Speaking of Jean-Claude Van Damme, it’s been a long 15 years since John Woo came to America to direct the Muscles from Brussels in Hard Target, and I’m ready for the action auteur’s return to Chinese cinema already. In the last decade and a half, Woo has delivered some embarrassing work while in Hollywood (I know, except for Face/Off, we all agree). But now he’s back with Red Cliff, an epic Chinese film costing about $80 million, which makes it the most expensive Asian-financed film ever.

The film, which takes place in the 3rd century (China’s Three Kingdoms period), was partially brought to the Cannes film market, where more than 8 minutes were shown to buyers. And now, courtesy of Trailer Addict, we get to see a bootleg of the reel (visit the site for a much bigger version). Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell if it’s actually going to be worth the wait and the money (this past weekend showed us, with the release of The Children of Huang Shi, that not all China-set epics are good). Nevertheless, it is interesting and exciting to see what Woo has been doing back on his native soil. And who doesn’t enjoy watching Tony Leung over Ben Affleck?

We’re all aware that the ’80s action movie hero is back in full force in the 2000s. Stallone brought back Rambo, Bruce Willis brought back Die Hard’s John McClane, Harrison Ford just brought back Indiana Jones. But what does someone like Jean-Claude Van Damme do? He’s an iconic action star of the same period, yet he hasn’t a single iconic action hero role with which to stage a comeback. To us, he was always simply Jean-Claude Van Damme. Which is why it’s all the more appropriate that his big return is with a meta-movie in which he plays himself.

J.C.V.D. premiered at the Cannes film market this month (Karina showed us the teaser trailer pre-fest) and it’s been labeled a surprise hit. But does it deserve prime U.S. distro, or would it be more appropriate for it to go straight to DVD in America? As far as I’m aware, it hasn’t been picked up for either, yet. But anyone taking note of two excitable blurbs on GreenCine today should be hopeful that we’ll get to see it Stateside soon. My favorite of the two:

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On the flight home from Cannes on Sunday, I sat next to a prominent female film critic who, like me, had major problems with James Toback’s much-praised Tyson. Particularly concerned about the section of the film where Mike Tyson tells “his side of the story” in regards to the rape that sent him to prison, she predicted that the film’s eventual distributor, Sony Classics, would likely have to tweak the Cannes cut in order to avoid a libel suit. But a story on the boxing site The Sweet Science indicates that might not be the only spot where Toback and Tyson fudge the truth.

The film virtually cuts straight from the death of Tyson’s former mentor Cus D’A,ato to his years working under the eye of Don King. Steve Lott, Tyson’s assistant manager from 1985 to 1988, sites numerous places where Tyson “lies” in Tyson, and accuses Toback of glossing over the years in which Lott worked with the boxer in order to better support the case that Tyson was “has demons, that he was a thug, that he was crazy.” Lott says the Tyson he knew was “neither an addict, nor a hoodlum, nor a manic depressive…[but] ‘the golden boy of corporate America’,” and that his life only started to spin out of control when Don King and Robin Givens stepped in. He also claims Tyson lies in the film about being forced to sign a contract when he was underage:

“I have the contract right here,’’ Lott said. “Mike Tyson was 18 when he signed that contract, not 16. He’s saying these lies for two reasons. The effect of Don King and all those years of him telling Mike it was the white guys who screwed him and the fact that Jimmy [Jacobs] is dead and can’t defend himself. I defy anyone to come out of the woodwork and say something bad that Jim did to Mike Tyson.’’

Of course, it’s possible that there’s a touch of sour grapes to Lott’s protests. The obvious (and admitted by Tyson) goal of Tyson––and the main reason why I find it so reprehensible––is to rehab Tyson’s image to the point where, as the Sweet Science story puts it, he can become “a product America will once again buy.” Lott apparently tried to do this himself two years ago:

Lott said he met with [licensing agent Harlan] Werner two years ago to discuss his ideas of how to help his old friend. He suggested he first get rid of the face tattoo he began to wear late in his boxing career and then do a series of exhibitions for the troops in Iraq followed by similar fund raising appearances in the U.S. for various fire and police departments.

In perhaps the only interesting stylistic element of the film, Toback uses overlapping voiceover and split screens to draw attention to where Tyson repeats and/or contradicts himself om various topics. Maybe this becomes a question of documentary ethics: is a filmmaker even responsible for “lies” told by his subject, if he draws attention to the fact that said subject is the world’s most unreliable narrator?

• Not content to let IFC walk off the Croisette as the big buying ballers of Cannes 2008, Sony Pictures Classics set a number of deals in the last days of the fest, including distribution pacts for the Israeli animated doc Waltz With Bashir, Lorna’s Silence by the Dardenne brothers, and James Toback’s Tyson.
• Meanwhile, the people at Magnolia have all but resigned themselves to distributing What Just Happened?, the Barry Levinson Cannes closer which they produced through 2929 Entertainment, but have been attempting to unload on another distributor since Sundance.
• Ewan McGregor will play Gore Vidal’s dad/Amelia Earhart’s lover in Amelia, a biopic set to star Hillary Swank as the famous missing aviatrix.
• Blah blah blah Indiana Jones, blah blah blah $311 million worldwide.

