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    Cannes Film Festival Announces Lineup, Including Scarlett Johansson and Wes Anderson

    A sidebar to the competition will feature Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut.Movies directed by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Ari Aster are among 19 films that will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced at a news conference on Thursday.The festival’s 78th edition, which opens May 13 and runs through May 24, will also feature the premiere of “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the eighth movie in the action series starring Tom Cruise, playing in an out-of-competition spot.Linklater’s movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless,” a seminal picture in the French New Wave film movement.Richard Linklater at the Berlin Film Festival in February. His “Nouvelle Vague,” playing in competition at Cannes, is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless.”Christopher Neundorf/EPA, via ShutterstockOther movies by American directors appearing in competition are Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” starring Benicio Del Toro as an eccentric businessman; Aster’s “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, and focused on a small-town election; and Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” about an art heist.Julia Ducournau, whose movie “Titane” won the Palme d’Or in 2021, will return to the competition with “Alpha”; and Joachim Trier, who directed “The Worst Person in the World,” a breakout hit that same year, will present a new film, “Sentimental Value.”In recent years, the Cannes competition has premiered a host of movies that have gone on to dominate award season. Last year’s lineup included Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” and Sean Baker’s “Anora” — the last of which won the Palme d’Or and this year’s Academy Award for best picture.A jury led by the French actor Juliette Binoche will announce the winner at a ceremony on May 24.Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which will feature in the competition’s sidebar, is called “Eleanor the Great.”Mario Anzuoni/ReutersOutside the main competition, the sidebar section, known as Un Certain Regard, features the directorial debuts of two prominent actors: Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” in which a woman in her 90s moves to New York and tries to start life afresh; and Harris Dickinson’s “Urchin,” a drama about a homeless person.Aside from the main competition and Un Certain Regard, the festival also has special screenings, out-of-competition slots and a section called Cannes Premiere. Some notable movies playing in those categories include “Private View,” directed by Rebecca Zlotowski and starring Jodie Foster in her first French-language role for over two decades; “Stories of Surrender,” based on Bono’s acclaimed one-man stage show; and “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” by the Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.The honorary Palme d’Or, given each year to acknowledge a contribution to cinema, will go to Robert De Niro. The actor performed the lead in two past Palme d’Or winners: Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” which won the main prize in 1976; and Roland Joffé’s “The Mission,” which triumphed in 1986. More

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    Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater to Compete at Cannes Film Festival

    A sidebar to the competition will feature Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut.Movies directed by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Ari Aster are among 19 films that will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced at a news conference on Thursday.The festival’s 78th edition, which opens May 13 and runs through May 24, will also feature the premiere of “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the eighth movie in the action series starring Tom Cruise, playing in an out-of-competition spot.Linklater’s movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless,” a seminal picture in the French New Wave film movement.Richard Linklater at the Berlin Film Festival in February. His “Nouvelle Vague,” playing in competition at Cannes, is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless.”Christopher Neundorf/EPA, via ShutterstockOther movies by American directors appearing in competition are Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” starring Benicio Del Toro as an eccentric businessman; Aster’s “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, and focused on a small-town election; and Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” about an art heist.Julia Ducournau, whose movie “Titane” won the Palme d’Or in 2021, will return to the competition with “Alpha”; and Joachim Trier, who directed “The Worst Person in the World,” a breakout hit that same year, will present a new film, “Sentimental Value.”In recent years, the Cannes competition has premiered a host of movies that have gone on to dominate award season. Last year’s lineup included Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” and Sean Baker’s “Anora” — the last of which won the Palme d’Or and this year’s Academy Award for best picture.A jury led by the French actor Juliette Binoche will announce the winner at a ceremony on May 24.Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which will feature in the competition’s sidebar, is called “Eleanor the Great.”Mario Anzuoni/ReutersOutside the main competition, the sidebar section, known as Un Certain Regard, features the directorial debuts of two prominent actors: Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” in which a woman in her 90s moves to New York and tries to start life afresh; and Harris Dickinson’s “Urchin,” a drama about a homeless person.Aside from the main competition and Un Certain Regard, the festival also has special screenings, out-of-competition slots and a section called Cannes Premiere. Some notable movies playing in those categories include “Private View,” directed by Rebecca Zlotowski and starring Jodie Foster in her first French-language role for over two decades; “Stories of Surrender,” based on Bono’s acclaimed one-man stage show; and “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” by the Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.The honorary Palme d’Or, given each year to acknowledge a contribution to cinema, will go to Robert De Niro. The actor performed the lead in two past Palme d’Or winners: Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” which won the main prize in 1976; and Roland Joffé’s “The Mission,” which triumphed in 1986. More

