Sean Penn, the jury head awarded the Palme d’Or prize for this year’s Cannes Film Festival to French film “The Class” about life in a tough Parisian school.  The film directed by Laurent Cantet uses real students and teachers in chronicling a year in their lives.  It is a film based on an autobiographical novel by young teacher Francois Begaudeau - and was praised by Penn as “an amazing, amazing film.”  In accepting the award, Cantet said that he aimed to make a film that was “a reflection of French society - multiple, many-faceted, [and] complex.  Sometimes also with friction that the film does not try to cover up.”

“Hunger” a portrayal of the last six week of Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands took the Camera d’Or prize for best first feature film. 

Benecio Del Toro won best Actor for his portrayal of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the Steven Soderbergh biopic entitled simply “Che” - “I’d like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara” said Del Toro in accepting the award.

Brazilian star Sandra Corveloni won best Actress for playing a pregnant mother of four in Sao Paolo in the film “Line of Passage.”

Clint Eastwood (who also directed “Changeling” starring Angelina Jolie) and Catherine Deneuve won lifetime achievement awards at the French festival’s closing ceremony.

Sean Penn praised the quality of films in this year’s festival stating: 

“There was a field of such powerful, emotional, moving movies and performances, there were so many times that we thought it just can’t get better.”

Italian mafia movie “Gomorrah,” set in Naples and based on a novel by Roberto Saviana, took the Grand Prix runner-up prize.

The third place jury prize went to “Il Divo,” Paolo Sorrentino’s portrait of the country’s former prime minister, Giulio Andreotto.

61st Cannes Film Festival

Palme d’Or - The Class

Grand Prix - Gomorrah

Special prizes - Clint Eastwood and Catherine Deneuve

Best director - Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys

Jury prize - Il Divo directed by Paolo Sorrentino

Best actor - Benicio del Toro (above) in Che

Best actress - Sandra Corveloni in Line of Passage

Best screenplay - Lorna’s Silence by Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Camera d’Or - Hunger

Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” is a 268 minute (if you aren’t a math expert that’s 4 hours and 28 minutes long) historical opus celebrating the life of one of the most interesting men to have lived in the 20th century  - Ernesto “Che” Guevara.  The Argentinia born Guevarra was a medical doctor who happened to meet up with the Castro brothers (Raul and Fidel) in Mexico as they planned to overtthrow the Cuban regime of Fulgencio Bautista in the late 1950’s.

Guevara joined up with the Castros and a handful of other Cuban revolutionaries and embarked on a boat called the Granma towards Cuba’s eastern coast.  From there, in the jungles the revolutionary movement grew and Guevarra, a doctor turned revolutionary became instrumental in the revolutionary success. 

Guevara was unhappy as a beurocrat running various Cuban government agencies under the early rule of Fidel Castro and thirsted to continue the revolutionary process in countries like the Congo and in Bolivia.  It is in Bolivia where Guevara was finally killed.  And from that moment the legend of Che has grown and become an inspiration to others who aim for revolution in thought and action.

The fact that Soderbergh was brave enough to undertake the challenge of putting this film together is credit enough for him.  Benecio Del Toro as ‘Che’ is ideal casting of the Argentine turned Cuban revolutionary martyr.  The Puerto Rican born Del Toro looks and embodies the feel of Guevarra well.  And Soderbergh (who previously won the Palmes D’Or in Cannes for “sex, lies and videotape” as well as an Oscar for “Traffic” and “Erin Brokovich”) is back to making serious movies after wasting time and energy with the Oceans 11 movies.

 Soderbergh was gravitated to Guevara because:

“He had one of the most fascinating lives of the last century.  I’m compelled by the fact he twice gave up everything to put his life on the line for someone else. He even gave up his family. That was fascinating to me.”

