‘Belle’: Mamoru Hosoda Crafts A Hopeful & Joyful Vision Of Utopia That Is Vibrant Maximalism [Cannes Review]

Ultimately lacking the Covid catastrophe or shutdown that many predicted, the Tokyo Olympics officially ended today in a near empty stadium with little more than a handful of athletes and a Japanese term for “thank you” on the jumbotron

Josh Groban is taking up hosting duties of the new competition series — based on Nippon TV’s popular game show Sokkuri Sweets set for premiere in August on Roku. Executive produced by Chrissy Teigen, the title was part of now-defunct Quibi’s portfolio acquired by Roku earlier this year.

Jessica Kiang No man is an island, but for 29 years, until his final surrender in 1974, Hiroo Onoda came as close as any man could.

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details of this morning’s Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony live on NBC.

The list of the highest paid Olympic athletes heading to the 2021 Tokyo, Japan games has been revealed…and there’s both a lot of star-power and a lot of money on this list!

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It has been a long road developing the live-action American remake of the Japanese animated blockbuster, “Your Name.” After years of toiling away in development hell with folks like Erik Heisserer taking shots at the script, it appeared “Your Name” was being fast-tracked with “Minari” filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung recently named as the filmmaker. However, it appears Paramount is going back to the drawing board once again.

While the internet IRL is drenched in morbidity and toxicity, Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda imagines a brighter semi-utopia in “Belle.” Five billion users have signed up to a virtual society called “U,” a vast chasm of lights and screens, and is populated by algorithmically generated avatars that supposedly bring out the person’s inner strengths.

Director Vincent Maël Cardona uses western Europe in the early-1980s as the canvas upon which he paints his layered and achingly genuine portrait of young love, familial bondage, artistic aspiration, and universal chaos. Unburdened by a firm connection to any one genre or narrative archetype, “Magnetic Beats” tells a simple story with a full arsenal of source music, thoughtful set design, and crisp acting at all levels to pull off this love letter to a particular moment in time.

It’s a good thing you can’t catch a virus from an image because if you could, just a few frames of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s fabulously yeasty, bilious, dank Competition title, “Petrov’s Flu” would bring all of Cannes‘ anti-Covid measures to naught.

Tatiana Huezo’s eye for lyrical truth has materialized in documentaries like “Tempestad” or “The Tinniest Place,” works that penetrate some of the most tenebrous corners in recent Latin American history with shimmering compassion. Her stance as an acute observer of the people that survive and persevere through tumultuous sociopolitical and economically disadvantaged contexts produces thought-provoking filmic meditations.

In one scene of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” Jessica (Tilda Swinton) and a friend browse refrigerated cabinets designed to preserve flowers. “In here, time stops,” the saleswoman says proudly, gesturing at the blue cupboards.

Celtic, with the Japanese forward set to sign on at Parkhead. It was announced early on Friday morning that Vissel Kobe had come to an agreement to sell the 26-year-old, with Ange Postecoglou raiding the J League market he knows so well.

In “A Hero” (“Ghahreman”), Asghar Farhadi blurs the line of innocence and guilt in a fraught drama about the true weight of a good deed. During a two-day reprieve from prison, Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi) and his girlfriend Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust) discover a handbag full of golden coins.

What do we really know about children? Until the Renaissance, artists were still painting them as freakish shriveled adults. Only in the last century-ish did American society decide they probably should go to school instead of laboring all day in sweatshops.

We can all stop wishing it a long life: the new flesh is thriving, living rent-free in Julia Ducournau‘s fucked-up titanium brain, oozing from every frame of her bizarrely beautiful, emphatically queer sophomore film, and thence seeping in through your orifices, the better to colonize your most lurid, confusing nightmares, as well as that certain class of sex dream that you’d be best off never confessing to having.

Premiering in competition at this year’s Festival de Cannes, Nanni Moretti’s wild melodrama “Three Floors” is based on a 2017 Israeli novel called “Shalosh Qomot” from writer Eshkol Nevo and begins with an undeniably tragic event. One dark night on a quiet street of Rome, a drunk driver runs over a lady crossing the road, narrowly avoids hitting a pregnant woman, then finally crashes into a building, landing straight into a family’s living room.

Since his 2008 debut film, Passion, Japanese director/writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi has been continuing to make an impact on the world cinema scene. His success at various festivals includes 2018, when he was first in competition in Cannes with Asako I & II, and earlier this year at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival, where his Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.