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Cannes: All Access
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (18th June 2007). |
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The Film
 It's widely regarded that the Cannes Film Festival held every year in the south of France is the pinnacle of all festivals, it's the most prestigious, it's the biggest, it's the most glamorous and it's the one that everyone in the industry waits for in anticipation as the films, the stars and the media ascend for a few weeks in May. The festival started in 1939; however the festival was postponed during the German occupation of France and until the end of the Second World War the festival re-launched in 1946 only to be stopped again in 1948 and also in 1950 due to financial problems. With the exception of halting the 1968 Festival the event has been largely moving forward, starting life as a small intimate gathering of films from around the world it has ballooned into a massive film market and media event attracting both small independent films as well as big budget event films that are keen to display their film for the media and the gloat about their latest product to the various other major studios they happen to be in competition with. Every year there are several events that take place and among the program you have films "in competition" (these are the selected films in which are among the 25 or so that are vying from any one of the prizes, including the best film prize called "Palme D'Or" or "Golden Palm" as its known in English), "out of competition" are the studio films that occasionally use the Festival to launch their summer blockbusters to the media. The Cannes Film Festival takes an army to put on and the three weeks that the Festival runs through is much like a marathon or promotions and parties, film historian Richard Schickel takes viewers through the 2006 Cannes Film Festival as he interviews the stars and filmmakers as well as the key personnel behind the Festival. Throughout this journey we learn about the history of the festival, the important and controversial films that played there and walked away with prizes, what the Festival means for a film and the industry insiders telling us why this is the place to be in May. For the most part this is a talking head piece that covers a lot of information in short vignettes, it's almost like "Cannes for Idiots" and I left like Schickel never really spent enough time with each interview participant. Furthermore there are elements of this documentary that I didn't really care about such as the planning and preparation and behind-the-scenes of the Festival...meh, I'd rather hear about the impact of the Festival and what it means for a film or a filmmaker much more than what it takes to put it on. I'd have preferred the filmmakers delved deeper into the politics of the awards and how the jurors are selected, but instead these things were only briefly covered. There are segments that are informative and entertaining, but I felt that the film had very little substance and was overall disappointed in the direction it went trying to cover a vast canvas in a little time instead of focusing on the more important aspects of the Festival. It's worth it for the interviews with the stars and filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Wim Wenders, Alexander Payne, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Gena Rowlands, Lindsay Beamish, Chloe Sevigny and Willem Dafoe among others. In a way this is a light-popcorn documentary that provides viewers into the glamorous and often exhausting world of the most exclusive Film Festival.
Video
Presented in a widescreen ratio of 1.78:1 this anamorphic transfer is a mixed bag including archival footage and new interviews filmed in DV. The archival footage is of course as expected not in the best of shape, mainly suffering from color loss and print damage which is expected. The DV footage is on the contrary sharp and clean, colors are bright and vivid and there are little flaws other than minor compression issues such as artefacts, other than that there are no problems with this fairly average transfer.
Audio
A single English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track is included and it's nothing spectacular, being a documentary filled to the brim with talking heads this Stereo track does the trick in presenting the dialogue clean and without any distortion, a few musical cues are included and they are also mixed without being too loud or annoying over the dialogue. It's as rudimentary as a Stereo track can be but it does the trick. This film does not include any optional subtitles.
Extras
First up we have "Carte Blanche with Richard Schickel", an interview that runs for 9 minutes 24 seconds, in this clip the director talks about what it's like being at the Festival, on shooting the documentary there and the exhausting nature of the shoot, on the interviews and choosing his subjects as well as shares his experience at the Festival and meeting the President of the festival among other things. Next up is "Fun in the Sun", this is a beach montage which runs for 42 seconds and includes some unused footage shot on the beaches of Cannes of people having fun. Following that is "The Party's Over" an alternate ending which runs for 3 minutes 46 seconds, this ending includes some extensions to the already existing ending used in the film, this version includes some additional interviews bits as well as additional footage of the city changing and removing the film fixtures the next day. "Ribbon Cutting at the American Pavilion" is an extended sequence which runs for 2 minutes 56 seconds and features actress Anna Paquin cut the ribbon and officially open the pavilion as well as pose for photographers. A series of deleted scenes follows presented in a reel that runs for 11 minutes 7 seconds, among these scenes are filmmakers talking about their first time at the Festival, additional stories about the Festival being a marketplace and what it was like in the 60's and 70's. Also included is the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 3 minutes 33 seconds. Rounding out the extras are a collection of bonus trailers for: - "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" which runs for 2 minutes. - "The Intruder" which runs for 1 minute 40 seconds. - "In The Realms Of The Unreal: The Mystery Of Henry Darger" which runs for 2 minutes 20 seconds.
Overall
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