Entry for May 22, 2008

1. A.O. Scott viết về festival film, " It’s a movie for people who like this kind of movie".

""To make a festival film, you must first choose a location, ideally a remote region only lightly touched by modernity, where the people say very little and an unseen authority rigorously enforces laws against smiling. You will film the landscape and its inhabitants in long takes with minimal camera movements. Though the characters will generally do very little — walk, smoke, sigh — their more significant actions characteristically will be undertaken in the absence of a discernible motive. Even as nothing much seems to happen, a mood of menace and portent will hang in the air, usually culminating in a burst of violence in the movie’s last minutes...

Well and good. The problem is that “Delta,” as much as any so-so Hollywood romantic comedy, seems content to live inside the bubble of its limited ambitions. It is hard to imagine an audience for this film except in places like Cannes. That is not necessarily because the outside public is incurious or unsophisticated, but rather because “Delta” makes no particular effort to reach beyond the international coterie of critics and programmers who see it out of duty and devotion. It’s a movie for people who like this kind of movie.

And I’m happy to admit I’m one of them. The festival film — slow, difficult, formally austere — can be a welcome antidote to the fast-moving, accessible movies that thrive in the sphere of commercial cinema. But it is also worth remembering — and “Delta” is hardly the only film here to remind me — that art movies, too, are susceptible to formula and cliché. "

2. Cannes năm nay có anh Steven Soderbergh làm phim về Che Guevara. A.O. Scott nửa khen nửa chê, nhưng có phần hơi thất vọng. Anh này còn có phần thất vọng nhiều hơn với phim mới của Charlie Kaufman: “Synecdoche, New York,”.

3. Nepal sắp thành nước đầu tiên có đảng Maoist cầm quyền bằng con đường bầu cử và đi thẳng từ nước quân chủ chuyên chế trở thành nước có thể chế cộng hòa trong thời gian ngắn ngủi vài năm.
Anh này đánh giá Cannes năm nay ít phim hay hơn năm trước.