cannes film festival

3:25AM Defamer Hollywood | As if Page Six’s blind items weren’t problematic enough, NY Post film critic Lou Lumenick last week offered a fun one from Cannes that found our refined hunch-dar betraying us. “Members of the press were lining up at the entrance to the announced venue well more than a hour before [Two Lovers] began,” he wrote. ” ‘I’m not going to wait an hour for f—-ing James Gray,’ one major U.S. film critic declared, before storming off, of the film’s American director, who is much more popular among critics in Europe than he is in his native country.” There’s a pretty short list of “major U.S. film critics” these days anyway, but the anecdote provoked visions of the NY Times‘ Manohla Dargis protesting to the Cannes overlords. However, as Dargis assured us this morning, “storming” is not her style; she indeed waited an hour just like everyone else for fucking James Grey. So it’s back to the blind-item drawing board for us, alas. Was Rex Reed at Cannes? [Defamer] More »

German Cinema Legend Makes Comeback With Cannes’ Prestigious ‘Crap d’Or’ Trophy

7:45AM Defamer Hollywood | And here we thought Che had it rough with critics at Cannes. Enter Wim Wenders, the New German Cinema pioneer whose Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire were among the fest’s most beloved films of the ’80s, but yet who’s fallen on hard times of late with a string of dodgy bombs including Don’t Come Knocking and Land of Plenty. His return to the Croisette with Palermo Shooting, about a fashion photographer who comes face-to-face with death, isn’t likely to help matters much — particularly not with the Absolute Worst Review of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival now making the rounds. More »

Jealous Harvey Weinstein Stakes His Own Claim to ‘Valkyrie’ Debacle

2:55AM Defamer Hollywood | Amid all of Tuesday’s post-holiday hustle and bustle, we regrettably overlooked perhaps the most profound news item of the day: Harvey Weinstein indirectly hopped in the Valkyrie fray at Cannes by picking up US theatrical/DVD rights to Operation Valkyrie, a 2004 German retelling of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It’s the same film Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer made (or are making, with worse accents) only to see it bumped twice to a Feb. 2009 release-date Siberia by Cruise/UA’s partners at MGM — oddly the same folks with whom The Weinstein Company shares its own distribution deal. Small world, eh? It gets even weirder — kind of. More »

Blame France for the New Screenwriting Diddy

10:25AM Defamer Hollywood | He can rap! He can act! He can produce (music AND plays)! He’s the dapperest of gentlemen ever to be accused of assault, bribery, shootings, sweatshop labour, a fatal stampede and making coats out of dogs! And now Diddy has a new occupation: screenwriter. According to the always reliable entertainment news service WENN, Diddy was “so inspired” by this year’s Cannes Film Festival that he decided to venture into feature writing. But wasn’t the festival like two days ago, you ask? Yes, yes it was. Apparently, Mr. Puffycombs wastes no time making his brand new dreams come true. More »

Sharon Stone’s Bold ‘Karma Tectonics’ Theory Infuriates Chinese Quake Victims

3:40AM Defamer Hollywood | When Sharon Stone wasn’t joking about Sean Combs’s crack budget last week at the Cannes Film Festival’s high-powered amFar benefit, she took a few minutes on the red carpet to play amateur seismologist for the international press. That went about as well as you’d expect when, only seconds into discussing the humanitarian crisis facing China after the May 12 earthquake that killed more than 67,000 people, Stone attributed the tragedy to… karma? More »