Cannes Film Festival

It was a shock to realise recently that it was actually ten years ago that I went to the Cannes Film Festival. my former employer was a major sponsor of the festival and the trip was the main prize in a film blogging competition.

It was the first time that I had tried blogging, but once I started I could not stop...

The prize included entry to one of the festival screenings: the event itself was quite amazing, in terms of black ties, long dresses and red carpets, but unfortunately the film we saw was not that good and did not appear in any of the critics' tips for an award.

However there was time t wander around some of the other events and I enjoyed a trip around an exhibition hall in which various films - presumably many of them unmade - were being heavily promoted. Clearly some things never change and in today's paper there was a big article about the current crop of wannabees:

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/26/tsunambee-clowntergeist-and-haunted-airplane-bad-cannes-films-posters

Cannes Film Festival

Seven years go I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time.  My then-employer was a major sponsor and each year there were a few tickets provided for employees.  In most years the tickets were handed out after a ballot of interested parties - so there was little chance of winning - but this year the company decided to set up a blogging competition.  I was one of the winners - and I haven't stopped yet.

The organising team were more keen to tell us about the logistics  for the trip, but they could not answer my first question: what screening were we due to attend?  So many films now regarded as masterpieces received their first screening at Cannes, but sadly what we saw was Les Chansons d'Amour:

I didn't manage to find a single review of it and inevitably it did not feature in any of the awards.

I still read all the reviews from Cannes avidly, and sometimes enjoy a good review of a bad film rather than a rave about a masterpiece.  This year Peter Bradshaw's description of Grace of Monaco featuring performances so wooden that they were a fire risk made me laugh our loud several times:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/14/grace-of-monaco-cannes-review-nicole-kidman