The vibrant city of Linden is gearing up to host the 9th Annual Afro House Music Festival on June 22, 2024. This year’s festival promises an exhilarating blend of music, dance, and culture, offering attendees a day filled with non-stop entertainment. Exciting Lineup and Events The festival will be held at the highly anticipated Dream Upscale Lounge. The day’s events include everything from a Salsa Dance Festival at Empire Outlets to an immersive Murder Mystery Show. Additionally, various acclaimed directors like David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader will be showcasing new titles, adding a distinctive cinematic touch to the festivities. A...
- 5/28/2024
- by Steve Delikson
- TVovermind.com
Disappointment hung in the air a few days into the 2024 Cannes Film Festival when no main competition films had universally wowed industry and press. But you have to know where to look, which often means going outside the official selection and into sidebars like Un Certain Regard and Directors’ Fortnight in search of gems.
By the end of the festival, though, more than a few stunners had emerged. The competition’s final days brought a series of potentially historic and beloved-on-the-ground Palme contenders: Mohammad Rasolouf’s searing Iranian drama “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Payal Kapadia’s day-in-the-life Mumbai portrait “All We Imagine as Light,” and Sean Baker’s wild and crazy sex worker odyssey “Anora.”
Elsewhere, movies like Matthew Rankin’s Abbas Kiarostami homage “Universal Language” and Mahdi Fleifel’s “To a Land Unknown,” the only Palestinian movie to play Cannes this year, impressed in Directors’ Fortnight, the...
By the end of the festival, though, more than a few stunners had emerged. The competition’s final days brought a series of potentially historic and beloved-on-the-ground Palme contenders: Mohammad Rasolouf’s searing Iranian drama “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Payal Kapadia’s day-in-the-life Mumbai portrait “All We Imagine as Light,” and Sean Baker’s wild and crazy sex worker odyssey “Anora.”
Elsewhere, movies like Matthew Rankin’s Abbas Kiarostami homage “Universal Language” and Mahdi Fleifel’s “To a Land Unknown,” the only Palestinian movie to play Cannes this year, impressed in Directors’ Fortnight, the...
- 5/27/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio and David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
David Cronenberg is one of our greatest living directors; a Canadian auteur who made a name for himself with body horror masterpieces like "Scanners," "The Fly," and "Videodrome," just to name a few. And every now and then, Cronenberg will step in front of the camera, too. He has a memorable supporting turn as the villain in Clive Barker's "Nightbreed." And he has cameos in films such as "To Die For" and "Jason X." He also appeared in several seasons of "Star Trek: Discovery" as the character Doctor Kovich.
With Cronenberg having spent so much time on the series, you might have wondered: why didn't he direct any episodes? He is, after all, a director first, actor second. Well, according to Cronenberg himself, it's not a gig he's particularly interested in. When asked by StarTrek.com what would happen if he was asked to direct an episode of the show,...
With Cronenberg having spent so much time on the series, you might have wondered: why didn't he direct any episodes? He is, after all, a director first, actor second. Well, according to Cronenberg himself, it's not a gig he's particularly interested in. When asked by StarTrek.com what would happen if he was asked to direct an episode of the show,...
- 5/27/2024
- by Chris Evangelista
- Slash Film
by Elisa Giudici
Sean Baker takes the Palme d'Or for "Anora" © Sameer Al Doumy / Afp
“I've been working towards this goal for thirty years.” So says Sean Baker as he leaps from his seat in the Lumière theater upon hearing the announcement of his Palme d’Or victory. He thanks Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, dedicates his film to sex workers, and champions indie cinema meant to be experienced in theaters -- the best experience, he says, “despite what some tech multinationals want us to believe.”
He knows his life as a filmmaker is about to change. The victory of Anora is the culmination of a long journey for a filmmaker who has merged a vibrant, funny, commercial approach with serious themes and auteur rigor. From his speech—one of the best ever delivered by a Palme winner—it’s clear that he is a great storyteller first and foremost.
Sean Baker takes the Palme d'Or for "Anora" © Sameer Al Doumy / Afp
“I've been working towards this goal for thirty years.” So says Sean Baker as he leaps from his seat in the Lumière theater upon hearing the announcement of his Palme d’Or victory. He thanks Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, dedicates his film to sex workers, and champions indie cinema meant to be experienced in theaters -- the best experience, he says, “despite what some tech multinationals want us to believe.”
He knows his life as a filmmaker is about to change. The victory of Anora is the culmination of a long journey for a filmmaker who has merged a vibrant, funny, commercial approach with serious themes and auteur rigor. From his speech—one of the best ever delivered by a Palme winner—it’s clear that he is a great storyteller first and foremost.
- 5/27/2024
- by Elisa Giudici
- FilmExperience
It was the year when arthouse brains met Hollywood brawn. But what made the last 12 months of the 90s so special? These films tell the story
In 1999, cinemagoers flocked to watch The Talented Mr Ripley, in which Jude Law smoked cigarettes in a lazily buttoned linen shirt. The same year, they could also watch the actor getting a socket stamped into the base of his spine so he could play a video game. In David Cronenberg’s Existenz, Law’s character is fitted with a gnarly looking “UmbyCord” and hooked up to a creepy, pulsing virtual reality game “pod” that mines his nervous system for data as he plays. While plugged in, the player is unable to take stock of the “real” world outside. “You won’t be able to stop yourself, so you might as well enjoy it,” says the game’s creator, a line that feels spookily resonant today.
In 1999, cinemagoers flocked to watch The Talented Mr Ripley, in which Jude Law smoked cigarettes in a lazily buttoned linen shirt. The same year, they could also watch the actor getting a socket stamped into the base of his spine so he could play a video game. In David Cronenberg’s Existenz, Law’s character is fitted with a gnarly looking “UmbyCord” and hooked up to a creepy, pulsing virtual reality game “pod” that mines his nervous system for data as he plays. While plugged in, the player is unable to take stock of the “real” world outside. “You won’t be able to stop yourself, so you might as well enjoy it,” says the game’s creator, a line that feels spookily resonant today.
- 5/27/2024
- by Simran Hans
- The Guardian - Film News
George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola reflected on their lifelong bond as the “Megalopolis” director presented the “Star Wars” visionary with Cannes Film Festival’s honorary Palme d’Or on Saturday night.
Before Lucas received the award, he was greeted in the theater by a several-minute standing ovation, during which he gave the crowd a thumbs-up and got a little teary-eyed. When Coppola came on stage, the two embraced and exchanged some private remarks.
In his speech, Coppola recalled his first meeting with Lucas, who shadowed him on the set of his film “Finian’s Rainbow” in 1968.
“Pleased to have someone in my own generation, I suggested he come every day, but only on one condition: That he come up with a brilliant suggestion every day, which he consistently did. And with that began an association that has lasted a lifetime,” Coppola said. “And he went on and on, making film history,...
Before Lucas received the award, he was greeted in the theater by a several-minute standing ovation, during which he gave the crowd a thumbs-up and got a little teary-eyed. When Coppola came on stage, the two embraced and exchanged some private remarks.
In his speech, Coppola recalled his first meeting with Lucas, who shadowed him on the set of his film “Finian’s Rainbow” in 1968.
“Pleased to have someone in my own generation, I suggested he come every day, but only on one condition: That he come up with a brilliant suggestion every day, which he consistently did. And with that began an association that has lasted a lifetime,” Coppola said. “And he went on and on, making film history,...