In chronological order:

• James Toback’s Tyson
• Indiana Jones premiere, and Everything is Fine
• In the market: Uwe Boll goes to Vietnam
• How to throw a renegade karaoke party in Cannes
• In the market: Sex and Breakfast
• Raymond Depardon’s La Vie Moderne
• James Gray’s Two Lovers
• Che distribution speculation, and the French Forrest Gump
• Pre-Che jitters
• Post-Che fallout
• Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours and Terrence Davies’ Of Time and the City
• Quentin Tarantino <3s Quentin Tarantino
• Philippe Garrel’s The Frontier of Dawn
• In the market: Abel Danger
• Abel Ferrara on the Bad Lieutenant remake
• Wendy and Lucy and the too-bright spotlight
• Chelsea on the Rocks and Nick Nolte: No Exit

For all the talk about how this was a mediocre year at the Cannes Film Festival, I think I personally saw a higher ratio of good to garbage than is my festival norm. Maybe I’m being Pollyanna-ish; maybe I just went in with lower expectations. Regardless: though certainly I saw films too mediocre to merit mention, it seemed like every day brought at least one new movie that deserved to have the living hell championed out of it. The following list is thus not ranked necessarily by absolute quality, but by how fervently I feel the need to shout the praises of the film in question––in some cases, in opposition to overwhelming derision or indifference.

1. Everything is Fine (above) — This French-Canadian drama, about a suicide pact between four teenage friends and the enigmatic boy left behind, was the true undiscovered gem of this year’s Market. Both cautiously romantic and devastatingly sad, its greatest achievement is the way in which it naturalisticaly depicts a teenager’s personal tragedies (those legitimately large and those that just seem that way) without condescension nor nostalgia. As far as I know, it left the Marche without any form of U.S. distribution.

2. Frontier of Dawn –– It wasn’t the most maligned film in competition––nothing could top the press corps’ universal disdain for Wim Wenders’ The Palermo Shooting––but Philippe Garrel’s richly-layered story of the ultimate doomed romance may have been the most misunderstood. Those who complain of the supernatural turn taken by Garrel’s epic in its third half (and, particularly, the silent-era effects used to achieve it) mostly refuse to engage with the film on its own terms. See my full review here.

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“Freud’s ultimate impulse, the reason why he did all his creative work, was to get laid –– which is ultimately a highly creative act.”

That’s a quote from Nick Nolte, pulled from Nick Nolte: No Exit, Tom Thurman’s experimental, quasi-existential documentary on the actor, his inner life, and his somewhat incredible journey from one dubious achievement to another: first PEOPLE Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, then, just ten years later, star of the most mockable celebrity mug shot in recent history. (It’s the latter achievement that seems to give Nolte greater pleasure––the mug shot is prominently displayed in a laugh-out-loud bizarre flash intro on his official website.)

The nature of the quote––its balance between absurdity and plausibility, its revision of history through the lens of impulse––makes it seem like it just as well could have been housed by Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks, the other film I saw on my last day of screenings in Cannes. In addition to sharing an interest in the relationship between excess and art, both films offer us stories presented through the eyes of older men of some notoriety, offering dispatches from a space on the dividing line between mainstream celebrity culture and a tangetial space––dirtier, less stable, less a sub-culture than an afterworld.

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• Karina does Cannes:

Cannes Diary: Eavesdropping on the Indiana Jones premiere; Karaoke; Assessing the Che situation; Terrence Davies and Olivier Assayas return to Cannes; the cons of premiering at Cannes.

Reviews: La Vie Moderne; Two Lovers; La Frontiere de l’aube.

Market Flash: Uwe Boll’s Vietnam Epic; the Macaulay Culkin group sex movie; the neo-noir 9/11 conspiracy theory spoof.

More: Tyson screening; Che premiere; the Che backlash; Live blogging the Tarantino lecture; Abel Ferrara crushes the Bad Lieutenant remake rumor.

• Indiana Jones and the Near-Daily Coverage: Initial backlash and reviews; backlash gone overboard; Harrison Ford vs. Deforestation; Defending Indy’s CG effects
• On the Podcast: Indiana Jones and an interview with Steve James.
• DreamWorks working on its own Pirates of the Caribbean.
• 10 Other ’80s Teen-Movie Actors Who Need a Roland Emmerich Movie.
• Iron Man marketing controversy.
• Cameron Diaz does what Dakota Fanning couldn’t.
• What if Michael Jackson were a filmmaker?

