a Riviera palace, the Eden Roc, at Cap d'Antibes. Singer Annie Lennox will give a special performance. Last year's event raised $10 million.

The closing night film is Dutch-born, now French director, Jan Kounen's COCO CHANEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY, screening out of competition. I shall be following the Festival from now until it closes 24 May.

People Already Queuing for Madonna Tickets at TCFF

[See previous post for more detail about this event.]

Tickets for Madonna's visit to the Traverse City (Michigan) Film Festival August 2nd will go on sale tomorrow morning (Saturday, June 7th) at 11 a.m. at the downtown State Theatre. However, Deb Lake, Executive Director of the Festival reported at 8:00 p.m. tonight that a line for tickets began forming at the State Theatre sometime in the wee hours Wednesday night. By last night, three tents had been erected on the sidewalk.

She characterized the crowd as resembling an unofficial Friday Night Live with "vogue-ing" on Front Street. She also admonishes not to fear, because arrangements have been made to accommodate the demand for TC's Madonna Night.

Madonna has agreed to a simultaneous showing of her movie in another venue, and her remarks at the State will be beamed "live" to this other yet-to-be-named location as well. Tickets to this "overflow theater" will be $15, and again, all the proceeds will go to the Raising Malawi Foundation. This way, hundreds more people will have a chance to participate in "Madonna in TC."

Tickets for the alternate event will be split 50-50 between the public and Friends of the TC Festival, as originally announced. So, if you are a Friend and have already sent your Post Card, you are in the lottery pool for both.

She thanks everyone for their overwhelming support and wishes each, "Good luck!" tomorrow.

Madonna in Traverse City, MI, 2 August - get tickets now!

Yes, that's correct. Singer / Actress / Writer / Producer Madonna will appear in person at the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF), 2 August, for a screening of her documentary, I AM BECAUSE WE ARE. The feature documentary, directed by Nathan Rissman, had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.

The tickets will be available to the general public, ONLY at the historic State Theatre box office in downtown Traverse City, Michigan, and will go on sale this Saturday, 7 June. NO tickets will be sold online or by phone. Tickets are $25. To see Madonna in person? Wow!

The screening is part of the program for the Traverse City Film Festival, which will run from 29 July - 3 August at the downtown State Theatre. It was co-founded by filmmaker Michael Moore and others. He, like Madonna, is a native of Michigan, and the festival is often referred to as Michael Moore's Film Festival.

Michael Moore in SICKO
I AM BECAUSE WE ARE is Madonna's personal journey and meditation about the African country of Malawi, a nation devastated by poverty and disease but filled with a desire to overcome all that it faces. The documentary has been described as "searing," "thoughtful," and "powerful."

The film features Bishop Desmund Tutu, President Bill Clinton, and author/activist Jeffrey Sachs. All proceeds from the event will go to the Raising Malawi Foundation, a project of Madonna's that helps orphans in one of the world's poorest countries.

For more about the festival, and relevant links, click title of this post, or HERE. Also, you might like to read Madonna's remarks at the screening of the documentary in Cannes last month.