- 5/25/2024
- by Ellise Shafer
- Variety Film + TV
The 77th Cannes Film Festival has come to a close. As with every year, the festival was host to its share of standing ovations, divisive screenings and debates over just which films and performances would take home awards at the end of the 12-day event, widely considered the most prestigious in the entire world. This year, Sean Baker’s Anora took the Palme d’Or while India’s All We Imagine as Light won the Grand Prix, generally considered the runner-up.
So, who else won out at this year’s Cannes Film Festival? While below is only a partial list of winners, you can check out the complete and extensive list here.
Palme d’Or: Anora, Sean Baker
Grand Prix: All We Imagine as Light, Payal Kapadia
Best Director: Miguel Gomes, Grand Tour
Best Actor: Jesse Plemons, Kinds of Kindness
Best Actress: Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña,...
So, who else won out at this year’s Cannes Film Festival? While below is only a partial list of winners, you can check out the complete and extensive list here.
Palme d’Or: Anora, Sean Baker
Grand Prix: All We Imagine as Light, Payal Kapadia
Best Director: Miguel Gomes, Grand Tour
Best Actor: Jesse Plemons, Kinds of Kindness
Best Actress: Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña,...
- 5/25/2024
- by Mathew Plale
- JoBlo.com
After two weeks of nonstop cinema, the moment of truth finally arrived. The winners of the 77th Cannes Film Festival were announced at a gala ceremony on Saturday night.
The Palme d’Or, the fest’s top honor, went to Sean Baker’s sex worker screwball comedy Anora. A nervous and shaking Baker took the stage and thanked the jury, saying he still “couldn’t believe it.” Baker said winning Cannes’ top prize has been “my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years.”
Baker also singled out Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, two veteran directors with films in Cannes competition this year, as major inspirations. Baker has come far, going from shooting his 2015 feature Tangerine on an iPhone5s to winning the Palme d’Or. He is the first American director to win the Palme since Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life in 2011.
Commenting on the jury’s decision,...
The Palme d’Or, the fest’s top honor, went to Sean Baker’s sex worker screwball comedy Anora. A nervous and shaking Baker took the stage and thanked the jury, saying he still “couldn’t believe it.” Baker said winning Cannes’ top prize has been “my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years.”
Baker also singled out Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, two veteran directors with films in Cannes competition this year, as major inspirations. Baker has come far, going from shooting his 2015 feature Tangerine on an iPhone5s to winning the Palme d’Or. He is the first American director to win the Palme since Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life in 2011.
Commenting on the jury’s decision,...
- 5/25/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sean Baker’s “Anora” has won the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a jury headed by Greta Gerwig announced on Saturday.
The win for Baker’s freewheeling film about a stripper and the son of a Russian oligarch becomes the fifth consecutive Palme winner to be distributed by Neon, which previously handled “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Triangle of Sadness,” “Titane” and “Parasite.”
TheWrap’s review said of the film, “It’s one of the most entertaining movies to play in Cannes this year, and also one of the most confounding: part character study of the title character (Mikey Madison), a sex worker from Brighton Beach who falls for rich Russian playboy Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn); part look into the world of the super-rich, an arena Baker has studiously avoided in films like ‘Tangerine,’ ‘The Florida Project’ and ‘Red Rocket’; part escalating nightmare comedy reminiscent of ’80s gems...
The win for Baker’s freewheeling film about a stripper and the son of a Russian oligarch becomes the fifth consecutive Palme winner to be distributed by Neon, which previously handled “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Triangle of Sadness,” “Titane” and “Parasite.”
TheWrap’s review said of the film, “It’s one of the most entertaining movies to play in Cannes this year, and also one of the most confounding: part character study of the title character (Mikey Madison), a sex worker from Brighton Beach who falls for rich Russian playboy Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn); part look into the world of the super-rich, an arena Baker has studiously avoided in films like ‘Tangerine,’ ‘The Florida Project’ and ‘Red Rocket’; part escalating nightmare comedy reminiscent of ’80s gems...
- 5/25/2024
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
The 2024 Cannes Film Festival is finally coming to a close — but not without a big splash. Crossing the Croissette one last time, stars and filmmakers alike are about to find out who’s taking home this year’s prizes.
Guessing the Palme d’Or winner has become a beloved pastime for fans and critics alike, but the best part of any Cannes Awards ceremony are the surprises. This year’s jury, led by Greta Gerwig and including Lily Gladstone, Ebru Ceylan, Eva Green, Nadine Labaki, J.A. Bayona, Pierfrancesco Favino, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Omar Sy, has been pretty tight-lipped about its preferences, but there are certainly a few standouts amongst the 22 films in competition.
“Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-the-making passion project saw him return to Cannes after many years, but was met with a mixed response despite IndieWire’s own appreciation for the film. One of the real standouts of...
Guessing the Palme d’Or winner has become a beloved pastime for fans and critics alike, but the best part of any Cannes Awards ceremony are the surprises. This year’s jury, led by Greta Gerwig and including Lily Gladstone, Ebru Ceylan, Eva Green, Nadine Labaki, J.A. Bayona, Pierfrancesco Favino, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Omar Sy, has been pretty tight-lipped about its preferences, but there are certainly a few standouts amongst the 22 films in competition.
“Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-the-making passion project saw him return to Cannes after many years, but was met with a mixed response despite IndieWire’s own appreciation for the film. One of the real standouts of...
- 5/25/2024
- by Harrison Richlin
- Indiewire
“Screen Talk: went live at the American Pavilion in Cannes this year and drew a lively crowd. Anne Thompson raved about one of the big-epic Hollywood titles playing out of competition, George Miller’s prequel “Furiosa” (Warner Bros.), starring Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role, which opens May 14, while both Thompson and cohost Ryan Lattanzio panned Kevin Costner’s old-fashioned three-hour Western “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter One” (Warner Bros.).
They both agree that this vanity project makes mad genius Francis Coppola’s self-funded $120 million “Megalopolis” look brilliant by comparison. Even if the Competition title is “unhinged,” at least he’s treading new ground, unlike Costner, who has spent some $100 million so far for the first two chapters of a planned four (the second part releases August 16). Coppola still awaits a North American buyer.
Both hosts admire Jacques Audiard’s Competition title “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical shot in Mexico...
They both agree that this vanity project makes mad genius Francis Coppola’s self-funded $120 million “Megalopolis” look brilliant by comparison. Even if the Competition title is “unhinged,” at least he’s treading new ground, unlike Costner, who has spent some $100 million so far for the first two chapters of a planned four (the second part releases August 16). Coppola still awaits a North American buyer.
Both hosts admire Jacques Audiard’s Competition title “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical shot in Mexico...
- 5/24/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio and Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Few periods on the calendar mean more to cinephiles than the two weekends in May occupied by the Cannes Film Festival. Since its founding in 1946, the French festival has been a launchpad for some of the most artistically significant films of all time. The Palme d’Or is one of the most coveted film awards on the planet, and the festival’s ability to balance subversive arthouse work with major Hollywood premieres has led many to view it as the world’s most significant celebration of cinema.
The 2024 lineup featured a mix of buzzy premieres from New Hollywood titans like Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader alongside exciting new works from emerging directors. Between the Main Competition, Un Certain Regard, special screenings, and sidebars like the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, the onslaught of new films can be overwhelming for anyone who isn’t able to give the festival their 24/7 attention.