Who would have thought, in 2006, when Old Joy spent a year slowly gathering critical steam after having been all but ignored at Sundance, that Kelly Reichardt’s next film would occasion an item in PEOPLE Magazine? “Michelle Williams Dazzles at Cannes Film Festival,” goes the headline of the story by Brenda Rodriguez. Last night’s Wendy & Lucy red carpet was the first that the actress walked since the death of former partner Heath Ledger, and for the tabloids that’s a major hook. Looking down from the balcony last night at the Debussy, it was a trip to watch the Chanel-clad former Dawson’s Creek star stand on the stage at one end of a line that included Reichardt, Old Joy/Wendy & Lucy producer Anish Savjani, and filmmaker/Wendy & Lucy producer and co-star Larry Fessenden.

When a film this small gets thrust under a spotlight this bright, you worry that the movie itself will be overwhelmed. I do hope this unlikely attention helps Wendy & Lucy get seen, but coming in with high expectations(Old Joy was one of my favorite films of its year), I was a bit underwhelmed.

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“Did everybody see the film?” Abel Ferrara cried at the jump of the Cannes press conference for Chelsea on the Rocks, compulsively putting on and pulling off a pair of black wraparound sunglasses, sipping on a can of Budweiser. Several journalists coughed in response. Said Ferrara: “What is this, avian flu? Everybody cough, yeah. We got a Howard Hughes complex as it is.”

The press conference as a whole was a woozy, half-sickly, half-populated affair…maybe typical of anything involving Ferrara meeting journalists, but definitely emblematic of the Festival itself at this point. But! But! Ferrara twice talked about Werner Herzog’s alleged Nicolas Cage-starring remake of his Bad Lieutenant––once in response to a question from a reporter, and once just because he apparently felt like he needed to vent.

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The French title of Philippe Garrel’s film in competition here is La Frontière de l’aube; the English translation in the Cannes guide is Frontier of Dawn, but the subtitle at the beginning of the film read, The Dawn of the Shore. Neither title gives any indication of what this film is: a story of amour gone so fou that the natural world becomes subject to the supernatural. Hands down the most accessible Garrel film I’ve seen, it’s still a strange, swoony, genre-bending challenge.

I have to wonder if those critics who dismissed James Gray’s Two Lovers earlier in week will bother to grapple with the similarities between that star-studded American production and Garrel’s infinitely cooler, warm-toned black-and-white capital-A work of Art. On paper, they’re essentially the same film: a Jewish photographer falls for a difficult, substance-dependent blonde; even though that relationship is clearly doomed from the start, it haunts him and prevents him from happily settling into a domestic routine with a still-beautiful but less troubled and exciting brunette. The big difference, at least narratively speaking: in Gray’s film, as the director told Andrew O’Hehir, the protagonist ultimately “does choose life.” Spoiler alert! The resolution to Garrel’s story is the diametric opposite.

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At this point in the festival, it’s hard for me to make room in my schedule for films screening purely in the market when there’s competition stuff to see at the same time (although I did see Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours today, and that was totally worth it––more later). And so on Thursday morning, I’ll be watching Philippe Garrel’s Frontier of Dawn during the sole screening of Able Danger, a neo-noir “spoof” of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. We turn, once again, to the official Marche du Film guide for a synopsis:

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Quentin Tarantino gave a two-hour chat about his films today in Cannes. I typed as fast as I could. Please excuse any typos that I didn’t catch.

2:30 pm: One of the things that’s been slightly blown out of proportion is that I gained in my film knowledge at Video Archives. No — i was HIRED at Video Archives Because I was a film expert.

Influences starting out: Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks. Brian DePalma was like my rock star. I spent a year and a half going over theTV Guide looking for movies by Hawks. They played 80% of his sound films on LA TV.

I would recommend that anyone who wants to direct join an acting class. That should be your first stop. If you do a scene with a class member, you then direct the scene. Everything I learned about writing, too, I learned by acting. I use acting adjectives when I write. Because the whole idea of acting is to get lost. It also taught me about the camera. I took a class in camera technique for actors with James Best, from Shock Corridor. Well, in teaching me acting for the camera, he started teaching me about the frame. So then when I watched the movies I loved, like Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath, with a little more knowledge of camera, I could see what those guys were doing. And once you start doing that, it’s only a short step until you’re composing shots of your own.

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Two films, two days, two revered European filmmakers presenting work that, in one way or another, reps a return. Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours screened in the market without the Cannes Film Festival’s official kiss on the cheek, but even without that critical imprimatur, it’s nonetheless one the finest features I’ve seen this year, a return to classicism of a sort for Assayas (in the press notes, he admits that he sought to return to the stylistic concerns and working method of his Late August, Early September era) and the kind of thoughtful French film designed for adults for which there seems to longer be a U.S. market (IFC bought it anyway). Of Time and the City, Terrence Davies’ first film in eight years after the commercially unsuccessful artistic triumph of The House of Mirth, is a plain return to work. Both movies are about memory, about place, and a taking stock of the relationship between the two that happens in mid-life.

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