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    Watching Movies Like It’s 1999

    A multimedia Culture desk series, “Class of 1999,” revisits a group of mold-breaking, star-studded films released that year.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.A sci-fi film whose climactic choice — red pill or blue pill? — has become so famous that it’s a meme. A found-footage style documentary horror film that achieved cult-classic status. A “Star Wars,” a “Toy Story” and two Tom Cruise movies.The year was 1999, and it was blessed with an abundance of cinematic riches. So many, in fact, that “The Blair Witch Project,” one of the top-earning indie films ever, was just the fifth-highest grossing film at the U.S. box office three weeks after its release.“It definitely was an epic year,” said Stephanie Goodman, the film editor for The New York Times. She led a team of more than a dozen writers, editors and designers who produced “Class of 1999,” a monthlong series celebrating the 25th anniversary of what many would argue is the greatest year in movie history.The multimedia project, which includes features, profiles and critical essays, not only explores directors’ innovation and risk-taking in 1999, but how their films were, at times, chillingly prophetic about the cultural, social and political themes of today.There’s a look at how the opening scene in “The Matrix” proved remarkably prescient; an essay on how “Blair Witch” foreshadowed the age of misinformation; a profile of Haley Joel Osment, who was 11 when he starred in “The Sixth Sense”; an article about the vulnerability of Tom Cruise; a playlist from the year’s top films; a reflection on reviewing movies in 1999; and a roundup of favorite films from the year, as selected by writers and critics. (Readers were invited to share their picks, too.)“A lot of people who worked on it had a strong connection to the movies,” said Ms. Goodman, who in 1999 was a copy editor at The Los Angeles Times. “That’s one thing that made the year special, in addition to the fact that just about every major filmmaker of the past 25 years was working that year.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Revisiting Tom Cruise’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and ‘Magnolia’ Performances From 1999

    Twenty-five years ago, the superstar starred in “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” and opened himself up for the camera in ways he rarely has since.“Eyes Wide Shut” had a blunt sales pitch: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.The poster didn’t need much more. Audiences already knew plenty. At the peak of his clout, having just earned his second Oscar nomination, for “Jerry Maguire,” and publicly launched his production company with “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, ditched Hollywood to quietly make a dirty movie in England with the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. The shoot was supposed to last six to eight months. It took 15.‘’People say: ‘You’ve lost 40, 60, 80 million dollars. You’ve lost all this money. You’ve lost all this time,” Cruise told The New York Times a year before its anticipated release. “To have a chance to work with Stanley Kubrick,” he added, “that’s worth it for me.”Talk about risky business. The second half of 1999 would prove to be the diciest period of Cruise’s career with the release of two back-to-back films that dared him to expose his private vulnerabilities. The first, “Eyes Wide Shut,” released 25 years ago this summer, was a cerebral and slippery tale about a husband named Dr. Bill Harford who wanders Manhattan for two nights as vague vengeance upon his wife for fantasizing about another man. It was hawked as Cruise after dark — the movie star and his spouse, the ascendant Kidman, inviting people into their bedroom to see how they slept, smooched and argued.Cruise sacrificed a year and a half of his life for what he hoped would be his major contender, the film that might finally earn him an Academy Award. But ironically, it was the other role that got him an invite to the ceremony: an outrageous supporting bit as the seduction guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama “Magnolia” that Cruise had shot in just three weeks. Of the two performances, it’s by far the most personally revealing.Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, married at the time, playing a couple in “Eyes Wide Shut.”Warner Bros.At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De Palma, breaking his ronin inclinations only to make “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” with Tony Scott. On “Thunder,” he had fallen in love with Kidman and made another film with her, too — “Far and Away” — and neither had been critically acclaimed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Watch Tom Cruise Roll a Fiat 500 in ‘Mission: Impossible’