The 2024 lineup featured a mix of buzzy premieres from New Hollywood titans like Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader alongside exciting new works from emerging directors. Between the Main Competition, Un Certain Regard, special screenings, and sidebars like the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, the onslaught of new films can be overwhelming for anyone who isn’t able to give the festival their 24/7 attention.
- 5/23/2024
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
David Cronenberg always makes personal cinema, whether telepodding Jeff Goldblum into a human-sized pest in “The Fly” or asking James Spader to fuck a gaping flesh wound in “Crash.” The Canadian filmmaker will never tell you what makes his body horror classics so close to home, but he doesn’t feel it should matter to viewers anyway.
“For an average audience, they shouldn’t have to know that,” Cronenberg, behind oversized Saint Laurent sunglasses, told IndieWire at Cannes on a windy day atop the Jw Marriott. “They shouldn’t have to know that it has any basis in my reality at all. The movie has to stand on its own, and you can’t expect the audience to give you credit because it’s really happened to you.”
But his latest film “The Shrouds,” his seventh to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and a co-production of fashion house Saint Laurent,...
“For an average audience, they shouldn’t have to know that,” Cronenberg, behind oversized Saint Laurent sunglasses, told IndieWire at Cannes on a windy day atop the Jw Marriott. “They shouldn’t have to know that it has any basis in my reality at all. The movie has to stand on its own, and you can’t expect the audience to give you credit because it’s really happened to you.”
But his latest film “The Shrouds,” his seventh to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and a co-production of fashion house Saint Laurent,...
- 5/23/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
It’s been 30 years since a film from India has been selected in the main competition at Cannes, but that finally changed this year.
Recent editions of Sundance, Tribeca, and Toronto have included riveting and even Oscar-nominated documentaries and features. In fact, Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” won the Golden Lion at Venice more than two decades ago. Granted, Cannes has recently programmed South Asian gems in other sections, such as the Queer Palm-winning “Joyland” from Pakistan in Un Certain Regard in 2022, or Anurag Kashyap’s “Kennedy” in Midnight last year. But would the South Asian drought in the main competition ever end?
Many were ecstatic last month when “All We Imagine as Light”, Mumbai-based Payal Kapadia’s narrative directorial debut, was announced in the competition lineup alongside legendary Cannes regulars: European heavyweights such as Jacques Audiard and Yorgos Lanthimos, American auteurs David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader, and Asian visionary Jia Zhangke.
Recent editions of Sundance, Tribeca, and Toronto have included riveting and even Oscar-nominated documentaries and features. In fact, Mira Nair’s “Monsoon Wedding” won the Golden Lion at Venice more than two decades ago. Granted, Cannes has recently programmed South Asian gems in other sections, such as the Queer Palm-winning “Joyland” from Pakistan in Un Certain Regard in 2022, or Anurag Kashyap’s “Kennedy” in Midnight last year. But would the South Asian drought in the main competition ever end?
Many were ecstatic last month when “All We Imagine as Light”, Mumbai-based Payal Kapadia’s narrative directorial debut, was announced in the competition lineup alongside legendary Cannes regulars: European heavyweights such as Jacques Audiard and Yorgos Lanthimos, American auteurs David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader, and Asian visionary Jia Zhangke.
- 5/23/2024
- by Ritesh Mehta
- Indiewire
George Lucas vetted several options before roping in Richard Marquand to helm Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Some directors were not interested in directing Lucas’s epic space film, while the creator rejected a few others. One of the directors whom Lucas didn’t want for the film was the Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven.
Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher in a still from George Lucas’s Return of the Jedi | Lucasfilm Ltd.
While he was a director with a vision, Verhoeven was known for including graphic scenes depicting violence and s*xual content in his films. Lucas wasn’t impressed by these scenes in one of the director’s films and decided to look for another director.
George Lucas Didn’t Want Paul Verhoeven To Direct Return Of The Jedi
Paul Verhoeven on the sets of Elle | Sbs Productions
Paul Verhoeven worked in the Dutch...
Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher in a still from George Lucas’s Return of the Jedi | Lucasfilm Ltd.
While he was a director with a vision, Verhoeven was known for including graphic scenes depicting violence and s*xual content in his films. Lucas wasn’t impressed by these scenes in one of the director’s films and decided to look for another director.
George Lucas Didn’t Want Paul Verhoeven To Direct Return Of The Jedi
Paul Verhoeven on the sets of Elle | Sbs Productions
Paul Verhoeven worked in the Dutch...
- 5/22/2024
- by Hashim Asraff
- FandomWire
Deadline photo studio hosted talent at the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival, as cast members of Cannes premiering films stopped by including David Cronenberg and Vincent Cassel for The Shrouds; Cayden Wyatt Costner, Jena Malone, Isabelle Fuhrman, Abbey Lee, Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Ella Hunt, Wase Chief, Georgia MacPhail, and Luke Wilson from Horizon: An American Saga, with Galen Johnson, Cate Blanchett, Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson attending for Rumours.
Sarocha Chankimha, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Aseel Omran attended for Rsiff Women in Cinema; Francis Ford Coppola and Nathalie Emmanuel from Megalopolis; Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Hunter Schafer, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie for Kinds of Kindness; Ron Howard for Jim Henson Idea Man, George Miller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and many more.
Related: Cannes 2024 in Photos: Parties, Premieres, Pressers & More
The Deadline Studio at Cannes will run from May 14-22, where the...
Sarocha Chankimha, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Aseel Omran attended for Rsiff Women in Cinema; Francis Ford Coppola and Nathalie Emmanuel from Megalopolis; Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Hunter Schafer, Margaret Qualley and Mamoudou Athie for Kinds of Kindness; Ron Howard for Jim Henson Idea Man, George Miller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and many more.
Related: Cannes 2024 in Photos: Parties, Premieres, Pressers & More
The Deadline Studio at Cannes will run from May 14-22, where the...
- 5/22/2024
- by Robert Lang
- Deadline Film + TV
Cate Blanchett: 'I’ve never been directed before by a threesome' Photo: Richard Mowe Normally Canadian director Guy Maddin has shunned casting star names in his body of work which now spans more than four decades.
Although his compatriots Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg have been regular fixtures in the Cannes Film Festival firmament until this year Maddin, 68, had never reached the giddy heights of the Croisette with any of his idiosyncratic works.
That omission has changed after a collaboration with his directorial co-conspirators, the brothers Evan and Galen Johnson (also Canadians) on Rumours, an excoriating and dark political satire about world leaders meeting for a G7 submit in the isolated surrounds of a dank schloss in the heavily wooded German countryside turns into a zombie apocalypse and quest for survival.
Cate Blanchett: 'It is very hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation' Photo: Richard Mowe...
Although his compatriots Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg have been regular fixtures in the Cannes Film Festival firmament until this year Maddin, 68, had never reached the giddy heights of the Croisette with any of his idiosyncratic works.
That omission has changed after a collaboration with his directorial co-conspirators, the brothers Evan and Galen Johnson (also Canadians) on Rumours, an excoriating and dark political satire about world leaders meeting for a G7 submit in the isolated surrounds of a dank schloss in the heavily wooded German countryside turns into a zombie apocalypse and quest for survival.
Cate Blanchett: 'It is very hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation' Photo: Richard Mowe...
- 5/22/2024
- by Richard Mowe
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
In his late career resurgence with Crimes of the Future having been showcased in the comp in 2022, David Cronenberg makes his entrance with The Shrouds (aka Les Linceuls) – a Canada-France co-production. Having been here before for Crash (1996), Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005), Cosmopolis (2012) and Maps to the Stars (2014), the filmmaker reunites with Vincent Cassel and makes it a first with Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce.
