Posts Tagged ‘Woody Allen’

Article in the Daily Express 26 May 2011

The 64th annual Festival de Cannes will kick off after Midnight in Paris with Woody Allen’s romcom set to open the festival on May 11, organizers said on Wednesday.

The film will premiere at the Lumiere theater in Cannes on the same day of its release in France.

The romantic comedy, shot last summer in Paris, stars a Franco-American mix of talent including Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Lea Seydoux, Adrien Brody, Gad Elmaleh and France’s first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Midnight was produced by Spain’s Mediapro and New York-based Gravier Productions. Mars Films will simultaneously release the title in Gaul in 400 theaters as it screens for the Cannes crowd.

In the first public-professional festival opening night in history, the festival and its media partner Canal Plus are offering Gallic theater owners the chance to screen the entire opening night program live in their cinemas for filmgoers.

“Midnight in Paris is a wonderful love letter to Paris,” festival director Thierry Fremaux said of the selection. He added: “It’s a film in which Woody Allen takes a deeper look at the issues raised in his last films: our relationship with history, art, pleasure and life. His 41st feature reveals once again his inspiration.”

Robert De Niro will preside over the jury for the fest’s 64th edition as part of a Franco-American, bi-continental celebration of the Tribeca Film Festival’s 10th anniversary.

The 64th annual Festival de Cannes will kick off on the Riviera on May 11 and run through May 22.

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Stage veterans Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen, and Nina Arianda have been added to the company of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The movie will be a romantic comedy about a family traveling to the French capital for business. The party will include a young engaged couple who are forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.

The film will star Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, and Rachel McAdams, and also feature Tom Hiddleston, Corey Stoll, Mimi Kennedy, Kurt Fuller, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Bates won an Academy Award for Misery and received Oscar nominations for Primary Colors and About Schmidt. Among her stage credits are ‘night, Mother on Broadway and Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune Off-Broadway. She also starred in TV version of the Broadway musical Annie.

Sheen’s Broadway credits include Amadeus and Frost/Nixon, in which he played talk show host David Frost. Arianda recently concluded an acclaimed run in David Ives’ Venus in Fur at Classic Stage Company, for which she has received Lucille Lortel and Drama League Award nominations.

Filming is set to commence this summer in Paris.

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