Juanita sent us over this first look at Michelle Pfeiffer in Cheri.

Pfeiffer, long overdue for an Oscar win (she came close with The Fabulous Baker Boys), may have another shot at it at long last.

Pfeiffer reteams with the Dangerous Liaisons crew, director Stephen Frears and writer Christopher Hampton.  Cheri was written by Collette and is described as:

A romantic drama set in 1920s Paris, where the son of a courtesan retreats into a fantasy world after being forced to end his relationship with the older woman who educated him in the ways of love.

Like it or not, Jeff Wells does do some of the best reporting from the Cannes film fest - that is, if you can get past his strange personal details (actually, those are maybe the best things about his site in the first place?), like how he lost his camera on the plane. I’m really hoping for a long article about how the French don’t use deodorant. He’s got a Blindness review up - he pans it, for the most part, but after reading how he came into the country it’s hard to take his reaction to it seriously; perhaps he was already too miserable to screen this film.

Just nabbed these off Oh No They Didn’t.  I haven’t been following the Broadway scene this year and thus, don’t know if it’s a good list or a bad list:

Best Musical

Cry-Baby
Producer: Adam Epstein, Allan S. Gordon, Élan V. McAllister, Brian Grazer, James P. MacGilvray, Universal Pictures Stage Productions, Anne Caruso, Adam S. Gordon, Latitude Link, The Pelican Group, Philip Morgaman, Andrew Farber/Richard Mishaan

In The Heights
Producers: Kevin McCollum, Jeffrey Seller, Jill Furman, Sander Jacobs, Goodman/Grossman, Peter Fine, Everett/Skipper

Passing Strange
Producers: The Shubert Organization, Elizabeth Ireland McCann LLC, Bill Kenwright, Chase Mishkin, Barbara & Buddy Freitag, Broadway Across America, Emily Fisher Landau, Peter May, Boyett Ostar, Larry Hirschhorn, Janet Pailet/Steve Klein, Elie Hirschfeld/Jed Bernstein, Spring Sirkin/Ruth Hendel, Vasi Laurence/Pat Flicker Addiss, Wendy Federman/Jackie Barlia Florin, Joey Parnes, The Public Theater, The Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Xanadu
Producers: Robert Ahrens, Dan Vickery, Tara Smith/B. Swibel, Sarah Murchison/Dale Smith

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Woody Allen’s latest movie is a soft core porn you’d see on Showtime?  Slashfilm has a first look at Vicki Christina Barcelona with the following synopsis:

And the last photo we bring you from Festival De Cannes, is our first official look at Woody Allen’s next film Vicky Cristina Barcelona about two young American women, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), who come to Barcelona for a summer holiday. Vicky is sensible and engaged to be married; Cristina is emotionally and sexually adventurous. In Barcelona, they’re drawn into a series of unconventional romantic entanglements with Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a charismatic painter, who is still involved with his tempestuous ex-wife Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz). Of course, all of this is set against the luscious Mediterranean sensuality of Barcelona. The official plot synopsis lists a 96 minute running time and calls the movie “Woody Allen’s funny and open-minded celebration of love in all its configurations…”

The French are going to love it.  And let’s face it, with all of that eye candy going on it will be nearly impossible to avoid.   Still, I gotta say, after all of these years it’s not easy for me to get down with the eroticism in Woody’s work.  He’s an auteur and thus, he’s exploring his own thoughts and that just kind of creeps me out.  He’s already pondered death, adultery, fame, love, morality, justice, therapy, religion - not much left to ponder, I guess.  Either way, I’m just sort of MEH on this one.

Jennifer’s Body, Diablo Cody’s follow-up to Juno, is shooting now with it-girl of the moment, Megan Fox. Pictures just appeared on Celebutopia (you may have to register to see them) - she’s got some kind of thingies on so that it’s not technically nekked. I don’t think this one has Oscar written all over it - not because of the nudity (Oscar loves naked young women) but because of the plot (which I kinda like, gotta admit, perhaps it’s my inner rage):

A newly possessed cheerleader turns into a killer who specializes in offing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

Cinematical took a closer look at Jennifer’s Body a while back, off the Latino Review’s Script Review.