Gist: Karsh (Cassel) is a prominent businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents GraveTech, revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds.…...
Gist: Karsh (Cassel) is a prominent businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents GraveTech, revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds.…...
- 5/22/2024
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.As part of our Cannes 2024 coverage, we invited critics and programmers to share their thoughts on one moment from a film they've seen at the festival so far.Sign up for the Weekly Edit to receive exclusive reports from the Croisette straight to your inbox.Miriam BaleElizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes by Nanette Burstein (co-director of The Kid Stays in the Picture) is in some ways a straightforward chronological documentary of the movie star's fascinating, tabloid-centric life. What makes the film formally interesting, though, is the separation of voice and image. Burstein’s reliance on audio recordings of Taylor made in 1964 and 1985 foregrounds her remarkable voice over her blinding beauty, seen in stills and film clips. Taylor's voice, even at ages 32 and 53, can range from girlish and flirtatious to bawdy and shrill, sometimes within the same statement. When she describes how the AIDS crisis led...
- 5/21/2024
- MUBI
David Cronenberg’s films have often imagined a future where technology would find a way into our collective id. 55 years into the director’s incomparable career, might that future have finally caught up with him? In Cronenberg’s new film––the slick, scrambled The Shrouds––there are two barely speculative conceits: that an AI chatbot could be designed to look like a recently deceased love one; and primarily, that a company might have the bright idea to wrap a blanket of HD cameras around our nearest and dearest before they’re sent six-feet-under, allowing us to check in on their decaying corpse, all with the click of an app.
If that sounds a little unambitious by the Canadian’s standards, the director––whose wife of 43 years, Carolyn, died in 2017 after a battle with cancer––has his reasons. If “grief is forever,” as the director said before the premiere in Cannes,...
If that sounds a little unambitious by the Canadian’s standards, the director––whose wife of 43 years, Carolyn, died in 2017 after a battle with cancer––has his reasons. If “grief is forever,” as the director said before the premiere in Cannes,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Death Be Not Shroud: Cronenberg Hits Dead Ends in Sluggish Mystery
The burial business serves as the battle ground for a complicated conundrum in David Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds, a glum examination marrying death and technology. Once again, Cronenberg’s central protagonist navigates a ruinous obsession with bodies, but this time the horror deals with the last stop on life’s night train. Vincent Cassel, who reunites with the director after a memorable supporting role in 2007’s Eastern Promises, is a man so preoccupied with his late wife’s body he’s developed a technology which allows loved ones to peek into the coffin indefinitely, to witness the decomposition of the body via a monitor built into headstones operated by apps on their cell phones.…...
The burial business serves as the battle ground for a complicated conundrum in David Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds, a glum examination marrying death and technology. Once again, Cronenberg’s central protagonist navigates a ruinous obsession with bodies, but this time the horror deals with the last stop on life’s night train. Vincent Cassel, who reunites with the director after a memorable supporting role in 2007’s Eastern Promises, is a man so preoccupied with his late wife’s body he’s developed a technology which allows loved ones to peek into the coffin indefinitely, to witness the decomposition of the body via a monitor built into headstones operated by apps on their cell phones.…...
- 5/21/2024
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
There was an eight-year gap between the release of David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars” and “Crimes of the Future.” Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait that long for his newest feature, “The Shrouds.”
Read More: ‘The Shrouds’ Review: David Cronenberg Digs Into The Core Of How Messy Grief Can Be [Cannes]
With “The Shrouds” debuting at Cannes, we now have our first teaser for the sci-fi drama from director David Cronenberg.
Continue reading ‘The Shrouds’ Teaser: David Cronenberg’s Sci-Fi Drama Stars Vincent Cassel & Diane Kruger at The Playlist.
Read More: ‘The Shrouds’ Review: David Cronenberg Digs Into The Core Of How Messy Grief Can Be [Cannes]
With “The Shrouds” debuting at Cannes, we now have our first teaser for the sci-fi drama from director David Cronenberg.
Continue reading ‘The Shrouds’ Teaser: David Cronenberg’s Sci-Fi Drama Stars Vincent Cassel & Diane Kruger at The Playlist.
- 5/21/2024
- by Martin Miller
- The Playlist
Today, Paramount+ announced that Academy Award winner Holly Hunter will star in the upcoming original series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy as the captain and chancellor of Starfleet Academy.
The series will follow the adventures of a new class of Starfleet cadets as they come of age in one of the galaxy’s most legendary places. Produced by CBS Studios, it will begin production later this summer.
“It feels like we’ve spent our entire lives watching Holly Hunter be a stone-cold genius,” said co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. “To have her extraordinary authenticity, fearlessness, sense of humor, and across-the-board brilliance leading the charge on Starfleet Academy is a gift to all of us and to the enduring legacy of Star Trek.”
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy introduces viewers to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors,...
The series will follow the adventures of a new class of Starfleet cadets as they come of age in one of the galaxy’s most legendary places. Produced by CBS Studios, it will begin production later this summer.
“It feels like we’ve spent our entire lives watching Holly Hunter be a stone-cold genius,” said co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. “To have her extraordinary authenticity, fearlessness, sense of humor, and across-the-board brilliance leading the charge on Starfleet Academy is a gift to all of us and to the enduring legacy of Star Trek.”
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy introduces viewers to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Mirko Parlevliet
- Vital Thrills
Grief is rotting Karsh’s (Vincent Cassel) teeth. It’s been four years since he lost his wife, the beautiful Becca (Diane Kruger), to a violent form of bone cancer that ate away at her body until her brittle frame could no longer sustain life. The loss changed Karsh’s life in more ways than one, the former producer of vaguely described industrial videos taking a sharp turn to become the sleek-looking CEO of the aptly named high-tech burial company GraveTech.
Continue reading ‘The Shrouds’ Review: David Cronenberg Digs Into The Core Of How Messy Grief Can Be [Cannes] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘The Shrouds’ Review: David Cronenberg Digs Into The Core Of How Messy Grief Can Be [Cannes] at The Playlist.
- 5/21/2024
- by Rafa Sales Ross
- The Playlist
The first time Donna Langley came to the Cannes Film Festival she was a junior executive working on 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”
“I had just been promoted and I was fortunate enough to get picked to come on this trip to be part of the support team, and it was great! It was very different to this experience, I will say,” Langley said, eliciting a laugh from the well-heeled crowd at the Kering Women in Motion dinner, held at the Place de la Castre high above the Croisette. “[But] we had the time of our lives. We were just in so much awe to be in the cinema capital of the world.”
Indeed, the chairman of NBC Universal Studio Group no longer needs to share an apartment with four other young women — especially not one situated behind the fancy hotels. After all — and as Cannes president Iris Knobloch...
“I had just been promoted and I was fortunate enough to get picked to come on this trip to be part of the support team, and it was great! It was very different to this experience, I will say,” Langley said, eliciting a laugh from the well-heeled crowd at the Kering Women in Motion dinner, held at the Place de la Castre high above the Croisette. “[But] we had the time of our lives. We were just in so much awe to be in the cinema capital of the world.”
Indeed, the chairman of NBC Universal Studio Group no longer needs to share an apartment with four other young women — especially not one situated behind the fancy hotels. After all — and as Cannes president Iris Knobloch...
