The Croisette talk today was all about how awful Lars Von Trier’s ANTICHRIST was. Yes, even more dragged out than Park Chan-wook’s THIRST. The Dogma founder director’s fart-house movie masquerading as a thinking person’s horror film couldn’t be more monotonous, pretentious and ludicrous. Nature is Satan’s Church according to this treatise on women being the devil incarnate as therapist Willem Dafoe tries to get wife Charlotte Gainsbourg out of her depression after the death of their son. Cue the Freud discussions and references to medieval witchcraft books and the parable of the Three Beggars. Hardly worth any serious consideration by genre fans, despite the gore and hardcore sexual mutilation in the latter quarter, ‘Gynocide’, who knew, it’s a pathetic dud from a once interesting talent. At least it provided one hilarious laugh - a disemboweled talking fox saying ‘Chaos Reigns’. Don’t expect this one to play at your local multiplex any time soon.

Then it was off to lunch with Eli Roth. Not only is the HOSTEL man in town to promote the one competition movie everyone is gagging to see, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, (all that recycled Morricone on the soundtrack, fab), he was here to talk about his latest horror production COTTON. Currently being directed by Daniel Stamm (A NECESSARY DEATH) on location in Louisiana, it’s about a troubled evangelical minister who has dealt in fake exorcisms for all his adult life. Deciding to set his charlatan record straight with one last ritual showing how it’s all phony, he picks his last case – a fourteen year-old girl who rips hearts out of her father’s farm animals whenever she’s abused. And of course she really is possessed by a demon. Eli is very upbeat about the project and told me it’s the first script that scared him half to death. They are going for THE EXORCIST atmosphere with a faux CLOVERFIELD documentary style. “Cine-verite is a technique now one uses for the right film, not just a BLAIR WITCH gimmick”, he says. Eli looked great, was on great form anyway and told me all the BASTERDS gossip and about his next film, a sci-fi adventure, plus a remake of an 80s shocker face. More about all of this news at a later date. Oh, and Dario Argento’s GIALLO has two fans in Roth and Quentin Tarantino. They watched it at Tarantino’s house the other week and had a great time with the story of a missing airhostess’ sister being tortured by a creepy yellow maniac in Turin’s gasworks.

I left Eli to go and see THE ECLIPSE, which had attracted stellar reviews from its Tribeca Festival debut. It’s a strange one about Ciaran Hinds chaperoning a female writer of psychic phenomena around an Irish literary festival and how their connection makes him come to terms with the death of his wife from cancer. It’s slow, touching and jolting – four sequences feature a lurching zombie of his father-in-law. But this odd mixture of romance, whimsy and the living dead can’t surmount its TV movie feel.

Segued into the Optimum Films cocktail party after this to talk about Gabe Ibanez’ HIERRO, the other movie attracting much hype, which we all see today. Paul rushed off to the DREAD party, then to the BLACK soiree. Which reminds me, one of my favourite movies here has been BLACK DYNAMITE, an absolutely brilliant parody of the 70s blaxploitation urban actioner. Not once does it run out of steam and made me laugh consistently throughout its daft story concerning President Nixon’s plan to shrink Afro-American men’s dicks with drug-laced booze. Michael Jai White is wonderful as the jive talking ‘black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks’ and the soundtrack is a spoofy Soul Train dream.

Today I’m talking to the lovely Vincenzo Natali, director of SPLICE, for my Guillermo del Toro book, and getting shown the first COTTON footage, plus the promo reel for the remake of AND SOON THE DARKNESS starring Amber Heard. Speaking of promos we’ve seen THE HOARD and REC 2 ones too and both look big scale and impressive. So it’s still pretty hectic here as we move into our final days in sun-drenched Cannes .

Until the next time...

Alan.

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