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Under discussion:

Blackbeard the Pirate  (1952)

Blackbeard's Ghost  (1968)

Gladiator  (2000)

Pirates of the Caribbean [Film Series]  Production Year

Shrek [Film Series]  Production Year

Enchanted  (2007)

Blackbeard  (2006)

After the enormous success of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, there were bound to be more swashbuckling seafarers arriving in theaters. And finally the next big deal pirate project has the go from DreamWorks to set sail. This one will probably be a little less fantastical, though. According to Variety, the plan is to have David Franzoni (Gladiator) script a new film about the notorious real-life pirate Edward Teach (aka Blackbeard). The infamous character has already been portrayed in a number of biopics, including Raoul Walsh’s over-the-top 1952 effort and a more recent Hallmark-produced miniseries starring Angus Macfadyen. But none before have had the benefit of being shepherded by former Philadelphia 76ers owner Pat Croce, who actually owns a pirate museum down in Key West.

Croce seems enough of a pirate expert, having also written a pirate history book titled “Pirate Soul” and an upcoming children’s book titled “My Pop-Pop Is a Pirate.” But DreamWorks will well enough riding on the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that it shouldn’t matter how historically accurate the new movie is. And on top of being able to exploit those film’s subject matter, DreamWorks should also find comfort in being able to capitalize on the success of Disney’s Enchanted, as well. Blackbeard, as the new biopic will be titled, is being produced by Enchanted’s Barry Josephson, so look for the posters and trailers to feature one of those “From the producer of … ” tags.

Variety makes no mention of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s involvement or interest in the Blackbeard project, but he’s probably excited about plundering Disney’s fortunes, even if only from its coattails. Too bad this isn’t a less-serious, more animated production so that he could engage in the kind of Disney parody he’s done with the three (and counting) Shrek films. Though I guess considering Disney already went the comedy route with both its Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and its much earlier Blackbeard’s Ghost, going for accuracy in Blackbeard is actually just another way of flipping Disney on its head.

My first couple of nights in Cannes, I was in screenings until almost midnight, and then I’d go to meet the people I’m staying with at the Grand Hotel, where we’d have drinks and then eventually share a long cab ride back to our place. The Grand is, apparently, Where Everyone Goes, which has it’s charms, but it also inevitably results in 30 minute waits amongst a partially-tuxedoed mob around the bar in order to have the privilege of paying 10 Euros (about $17, I think) for a single cocktail. Apparently, it wasn’t always like this. “Where’s the Cannes dive bar?” I wondered aloud to a group of veterans. The answer: “The Grand WAS the dive bar.” Whoops.

So when I heard that Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest founder Tim League was planning on throwing a renegade karaoke party in Cannes last night, I really, really wanted to see him pull it off. But it seemed impossible. So what if he had brought his portable karaoke system all the way from Austin? Where was he going to find a bar––in Cannes, during Cannes––that would be amenable and available to a bunch of scrappy Americans looking to scratch a drunken irony itch? And with the exchange rate being what it is, how would any of us be able to afford the amount of alcohol necessary to fuel such an endeavor?

But he pulled it off.

It was a triumph of collaboration. Instead of a bar, Tim set up shop in a falafel place called Twins, which agreed to stay open until 2 and sell wine and cans of beer for 2 Euros. He borrowed a microphone from Salon.com’s Andrew O’Hehir––the same tiny, directional mic that Andrew uses to record podcasts. I don’t remember where they said they got the P.A., but I think I remember someone saying it had to be returned to someone at the Finish Film Society at the end of the night. And filmmaker and sometime Spout blogger Michael Lerman sent out emails to spread the word.

The crowd spilled out of the tiny Twins and filled the cobblestone street, blending with the throngs pouring out of the Petit Mejestic at the end of the block. Eventually, someone from that hotel came around and huffily stacked their tables and chairs adjacent to Twins. No one left just because they couldn’t sit down. Brit Withey of the Denver Film Society shot an iPhone video of me performing “Love is a Battlefield,” which I sincerely hope never sees the light of day. Lloyd Kaufman showed up at one point, and Tim grabbed the microphone and begged the Troma genius to sing. I tried to stop him as he made his escape, and he promised me he was just going to an ATM and would be right back. Lloyd Kaufman lied to me.

