Cannes You Dig It? 2009 Festival Winners: An Austrian-tatious Party
The Twitteratti are pecking away the wins at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival that don’t involve Jean Claude Van Damme getting freak-ay with some fan(nes). Michael Moore, pictured, wasn’t there. This year’s winners:
Do the Michael Haneke Panky! His film, The White Ribbon, won the king shit prize, the Palm D’Or, and swept the acting categories.
You may know the Austrian director from his sadism-happy foreign fare like the awesome Cache (American remake on the way) for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2005, and Funny Games (American remake already made). It’s a (get this) sadistic movie that received mostly tepid applause about an German officer (Christopher Waltz, who won Best Actor) and a schoolteacher (Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won Best Actress) that takes place around WWI, and opens with someone falling off a horse. It’s a Michael Haneke movie, so nobody’s going to really be able to explain it to you (or why you’d want to watch it) until you actually see it.
The best director prize went to an underdog, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza, for his graphic hitman drama Kinatay, a film that was hugely buzzy before the festival, not so much during. Variety more or less said it sucked, and it sounds too much like last year’s Gomorra for American audiences to really care.
Finally, British director Andrea Arnold won a second jury prize for her film Fish Tank; she’s sharing it with South Korean director Park Chan-Wook (director of the incredible Oldboy. American, Will Smith-helmed remake on the way. Seriously.) for a film called Thirst, about a vampire-priest. No word on what the Vatican or vampire blog Bloodcopy have to say about this, but chances are that it – like anything American film execs would care about at Cannes that isn’t in English – will eventually be made into a shitty American remake. Foreign languages: fail.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@eleusiswalks: That's my understanding too. She won for being a masochist under Lars Von Trier, not for being a sadist under Michael Haneke. We have to keep our insanity shit straight, people.
Whatever, cutting off your clit with a rusty knife is the new playing a retard. Such an easy win. Gainsbourg is just the first of many to win for this kind of roll.
*sigh* the film is called "Samson and Delilah".
What happened to the preview button?
And Australian film,, by director Warwick Thornton, won the Camera d'Or.
It's described as "an unflinching look at the problems facing Australia's remote Aboriginal communities: violence, substance abuse and poverty." so that one will probably be remade by Will Smith.
@Aidan_: Also heartbreaking. Don't forget heartbreaking. I look forward to his scream of "Oh hell naw!" pre-octopus eating scene
Yo, Waltz won for Inglourious Basterds and Gainsbourg won for Antichrist. Neither was in The White Ribbon.
eleusiswalks
Charlotte Gainsbourg is not in the White Ribbon. She won for AntiChrist.
SanjulaGaloope
Will Smith is connected to an American remake of Oldboy?
That's...unexpected.
Aidan_
Oh, and Christoph Waltz won the acting prize for the Tarantino film, and Gainsbourg was in the von Trier movie.
But don't let the facts get in your way...
Swordfish
And e on Palme.
Swordfish
Palme d'Or. Little d.
Swordfish
@Swordfish: It's Fox News weekend on Gawker: Live from Las Vegas!
DeltaGuy
Clips?
Trailers?
mojita
@GZAthegenius: Didn't Huppert already do that in Haneke's The Piano Teacher with a razor blade?
It's all so boring and appaling at the same time.
Swordfish
@MiriamIdomeneus:
I think he meant "Oldboy" was "incredibly good/great"..., and used "American remake already made" to echo a previous sentence for humorous effect.
Copy-editing snafus are not Mr. Kamer's biggest problem in this entry, though. Everything in the third graph is factually wrong, including "and" and "the."
I didn't even get into his creaky "Cannes you dig it?", "Austrian-tatious," and "fan(nes)." It's like the Special Olympics of punning!
I'm prepared to forgive some things because he's clearly the only one on duty over the weekend, so he might have been overworked, rushed and possibly drunk, but c'mon, guys, fixed the third graph at least..
snugbug
...This just in from the fact-checking department:
1. It's "Jean-Claude Van Damme," not "Jean Claude Van Damme"
2. "The White Ribbon" did NOT "sweep the acting categories." Best Female Performance prize was awarded to Charlotte Gainsbourg for her role in "Antichrist"; Best Male Performance prize went to Christopher Waltz in "Inglourious Basterds."
3. It's "a German officer," not "an German officer," and in any case, there's no "German officer" in "The White Ribbon." The main protagonists are a preacher, a baron and his wife, a doctor, and school teacher of the MALE persuasion, who is played by an actor named Christian Friedel, not by "Charlotte Gainsbourg." (See note above.)
4. It's "Caché," ("Hidden," in fr.), not "Cache"
Congratulations for keeping us busy, Mr. Kamer!
PS: You also misspelled your own byline.
PPS: Just kidding!
snugbug
Everything was okay with this article and its author's trustworthiness as an arbiter of aesthetic taste until he hailed Oldboy as "incredible." When he finished the post with a total misuse of the passé conversational trend known as "fail", I decided I need to take action and share my sense of extreme disappointment, not only with the above-mentioned peccadilloes, but rather the more glaring weaknesses in this shoddy work of anti-journalism. The entire 2nd to last sentence was mangled; "it" seems to refer to "what the Vatican or vampire blog Bloodcopy have to say about this" as opposed to what, in context, we can understand the writer meant to say, that is, something closer to "No word on what the Vatican or vampire blog Bloodcopy have to say about this, but chances are that "Thirst" - like anything American film execs would care about at Cannes that isn't in English - will eventually be made into a shitty American remake." There are at least 2 other reasons why this sentence is an embarrassment to writers everywhere (but mostly to the to-cool-for-school fools who edit and publish this crap). First "made into a remake..." -- c'mon! MADE into a remake? Can you please get at least a touch more ambitious and creative with your word choice? Do you even realize how awfully repetitive and dumb you sound when you write that? Secondly, there is no apparent connection provided between what the Vatican or Bloodcopy might say about this allegedly inevitable Hollywood misdeed. What ever happened to hiring writers who can write? Who the hell is this guy and why does he have a job? As for not being able to explain Haneke films, it simply underscores how woefully unprepared this dimwit is to cover cinema with enough brainpower to back up his feckless snark.
MiriamIdomeneus