NSFW pic after the cut.

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As a tribute to moms everywhere, here is a list, off the top of my head, of my favorite moms in film and, in some cases, favorite mom characters:

Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment AND Postcards from the Edge
Debra Winger in Terms of Endearment
Meryl Streep in One True Thing
Dee Wallace in E.T.
Helen Hunt in As Good as it Gets
Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest
Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist
JoBeth Williams in Poltergeist
Diane Keaton in Baby Boom
Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby
Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath
Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life
Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2
Jessica Tandy in The Birds
Mary Louise Parker in Fried Green Tomatoes
Marie-Christine Barrault in Stardust Memories
Frances McDormand in Almost Famous AND Fargo

I kind of did these on top of my head and I know I’m forgetting others. Also, it occurs to me as I’m writing this that my list is very whitey, with not a lot of ethnic diversity. Is it possible there aren’t many archetypes for mothers, either unwed or wed, who are also strong or heroic? Does your ethnicity determine what kind of mother audiences will accept? What is the difference between a stranded black mother and a stranded white mother in Hollywood films? Food for thought. Either way, Happy Mother’s Day.

The Cannes lineup and screening guide has gone up and from the looks of it, and from Oscar’s standpoint, there are some titles to keep an eye on.  Those are:

Official Selections:

Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Clint Eastwood
Che (The Argentine; Guerrilla), starring Benicio Del Toro, directed by Steven Soderbergh
Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman

Out of Competition:
What Just Happened, starring Bruce Willis, directed by Barry Levinson

Special Screenings:
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, directed by Marina Zenovich

These are the names and titles that jump off the page in an obvious way.  But because nothing is ever that predictable, we reserve our right to change our minds later if any of these films end up with the hotly desired fifteen minutes standing ovation.

One does wonder, though, which film will get the dreaded booing, always a risk when starting the season early at Cannes.

My server company has sent out the following announcement for this Saturday:

As a reminder, there will be a scheduled outage onMay 10, 2008, beginning at 11 p.m. CDT.  We’ll do our best to minimize downtime; however, we anticipate the outage could last as long as seven hours

For once it won’t have been our fault.

Thanks to reader Michael who points us to the latest EW with Josh Brolin as W on the cover.  It’s difficult to recognize the actor, and I’ve long been wondering about this project anyway, whether it’s too soon for an Oliver Stone interpretation of these events.  Of the two films Stone has made on US Presidents, only one I really love.  I appreciate JFK in certain ways but I think the film is dishonest in its portrayal of Garrison and thus, it becomes difficult to take it seriously - well I guess there are many reasons to not take it seriously - it is good entertainment, however.  Nixon, on the other hand, is a movie I have seen many times and one that, I think, mostly nails Tricky Dick.

You know, I’m so tired of this election year already. I’m so sick of the horrid pounding Hillary has been taking by guys on the web who are mostly small-minded in general and tend to think in terms of white and black or black and girl. I’ve gotten so sick of it, in fact, that I’ve stopped watching or caring. I don’t have a lot of faith in our government but I admire those I know who still do. I will say this much about the Obama campaign: they ain’t see nothing yet. The stuff Hillary’s campaign has been throwing at them is softball compared to what they’ll be getting at the big show. At any rate, here is Ebert as he ponders what kind of movie might be made about Bill and Hill:

Hillary and Bill are both intelligent, experienced political creatures. They’ve both been running for something since grade school. They are fueled by the desire for high office and public recognition, but fueled also by the process itself. They’re good at it. Considering their apparent depression on Tuesday night I realized that, yes, as late as that, they really did still think Hillary could win, even after the CNN “panels” were running out of ways to say farewell. They believed it right up to the end, because they had to, they needed to, in order to keep on running at all.

