Who will win the Palme at Cannes? [2018 edition]

https://d1nslcd7m2225b.cloudfront.net/Pictures/1200xany/4/9/0/1282490_Jury-Grid-DAY-5.jpg

And here are the Chinese critics

#Cannes2018 Our Chinese critics didn’t enjoy Girls of the Sun pic.twitter.com/7mktWT706a

— Chinese Critics Grid (@CriticsGrid) May 13, 2018

Update on the Screen International list

We have a new leader atop the @Screendaily critics jury grid. #Cannes2018 pic.twitter.com/hyM5f4Sm2j

— Tim Grierson (@TimGrierson) May 13, 2018

I've never seen (or even previously heard of) any Rohrwacher's stuff before but this sounds neat

http://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/happy-as-lazzaro-review-1202808832/

Both Corpo Celeste and The Wonders are really great. She is a major new filmmaker. Alba Rohrwachers sister :)

I've been trying not to read too much about Lazzaro Felice so as not to spoil the surprise. The Wonders was lovely and memorable. Corpo Celeste is available on the library streaming app Kanopy, so maybe I'll watch that this week

the trailer for the LVT is less than encouraging tbh

Kore-eda's Shoplifters is also getting pretty great reviews. Sounds like it has echoes of Nobody Knows, my favorite film of his so far

After the Storm was the best Kore-eda in years, so I could actually sorta believe he recovered his mojo.

An outlying opinion, but the best tweet:

Unfortunately the new Spike Lee often reminds me of Three Billboards or the Starsky & Hutch w/ Owen Wilson.

— Miriam Bale (@mimbale) May 14, 2018

Are you Alba Rohrwacher, Alba? Because if so, cool!

Yeahhh I'd be happy to be wrong but I'm concerned LVT might have tripped over a little too far into troll mode

So in Lars Von Trier's film premiering at Cannes tomorrow the male characters have names and the women characters are LADY 1, 2, 3 and Simple. I was worried this year's festival was too feminist so I am relieved. #Cannes71 #cannes2018

— Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (@anothergaze) May 14, 2018

It's the second time in 25 years that LvT has a male protagonist, and he has used nameless characters before. He is not trolling.

Lvt's entire career is built on trolling ppl.

Glad to help you understand.

Yeah, I've written about him for years, interviewed his collaborators, he is not trolling.

he's too frequently a clown (and not a good one)

The weird thing about LVT is that people seem much more keen on reviewing him than reviewing his films. Maybe it's that fear of being fooled that does this.

he's in his films

Yeah, I've written about him for years, interviewed his collaborators, he is not trolling.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, May 15, 2018 5:47 AM (one hour ago)

You will forgive some of those on the thread for engaging in a little consideration of the source here.

How so?

Well, calling LVT not a troll is a pretty good place to start.

And end, apparently.

I'm cool with that.

Well, let me oblige you: Lars von Trier is not a troll.

The fact that he has worked with ppl and that you've written about him and talked to him doesn't mean he isn't a troll.

It means you haven't picked up on it.

Not to make a big thing out of it but I like/love a lot of his movies (and think he's done some of his best work recently) but I wouldn't deny he has trollish tendencies at the very least.

*as I like/love etc

Someone who spends as much time on every detail of his films as Lars von Trier does is not a troll. His composers constantly map out everything with him, and rearranges and records the classical pieces he uses so that they fit the film - doubling instruments, changing instrumentation. It's like the difference between Milo and Jordan Peterson. 'Maps of Meaning' is idiotic and gibberish, but it's not the work of a troll.

This might be better discussed on a dedicated LVT thread but I don't see how meticulousness precludes trollishness

What Simon said (Dogville is clearly a key 21st century movie, I think). Maybe we're disagreeing on the definition of troll here. One can put a lot of effort and care into a piece of art, but if the outcome is intended to be confrontational, that's the work of a troll, no matter how skilled.

Lawful evil, as opposed to chaotic evil

confrontational? like, dada?

Dogville was a key 3 hours of pain in my life

The definition of trolling is just provoking to provoke. Spending so much time on stuff nobody would even consciously pick up on is something else. LvT is provocative, and runs his mouth, but he is not a troll by any definition of the term. He is obsessed with power and violence, and constantly asking whether or not a director should be manipulative and emotionally violent towards his audience - and often, but not always, saying yes. But that's different.

And yeah, reducing 'trolling' to just being confrontational is... well, sad? Would you call 'dada' trolling? Bertolt Brecht? Stravinsky?

no wonder E likes de Palma, someone who confronts nothing, ever...

I don't like either of you.

right NOW, you mean.

