Saturday, May 24, 2014

Best quotes from the Cannes Film Festival


CANNES - Some of the movie world's best known and most influential actors, writers and directors have been on the French Riviera for the past 10 days for the 67th Cannes Film Festival.

Here is a selection of some of the most memorable quotes from the film fest which awards its top Palme d'Or prize at a ceremony on Saturday.

-- "A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take the tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic"

Guardian newspaper critic Peter Bradshaw on "Grace of Monaco", Olivier Dahan's much-panned biopic starring Nicole Kidman as the former Hollywood star-turned princess Grace Kelly.

-- "I cry in the place of those who experienced this real suffering. Real courage is those who lived these moments on a daily basis. They waged a silent combat."

Abderrahmane Sissako, director of "Timbuktu", a film about the Islamist occupation of northern Mali, after he broke down in tears at a news conference.

-- "The great thing is that what made us a perfect match, apart from anything, is that he was a funny-looking fat little man and so am I... genius is not always in the most romantic of packages."

British actor Timothy Spall on playing Romantic landscape painter JMW Turner in Mike Leigh's film "Mr Turner".

-- "It is and it isn't. The film is made when you're there and so influenced by your actors, by the environment."

Elusive Canadian star Ryan Gosling's response to being asked if his directorial debut "Lost River" had ended up as he intended.

-- "Being elsewhere than here, it is not possible for me to be with you, dear comrades, on May 21, in fact it is no longer a film even though it is my best."

Jean-Luc Godard in the typically cryptic video message the 83-year-old film veteran sent festival organisers to explain his absence from the premiere of his "incomprehensible" 3D extravaganza "Goodbye to Language".

-- "The year I gave birth, there was no festival. Everyone says that it was because I wasn't there that they didn't go ahead with it."

Simone Lancelot, 97, Cannes' most faithful fan who has been to 66 of the 67 festivals held.

-- "I know that I can manage, if the part requires it, to be quite beautiful or quite ugly. I can transform myself... and that's quite an asset in the job I do."

Oscar winning French actress Marion Cotillard on her latest role as a factory worker under threat of losing her job in the Dardenne Brothers' "Two Days, One Night".

-- "We had access to absolutely nothing, not even a shirt."

Eric Altmayer, the producer of the unauthorised biopic "Saint Laurent", commenting on the cooperation the production received from fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's romantic and business partner Pierre Berge. The film explored Saint Laurent's struggles with depression, drink and drugs.

-- "I think you would have to say that there's some inherent sexism in the industry. It does feel very undemocratic... time and time again we don't get our share of representation... men eat all the cake."

Head of the Cannes jury Jane Campion on the struggle facing women working in the movie industry.

-- "(To) hang out with people my own age... hopefully kissing them a little".

Canadian wunderkid Xavier Dolan, 25, explaining why he planned to put directing on the back burner for a while and go back to university.

-- "They like victims and they like criminals and they might like a battered wife or two. Give them someone who knows what they're talking about... and they say 'My God... you're telling us what to think here'."

Cannes' darling Ken Loach on why some critics don't like working class heroes like Jimmy Gralton, the free-spirited, jazz and blues-loving protagonist of his film "Jimmy's Hall".

-- "The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator."

The Turkish director of the more than three-hour-long "Winter Sleep" Nuri Bilge Ceylan after being asked to comment on political upheaval in Turkey following a coal mine disaster.

-- "We are children with arthritis."

Sylvester Stallone, 67, after he led the all-star cast of "The Expendables 3" including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson and Wesley Snipes into Cannes in tanks, causing chaos on the Croisette, the Cannes promenade.

-- "The knife-in-the-back wound is starting to scab, and I have calmed down on it."

Quentin Tarantino talking about how his anger has subsided since the script for his latest film project "The Hateful Eight" was leaked on the Internet.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com