Thinking aloud

Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” won the Palme d’or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (check Daniel Kasman’s review out) won the Palme d’or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “The White Ribbon” opened at Madison’s Sundance Cinemas in March, playing there for a few weeks before enjoying a shortish run at the Orpheum. “Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives” will open here… never would be my best guess. Write a letter to your favorite state-level politician. Below is the film’s trailer. Dig it.

“There’s no difference between reality and fiction.”

I’m already on record as saying that Godard’s “Film Socialisme” is my most anticipated premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, but a very close second is the latest by Abbas Kiarostami, “Certified Copy.” Here you’ll find an article that explains a bit about the philosophy expounded by and the methods that produced what looks to be one of the most intellectually intriguing films in recent memory.

Kiarostami’s implicit points of reference in “Certified Copy” are just as exciting as Godard’s casting of Alain Badiou in “Film Socialisme”; the article I linked to makes the film sound as though its title could instead be “Juliette Binoche in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

I’m inclined to agree with the almost pretentious pronouncement by Kiarostami that I quoted in the title of this post. It’ll be a lot of fun to see how he goes about making his case.

Soon we’ll know

Just wanted to direct your attention toward some recent news re: the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. The newest film by Jia Zhangke, a “documentary” (after last year’s excellent “24 City,” the quotation marks are entirely necessary) entitled “I Wish I Knew,” will premiere as part of the festival’s Un Certain Regard portion, alongside new films by Manoel de Oliveira, Cristi Puiu, Hang Sang-soo and Jean-Luc Godard.

I’ve yet to be let down by a Jia film—always so rich with visual curiosity and offbeat dramatics—though I’m not quite as gushingly enthusiastic about his overall body of work as some. Even so, “I Wish I Knew” has some seriously high expectations to live up to, especially in the light of MOMA’s recent retrospective—but that’s just how it goes when you’re a critical darling. Who’s paying for my plane ticket?

If it isn’t one [film festival], it’s another

The 2010 Wisconsin Film Festival began just yesterday (man, “Historias extraordinarias” was some kind of underwhelming) but the cinema gods already want us to look ahead to yet another film festival: Cannes 2010.

The lineup for the annual film extravaganza’s 63rd installment was announced this morning in Paris. Among the films to be shown are new works by Xavier Beauvois, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Abbas Kiarostami (whose new film, “Certified Copy,” is set in Italy and stars Cannes poster-girl Juliette Binoche; very curious…), Takeshi Kitano, Mike Leigh, Nikita Mikhalkov, Bernard Tavernier, Apichatpong Weerasethakuhl, Manoel de Oliveira (how does he manage to keep on keepin’ on?), Jean-Luc Godard (“Socialism” is finally set to premiere, but I’ll believe it when I see it), Cristian Puiu, Hong Sang-soo, Ridley Scott and Woody Allen.

Of course, more movies will be added to this list in the months to come. The rest of the announced lineup can be viewed, courtesy of David Hudson, over at the Auteurs.

P.S. If you’re curious how Day One of the Wisconsin Film Festival went, be sure to read Kenneth Burns’ coverage over at the Isthmus. Be glad you didn’t stick around to see “Historias,” K.B.; I can’t recall the last time I saw a film so convinced of its own po-mo credentials and so eager to try to jerk its audience around for no good reason (operative word here being “try”). Also, the DV image, as a friend remarked to me, resembled a massively blown-up YouTube video.