Wong road trip to open Cannes festival

[summertime]

Wong road trip to open Cannes festival

Marc Burleigh

Friday, April 20, 2007

Veteran directors Quentin Tarantino, Emir Kusturica, Gus Van Sant and Wong Kar-wai will vie with a group of hungry young filmmakers for the top prize at this year's Cannes film festival, organizers said.
The mix of old and new in the list of 22 films competing for the Palme d'Or reflects the efforts of the cinema event - the biggest in the world - to remain fresh as it celebrates its 60th year.

"For the anniversary we chose to mix heritage with modernity, well- known names and new blood," said Giles Jacob, the president of the festival, Thursday. The red-carpet glamour will be provided by Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta- Jones, Matt Damon, Al Pacino and Andy Garcia - all expected for the premiere of Ocean's Thirteen, to be screened out of competition.

Also in town for the May 16-27 filmfest will be Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda and U2 pop star Bono.

Michael Moore, who won the Palme in 2004 for his biting documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, will be back with another out-of-competition film sure to needle US President George WBush, about the US health system, while British director Michael Winterbottom will be screening A Mighty Heart, about the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl.

Wong will open the festival with My Blueberry Nights, an English-language road-trip movie starring singer Norah Jones. The competition will then continue with Tarantino - who won in 1994 for Pulp Fiction.

Kusturica, a two-time winner, will be returning with Promise Me This, an off-the-wall story about an old Serbian praying his son finds a wife.

Van Sant, who won in 2003 for Elephant, his film inspired by the Columbine High School massacre, will show Paranoid Park, another US urban expose that starts when a teenaged skateboarder accidentally kills a security guard.

They will be joined by a bunch of new faces, among them an Iranian, Marjane Satrapi, who will be bringing her popular comic books about life in Teheran to the big screen, and Fatih Akin, a German of Turkish heritage.

There will also be a young South Korean director, Lee Chang Dong, and a Romanian one, Cristian Mungui.

Several slots went to French films, among them a musical titled Les Chansons d'Amour by Christophe Honore.

This year's jury is headed by British director Stephen Frears, who made The Queen.

He will be joined by eight other personalities from the cinema and literary worlds, including actresses Toni Colette from Australia, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk from Hong Kong and Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk from Turkey.

Associated competitions and screenings in the sprawling market section of Cannes mean hundreds of other films will also be shown during the festival's 10-day run, making it an unparalleled celluloid extravaganza.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=18&art_id=42588&sid=13221828&con_type=1

[Kerilyn]

Does anyone know when the movie is coming out in America?
MBN didn't do very well in w/the critics, but I think that has to do with the script - written by Lawrence Block, not in his native language - than anything else. I really really want to see the movie!
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