Yet there must have been private moments of despair. The two realists, as able as anyone to read the trends, must have spoken privately about their shrinking options. And on Tuesday night, as Hillary’s double-digit lead in Indiana dwindled to very small single digits, there must have come a time when one of them said, “We’ve lost this thing.”

What were those moments like? What kept them going between themselves? Did they encourage one another, or was there an unspoken pact not to voice the unspeakable? Was there blame when Bill had one of his unwise moments? Did their shared past, of success and scandal, enter into it, or were they absorbed in this moment?

In answering those questions, there you would find the movie. It would be more introspective than audiences would probably prefer, and less sensational. Smarter, too. There would be a limited budget, because you wouldn’t need a stadium filled with thousands of people so much as you’d need lots of lonely hotel rooms after midnight. The climaxes would come as one old comrade after another abandoned them for the Obama camp. There would be a desperate, clinging love that had survived all the years, because it was based on shared experience and memories and goals, not so much any longer on passion.

It would be a sad story, but a true one, and it might contain more truth than political movies are conventionally allowed to have. It might, like “Bulworth,” say forbidden things. And issues would not be at issue: The campaign was not about political positions, but about sheer desire. Hillary wanted to win, and she ran and ran and ran until there was a kind of heroism to it. Futile heroism after a point, but that’s where the story lies.

Thank you, Ebert, for bringing some intelligence to this discussion, a rarity these days on the web.

Andrew O’Hehir lists “The Wackness” as one of “10 to Watch from Tribeca,” and the New York Times names Mary-Kate Olsen as one of this summer’s “4 to Watch” in this 2008 Sundance Audience Award winner. Everybody is watching this movie, or telling us we should watch for it. Or having watched it, telling us how great it is.

We also hear that whoever cut this trailer captures all of the flakiness and none of the charm or vaguest clue of what it’s about.

Will “The Wackness” be this year’s Quirky Indie with Legs? Will it be this year’s Juno with flava? Will we be able to make heads or tails of it from this inscrutably wispy teaser? Hey Sony Classics, we get that it’s wacky, from um, the title. Back up a bit and drop a hint with another reason or two for seeing it, yeah? Not every moviegoer is as intrigued by wtf for wtf’s sake as AD readers.

ONTD posted a couple of shots of the great Meryl in her Julia Child garb. I think she’s going to nail Julia and is probably one of the few actresses who can do her voice without sounding funny. Or maybe just a little funny.  And yes, as the commenters point out, that is Stanley Tucci with her!

Buzz Photo and Simply Streep have the photos.

How delicious does this look? 27 years ago, Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews and Diana Quick starred in the 11-hour TV miniseries of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 romantic classic. This fresh adaptation defines that triangle with a depth PBS couldn’t explore. While some Oscarwatchers last year labeled Atonement the Best Picture nominee most likely to appeal to gay AMPAS members, for others it wasn’t nearly gay enough. (What ever is?) Brideshead Revisited seeks to rectify that deficiency in July with “an evocative story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence…” (Forbidden love? What exactly are they trying to say?)

Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode, “The Lookout”) becomes entranced with the noble Marchmain family, first through the charming and provocative Sebastian Marchmain (Ben Whishaw), and then his sophisticated sister, Julia (Hayley Atwell, “The Duchess”). The rise and fall of Charles’ infatuations reflect the decline of a decadent era in England between the wars.

ahh… ok. That kind of forbidden. If the gay bits still seem elusive, look for the music cues in the trailer. I love how the nouveau-Giorgio Moroder synth-rock strings and pulsating bass kick into overdrive when the action hots up in Venice. Nice touch. The aristocracy and dissolute youth — Gosford Park meets Paranoid Park. Helleww, BAFTA dahling.

(The elegant eye-candy well worth a click to the high-def version. The architectural eye-candy, of course.)