Steven Spielberg And His Jury Gave Out Some Awards At Cannes Today
And we gave out a few more of our own.
The Cannes Film Festival, meeting place for the world’s greatest movie people and other assorted nutcases, rolled up its red carpet for another year today. Honorary jury president Steven Spielberg and his crew of creative international misfits — including France’s Daniel Auteuil, Japan’s Naomi Kawase, Taiwanese Oscar-winner Ang Lee, Austrian superstar Christoph Waltz, and our own Nicole Kidman — handed out their awards to the best films and performances they’d like you to see in the coming months.
Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a gritty romance based on a French graphic novel about the relationship between two female students in Lille, scored the first-placed Palme d’Or; Inside Llewyn Davis, the new Coen Brothers film featuring a folksy duet between Justin Timberlake and Girls‘ Adam Driver, scored the second-place Grand Prix; and the Japanese drama Like Father, Like Son, about a botched child-swap, scored the Jury Prize.
In other news, Bruce Dern — the awesome old guy from such cinematic masterpieces as Silent Running (1972), The Driver (1978) and, well, The ‘Burbs (1989) — scored the Best Actor award for his grizzled, boozy role in Alexander Payne’s father-son tearjerker, Nebraska; and Berenice Bejo, who found instant fame in Oscar winner The Artist, won Best Actress for her dramatic portrayal of a jilted wife in the French/Iranian drama, The Past.
“Oooh, so interesting,” we hear you say, “Please, tell us more about these pretentious Euro films that don’t go well at all with popcorn.” Geez, take it easy, bully. Now that the ‘info’ has been provided, let’s honour the ‘tainment’ part (hopefully) of our credo with our own awards to a few of the other major players who made noise at Cannes this year…
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The Lars Von Trier Award for European cinema’s new enfant terrible goes to:
Nicholas Winding Refn, whose new Ryan Gosling vehicle, Only God Forgives, was greeted by a smattering of boos during its premiere screening, mainly for its nutso gore, violence and creepy mother/son weirdness. Speaking to Vulture after the incident, Winding Refn defended the film — well, we think that’s what he did — by saying this: “I mean, how can I expect someone to not react like this when on one hand you are dropping what you do in everyone’s face and at the same time saying, “Love me, please,” you know? You’re going to get that. You know, great art — horrible thing to say — but art is meant to divide, because if it doesn’t divide, it doesn’t penetrate, and if it doesn’t penetrate, you just consume it.”
Sounds like something Lars Von Trier would say, you know, minus a whole side-rant about Nazis.
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The Werner Herzog Award for “Relax everybody, it’s just a few gunshots…” goes to:
Christoph Waltz, whose lighthearted TV interview with a couple of old French dudes was interrupted by a crazed gunman brandishing a live grenade. The live footage of the event finds the intense Austrian unfazed by the ruckus around him, a reaction he later confirmed in an interview with the Daily Mail: “I was on a panel at the Studio Canal platform off the beach when a man produced a gun. I think it was a pistol and he fired but luckily for me they were blanks. Then he shouted he had a grenade and again luckily for me there was no grenade.” Yes, that seems to be the right reaction to all this.
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The Whatever Award You Wanna Give This Guy…
Some guest at a charity event for a nonprofit AIDS research facility held in Cannes this weekend paid $1.5 million to travel into space on a Virgin Galactic spaceship, seated next to Leonardo DiCaprio “sometime in 2014”. That’s quite a nice donation to support a worthy cause, and this mystery bidder should be commended. In related news to come out of Cannes this weekend, LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS GOING TO SPACE SOMETIME IN 2014. What the f**k, did everybody know this already?
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The Jennifer Lawrence Award For Most Glamorous Red Carpet Up Yours Goes To…
Asia Argento. The actress/filmmaker, member of Italian cinematic royalty, and awesome crazy lady, gave assembled photographers a nice farewell at the awards ceremony. Then she tweeted about it and quoted a Kendrick Lamar lyric. And THAT’s how you close festivities with style. Later, Cannes.
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