Sometime around 1:30, just as Glenn Kenny was gearing up to sing “Mack the Knife,” the cops arrived. Something about noise complaints. They said we could have one more song, and Tim tried to get the whole crew to join in on a mass sing-a-long of “We Are the World.” No one was into it––at the end of the day, no one really ever wants to sing “We Are the World.” Of course, it didn’t matter––any party broken up by uniformed officials counts as an unqualified success.

My camera is broken, so I didn’t get any pictures of the festivities (hence the above graphic). If you’ve got any or have seen any (preferably less incriminating for Your Blogger than that iPhone video), let us know in the comments.

Under discussion:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull  (2008)

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting in a big, round room at the top of the Palais called Le Club, listening to hundreds of people scream. There’s a balcony encircling Le Club which looks out on docked yachts straight ahead, and the artist’s entrance for the red carpet premieres down below. The Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford’s Public Pension Collection premiere begins shortly, and every few minutes, the paparazzi mob down below erupts into a guttural, multi-lingual wail, each one greater than the last, as another celebrity gets out of another car.

Meanwhile, a large group of notebook-clutching press types have started to gather around two flat screen monitors inside Le Club, watching simulcast coverage of the arrivals. I would be making catty comments with them if I sensed that we spoke the same language––and if they seemed just a tiny bit less star-struck. Frankly, I’m slightly appalled. At least George Lucas had the decency to wear a sports coat––Spielberg, decked out in a baseball cap, a pink shirt and what appears to be a sweater vest made out of berber, is an embarrassment. Shia LaBeouf looks embarrassed. Shia LaBeouf, by the way, is extremely attractive for a 12 year old.

I didn’t even try to get into an Indiana Jones screening today––early word suggests it’s less than spectacular (my Cannes roommate Eric Kohn live-blogged his screening via text message for indieWIRE) and I’ve been having bad luck with lines, so I figure I’ll try to catch the “day after” screening tomorrow. I’m sitting in Le Club because I was shut out of what I believe is the final screening of Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona––I showed up an hour before the scheduled start time, after walking out of Jia Zhangke’s interminable 24 City, and the screening was already full. I’ve been having much better luck getting into screenings in the market (more on the distinction between the Festival and the Marche in a post coming up later today), but this means I’ve missed out on a lot of the films at the center of the conversation. People are talking about Vicky Cristina, Tyson, Tokyo! (especially Michel Gondry’s segment), Steve McQueen’s Hunger and, to a lesser extent, Waltz with Bashir. I made it into a 10 pm screening of that last one last night, but had to walk out after about 40 minutes due to a combination of starvation and exhaustion. Based on what I saw, there are a lot of beautiful images, but Manohla Dargis’ rave (already the stuff of legend around here) seems irrationally exuberant.

But don’t cry for me––I’m seeing films in the market that no one else is seeing, and even when they’re bad (like the Darby Crash biopic What We Do Is Secret, which plays like an after school special directed by a young John Waters––if John Waters had been lobotomized and had lost his sense of humor), I at least get a kick out of going out and making discoveries. And sometimes they’re really, really good.

I found myself with an unexpected hole in my schedule on Saturday and stumbled into a market screening of a film called Everything is Fine, which premiered in the Panorama at Berlin in February, where it drew kind reviews from Screen and Variety but didn’t find U.S. distribution. It’s a beautifully made film about a teen boy and girl who come together after four of their friends commit suicide. With a strong sense of style and an especially inventive feel for sound design, first-time feature director Yves Christian Fournier manages to turn the story of the inner conflict of a 17 year-old boy into something almost resembling a thriller, with a final act catharsis that left several of us in the screening room in tears. I’ve been describing it as the French-Canadian Paranoid Park, except more satisfying emotionally and without the problematic homo-erotic subtext. I think it’s against the rules for me to write a full review of anything that’s screening for buyers outside of the Festival proper, which is a shame––Everything is Fine is, by far, the most exciting thing I’ve seen in Cannes thus far.