• If “Blood Ties” by Guillaume Canet hits all the right notes it’s probably because the partition is a familiar one: an Italian-American family drama based in New York, the gangster’s life, one final hit before I retire. This is a genre in itself.

    Starring in no particular order Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup, “Ties” also include Clive

  • I'd like to thank the Coen Brothers for giving me the opportunity to write this post. I've just waited sixty minutes in the pouring rain for a chance to get inside the Debussy theater and watch "Inside Llewyn Davis" but the theatre filled up and we got left out in the cold. Fortunately I was with my three colleagues from the French site Abus de Ciné so we got a chance to exchange about the day's discoveries (there was a lot to cover).

  • Four songs and four seasons provide the pace in “Young and beautiful,” (original title: "Jeune et Jolie") the engrossing film by France’s filmmaker Francois Ozon (“The swimming pool”) in competition this year. They provide a neat way to organize the film but also reinforce our oh-so-wrong expectations as we settle into the quaint family vignettes which he tenders in the first part of his film: a semi-normal family (they

  • There’s a scene in Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante’s film « Heli » in which a young woman returns home to find a pool of blood across the floor of her home and a family that’s vanished. The camera is set low to knee-height and shows her from behind as she enters, and then slowly withdraws out of the room upon making the gruesome discovery, the camera leading the way as she walks backwards to eventually lean against a wall and slowly

  • CANNES - All aboard for the 66th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

    "The Great Gatsby" by Baz Luhrmann unofficially opened the festivities this morning at 10 a.m. local time (fest kicks off tonight at 7:15 p.m. with the film's premiere).

    No need to dwell on the artistic indulgence that befits the director of "Moulin Rouge," we've been down that road before. Luhrmann

  • France figures highly this year at the Cannes Festival. As Auréliano Tonet noted in his lead article in the special Cannes edition of Le Monde, out of the 75 or so films competing for various prizes across all official and parallel programs, 33 are French. And that’s a boon for cinephiles, indeed. Because as the American majors have been busy turning out a circus-styled sequel-and-3-D performance and some key indie-minded filmmakers

  • The Cannes Festival isn’t just the greatest film festival in the world: it’s also a major commercial player driving the local economy and ensuring the livelihood of thousands.

    Here's a look at the arithmetic:

    $25,000: that's the estimated value of the Palme D'Or; $50,000: poney up and you will the most expensive penthouse