Big films, big directors, big stars: The 2009 Cannes Film Festival is going mainstream this year, leaving little room for emerging filmmakers to take home the big prizes.
In Paris yesterday, the festival announced its complete official lineup, with no significant Canadian content showing up this year.
As rumoured, maverick American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is in with his World War II vanity project, Inglourious Basterds.
It will go after the Palme d'Or as best film in the main competition. He won in 1994 with his violent masterpiece, Pulp Fiction.
The inclusion of Inglourious Basterds means Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Mike Myers, Maggie Cheung, Eli Roth, Julie Dreyfus and other Basterds stars are possible -- and, in Pitt's case, probable -- for the red-carpet walk into the Lumiere theatre for the world premiere.
Inglourious Basterds is the story of Jewish-American soldiers, known as The Basterds, who terrorized the Germans by scalping and brutally murdering Nazis during World War II.
Tarantino's opus, which he has been working on for more than a decade, will be competing with films from an international roster of heavyweight directors such as Ang Lee (back in Cannes with Taking Woodstock), Pedro Almodovar (Broken Embraces), Jane Campion (Bright Star), Ken Loach (Looking for Eric), Johnnie To (Vengeance), Lars Von Trier (Antichrist), Elia Suleiman (The Time That Remains), Chan-Wook Park (Thirst), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon), Marco Bellocchio (Vincere), Isabel Coixet (Map the Sounds of Tokyo) and Alain Resnais (Les Herbes Folles).
Other directors represented in the competition are: Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), Jacques Audiard (Un Prophete), Xavier Giannoli (A l'Origine), Lou Ye (Spring Fever), Brilliante Mendoza (Kinatay), Gaspar Noe (Enter the Void) and Tsai Ming-Liang (Face).
The closing-night film, which plays out-of-competition, will be Jan Kounen's drama, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky.
Cannes 2009 runs from May 13-24 in the south of France. It remains the most prestigious and important film festival in the world.
Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is also out-of-competition but sure to be one of Cannes' most eagerly awaited films. It contains the last film footage that Heath Ledger shot before dying of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on Jan. 22, 2008. Ledger was home in Manhattan on a holiday break from Gilliam's London shoot when he died.
With the blessing of Ledger's Australian family members, Gilliam enlisted a bevy of other famous actors to finish Ledger's scenes. Among them is Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, all of whom will be invited to Cannes, although the festival's confirmed guest list has not been made public yet.
Among other stars expected are: Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz for Broken Embraces, Emile Hirsch and Liev Schreiber for Taking Woodstock, Willem Dafoe for Antichrist and Mariah Carey for the screening of Lee Daniels' Precious in Un Certain Regard, the parallel section to the main competition.
Taking Woodstock is one of the most interesting Cannes competition films this year, at least for North Americans who remember the famous musical festival of 1969 that helped define an entire generation.
Lee, a Taiwanese-American, delves into hippy history in a tale of how one man, while working in his parents' hotel in the Catskills, ignited the flame that lead to the festival. Canadian comic and actor Eugene Levy plays Max Yasgur, the New York State farmer who allowed his land to host what would become one of the most famous and controversial events of its decade.
Among other notable oddities that were announced yesterday, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell will play as a special, out-of-competition screening at midnight.
After three Spider-Man movies, Raimi's is raising a little horror hell for a change, going back to his Evil Dead roots. Drag Me to Hell co-stars Justin Long and Alison Lohman.
The opening-night film this year is the Pixar animation Up, from director Pete Docter. It had been announced earlier.
The 2009 Cannes competition jury will work under Isabelle Huppert this year, with Robin Wright Penn among its members.
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