All the Loves You Cannes 2010
posted in News |All the Love You Cannes 2010
Greetings from Tromaville! Indiewire.com recently asked me to write up my thoughts on this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Enjoy!
Toxie, the Troma Team and I have been going to Cannes since 1971, when I had the 35mm print of Sugar Cookies and I slept on the beach. So I think I know a little something about the Cannes Festival.
Lloyd Kaufman and his wife, Patricia, on the Carlton Beach promoting the Toxic Avenger with an aerobics class. 1984
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Some of the movies at this year’s Cannes Film Festival look Cannes-tastic! I’m looking forward to Takeshi Kitano’s new movie Old Japanese Men Yelling At Each Other. It reminds me of when I was filming The Toxic Avenger Part II in Japan. I was in a Tokyo steam bath when a very hungry, near-sighted old man mistook my male member for a California Roll. Boy was there some yelling by old men that day!
Another Asian film that we should all be looking forward to is Sang-soo Im’s South Korean entree, The Housemaid. This is definitely NOT a remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Virgin Spring.
Poetry, by Lee Chang-dong is a story of an aging woman coming to terms with Alzheimer’s and tragedy in her life, like the fact that her grandson attacked a girl that later committed suicide! I just love slap-stick comedies!
On the downside, Cannes is promoting Fair Game, a major mainstream movie backed by a big gigantic ad campaign, directed by the same guy who made the abominable Mr. and Mrs. Smith! What’s that all about, folks? This festival should be promoting fresh talent, but, instead is promoting decaying flounder.
Speaking of yesterday’s flounder, much of this year’s Cannes Film Festival looks like it stinks What’s this parade of famous old men and their tired movies? Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, et al., WTF? These pieces of beef jerky are all rich and famous and don’t need festival help in getting their sixty year-old, or in some cases seventy year-old messages to the public! They will have huge mainstream media behind them. Cannes should be promoting more unknown, talented filmmakers such as a wonderful, young, fresh and vibrant talent named Lloyd Kaufman!
Mike Leigh has been very secretive about his new film, Another Year. I’ll let you in on a secret, Another Year will be a masterpiece because everything Leigh does is great…and I am a great judge of quality – take a look at my Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, if you do not believe me!
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is actually based on visions I had in the hospital after Michael Herz strangled me at a previous Cannes festival for throwing fake blood on the Warner Bros’ dog.
La Princesse de Montpensier by Betrand Tavernier, based on the story by Madame de La Fayette, is a film we’re keeping a close eye on. Tavernier is also one of those great “auteur†directors who lives by “To Thine Own Self be True.â€
As usual, 2010 Cannes will be one of the most exciting places to view movies. I am optimistic that there will be a small number of gems that will be pulled out of this corporate, media conglomerate dominated terrain.
Lloyd Kaufman
President, Troma Entertainment and Creator of the Toxic Avenger
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