Cannes ‘08: Kenneth Turan provides an early glimpse at this year’s festival and market
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan checks in on the first morning of this year’s Cannes Film Festival with a curtain-raiser about the intersection of art and commerce - not to mention some perfectly cheesy B-Movie titles:
CANNES, FRANCE -- IN CASE you had any doubts -- and maybe you didn’t -- it’s now official: The Festival de Cannes is a very big event. According to a story in Nice-Matin, the paper of record in the South of France, the festival close to triples the population of this wealthy seaside town, taking it from 70,000 to 200,000 for the 12 days it takes place. And all these people spend an awful lot of money: The festival estimates that 170 million Euros -- that works out to about a quarter of a billion dollars -- was spent here last year. So maybe it’s to be expected that the major presence in this big, expensive festival, set to open tonight with Fernando Meirelles’ highly anticipated ‘Blindness,’ is a big, expensive movie: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Does that title ring a bell? It certainly does over here.
More on the film line-up and the American presence at the festival here.
-- Sheigh Crabtree