- 5/21/2024
- by Angelique Jackson
- Variety Film + TV
David Cronenberg is a filmmaker who has created his own brands of sci-fi for quite some time. But even a filmmaker like Cronenberg, someone who has dreamed up what the future could look like, is amazed at what technology is capable of today, specifically artificial intelligence (A.I.).
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival (via Deadline), where he recently premiered his latest sci-fi feature, “The Shrouds,” David Cronenberg talked about the emergence of A.I.
Continue reading David Cronenberg Believes A.I. In The Film Industry Could Mean That “The Whole Idea Of Productions & Actors Could Be Gone” at The Playlist.
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival (via Deadline), where he recently premiered his latest sci-fi feature, “The Shrouds,” David Cronenberg talked about the emergence of A.I.
Continue reading David Cronenberg Believes A.I. In The Film Industry Could Mean That “The Whole Idea Of Productions & Actors Could Be Gone” at The Playlist.
- 5/21/2024
- by Martin Miller
- The Playlist
Iconic directors named David haven’t been having the best luck with the Netflix streaming service lately. David Lynch recently revealed that Snootworld, an animated movie he hopes to make, had been rejected by Netflix, and now David Cronenberg has said that his new film The Shrouds – which just made its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (you can read some of the first reactions Here) – was originally intended to be a Netflix TV series, but the streamer dropped it after paying him to write the pilot episode.
During a press conference at Cannes, Cronenberg said (according to The Hollywood Reporter) that he “envisioned the story working well as a series. He flew to Los Angeles to speak with two Netflix execs who financed the writing of a first episode – which they loved. But after the second, they did not want to go any further.” Cronenberg went on to say,...
During a press conference at Cannes, Cronenberg said (according to The Hollywood Reporter) that he “envisioned the story working well as a series. He flew to Los Angeles to speak with two Netflix execs who financed the writing of a first episode – which they loved. But after the second, they did not want to go any further.” Cronenberg went on to say,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice has failed to impress the critics on Screen’s Cannes jury grid, recording the lowest score so far this year of 1.7.
The film tells Donald Trump’s origin story, with Sebastian Stan playing the future president and Jeremy Strong his ruthless lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn.
It earned eight scores of two (average), plus two ones (poor) and a zero (bad) from Mathieu Macharet at France’s Le Monde.
Click on the jury grid above for the most up-to-date version.
With a 1.7, it is just below Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, which previously occupied the...
The film tells Donald Trump’s origin story, with Sebastian Stan playing the future president and Jeremy Strong his ruthless lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn.
It earned eight scores of two (average), plus two ones (poor) and a zero (bad) from Mathieu Macharet at France’s Le Monde.
Click on the jury grid above for the most up-to-date version.
With a 1.7, it is just below Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, which previously occupied the...
- 5/21/2024
- ScreenDaily
David Cronenberg has opened up on putting his film The Shrouds to Netflix executives as a television series, who greenlit writing a first episode before rejecting the director’s project.
The sci-fi drama, which aired in Cannes to a three-and-a-half minute applause before Cronenberg spoke to the audience, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a prominent businessman and widower who, inconsolable since the death of his wife (Diane Kruger) invents a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor the decomposition of deceased loved ones in their graves.
Cronenberg spoke at Cannes’ press conference for the film on Tuesday, explaining how he envisioned the story working well as a series. He flew to Los Angeles to speak with two Netflix execs who financed the writing of a first episode – which they loved. But after the second, they did not want to go any further.
“They said – and this is a...
The sci-fi drama, which aired in Cannes to a three-and-a-half minute applause before Cronenberg spoke to the audience, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a prominent businessman and widower who, inconsolable since the death of his wife (Diane Kruger) invents a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor the decomposition of deceased loved ones in their graves.
Cronenberg spoke at Cannes’ press conference for the film on Tuesday, explaining how he envisioned the story working well as a series. He flew to Los Angeles to speak with two Netflix execs who financed the writing of a first episode – which they loved. But after the second, they did not want to go any further.
“They said – and this is a...
- 5/21/2024
- by Lily Ford
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
David Cronenberg weighed the pros and cons of artificial intelligence in filmmaking at the Cannes Film Festival press conference for his latest film, “The Shrouds,” on Tuesday.
Though Cronenberg said that technological advancements like CGI have “made filmmaking much easier” in terms of tasks like removing coffee cups from footage, he admitted that it’s “quite shocking … to see what can be done even now with the beginnings of artificial intelligence.”
Speaking of Sora, the new AI software that can generate motion pictures, Cronenberg said it has the potential to “completely transform the act of writing and directing.”
“You can imagine a screenwriter sitting there, writing the movie, and if that person can write it in enough detail, the movie will appear. The whole idea of actors and production will be gone. That’s the promise and the threat of artificial intelligence,” he said. “Do we welcome that? Do we fear that?...
Though Cronenberg said that technological advancements like CGI have “made filmmaking much easier” in terms of tasks like removing coffee cups from footage, he admitted that it’s “quite shocking … to see what can be done even now with the beginnings of artificial intelligence.”
Speaking of Sora, the new AI software that can generate motion pictures, Cronenberg said it has the potential to “completely transform the act of writing and directing.”
“You can imagine a screenwriter sitting there, writing the movie, and if that person can write it in enough detail, the movie will appear. The whole idea of actors and production will be gone. That’s the promise and the threat of artificial intelligence,” he said. “Do we welcome that? Do we fear that?...
- 5/21/2024
- by Ellise Shafer
- Variety Film + TV
When it comes to whether AI is friend or foe, particularly in regards to its place in the film industry, David Cronenberg is both intrigued and terrified.
“What do we do? I have no idea,” the Canadian horror sci-fi maestro said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, the day after the world premiere of his new film The Shrouds.
Cronenberg’s techno forward-looking yet eerily dystopian The Shrouds follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. There’s a moment in the film that deals with AI. Guy Pearce‘s character Maury, has set-up Karsh’s computer. Maury claims to live inside it, along with blonde Hunny the AI bot that does Karsh’s admin.
Diane Kruger and Sandrine Holt also star.
Cronenberg said today he is rather amazed at AI’s powers in filmmaking.
“What do we do? I have no idea,” the Canadian horror sci-fi maestro said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, the day after the world premiere of his new film The Shrouds.
Cronenberg’s techno forward-looking yet eerily dystopian The Shrouds follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. There’s a moment in the film that deals with AI. Guy Pearce‘s character Maury, has set-up Karsh’s computer. Maury claims to live inside it, along with blonde Hunny the AI bot that does Karsh’s admin.
Diane Kruger and Sandrine Holt also star.
Cronenberg said today he is rather amazed at AI’s powers in filmmaking.
- 5/21/2024
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
by Cláudio Alves
I can't wait to plunge into the enigmas of The Shrouds.
Another day, another lackluster reception to a highly anticipated Cannes title. Ali Abbasi's Donald Trump film, The Apprentice, seems neither thrilling nor especially deep, with various comparisons to Wikipedia entries throughout naysayer's reviews. At least, its cast got general praise, with highest honors to Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. Then again, it did receive one of the festival's longest standing ovations yet, so make of that what you will. On a more somber note, David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is being described as the director's most transparent movie, laying bare the grief of an artist dealing with his wife's passing. In a recent interview, the Canadian master described cinema as a cemetery, and it seems his latest work follows that idea to literal ends.
For the Cannes at Home odyssey, let's examine two horrors from...
I can't wait to plunge into the enigmas of The Shrouds.
