Cannes 2010: And the Race is On

A day or so ago the news broke that Robin Hood will open the Cannes Film Fest on May 12. Interestingly, Cannes hasn’t been an Oscar platform. But I’ve formed a notion that I will test as a concept and then maybe formulate into an idea that it is the best platform because there is ample opportunity for the film to fail thereafter. If it fails big no one has to worry about an Oscar campaign. But if it hits big and then doesn’t die in the many months leading up to the Big Game? Good as gold. Such was the case with last year’s opener, Up.

They still haven’t announced the official lineup for Cannes but we’ll be keeping a very close eye on it. As for Robin Hood – it will open wide in France on May 12 and then in the US on May 14. It is feeling to me like Robin Hood is going to be a movie for right now. Wall Street catastrophes and corporate-owned health care – it has never seemed more like a divided country between rich and poor. And, as history has shown us again and again, that never works very well for very long. The people can’t really tolerate it. So, we wait with eager anticipation for Robin Hood.

And as for the whole “It’s Gladiator Part II” — It might have a similar look and is being sold as a similar kind of experience – but really, these are two very different worlds.

Meanwhile, you gotta love the Brits — from The Guardian:

SIR ‚Äì Gadzooks! Ridley Scott hath got it all wrong (“Russell Crowe to play Robin Hood with East Midlands accent”, report, March 22). Robin Hood is a mythical character generally placed at the time of Richard I’s absence from England. He and the Sheriff of Nottingham would have spoken Norman French.

Clerics would also have spoken Latin, and ordinary people would have spoken pre-Chaucerian Middle English.

The paradigm for Robin Hood is the 1938 film, with Errol Flynn and Basil (“You may be a fine archer Hood, but I’ll teach you how to use a sword”) Rathbone speaking cultivated stage English, the Merry Men and the yokels speaking authentic Yokelese and the belligerent Friar Tuck speaking futuristic Irish American.