1. “Cannes: Winter Sleep Wins Palm d’Or.” Other winners include Julianne Moore, Xavier Dolan, and Jean-Luc Godard.
“After 11 days of films, the Cannes Film Festival wrapped up Saturday night with the closing ceremony. The top prize, the Palme d’Or, went to Winter Sleep. President Jane Campion and her jury including Sofia Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Nicolas Winding Refn and Gael Garcia Bernal picked the prizes from this year’s selection of 18 films in competition. Iconic French actor Lambert Wilson served as master of ceremonies at the event. Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob, who will step down after this year, received a long standing ovation at the event. Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino and star Uma Thurman, in town for a 20th anniversary celebration of their film, announced the winner of the Palme d’Or. Winter Sleep, directed by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is an epic story of a marriage starring Haluk Bilginer, Melisa Sozen, and Demet Akbag. Ceylan dedicated his award ’to the young people of Turkey who have lost their lives during the last year,’ and thanked the festival’s Thierry Fremaux and Jacob for supporting ’such a long film.’ (The film was the longest in the competition at 3 hours, 16 minutes.)”
2. “In a final videotaped message, a sad reflection of the sexist stories we so often see on screen.” Ann Hornaday’s thoughts on our cinematic grammar of violence, sexual conquest, and macho swagger has angered Judd Apatow.
“How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like Neighbors and feel, as [Elliot] Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of ’sex and fun and pleasure’? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, ’It’s not fair’? Movies may not reflect reality, but they powerfully condition what we desire, expect and feel we deserve from it. The myths that movies have been selling us become even more palpable at a time when spectators become their own auteurs and stars on YouTube, Instagram and Vine. If our cinematic grammar is one of violence, sexual conquest and macho swagger—thanks to male studio executives who green-light projects according to their own pathetic predilections—no one should be surprised when those impulses take luridly literal form in the culture at large.”
3. “Are We Ready for H.I.V.’s Sexual Revolution?” Donald G. McNeil Jr. on the Truvada backlash.
“Pretend it’s 1960, and the Food and Drug Administration has just done something startling. It has taken a drug it had previously approved for infertility—brand name Enovid—and approved it for the opposite use: birth control. That pill—soon simply the Pill—triggered the sexual revolution. But not overnight. Doctors at first resisted giving it to unmarried women. Women were shy about carrying evidence that they actually planned to have sex. Pioneering feminists like Margaret Sanger and Katharine D. McCormick braved vilification to champion it. Madison Avenue chimed in: Ads featured Andromeda, the princess of Greek mythology, nude and breaking free of her chains. Some of the dire predictions of moralists did come true: Gonorrhea rates among women rose. Side effects like blood clots emerged. But the revolution stuck. For gay men—not to mention millions of Africans, drug users and others at risk for contracting H.I.V.—the world is again at such a moment.”
4. ”Mad Men Mid-Season Finale Recap.” Matt Zoller Seitz on how the moon belongs to everyone.
“The one quality that every great scripted show has in common is surprise. Whatever the show is, when you hear the opening credits you lean forward a bit, anticipating that you’ll very likely get something different from but as good as whatever you were expecting, and that there’s a chance you’ll be gobsmacked by an out-of-nowhere plot twist or style choice. ’Waterloo,’ the midpoint of Mad Men’s seventh season, is a perfect example of what I mean. As written by Carly Wray and Matthew Weiner and directed by Weiner, it’s not a pantheon episode in terms of structure—in fact it’s rather choppy, and there are points where David Carbonara’s score seems to be struggling to create the illusion of cohesiveness; but in sheer variety of startling momentary delights, it’s aces, and the final three minutes rank with the show’s greatest. “
5. ”Paradise Lost shows that charisma doesn’t need movie-star looks.” Mike D’Angelo takes the scene route toward Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s masterpiece Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.
“Clearly, the prosecuting attorney believes he has Echols cornered. First, he asks Echols whether he’s familiar with Aleister Crowley, quite likely expecting the dismissive reply that he gets. Then he springs his big trap: a sheet of paper on which Echols practiced writing in some sort of cipher, using Crowley’s name alongside that of family and friends. The implication is that Echols is much more of a Crowley fan than he just let on, though it’s hard to say exactly what conclusion a sensible jury (NOTE: not this jury) is meant to draw from such a revelation, even should they decide to accept it. This is the weakest sort of circumstantial evidence—indeed, it barely even qualifies as evidence, functioning more as an ad hominem attack. Even if one posits that the murders in question were committed by individuals with a strong belief in the occult (which the prosecution never even vaguely demonstrated, at least not in the courtroom footage included in Paradise Lost), it doesn’t follow that an interest in the occult suggests a predisposition to murder. That’s a basic logical fallacy called ’affirming the consequent,’ which one hopes the defense attorney then proceeded to quickly dismantle.”
Video of the Day: Quentin Tarantino’s press conference from Cannes:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
