Human_Error
05-24-2003, 05:57 PM
Clint Eastwood saved the Cannes Film Festival from ridicule yesterday when his new film, Mystic River, drew a standing ovation from delighted critics.
Asked if he felt lucky in the competition for the Golden Palm, the actor-director replied: "The French people have always been very kind to me over the years, and I feel very strong about them too."
But others have not been treated as kindly on the Croisette, with complaints about the poor quality of many of this year's entries.
Clint Eastwood with co-star Laura Linney
A year ago the festival was at a high point, with a slate of remarkable films including The Pianist, Bowling for Columbine and City of God.
But this year's competition choices are "the worst in living memory", with critics left numb by the constant "grind of disappointment", according to the trade paper Screen International.
The festival had watched 900 films before making a final choice, it pointed out. "What could possibly have been worse than some of the films they chose to accept?"
At almost every screening, people have started leaving the cinema before the end. At a showing two nights ago of the Russian movie Father and Son by Alexander Sokurov, a director who has a current British hit with Russian Ark, the sound of seats being swung back began in the first 10 minutes.
Maverick director, Vincent Gallo
Several people also left early the first showing of the British entry, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1, The Moab Story, by Peter Greenaway.
Screen International singled out for particular scorn the first night film, the "leaden swashbuckler" Fanfan La Tulipe, starring Penelope Cruz, and the "monumental folly" of Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny with its oral sex sequence.
Gallo, a maverick director whose previous film, Buffalo 66, was an international hit, has taken the unprecedented step of apologising to his audience.
The screening of The Brown Bunny - during which an American critic sang Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head - was "the worst feeling I ever had in my life", he said.
Although the film had taken years to make, "I probably will never watch it again". He imagined he was sharing "something beautiful" with cinemagoers. "What I think is beautiful does not match up with what the general population thinks. I don't know how to give people what they want.
"I worked hard on the film. I liked it very much. I accept what the critics say. If no one wants to see it, they are right. It is a disaster of a film, and it was a waste of time.
"I apologise to the financiers of the film, but I assure you it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film."
Behind the scenes at Cannes another row is simmering. Moritz de Hadeln, organiser of the Venice Film Festival, denounced Serge Losique, director of the Toronto Film Festival, as "the Al Capone of Montreal" after the dates of this summer's Canadian festival were brought forward, conflicting directly with the Italian event.
With new works by Ridley Scott, Peter Weir and Ingmar Bergman in the offing, competition for the premiere showings is fierce.
Even while Eastwood's film about a complex homicide investigation was being lauded last night, the 72-year-old director was quick to point out that the project had been difficult to finance, as it involved paedophiles.
Hollywood really wanted him to "revisit" his Dirty Harry days as the San Francisco police inspector Callaghan, he said. "But sometimes you have to move on, and this story is where I am today." Warner Brothers had provided the finance. "The stipulation was that they would do it for a limited budget. It was fine with me.
"I said: 'You don't have to pay me now. Pay me later if the picture does something. If it doesn't, I don't care because I just want to make it.' "
The film's stars, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fisburne and Laura Linney, all worked for less than their usual fees, he added. "My film was very inexpensive by today's standards.
"A lot of studios didn't want to do this project. Even people I knew said they were more interested in another type of movie. But I'm too old to make comic books. I still think there's an audience for a serious adult story. I may be wrong, but I'd like to try."
Eastwood, 72, said: "I've thought about retiring for years now. When I did Play Misty for Me in 1970, I thought that if I could pull this off maybe I could step behind the camera, and it would be time to see the end of me.
"Every year I have threatened to do that - and here I am. So it may come sooner than you think."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/24/wcann24.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/05/24/ixworld.html
Asked if he felt lucky in the competition for the Golden Palm, the actor-director replied: "The French people have always been very kind to me over the years, and I feel very strong about them too."
But others have not been treated as kindly on the Croisette, with complaints about the poor quality of many of this year's entries.
Clint Eastwood with co-star Laura Linney
A year ago the festival was at a high point, with a slate of remarkable films including The Pianist, Bowling for Columbine and City of God.
But this year's competition choices are "the worst in living memory", with critics left numb by the constant "grind of disappointment", according to the trade paper Screen International.
The festival had watched 900 films before making a final choice, it pointed out. "What could possibly have been worse than some of the films they chose to accept?"
At almost every screening, people have started leaving the cinema before the end. At a showing two nights ago of the Russian movie Father and Son by Alexander Sokurov, a director who has a current British hit with Russian Ark, the sound of seats being swung back began in the first 10 minutes.
Maverick director, Vincent Gallo
Several people also left early the first showing of the British entry, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1, The Moab Story, by Peter Greenaway.
Screen International singled out for particular scorn the first night film, the "leaden swashbuckler" Fanfan La Tulipe, starring Penelope Cruz, and the "monumental folly" of Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny with its oral sex sequence.
Gallo, a maverick director whose previous film, Buffalo 66, was an international hit, has taken the unprecedented step of apologising to his audience.
The screening of The Brown Bunny - during which an American critic sang Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head - was "the worst feeling I ever had in my life", he said.
Although the film had taken years to make, "I probably will never watch it again". He imagined he was sharing "something beautiful" with cinemagoers. "What I think is beautiful does not match up with what the general population thinks. I don't know how to give people what they want.
"I worked hard on the film. I liked it very much. I accept what the critics say. If no one wants to see it, they are right. It is a disaster of a film, and it was a waste of time.
"I apologise to the financiers of the film, but I assure you it was never my intention to make a pretentious film, a self-indulgent film, a useless film, an unengaging film."
Behind the scenes at Cannes another row is simmering. Moritz de Hadeln, organiser of the Venice Film Festival, denounced Serge Losique, director of the Toronto Film Festival, as "the Al Capone of Montreal" after the dates of this summer's Canadian festival were brought forward, conflicting directly with the Italian event.
With new works by Ridley Scott, Peter Weir and Ingmar Bergman in the offing, competition for the premiere showings is fierce.
Even while Eastwood's film about a complex homicide investigation was being lauded last night, the 72-year-old director was quick to point out that the project had been difficult to finance, as it involved paedophiles.
Hollywood really wanted him to "revisit" his Dirty Harry days as the San Francisco police inspector Callaghan, he said. "But sometimes you have to move on, and this story is where I am today." Warner Brothers had provided the finance. "The stipulation was that they would do it for a limited budget. It was fine with me.
"I said: 'You don't have to pay me now. Pay me later if the picture does something. If it doesn't, I don't care because I just want to make it.' "
The film's stars, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fisburne and Laura Linney, all worked for less than their usual fees, he added. "My film was very inexpensive by today's standards.
"A lot of studios didn't want to do this project. Even people I knew said they were more interested in another type of movie. But I'm too old to make comic books. I still think there's an audience for a serious adult story. I may be wrong, but I'd like to try."
Eastwood, 72, said: "I've thought about retiring for years now. When I did Play Misty for Me in 1970, I thought that if I could pull this off maybe I could step behind the camera, and it would be time to see the end of me.
"Every year I have threatened to do that - and here I am. So it may come sooner than you think."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/24/wcann24.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/05/24/ixworld.html