SOME studios have been so keen to oil the wheels of hype around their films in Cannes that I have occasionally found myself talking to people about movies that none of us has seen because they aren't finished yet. Cannes feels unreal at the best of times, of course, but this week it has come close to feeling like a sort of Second Life experience.
Sometimes, I've at least been able to see some footage - ten minutes of The Golden Compass (nice polar bear), and a few minutes of Eli Roth's promisingly gruesome Hostel 2 and the latest Jason Statham thriller The Bank Job - but there was nothing wha
tsoever to show for Ealing's updated riff on St.Trinian's.
This was a first for Colin Firth and Rupert Everett. They were perplexed: how do you talk about a film that's not even finished yet? You don't, was the answer. Instead we chatted about cars (Firth drives a hybrid Toyota Prius), hotels in Berlin (Everett's favourite city), and politics.
Still, it was an experience meeting some of the girls from the movie, even if the fact that newcomers Gemma Arterton and Talulah Riley (flanking the chicly attired Casino Royale beauty Caterina Murino) were dressed in stylised school uniforms, high heels, black stockings and suspenders did cause my mind to wonder, and made me feel like I was doing something I shouldn't.
Speaking of which, Quentin Tarantino screened his extended cut of Death Proof - his half of Stateside flop Grindhouse - in competition on Monday. Initially running at around 85 minutes, now self-indulgently extended to over two hours, Tarantino's take on 1970s exploitation cinema is long on talk and short on action. The director pulls off two thrilling car chases, and Kurt Russell hams it up deliciously as the film's killer, but his normally fizzy dialogue feels tired. It is as if Tarantino has turned into the anti-Mamet, giving his actors lots of words but absolutely nothing to say. This is the first time I've actually wanted his characters to stop talking.
Ten years ago, Jackie Brown suggested that Tarantino was maturing. Since then, however, he has let his fanboy obsessions run wild and seemingly returned to his adolescence. His skills as a filmmaker still remain undeniable. I just wish he would put them to better use. Maybe his next film, the Second World War-set Inglorious Bastards, will mark a return to form. Even if it doesn't, the unquestioning adoration of some journalists in Cannes suggests that there will always be those for whom he can do no wrong.
Whether or not Hollywood can please fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books is yet to be seen. The special effects-laden footage from The Golden Compass (adapted from Northern Lights) certainly looked impressive - lots of CGI animals, vehicles and formidable cityscapes - but the cast will have to give the film a heart and soul if it is to succeed.
One question that has been hanging over the film is the implicit criticism of organised religion essential to Pullman's books. Bob Shaye of New Line Cinema, the film's main production company, told me in Berlin that the material had been "bowdlerised". Speaking in Cannes, writer/director Chris Weitz, referring to the Magisterium - the religious body that wields total political power in the world of Lyra (Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), the heroine - said: "In the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that's what you want in the film, you'll be disappointed. We have expanded the range of meanings that the Magisterium represents."
Dark forces were at work in Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart. Grippingly made, the film follows the real-life hunt for kidnapped Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, focusing less on him than on his heavily pregnant wife, Mariane (Angelina Jolie), upon whose book the film was based, as she awaits news of her husband's fate. That the outcome will not be a happy one is a given. Yet when the awful truth is revealed, the moment is emotionally shattering. While reviews have been mixed, the overall feeling is that this is a worthy addition to Winterbottom's rapidly expanding catalogue.
The Blackburn-born director is not in contention for the Palme d'Or which, as the festival's end approaches, is increasingly on people's minds. One of my tips for the top prize is New York artist Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The film tries to get inside the head of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle who suffered a stroke which left him able to communicate only by blinking. Yet he managed to write a book about his life - the source for the film - dying just days after its publication in 1997. Some may ask whether we really need another film about a paralysed writer after The Sea Inside. But while the two films do share similarities, Schnabel's does a wonderful job of making us feel what it might be like to have "locked-in syndrome" - and to escape it like a butterfly through the power of imagination. Eerily, just as I was writing these words, a butterfly landed on my computer screen. Omens, surely, don't come much better.
Lastly, Kids writer Harmony Korine received a warm welcome on Tuesday night, at the world premiere of his first film in eight years, Mister Lonely. A sad and poetic tale about a commune of celebrity impersonators in the Scottish Highlands, including Diego Luna as Michael Jackson and Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe, this is warmer and more accessible than Korine's previous directorial outings, Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, and features flashes of genuine brilliance. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm glad to see him back.
• Read Stephen Applebaum's final report from Cannes in The Scotsman on Tuesday.
The full article contains 980 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