Another day, another lackluster reception to a highly anticipated Cannes title. Ali Abbasi's Donald Trump film, The Apprentice, seems neither thrilling nor especially deep, with various comparisons to Wikipedia entries throughout naysayer's reviews. At least, its cast got general praise, with highest honors to Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. Then again, it did receive one of the festival's longest standing ovations yet, so make of that what you will. On a more somber note, David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is being described as the director's most transparent movie, laying bare the grief of an artist dealing with his wife's passing. In a recent interview, the Canadian master described cinema as a cemetery, and it seems his latest work follows that idea to literal ends.
For the Cannes at Home odyssey, let's examine two horrors from...
- 5/21/2024
- by Cláudio Alves
- FilmExperience
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and the reviews have begun to emerge. The film follows a businessman and grieving widower who invents a controversial technology known as Gravetech that allows families to see inside the graves of their loved ones as they decompose. Although known as the master of body horror, fans shouldn’t expect too much of that as Cronenberg’s latest is a much more personal film. The Shrouds is at least partly inspired by the death of his wife, Carolyn Cronenberg, in 2017.
THR‘s Leslie Felperin said, “This fetid stew of sex, death and tech may be an aphrodisiac for hardcore Cronenberg fans, but more casual viewers are likely to find it all rather slapdash and undercooked here. Cinematographer Douglas Koch’s lighting looks drabber than usual, and many of the scenes feel like the first or second take after a long day’s filming,...
THR‘s Leslie Felperin said, “This fetid stew of sex, death and tech may be an aphrodisiac for hardcore Cronenberg fans, but more casual viewers are likely to find it all rather slapdash and undercooked here. Cinematographer Douglas Koch’s lighting looks drabber than usual, and many of the scenes feel like the first or second take after a long day’s filming,...
- 5/20/2024
- by Kevin Fraser
- JoBlo.com
The Cannes audience gave a respectful embrace to David Cronenberg’s chilly drama The Shrouds, the latest from the Canadian king of horror.
Cronenberg joined castmembers Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt and Elizabeth Saunders to hit the Croisette for the film’s premiere Monday. Cronenberg rocked the red carpet wearing a pair of white rimmed wrap-around 1990s-style plastic sunglasses.
The film was met with applause that went on for three and a half minutes before Cronenberg put an end to it by taking the mic and thanking the crowd. The director explained that it was the first time he had seen the movie with an audience and added, “And it is completely different.”
Its reception was rather reserved, perhaps in keeping with the film’s subject matter of grief and death. The connection to the director’s own experience was made clear with Cassel’s character Karsh,...
Cronenberg joined castmembers Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt and Elizabeth Saunders to hit the Croisette for the film’s premiere Monday. Cronenberg rocked the red carpet wearing a pair of white rimmed wrap-around 1990s-style plastic sunglasses.
The film was met with applause that went on for three and a half minutes before Cronenberg put an end to it by taking the mic and thanking the crowd. The director explained that it was the first time he had seen the movie with an audience and added, “And it is completely different.”
Its reception was rather reserved, perhaps in keeping with the film’s subject matter of grief and death. The connection to the director’s own experience was made clear with Cassel’s character Karsh,...
- 5/20/2024
- by Scott Roxborough and Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” the horror auteur’s latest film about a widow who invents technology to see inside his late wife’s grave, received a 3.5-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere on Monday night.
The crowd showed their respect for the Cannes legend with applause after the credits rolled, but it was lackluster as audience members digested the film, which is a departure from Cronenberg’s usual out-of-the-box body horror. Instead, “The Shrouds” is a thoughtful exploration of grief and technology, and though there are several gross-out moments, the film relies on emotion more than anything.
“This is the first time I’ve seen the movie with an audience, and it’s completely different,” Cronenberg said after the clapping died down. “I’m very happy that you are all here.”
Described as an arthouse horror film, “The Shrouds” stars Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt.
The crowd showed their respect for the Cannes legend with applause after the credits rolled, but it was lackluster as audience members digested the film, which is a departure from Cronenberg’s usual out-of-the-box body horror. Instead, “The Shrouds” is a thoughtful exploration of grief and technology, and though there are several gross-out moments, the film relies on emotion more than anything.
“This is the first time I’ve seen the movie with an audience, and it’s completely different,” Cronenberg said after the clapping died down. “I’m very happy that you are all here.”
Described as an arthouse horror film, “The Shrouds” stars Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt.
- 5/20/2024
- by Ellise Shafer
- Variety Film + TV
When his wife died, Karsh tells the blind date he has asked to lunch, he had an overwhelming urge to jump into the coffin with her rather than see her sent away alone. Instead, he contrived a way to straddle the worlds of the living and the dead, setting up a luxury cemetery where the dead are wrapped in metallic shrouds that are like camera blankets. Above ground, there are screens over each grave on which you can watch your loved one disintegrating.
Welcome to Gravetech, the latest of Canadian director David Cronenberg’s sinister institutions, and welcome to The Shrouds, Cronenberg’s latest feature to debut in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Over the four years since she died, the painfully bereaved Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has been checking in to see his wife Becca’s body – already crumbling with cancer before she passed – rot down to the bone.
Welcome to Gravetech, the latest of Canadian director David Cronenberg’s sinister institutions, and welcome to The Shrouds, Cronenberg’s latest feature to debut in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Over the four years since she died, the painfully bereaved Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has been checking in to see his wife Becca’s body – already crumbling with cancer before she passed – rot down to the bone.
- 5/20/2024
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
Cannes film festival
Elaborate necrophiliac meditation on loss and longing stars Vincent Cassel as an oncologist who has founded a restaurant with a hi-tech cemetery attached
David Cronenberg’s new film is a contorted sphinx without a secret, an eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief, longing and loss that returns this director to his now very familiar Ballardian fetishes. It’s intriguing and exhausting: a quasi-murder mystery and doppelganger sex drama combined with a sci-fi conspiracy thriller which comes very close to participating in that very xenophobia it purports to satirise. And among its exasperating plot convolutions, there is a centrally important oncologist who was having a possible affair with the hero’s dead wife and who had also been her first sexual partner as a teenager – but who never appears on camera.
Yet for all this, the film has its own creepy, enveloping mausoleum atmosphere of disquiet, helped by the...
Elaborate necrophiliac meditation on loss and longing stars Vincent Cassel as an oncologist who has founded a restaurant with a hi-tech cemetery attached
David Cronenberg’s new film is a contorted sphinx without a secret, an eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief, longing and loss that returns this director to his now very familiar Ballardian fetishes. It’s intriguing and exhausting: a quasi-murder mystery and doppelganger sex drama combined with a sci-fi conspiracy thriller which comes very close to participating in that very xenophobia it purports to satirise. And among its exasperating plot convolutions, there is a centrally important oncologist who was having a possible affair with the hero’s dead wife and who had also been her first sexual partner as a teenager – but who never appears on camera.
Yet for all this, the film has its own creepy, enveloping mausoleum atmosphere of disquiet, helped by the...
- 5/20/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Inspired by the loss of the director’s wife, “The Shrouds” is a grief story as only David Cronenberg would ever think to shoot one: Sardonic, unsentimental, and often so cadaverously stiff that the film itself appears to be suffering from rigor mortis, as if its images died at some point along their brief journey from the projector to the screen. And really, what else would you expect? I suppose it’s possible that the story’s deeply personal context might have spurred Cronenberg to push against the tender sterility of his recent features, or even dare to expose the soft underbelly that’s always been hiding inside his tumorous body of work and its many layers of scary-beautiful new flesh. If so, it almost immediately becomes clear that he had zero interest in accepting that invitation.