 The $60 million budgeted film is currently the talkin of Cannes because of the running length and the inability to find a distributor brave enough to take it on.  There is talk from financing sales company Wild Bunch that the film will be distributed in 2 parts.  The first being called “The Argentine” and the second “Guerilla.”  The length is one draw-back as are the conditions that Soderbergh is reportedly mandating.  At the critics screening, there was an intermission between the two parts and critics were given sandwhiches and KitKats to help keep them happy and awake.

The first part shows Guevara and Castro sailing to Cuba in 1956 and the second begins in 1966 seven years after the guerrilla victory on New Years Eve 1959.

The first part is unanimously being called the more interesting of the two and the second is seen as anti-climactic by Cannes audiences as it shows Guevara’s demise in Bolivia.  In other words, the best moments of Che’s life were leading up to the victory and his untimely execution in Part 2 is a downer.  No wonder Soderbergh wants people to see the entire film in one go - because otherwise a separate release of 2 movies would have people ignoring his second part after they got their fill in part 1.

Here’s a brief clip of the film:

Cast members Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu and Jack Black were all on-hand here in Cannes to celebrate the launch of the upcoming animated movie in which they supply the voices “Kung Fun Panda.” Surprisinly, both Angelina Jolie and her husband Brad Pitt made the premiere as Angelina’s voice is also in the film.

Angelina looked very pregnant with twins.

Was good of her and him to make the premiere, clearly with her being so pregnant they could have opted out of it.

Doing the Cannes thing against this year for Box Office Psychics.

This means a painful flight from LAX to Frankfurt to Nice on Lufthansa. If you thought American flight attendants didn’t have sense of humor. You should get a load of these Germans….

On my flight were the honorable and missus Scott Lambert (agent William Morris Agency) and Alexandra Milchan (heiress and producer and all around nice person….) as well as Bryan Lourd (chieftain of all things as one of the main figure-heads behind CAA)

Was not picked up at the airport in Nice. (That’s not nice, but shit happens) Headed in a taxi towards the Hotel Palais Stephanie (was previously called the Noga Hilton) on the Croisette.

90 Euros (That’s like $140) for the taxi ride. That’s 25 minutes with traffic and the guy is getting paid twice what my shrink would (if I wasn’t too cheap to go to a shrink, but alas I am, so I started this blog…)

Got to the hotel room/suite/business center and found it to be one enormous space-age UFO vessel circa the imaginings of one crazy drug-induced French guy circa 1972. The walls are a orange-reddish and they are built in the craziest angles. I was so tired I went to bed.

But not before going in the lobby and checking out the scene. On my return to the room I realized that there is a large tattoo faced man standing right outside. Turns out Mike Tyson is my neighbor for the Cannes Film Festival. This ought to be interesting. “Iron” Mike is inches away from me for the entire time I’ll be here in the South of France.

Why is he here?

Turns out Mike is here to help promote a film about his life. The film “Tyson” directed by James Toback (”Fingers“) details the live thus far of the 41-year-old living legend.

Apparently the film got a standing ovation at the Cannes screening and Mike told the press the following:

“I lived a wild and extreme life… I used drugs. I had altercations with dangerous people. I slept with guys’ wives that wanted to kill me. I’m just happy to be here, you know. It’s just a miracle.”

The movie, which blends old video footage and TV interviews shows how Tyson grew from a kid who got beat up when he was overweight to how he later beats up and steals people when he started training.

Tyson spares no details in describing his sex life, and covers his career’s low points, like biting Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1997

The film even dwells on an issue he refuses to take responsibility for (and perhaps rightly so given the facts and the all-white jury in Indiana which convicted him) - the 1991 rape of an 18-year-old beauty queen for which he served three years in prison. He says he’s innocent.

“I’ve been abusive to women before in my life, I thought (the conviction) was wrong, I thought it was unfair.”

Director James Toback who has known Tyson for 23 years gave him a small part in his Leonardo DiCaprio film “Black and White” and also in “When Will I Be Loved,” says he talked to Tyson in a soothing, hypnotic voice to get him to open up for the film.

If I see Mike late tonight after drinking a few too many, I’ll remember to use my soothing and hypnotic voice to make sure he leaves me alone…