‘Oh, Canada’ Review: Paul Schrader Separates the Art From the Artist in Prismatic Portrait of a Dying Director

Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang have had very different “Saturday Night Live” trajectories. And yet, they both have made history. Thompson, who joined the show in 2003, is the longest-tenured cast member in the show’s history.

Often, the juries at the Cannes Film Festival will try to make a political statement in their choices for the winners of the world’s most famous film festival. Not this year. At least, not in the way they might have.

Refresh for latest…: The 77th Cannes Film Festival draws to a close this evening with the prize ceremony about to kick off inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière. The past 10 days have been building to this moment after a somewhat muted start that arrived under gloomy skies. The clouds have since cleared and several films have emerged as potential winners tonight. Scroll down for the list of laureates which is being updated as awards are announced.

Paul McCartney delivered an amusing roasting of Bruce Springsteen at the Ivor Novello Awards last night (May 23).The Boss became the first international songwriter to receive the Fellow of the Ivors Academy at Grosvenor House in London, following in the footsteps of Elton John, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Paul McCartney.Becoming an Academy Fellow is the highest honour the organisation bestows, and with it, the iconic singer, songwriter and guitarist becomes the first American songwriter that the Academy has inducted into Fellowship in its 80-year history.Presenting the prize, McCartney who brought Springsteen onstage along with Dave Grohl during his headline slot at Glastonbury in 2022, jokingly said: “Like Bruce’s concerts, I’m going to keep this brief,” referencing the Boss’ three hour plus concerts, before adding that he “couldn’t think of a more fitting” recipient “except maybe Bob Dylan, or Paul Simon, or Billy Joel, or Beyoncé, or Taylor Swift. The list goes on.”He also spoke about his performance at Glastonbury and said he never expected the Boss to show up.“Springsteen is a Dutch name. Did you know that? In Dutch it means man in charge.

Despite many of his generation taking time between films, Paul Schrader is a filmmaker who has kept working quite prolifically over the decades. Since 2002, he’s directed no fewer than 11 features.

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Paul Schrader hit Cannes this weekend with Competition title Oh, Canada, reuniting him with American Gigolo star Richard Gere in the role of a terminally ill documentarian who reveals secrets as his life nears its end.

Diaries are written in secrecy, free-flowing thoughts anchored to the page as if the ink could stop memories from vanishing through the hands of time. Filmmaker Paul Schrader understands the lingering, often quiet desperation of journaling like few filmmakers do.

Paul Schrader revealed first details about his next feature project entitled Non Compos Mentis, at the press conference for his Cannes Competition title Oh, Canada on Saturday.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The unstoppable Paul Schrader, the 77-year-old auteur who just brought his latest movie “Oh, Canada” to Cannes, has announced his next project. The director revealed he intends to start production this fall on “Non Compos Mentis,” a noir film he is currently writing.

Paul Schrader had a special job on the set of his latest film, “Oh, Canada”: drawing on the jockstrap that Jacob Elordi wears in one of the Vietnam War drama’s pivotal scenes. There’s a choice at the heart of “Oh, Canada,” when the fictional filmmaker Leonard Fife (played as a young man by Elordi, and older man as Richard Gere) dodges the Vietnam draft and escapes to Canada. The script leaves breadcrumbs as to what exactly happens until very late in the film, but finally Elordi is seen reporting for an Army physical.

Paul Schrader shed tears as his new film “Oh, Canada” earned a four-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival on Friday night. Jacob Elordi was notably absent from the premiere, possibly because he is filming Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” in which he stars as The Monster. After the ovation finished, Schrader addressed Elordi not being there, saying: “I’m very happy with Richard, Uma, Jake — not here with us –and it all worked out.

Richard Gere poses for a family photo while attending the 2024 Cannes Film Festival premiere of his upcoming film Oh, Canada held at Palais des Festivals on Friday (May 17) in Cannes, France.

Hard to believe it has been 44 years since Paul Schrader and star Richard Gere last worked together on 1980’s seminal American Gigolo, a film that became not just a keystone in Gere’s celebrated career but also one for one Schrader’s as one of his earliest directorial credits. Of course he has written some of the great screenplays, particularly in his collaborations with Martin Scorsese on Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Taxi Driver. But it is what interests him now a half century later as a writer-director that continues to fascinate.

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Megalopolis,” which premiered at Cannes Film Festival May 16. The wait is over: “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi drama has finally premiered at Cannes Film Festival, shocking and dividing critics. The film, a $120 million epic starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito and Shia LaBeouf, was financed by Coppola himself — and has yet to secure a distributor in the United States. Regardless, the movie earned a 7-minute standing ovation from Cannes, as Coppola hugged Driver and Esposito and delivered an emotional speech dedicating the film to hope and family.

Angelique Jackson Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi star in Paul Schrader‘s latest, highly anticipated film ‘Oh Canada,’ which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday. Based on the late Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone,” the film centers on Gere’s Leonard Fife, an acclaimed filmmaker and “one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam, shares all his secrets to de-mythologize his mythologized life.” Elordi plays the younger version of Leonard. In this first-look clip, Gere’s Leonard speeds up to someone’s home, gets out of a car and walks toward the gate.

Uma Thurman has been to Cannes more times than she can remember, either to pledge support for the glamorous annual charity event amfAR or with films as diverse as the genteel Merchant-Ivory period film The Golden Bowl (2000) and Quentin Tarantino’s ultraviolent Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), in which she reprised her badass role as The Bride. The film that propelled her to stardom, Pulp Fiction, won the Palme d’Or there, and Thurman hasn’t forgotten what it did for her. This year, she’s back with Paul Schrader‘s Oh, Canada, the kind of smart, character-based indie on which she earned her spurs.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Principal photography has begun on “The Captive,” a historical epic from “The Others’” Alejandro Amenábar, starring Julio Peña (“Berlin”) as “Don Quixote” author Miguel de Cervantes, a prisoner of Ottoman corsairs, seen in a very first still from the film, alongside Alessandro Borghi (“Suburra”), playing his captor, which has been shared in exclusivity with Variety. Paris and London-based production, finance and sales house Film Constellation handles worldwide sales.

Gregg Goldstein These auteurs are ready for their close-up. When Quentin Dupieux’s comedy about an ill-fated film set, “The Second Act,” opened the Cannes Film Festival May 14, it will be just one of several movies about filmmaking and filmmakers to touch down on the Croisette. After all, directors Christophe Honoré, Paul Schrader and Josh Mond are among the other prominent filmmakers who are ready to premiere semi-autobiographical stories.

Paul Schrader was about to start shooting “Oh, Canada,” his adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel about a troubled artist taking stock of his life, when the major actors union went on strike. For a second, it looked like all that hard work, passion and planning might be for nothing — with performers on the picket lines and major studios holding out on their contract demands, it was hard to see how cameras would ever roll on the low-budget indie. “Everything shut down,” said Brian Beckmann, the CFO and COO of Arclight Films, which is selling international rights to the film.