Tarantino, Almodóvar Get Cameras Rolling at Cannes

Cinema

QUENTIN-TARANTINO

Quentin Tarantino catching a fly

The 57th annual Cannes International Film Festival is off to a rousing start, with the head of the jury slugging a security guard on the way into a screening of Man Bites Dog by Belgian actor, writer and fellow jury member Benoît Poelvoorde.
So much for Quentin Tarantino’s first day on the promenade.
For the next 12 days, the French Riviera city will host a dizzying run of screenings, publicity spectacle, dealmaking and exclusive parties attended by more than 15,000 movie paparazzi and movie writing hangers on. The galaxy of A-list stars expected to attend this year include: Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, Maggie Cheung, Cameron Diaz, Gong Li, Penélope Cruz, Uma Thurman, Tom Hanks, Sharon Stone and Sean Penn. Y-y-a-a-w-w-n-n.
Okay, okay. At least in part, the Cannes Film Festival is about movies. In that regard, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar kicked off the festival with Bad Education, a dark tale of priests’ sexual abuse of boys, homosexual love and lies.
Otherwise, want to know what’s going on at Cannes? James Mottram, of Britain’s Channel 4, offers a straightforward account of the “well-balanced affair,” while Roger Ebert reflects on the meaning behind Cannes, in the process offering hints as to the films which may emerge as contenders for the coveted Palme d’Or, the top prize at the festival.

Kerry and McCain: The Winning Ticket Against Bush/Cheney?

Politics


Presidential hopeful John Kerry, and Senator John McCain for the Democratic ticket this November?

Word out of Washington, D.C. this morning has Democratic party Presidential hopeful considering five candidates for the Vice-President’s slot on the ticket: John Edwards, retired General Wesley Clark, Richard Gephardt of St. Louis, Senator Bob Graham from Florida, and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.
All and all, a pretty lacklustre group of potential running mates for a Kerry campaign already dogged by allegations of unutterable dullness.
Although there’s been some blue sky speculation / hopeful thinking about a John Kerry / John McCain Democratic ticket come November, The New Republic’s senior editor, Andrew Sullivan, goes a bit further than previous commentators.

In office, McCain could be given real authority as a war-manager, providing a counterweight to Kerry’s penchant for U.N.-style non-solutions … Domestically, a Kerry-McCain ticket would also go a long way toward healing the Vietnam wound, now rubbed raw again by recent events in Iraq … The next president, whomever he is, may well have to encounter seismic shocks from new terrorist atrocities in America and the world. Under those circumstances, America cannot afford more polarization, partisan division, and acrimony. In parliamentary democracies, such crises sometimes provoke the formation of a ‘national government’ in which both major parties serve together.

A United States government of national reconciliation? With each passing day, and as the position of the United States only continues to worsen — with the continued publishing and broadcast of horrendous pictures and video from Iraq, with the Bush administration’s failed policies on the environment, with the potential for a privatized education system, and a thousand other issues of concern to working Americans — VanRamblings joins the call for the Kerry campaign to implore John McCain to run on the Democratic ticket, to heal the wounds of division that have torn Americans apart, so that order might once again be re-established in the U.S., and the lives of each and every one of us will not be imperiled to the degree that has become the case under Bush.

Vanity Fair: Last Days of the Empire for Beleaguered Editor?

Media

GRAYDON-CARTER

According to L.A. Weekly’s Nikke Fink, both the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times are working on major stories about whether Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter is using his close ties to Hollywood to benefit financially. A source close to the action told Defamer that the investigations are likely to turn up some serious dirt, and it’s “last days of the Roman Empire” time for Graydon Carter’s ‘freewheeling’ Vanity Fair.

Horror Show: Nightmarish Images Emerge From Iraq
Soldiers Armed With Digital Cameras Bring The Warm Home

Media, Politics, Web & Tech

NICK-BERG-FAMILY

On Tuesday, Michael Berg, center, hugs his daughter, Sara, as his son David stands
nearby, after learning the details of the killing in Iraq of his other son, Nick.



Farhad Manjoo, writing for Salon (free day pass available) theorizes as to why 26-year-old freelance contractor Nick Berg did not become a media story until video of his horrible decapitation was played on an Arab website.
From a government which has, for years, held sway with the American press, when spin control from the White House, since 9/11, has all but guaranteed favourable press for the Bush administration across the United States, times have certainly changed. The brutal realities of war have been brought home in a new and horrendous way, as digital age ‘travelogue’ pictures and videos are transmitted back home from the war front, sent by e-mail, or posted on websites.
And the senior ranks of the Bush administration reels with each new revelation.

“The video of Berg’s beheading that so dominated the news on Tuesday is just the latest example of how gruesome digital images are forcing us, and forcing the government, to confront the awful reality of war,” writes Manjoo.

We were never supposed to see the pictures that are now pouring out of Iraq. If the U.S. government had its way, ‘embedded journalists’ would have reported only on what the American administration wanted us to see and read. There would be no pictures of dead soldiers returning, of Iraqi prisoner abuse, or of Canadian and American civilians held at the mercy of the shadowy enemy.
That amateurs — American soldiers employing new technology — have emerged as the journalists who have created the iconic images of the Iraq war represents a watershed change in the way we receive news, and a shattering and revolutionary new way of documenting the world around us.