    The director Christopher McQuarrie discusses a chase scene involving the star and Hayley Atwell in ‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Ethan Hunt has found himself in many elaborate car chases throughout the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. But while the stunts have gotten bigger, this time, the car has gotten smaller.In “Dead Reckoning Part One,” a Fiat 500 becomes the star of a sequence set in Rome involving Ethan (Tom Cruise) and Grace (Hayley Atwell). The two find themselves handcuffed to each other as Ethan gets behind the wheel of their tiny getaway vehicle.Narrating the scene, the director Christopher McQuarrie said the inspiration for it occurred to him when he was scouting locations in Paris for a chase sequence in “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” and came across a Fiat 500 parked along the Seine.“I thought it would be great, the idea of watching Ethan Hunt and Tom Cruise driving in a car like that,” he said.This scene includes more humorous moments than the series’ previous car chases. And it involves Cruise having to navigate the Fiat around cobblestone streets, which the actor did himself.A climactic moment in the scene involves the Spanish Steps, when the Fiat bumbles its way right down the monument.The production was not allowed to let cars actually touch the steps, so they built a replica of the landmark on a backlot and tumbled the vehicle down there.Read the “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” review.Read an interview with the franchise co-star Henry Czerny.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Takes Producers Guild Award

    The prize is a strong indicator of what will win best picture at the Oscars. The film already won the Directors Guild Award.Add another one to the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” trophy shelf (and slap some googly eyes on it, too).The Producers Guild of America handed its best film award on Saturday night to the sci-fi hit about a Chinese American laundromat owner’s unlikely quest to save the multiverse, extending the film’s award-season momentum after a big win at last weekend’s Directors Guild ceremony.The producer Jonathan Wang took the stage flanked by his cast, including Oscar nominees Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis, and the film’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Wang spoke movingly about his feeling of never fitting in as a mixed-race child.“When I was with my Chinese family, I never felt really Chinese, and with my while family, I never really felt white,” Wang said. “But in this room with all you other nominees, you shouldn’t have accepted me, you shouldn’t have welcomed me in, but I feel like family in this room with you producers.”There is no stronger best-picture bellwether than the PGA Awards, which are voted on by a guild that shares significant member overlap with the academy. Since 2009, when both groups adopted a preferential ballot and expanded the number of best film nominees from five, the PGA winner has repeated at the Oscars all but three times. Last year, when the Producers Guild opted for “CODA” over the Directors Guild winner “The Power of the Dog,” it offered the strongest evidence that the family dramedy was on a path to Oscar’s top prize. And of the last 15 films to win both the PGA and DGA prizes, 11 went on to win the best picture Oscar.Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.A Lovelorn Romantic: An ‘80s child star, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.A Side Dish of Nothing: Two of the most talked-about movies of 2022, “Everything Everywhere” and “Glass Onion,” delve into nihilism through conceptual foodstuffs. What they do next is surprising.With two significant guild prizes in its pocket, “Everything Everywhere” is heavily favored to triumph at both the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night and the Writers Guild Awards next weekend. That would be an auspicious clean sweep: In the last 28 years, no film has won the best picture Oscar without first taking a top prize from at least one of Hollywood’s four major guilds.Is the final race decided, then? Well, it’s worth noting that “Everything Everywhere” got a cold shoulder last weekend at the BAFTAs, prizes that are handed out by the British academy, which also shares members with the American academy: Despite 10 BAFTA nominations, “Everything” won only an editing prize, and even season-long sweeper Ke Huy Quan lost the supporting-actor trophy to “The Banshees of Inisherin” star Barry Keoghan. BAFTA gave its best film award to Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” though it will be difficult for that war movie to build dark-horse momentum over the coming weeks, as it was not nominated for the SAG, WGA, or Independent Spirit Awards.Elsewhere at the PGA Awards, the documentary film prize went to “Navalny,” while “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” was named the best animated film. The top TV awards went to “The White Lotus” (best episodic drama), “The Bear” (best episodic comedy) and “The Dropout” (best limited series).Here’s the complete list of winners:FilmBest Film: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Animated Feature: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”Documentary: “Navalny”David O. Selznick Award: Tom CruiseStanley Kramer Award: “Till”Milestone Award: Michael De Luca and Pamela AbdyTelevisionEpisodic Drama: “The White Lotus”Episodic Comedy: “The Bear”Limited Anthology Series: “The Dropout”Television Movie: “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”Nonfiction Television: “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy”Live, Variety, Sketch, Standup and Talk Show: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”Game and Competition Television: “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls”Sports Program: “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off”Children’s Program: “Sesame Street”Short-Form Program: “Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question”PGA Innovation Award: “Stay Alive, My Son”Norman Lear Achievement Award: Mindy Kaling More