A quintessentially late film from an artist who’s always been ahead of his time,...
A quintessentially late film from an artist who’s always been ahead of his time,...
- 5/20/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
“How dark do you want to go?” The man asking that is named Karsh (Vincent Cassel), and he’s seated in a minimalist art-chic restaurant having lunch with a blind date. The one who’s really asking the question, though, is David Cronenberg, writer-director of “The Shrouds.” He’s been asking that question — to audiences — for his entire career, and to him the answer has always been the same: The darker the better.
Yet Cronenberg has a special brand of dark. In “The Shrouds,” Karsh is a businessman who produces industrial videos, with a sleek Toronto apartment that looks out at the Cn Tower, but he’s also a co-owner of the restaurant they’re sitting in, and the purveyor of what’s in the garden next to it: a cemetery where the gravestones are technological devices, and the corpses are draped in futuristic shrouds that allow you to peer...
Yet Cronenberg has a special brand of dark. In “The Shrouds,” Karsh is a businessman who produces industrial videos, with a sleek Toronto apartment that looks out at the Cn Tower, but he’s also a co-owner of the restaurant they’re sitting in, and the purveyor of what’s in the garden next to it: a cemetery where the gravestones are technological devices, and the corpses are draped in futuristic shrouds that allow you to peer...
- 5/20/2024
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Revenge director Coralie Fargeat’s new body horror satire, The Substance, screened at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend, and the reactions have been (mostly) very positive - although it sounds like the movie has its share of shocking moments.
The film focuses on an acclaimed actress turned celebrity host of a daytime exercise program (Demi Moore) who gets replaced by a younger star (Margaret Qualley), sparking a confrontation between the two women that ultimately turns violent.
The Substance reportedly features some pretty extreme gore, but the scene that's sparked the most discussion is a brutal fight between Moore and Qualley's characters - complete with graphic, full-frontal nudity.
“I had someone who was a great partner,” said Moore of her co-star. “We were obviously quite close at some moments… and naked. But there was also a levity [in shooting those scenes].”
Moore also noted that the film “pushed me out of the comfort zone,...
The film focuses on an acclaimed actress turned celebrity host of a daytime exercise program (Demi Moore) who gets replaced by a younger star (Margaret Qualley), sparking a confrontation between the two women that ultimately turns violent.
The Substance reportedly features some pretty extreme gore, but the scene that's sparked the most discussion is a brutal fight between Moore and Qualley's characters - complete with graphic, full-frontal nudity.
“I had someone who was a great partner,” said Moore of her co-star. “We were obviously quite close at some moments… and naked. But there was also a levity [in shooting those scenes].”
Moore also noted that the film “pushed me out of the comfort zone,...
- 5/20/2024
- ComicBookMovie.com
The Substance: Demi Moore body horror film earns 11 minute standing ovation and rave first reactions
Seven years have gone by since director Coralie Fargeat made her feature directorial debut with a very cool revenge movie that was appropriately titled Revenge – you can read our 8/10 review of the film at This Link. Now Fargeat is back with an “explosive feminist take on body horror” called The Substance, which stars Demi Moore (Ghost) and Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). The film had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend, earning rave first reactions and an 11-minute standing ovation from the audience. (While also catching media attention with its scenes of Moore and Qualley displaying full frontal nudity.) We have assembled some of the reactions here:
I can’t get off my head #TheSubstance it’s an absolute brillant and well directed movie. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley at their bests. Unbelievable that this movie is actually in Competition. Unforgettable session tonight!
I can’t get off my head #TheSubstance it’s an absolute brillant and well directed movie. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley at their bests. Unbelievable that this movie is actually in Competition. Unforgettable session tonight!
- 5/20/2024
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
As the 77th Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25) arrives at its halfway point, here is THR executive editor of awards Scott Feinberg’s assessment of the awards prospects — at the Cannes closing ceremony and later in the fall — of the films that have screened at the fest so far.
The Two That Popped
One cannot know what the specific preferences and priorities of the Greta Gerwig-led main competition jury are, but one can categorically state that two competition films — both of which are so original and out-there that they have to be seen to be believed — have been particularly well received. Both garnered nine-minute standing ovations and rave reviews, including particular praise for their leading lady.
The first is The Substance, a body-horror flick from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat that might be described as Sunset Blvd. meets Freaks, and an instant classic. Demi Moore, in a gutsy career-best turn...
The Two That Popped
One cannot know what the specific preferences and priorities of the Greta Gerwig-led main competition jury are, but one can categorically state that two competition films — both of which are so original and out-there that they have to be seen to be believed — have been particularly well received. Both garnered nine-minute standing ovations and rave reviews, including particular praise for their leading lady.
The first is The Substance, a body-horror flick from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat that might be described as Sunset Blvd. meets Freaks, and an instant classic. Demi Moore, in a gutsy career-best turn...
- 5/20/2024
- by Scott Feinberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
German Films celebrated its 70th anniversary at Cannes on Sunday, with its guests looking back but also looking forward.
“It has gotten much better,” Managing Director Simone Baumann told Variety at the event.
“We’ve had Oscar-winning ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ Oscar-nominated ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ [for best international feature], films by Wim Wenders and with Sandra Hüller! Sure, Wim showed a Japanese movie and Sandra a French one [‘Perfect Days’ and ‘Anatomy of a Fall’], but it doesn’t matter: It’s more ‘mixed’ these days and I am proud of it, to be honest.”
At Cannes, 14 German productions and co-productions have been selected this year, including Match Factory’s main competition offerings “Motel Destino” by Karim Aïnouz – who also attended the bash – and Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour.” Run Way Pictures is behind Mohammad Rasoulof’s anticipated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”
As festivals get “more competitive,” underlines Baumann, international collabs are here to stay.
“It has gotten much better,” Managing Director Simone Baumann told Variety at the event.
“We’ve had Oscar-winning ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ Oscar-nominated ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ [for best international feature], films by Wim Wenders and with Sandra Hüller! Sure, Wim showed a Japanese movie and Sandra a French one [‘Perfect Days’ and ‘Anatomy of a Fall’], but it doesn’t matter: It’s more ‘mixed’ these days and I am proud of it, to be honest.”
At Cannes, 14 German productions and co-productions have been selected this year, including Match Factory’s main competition offerings “Motel Destino” by Karim Aïnouz – who also attended the bash – and Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour.” Run Way Pictures is behind Mohammad Rasoulof’s anticipated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”
As festivals get “more competitive,” underlines Baumann, international collabs are here to stay.
- 5/20/2024
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Shocking and resonant, disarmingly grotesque and weirdly fun, “The Substance” is a feminist body-horror film that should be shown in movie theaters all over the land. By that, I don’t mean that it’s some elegant exercise in egghead darkness like the films of David Cronenberg, or a patchy postmodern punk curio like “Titane.” Coralie Fargeat, the writer-director of “The Substance,” has a voice that’s italicized, in-your-face, garishly accessible and thrillingly extreme. She draws on much of the hyperbolic flamboyance that’s come to define megaplex horror. But unlike 90 percent of those movies, “The Substance” is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us.
“The Substance” tells the story of an aging Hollywood actress-turned-aerobics-workout-host, named Elisabeth Sparkle and played by Demi Moore, who gets fired from a TV network because she is now deemed too old. In a rage of desperation,...
