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l CANNES DIARY $§5X§1§3LJ AM NOT ALSO nausea
3593mm ”. Cassandra’s Dream (12A) 5 108mm 00 Cockney ) brothers Ian (Ewan McGregorl I and Terry (Colin Farrell) find i themselves in serious financial I difficulty. Their solution is kill a , man for money but the ! repercussions of the act soon overcome their close relationship. i Woody Allen's third London-set ’ film (following on from Match Pei/it and Scoop) is a confused einbarrassmt-znt of quaint oide English observation bad accents and sub Dostoevsky tragedy. Selected release from Fri 23 May. Back in 1980. a Polish-born JeWish Timber Falls (18) 100min oo doctor Garri Urban published an Another week. another ‘sunxiyal FESTIVAL DIARY autobiographical account Tovar/sch. / horror' flick. This one has loved up , , Am Not Dead of his remarkable couple Mike i.Jos'n Randalli and Kateem Aftab assesses some of the films from the first week of the 3 .7) __ . . E, .1 X E , 3 i . S, u ,l B , , B, ‘ H ' I Cannes Film Festival cxpericnces in as crn uiopc ( tiring .t(,f\, i rianna f()\..l.l (,ainpi.ig and ~~« « World War Two. Havuig fled the Nazis. trekking through the West Virginia f The start of the Cannes 2008 film festival was dominated by two films who massacred many members of his hills. Unfortunateiy for them there are i that delve into the recent past to raise pertinent and timely questions own community and famin he was a lot of psycncs ill them there hiiis i about how the State deals with those they consider terrorists. Billed sent by the Russian authorities to the and they 'ye all got big plans for Mike : as cinema’s first animated documentary, the first to screen was Ari Gulag for attempting to cross into and Shem. laminar and (Z()ftti‘l‘.e(l l Folman’s Walt with Bashir. In it a cartoon version of Folman has a Romania. Escaping from \‘.‘ltlt lame dialogue. snomraso. l discussion with an old friend who asks him if he can remember imprisonment. he spent years as a Paisley and selected release from in i anything that happened on the night in Lebanon in 1982 when they fugitive. before eventually Crossing 12:; fit/fat: l were both young Israeli soldiers while Palestinians were being over to the West by pretending to be a Sex and the City (15) 145min l massacred by Christian fundamentalists at the Sabra and Shatila German prisoner-of—war. (unable to review at press time) i refugee camps. Folman makes comparisons with the Holocaust and This conventionally structured Carrie Bradshav. and the girls are : damns the failure of Israeli soldiers to intervene. documentary. directed by Urbans back in a glossy big screen ; Closer to home, former Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen’s filmmaking son Stuart. updates the aducnture that takes on some big 5 feature film debut Hunger is an account of the politics and philosophy book. foctissing on a trip made by issues. see t'eatuie. page 9.2. I that led to IRA figure Bobby Sands going on a hunger strike in the Garri and Stuart to the former SoViet R(}\.’l(:\.’.‘<}(l next issue. General 5 notorious Maze prison in 1981. It’s brilliant filmmaking veering from Union in 1992. The now 7f.)-soinething release from ',"/eo 28 long stretches with no dialogue to a 22-minute single-take sequence Garri is reunited with a female lover he Chemical Wedding (18) 106min i in which Sands (a brilliant performance from Michael Fassbender) hasn't seen or heard from in some 50 O. Absolutely ridiculous but l discusses his reasons for going on a hunger strike with a priest (Liam years. and he attempts to get hold of mildly emoyabie supernatural thriller l Cunningham). The sympathetic portrait of Sands is bound to create his KGB file. which will prove that his about what might happen if t controversy when it shows in the UK and Ireland later in the year. wartime adventures really did happen infamous mystic and occult scholar i The dark note of these films was also present in the heavily in the way he has claimed. Aieistei- Crowley came back to life. 3 anticipated opening night film Blindness. But Fernando Meirelles’ (City The film suggests that Garri's Set Elt his oid ‘i‘nnity Coliege in of God) adaptation of the acclaimed Jose Sacramento novel was a hit- reasons for wanting to make the Cambridge. Crox'rley. prayed ‘.'.’ltlt ; and-miss affair. Meirelles managed to give the sense of going blind by journey back to the archives are great abandon by simon Calioys. rel : playing with the white light on screen but the effect was not as strong related to his desire to suppress rather emerges after some (it) :inaging ; as that which Julian Schnabel achieved with his eyelid effects in The than confirm the truth about his past: experiments. ‘.'.’|tlt a new super Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In contrast the Turkish writer/director of key CVIdence from the KGB goes computer. go wrong. lf()f‘. Maidens i Uzak and Climates, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, did not disappoint with his either unreleased or is mysteriously frontinan Bruce l.)l(2l\lllf3()i't y'a‘ote the ', latest film Three Monkeys. it’s a brilliant mystery thriller set around a destroyed. Perhaps Stuart could have screenplay and this is directed l dysfunctional family. revealed more of his personal feelings .Julian Doyle. veteran Monty Python i It’s not been all doom and gloom, even if the weather has been towards a father, who is shown in second unit director editor. this I worse than normal, Dreamwork’s animation Kung Fu Panda will home-movie and video footage to be feels like it should have been funnier. . delight younger audience with it’s fun, if formulaic, pastiche of martial charming and domineering. playful cieverer and more nihilistic than it is I arts flicks. (Kaleem Aftab) and hypercritical of his offspring. but and the pacing is all over the place. I Cannes Film Festival last until Sun 25 May. For all the latest news from it's still an absorbing and movnig tale. Shots/case. Paisley and selected Cannes, visit www.festiva/-cannes.fr/ (r om Dawson) release from la (to May. I GET. Glasgow. Thu 26 8. Fri 27 May.
COMEDY DRAMA CHANGE OF ADDRESS (12A) 85min oo
French horn teacher DaVId (Emmanuel Mouret) is iinprobabiy picked up by impulsive Anne (Frederique Bel). She convinces him to come and live in her small Parisian flat. These oddballs are obVIously perfect for each other but in denial of this fact they become best friends and discuss the fact that they're both infatuated with someone they've met at work.
You could compare the small-in-scope romantic comedies of writer director star Emmanuel MOuret to the films of Woody Allen. but to do so would bean injustice to the New Yorker. Mouret is not the Gallic Allen. for he has an annoying habit of thinking that being sweet and overly guirky is a recipe for cool. Ultimately everything in this film feels unreal and it's made worse by the zero attempt at discerning anything worthwhile about the nature of relationships or what makes them tick. On the plus Side. Fanny Valette is excellent in the non—coinntunicatiye role of Julia and manages to convey her thoughts and feeling wrth slight physical movements that were once mastered by silent inoVie stars. However. the occasional interludes of humour cannot hide the fact that Change oiAddress has not one single new plot move. (Kaleem Aftab)
I Film/rouse. Edinburgh from Fri 30 May.
48 THE LIST 22 May—5 Jun 2008