The Cannes Film Festival Blog

Doing press work during the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, Italy, Director Oliver Stone (Wall Street, Natural Born Killers, Platoon, JFK) gave some interesting background on his new movie “Savages”. With shooting to start in three and a half weeks, the movie features a top cast including Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Blake Lively and Benicio Del Toro. “California has legalized marihuana for medical purposes. As a result very high grade weed is grown in southern California, some of the best in the world in my personal opinion, Very fine quality. They really work at it. They’re good at it.” “To have a nice brand O.G. LA (original gangster LA) is hard work. It’s also expensive, very expensive. It’s like creating a fine wine. We learned how to do that from other countries, now we make great marihuana. We have great marihuana, better than anywhere in the world. It used to be Thai weed, or afghan, now it’s Southern California.” “The movie is about those people and people from...

Some directors specialize in sequels to create movie franchises. Oliver Stone has developed another angle: he does new cuts of “Alexander”. At the Taormina Film Festival, he presented the third cut, entitled somewhat geeky but certainly precise “Alexander Revisited: The Final Unrated Cut”. In the master class, he talks about the movie, his ongoing Marihuana film project and why he’s not making political films. Q: Can you say more about the first version of “Alexander”? Oliver Stone: It cost a lot of money. We did manage to do break even in foreign countries, but not in the UK and the US. We ended up in the list of top 20 top grossing films of the year. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be. People made it sound like it was the worst film of time. It was horrible for me. I knew Alexander well, and I assumed the audience knew what I know. Q: When seeing “Alexander”, I saw certain parallels with Jesus. Oliver Stone: I never thought of Alexander with the reference to Jesus. I see ...

In town for the screening of “Kung Fu Panda 2” in 3D in the Greek theatre, Jack Black opened this year’s series of master classes at the Taormina Film Festival 2011. Somewhat struggling in his role as professor with questions on destiny, quantum theory and God, Black managed to kept it light and funny, repeatedly interrupting his lecture bellowing out (yes, that’s the word) songs covering a repertoire from AC/DC to – would you believe it? – Vivaldi. Q: Kung Fu Panda has a lot to do with destiny. Do you believe in destiny? Jack Black: I’m not the smartest man in the world but I do believe in destiny … I like the way this lecture is going, I feel like a professor. Are there any more questions about life and the rest of the universe? Q: What’s your take on quantum theory? Jack Black: I love science fiction – I better get some easier questions, or this is going to end very soon! Q: Does the Kung Fu Panda character resemble you? Is it your inner part? Jack Black: Yeah, I think we have a lot...

The next Cannes Film Festival will take place from May 16 to May 27 2012 - a few days later than 2011. And yes, Christina, in case you are still not quite sure , it will be in Cannes, as usual!