The blackly comic thriller, which stars Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman, follows the murder spree of a serial killer over the course of several decades. Advance word on the film suggested that it would feature scenes of sadistic violence and brutality, with Cannes director Thierry Frémaux saying that it featured “a subject so controversial” that it could only appear in an out-of-competition slot at the festival.

That advance billing seems to have been lived up to, with Variety’s Ramin Setoodeh reporting more than 100 people leaving the cinema prematurely due to the film’s “disgusting” content. “Gross. Pretentious. Vomitive. Torturous. Pathetic,” wrote one attendee on Twitter, while entertainment reporter Roger Friedman described it as a “vile movie” that “should not have been made”.

The scene which seems to have prompted the majority of walkouts is one in which Dillon’s character shoots two children at a family picnic in the head with a rifle. In another Keogh’s character is seen having her breast sliced off, while a flashback scene shows a child removing a duckling’s leg with a pair of pliers. Archive footage from concentration camps is also shown.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/15/vomitive-pathetic-lars-von-trier-film-prompts-mass-walkouts-at-cannes

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/6a00d83451b8c369e2014e8887d3a6970d.gif

I'm just doubting anything can be as horrifying as the toughest scenes of Antichrist and Nymphomaniac (five hour version), and those descriptions don't really change my mind. I'm more worried that it's just a sad retread of Nymphomaniac with a violent man in the lead. If there's one really bad thing LvT constantly does, it's repeating himself. Manderlay is pathetic, but it's far from the worst offender. IMO.

A lot of critics were fairly pissed at those tweeting walkouts, though. The festival scheduled the press screening on the morning after the galla screening, and so journalists got scooped by people who didn't even stay to the - allegedly pretty wild - end. Not that it has anything to do with LvT, but the changes Cannes is making are pathetic.

Wait, it's by far the worst offender, it's just not the only one :)

Are you Alba Rohrwacher, Alba? Because if so, cool!

― Frederik B, Monday, 14 May 2018 22:11 (yesterday)

Sadly no.

Looking forward to Happy as Lazzaro now:

Also, I'm sorry but Lazzaro has the exact gait and demanor of Dougie in TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN and once I noticed that I could not unsee it.

— Jessica Kiang (@jessicakiang) May 14, 2018

I don't know why I've got so into following Cannes this year. I made a Twitter list of people there tweeting about it, in case anyone wants to use it. It's quite fun monitoring the reactions just after a premiere:

https://twitter.com/NickyD/lists/cannes-2018

a strange detail in Peter Bradshaw's review makes me want to see it so I can see this artefact:

There is supposedly a place called “Carlson’s Supermarket” near one of these very remote chalets, and although we don’t see this store, we see its brown bag with its logo. I don’t think I have ever seen a more obviously faked artefact in a film in my life.

re the LVT, obv.

Someone who spends as much time on every detail of his films as Lars von Trier does is not a troll. His composers constantly map out everything with him, and rearranges and records the classical pieces he uses so that they fit the film - doubling instruments, changing instrumentation. It's like the difference between Milo and Jordan Peterson. 'Maps of Meaning' is idiotic and gibberish, but it's not the work of a troll.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, 15 May 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is nonsense, btw. Under this definition no auteur could ever be a troll. You are confusing someone who spends time typing stuff out in the dark web with someone who makes films for a living. Just because the former supposedly takes less time (although seeing people apparently argue for hours upon hours you'd think wasting enormous amounts of time and energy comes with the job) doesn't mean that's the only thing to trolling.

And LvT is much more of a troll than a provocateur. The latter actually spends time thinking about things and formulating matter that makes an apperance over and over again across a filmography, as a theme. That's Haneke for me. Von Trier doesn't think stuff through, nor does he have any discipline to expand any of it, so that leaves him with these weird pronouncements in interviews like 'Hitler had a hard time' or whatever. Just your usual free speech neighbourhood warrior. For someone who attacks Cannes as being un-supportive of women it says volumes you are defending LvT.

Having said that the guy has made some good films. You can be a troll and make some good films.

Just trying to think of anytime I've been impressed about the score in a LvT film and that was Bjork's soundtrack for Dancer in the Dark.

We know how that ended for her.

Coming vainly back to the poll, Under the Silver Lake seemed a good bet going in. Now, not so much.

Von Trier doesn't think stuff through, nor does he have any discipline to expand any of it, so that leaves him with these weird pronouncements in interviews like 'Hitler had a hard time' or whatever.

This was the last of several interviews where he talked about his own problems with embracing romantic aesthetics, Wagner, etc. He definitely thought it through, and just because you don't realize it doesn't mean it's not there.

The English translation is not online anymore, but put this through google translate: https://www.dfi.dk/omdfi/det-eneste-formildende-er-jorden-gar-under