(Tim unveils the Calista Flockhart action figurine.)

No need to sugarcoat the penis head on this post, pretty awesome news to report: Tim Burton will serve as President of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, in the south of France (May 12-May 23).

Cannes fest prexy Gilles Jacob said, “We hope Tim Burton’s sweet madness and gothic humor will pervade the Croisette, bringing Christmas to all. Christmas and Halloween.” (oh stop, Gilles, your cleverness is making my adult diaper wet.-Ed.)

Burton said, “After spending my early life watching triple features and 48-hour horror movie marathons, I’m finally ready for this.” [Variety]

Tim Burton is a stud and regardless of whether or not you’ve enjoyed every film he’s ever made, is irrelevant; you have to give credit where credit is due. Aside from directing, Burton has collaborated on so many projects and in such varying genres, you can’t help but to respect his keen sense for entertainment.

In a press release from the festival’s submission department, a Cannes intern gushed to reporters, “We’re so excited to be working with Mr. Burton. It’s great having all of this year’s competitors resubmit their projects under new names containing ‘Vincent Price’ in the title.”

-chodin

Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon won this year’s Palme d’Or (French for “Golden Shower of Praise”) at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The trailer is below, in German and black and white.  Fancy!   An astute reader theiving Kraut-talker over at /film provides a translation, and here’s an excerpt: 

“Today a little short of two months ago . . . the doctor had a riding accident. This accident was caused by a tight rope set up in his garden. We all know that the ones responsible for my son’s and the doctor’s severe injuries are . . . here. Among us. Sitting in this room.” [Ed.- and the call was coming from inside the house]

Well, that’s cheerful.  The film is set in 1913 and the doctor’s ”accident” is just one of many.  Sure, when it’s a black and white pre-WWI movie in a foreign language it’s art, but when Final Destination does it, it’s crap.  Whatev.  *continues making decoupage with pictures of Devon Sawa*

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Quentin Tarantino’s glourioussly missppelled WWII epic Inglourious Basterds debuted at Cannes yesterday, and the reaction was… somewhat split. Like your parents.

Hollywood Reporter (careful, the full review has spoilers): “History will not repeat itself for Quentin Tarantino. While his 
”Pulp Fiction” arrived late at the Festival de Cannes and swept away the
 Palme d’Or in 1994, his World War II action movie “Inglourious Basterds”
 merely continues the string of disappointments in this year’s Competition. The
 film is by no means terrible — its running time of two hours and 32 minutes 
races by — but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long
 stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized 
characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing.
”

BBC: “Inglourious Basterds clocks in at nearly three hours, and its director could certainly have trimmed more of its flab.  It still can’t touch Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme D’Or in 1994, but the reaction here at Cannes is that Quentin Tarantino has made a glorious, silly, blood-spattered return.”

Guardian (who call it “an armour-plated turkey,” the kind of cutesy, nonsensical shorthand that is the hallmark of a pretentious douche with no real insight):  “Quentin Tarantino’s cod-WW2 shlocker about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France is awful. It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious. It isn’t funny; it isn’t exciting; it isn’t a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn. It isn’t emotionally involving or deliciously ironic or a brilliant tissue of trash-pop references. Nothing like that. Brad Pitt gives the worst performance of his life, with a permanent smirk as if he’s had the left side of his jaw injected with cement, and which he must uncomfortably maintain for long scenes on camera without dialogue.”

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Even though I hate some of these peoples’ movies (Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, for instance – puke) by pretty much any objective assessment, the lineup for the Cannes Film Festival in May is a film dork’s wet dream. This list isn’t finalized or complete, but here are some of the films officially rumored to be playing:

Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, (opens in Spain on March 18 so seems a fair bet)
Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant and The Girlfriend Experience (a friend tells me the latter film will probably hit at Tribeca first)
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist
Cristian Mungiu’s Tales From the Golden Age
The Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man
Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void
Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock
The new Michael Moore documentary (possibly titled, “Bailout”)
Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen (“The Edge Of Heaven” was in our Top 20 of 2008, he’s amazing)
Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon
Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons
Jane Campion’s Bright Star
Todd Solondz’s [Editor’s note: director of Happiness, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s most underrated performance.] Forgiveness (btw, we were right about the title)
Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control (opens in the U.S. in late May, so seems perfect for the early-mid May Cannes festival)
Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric
Neil Jordan’s Ondine
Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus [Ledger's last role]
Park Chan-wook’s vampire drama Thirst
and of course Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourius Basterds if he can finish on time. [via ThePlaylist & HollywoodElsewhere]

So Steven Soderbergh did two Che movies last year and he’s already finishing two more by May?  Does that guy ever sleep?  I think maybe he’s been dipping into Tarantino’s coke stash. In any case, I wish I wasn’t too poor to go to France, both because of the movies and because it’s been rumored that there’s a place there where the ladies wear no pants.  I think I read that somewhere.