“The Substance” tells the story of an aging Hollywood actress-turned-aerobics-workout-host, named Elisabeth Sparkle and played by Demi Moore, who gets fired from a TV network because she is now deemed too old. In a rage of desperation,...
- 5/19/2024
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Have you ever dreamed about being a better version of yourself? With her second film, Coralie Fargeat not only addresses this question but takes aim at ageism and sexism in the entertainment industry with a riotous, dreamlike horror-thriller that ends in a delirious symphony of blood, guts and otherwise undefinable viscera. Imagine David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive fused in a telepod with David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, add the unbelievably dynamic pairing of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, process it through the ultra-vivid color palette that is Fargeat’s hyper-saturated imagination, sprinkle a bit of J.G. Ballard on top, and you have the perfect breakout genre movie of the year.
If you had “Demi Moore to make a hagsploitation body horror splatter movie” on your 2024 bingo card, you stand to make a fortune, but, come on, it’s not very likely; there’s been nothing in her filmography so far...
If you had “Demi Moore to make a hagsploitation body horror splatter movie” on your 2024 bingo card, you stand to make a fortune, but, come on, it’s not very likely; there’s been nothing in her filmography so far...
- 5/19/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
On Sunday at Cannes, Diane Kruger put her star power behind a worthy cause, attending the ‘Transcending Borders’ gala at the Campari Lounge hosted by Breaking Through the Lens—an organization that works to support female filmmakers.
“I know first hand how incredibly difficult it is as a woman in this industry,” Kruger told Deadline. “Even though we’ve made strides, obviously, in the industry. But [this organization] really just resonated to me and I think more than ever, it’s a time to hear female voices. Even this year alone in Cannes, we’ve heard the uprising of the #MeToo movement, but it’s not just that. It’s also just telling our stories, and so I think that’s incredibly important.”
Kruger is at the Cannes Film Festival with David Cronenberg’s film The Shrouds, which will premiere in Competition on Monday. “I’m starting to be actually a little nervous,...
“I know first hand how incredibly difficult it is as a woman in this industry,” Kruger told Deadline. “Even though we’ve made strides, obviously, in the industry. But [this organization] really just resonated to me and I think more than ever, it’s a time to hear female voices. Even this year alone in Cannes, we’ve heard the uprising of the #MeToo movement, but it’s not just that. It’s also just telling our stories, and so I think that’s incredibly important.”
Kruger is at the Cannes Film Festival with David Cronenberg’s film The Shrouds, which will premiere in Competition on Monday. “I’m starting to be actually a little nervous,...
- 5/19/2024
- by Antonia Blyth
- Deadline Film + TV
Strange but true: after 15 years as an international movie star, propelled to fame in 2004 by Wolfgang Petersen’s historical epic Troy, German-born Diane Kruger won the Best Actress award in Cannes for her first-ever performance in her native language. Fatih Akin’s provocative 2017 drama In the Fade, in which she played a widow consumed by revenge after a terror attack, revealed an unexpectedly tough new side of her glamorous persona.
This year she returns to Cannes starring alongside Vincent Cassel in David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, a very different, and for its director highly personal film about the very same subject, love and loss, following his own wife’s death in 2017. This typically Cronenbergian plot centers on Karsh (Cassel), a businessman and grieving widower who creates a device to connect with the dead, using a high-tech burial shroud. This burial tool — installed at his own state-of-the-art but controversial cemetery — allows...
This year she returns to Cannes starring alongside Vincent Cassel in David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, a very different, and for its director highly personal film about the very same subject, love and loss, following his own wife’s death in 2017. This typically Cronenbergian plot centers on Karsh (Cassel), a businessman and grieving widower who creates a device to connect with the dead, using a high-tech burial shroud. This burial tool — installed at his own state-of-the-art but controversial cemetery — allows...
- 5/19/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Julianne Moore says the film industry has “changed dramatically” since she started out in the early 1990s when it comes to female representation.
Speaking as part of Kering’s Women in Motion program at the Cannes Film Festival, the Oscar winner said one of the most noticeable differences is when it comes to career longevity for actresses.
“Meryl [Streep] said this too the other day [during the festival’s opening ceremony], this idea that when she was 40, she thought it was all going to be over,” she said. “I think we’re now seeing women represented through all stages of their lives, which is very exciting.”
In the conversation, moerated by Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson, Moore noted that she is now seeing not just more female directors, but more women working as camera operators, grips and in the electric department. “Whereas before there were none,” she said. “But we’re still really far from gender parity.
Speaking as part of Kering’s Women in Motion program at the Cannes Film Festival, the Oscar winner said one of the most noticeable differences is when it comes to career longevity for actresses.
“Meryl [Streep] said this too the other day [during the festival’s opening ceremony], this idea that when she was 40, she thought it was all going to be over,” she said. “I think we’re now seeing women represented through all stages of their lives, which is very exciting.”
In the conversation, moerated by Variety senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson, Moore noted that she is now seeing not just more female directors, but more women working as camera operators, grips and in the electric department. “Whereas before there were none,” she said. “But we’re still really far from gender parity.
- 5/19/2024
- by Alex Ritman
- Variety Film + TV
David Cronenberg is returning to Cannes with “The Shrouds,” the story of an industrialist named Karsh, who invents a controversial technology that allows grieving families to see inside the graves of their loved ones with high-resolution cameras.
It’s a film that defies easy categorization. This being a Cronenberg production, there are elements of body horror, but there’s also a conspiracist undercurrent, as Karsh (Vincent Cassel) begins to suspect that shadowy forces are undercutting his expansion plans after his cemetery is ransacked. He has his own reasons for developing his business. Karsh’s wife died after a brutal fight with cancer, leaving him inconsolable. He begins to question if her death may be part of a larger plot by the medical establishment.
The material has personal resonance for Cronenberg as well. His wife, Carolyn Cronenberg, died from cancer at the age of 66, and the unyielding grief that he felt...
It’s a film that defies easy categorization. This being a Cronenberg production, there are elements of body horror, but there’s also a conspiracist undercurrent, as Karsh (Vincent Cassel) begins to suspect that shadowy forces are undercutting his expansion plans after his cemetery is ransacked. He has his own reasons for developing his business. Karsh’s wife died after a brutal fight with cancer, leaving him inconsolable. He begins to question if her death may be part of a larger plot by the medical establishment.
The material has personal resonance for Cronenberg as well. His wife, Carolyn Cronenberg, died from cancer at the age of 66, and the unyielding grief that he felt...
- 5/18/2024
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
“I took it hard. I wanted it to be special for him,” says Diane Kruger of performing in David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, a film the legendary director wrote as part of his grieving process after the death of his late wife, Carolyn.
The Shrouds, which is screening in competition in Cannes, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a prominent businessman and widower who, inconsolable since the death of his wife, invents a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their departed loved ones in their graves. Kruger plays three roles — that of the late wife and her sister, as well as a virtual avatar that is a rendering in CG animation.
“One thing [David] said to me, which I think Vincent says in the film, is that when his wife passed and they put her in a coffin, he had this horrible, horrible urge to jump in with her...
The Shrouds, which is screening in competition in Cannes, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a prominent businessman and widower who, inconsolable since the death of his wife, invents a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their departed loved ones in their graves. Kruger plays three roles — that of the late wife and her sister, as well as a virtual avatar that is a rendering in CG animation.
“One thing [David] said to me, which I think Vincent says in the film, is that when his wife passed and they put her in a coffin, he had this horrible, horrible urge to jump in with her...
- 5/18/2024
- by Mia Galuppo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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