Furiosa @ Cannes 77

 #furiosa

Today's announcement from Festival de Cannes !!! Told ya so (here;) at the trailer's debut on Dec. 1st 2023! 

Nine years after Mad Max: Fury Road, the Australian director, screenwriter and producer George Miller’s famous saga’s is back on the Croisette! The highly anticipated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be revealed in the presence of the director and the cast, led by Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke, on the occasion of an Out of Competition gala screening at the Grand Théâtre Lumière at the Palais des Festivals on Wednesday May 15.

Mad Max (1979), Mad Max II: The Challenge (1981), Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024): in 5 episodes and in almost 5 decades, George Miller has created a cathartic myth, even a cathartic mythology. Mad Max is a chronicle of societal and environmental collapse, playing with genre codes to question these themes, initially visionary and now cruelly topical. Originally filmed in the Australian Outback, this revisited “Western on wheels” describes a dystopian world where speed and movement are just as synonymous with life energy as with death as a result of resource depletion, offering the viewer a dose of adrenaline rarely equalled on the big screen.

 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the latest episode. It returns to the origins of Furiosa, the new saga-heroine who appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road, rewarded with several Oscars. Actress Anya Taylor-Joy plays the young Furiosa, trying to return home, despite numerous hostile armed gangs.

 

“The idea of this prequel has been with me for over a decade,” said George Miller. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to return to the Festival de Cannes – along with Anya, Chris and Tom – to share Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. There is no better place than La Croisette to experience this film with audiences on the world stage.”

 

George Miller, the singular and unclassifiable filmmaker, passing from post-apocalyptic films to young audiences – Babe (1995), Happy Feet (2006) – was twice a Festival de Cannes Jury member before becoming its President in 2016 for the 69th edition. In 2022, he presented Three Thousand Years of Longing with Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, Out of Competition.

RIP M. Emmet Walsh

Mr. M. Emmet Walsh has gone away at the grand age of 88. Shy three days of being 89 :(  (born on 22th of March 1935, dead on 19th March 2024)

Character's actor Actor, he was great in all of 'em. 

Blade Runner

especially in Blood Simple, Coen bros. first film 

he was in Raising Arizona too...

I last saw him recently in White Sands (1992), that I've revisited (great soundtrack that got me to Missing Persons...)

a strong unforgottable presence.

Red Rooms / Les Chambres Rouges (2023)

Canadian thriller/horror/psychological drama in French (shot in Montreal) screening now in Romanian Theaters (very selected;). Distributed by Cay Films (their best entry on their roaster)

Sitges and Fantasia entry, awarded at various film fests of last year, this film deserves to be better known. I had an inner feeling seeing the poster but had no clue about it. So, I was happy I went to see it in the cinema, it was an imersing experience. 

A twist on the serial killer game, focusing on their groupies, and a descent into "The Dark Web" more realistic than any I've seen so far.  

It' s also a first fare into the genre  (cross-over) by writer/director Pascal Plante, Les Chambres Rouges/ Red Rooms -in Romanian it's "Camera rosie" (singular instead of plural!)

Great score (John Carpenter style by Dominique Plante, I guess it's the director's wife), sound design, acting (Juliette Gariepy is sensational as Kelley-Anne!, she looks alike a young Madeleine Stowe but with an uncanny glance intensity, then there is big-eyed Laurie Biron as Clementine ), masterfully shot (a lot of long takes, the first one in the courtroom is quite a tour-de-force), interesting choice of framing (1.50:1), atmospheric and mysterious, with high tension psychologically and emotionally.

Reminded me of David Cronenberg and a bit of Repulsion. 

See it in a cinema if you can ! Also not for the faint of heart (rated R-N 15)

Deadline review from Karlovy Vary film fest (in competition). 

RIP Steve Harley The Cockney Rebel

Another bad news Sunday...Steve Harley just died. The leader of Cockney Rebel and the creator of The Human Menagerie (his 1st album with Cockney Rebel in 1973) just got to be 73 on February 27th. He had cancer and that forced him to stop his 2023 tour in the middle of t. I 1st heard of him on Radio Free Europe back in 1983 with the song Sebastian (1973), which was a powerplay hit on the Metronom by Request show. "Make me smile"

I will pay a tribute to him on Rockland Radio this Thursday, with Death Trip. 

So now we're on a death trip, listen to the blood drip
Oozing from a curled lip, ever thought of dying slowly
Ever thought of dying totally unholy.

Obit on bbc here

and here's a bio on youtube

And can you think of one good reason to remain? To remain? To remain? To remain?