by Antonio Mejías-Rentas
COMPETING IN CANNES: Two fi lms starring Latino Oscar-winning actors are among the most expected at this year’s most important international film festival.
Director Steven Soderbergh’s Che and Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona are among the 20 competing films announced last week for the 61st annual International Film Festival at Cannes, France, to be held May 14-25. Soderbergh’s four-hour fi lm about the Argentinean hero of the Cuban Revolution stars Benicio del Toro, a 2000 Oscar winner for Traffic, from the same director.
The production had previously been announced as two separate fi lms. El argentino and Guerrillero. It was shot last year in Mexico, Spain and Puerto Rico at a reported cost of $70 million. The film also stars Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno.
Allen’s film was shot in the title city and stars this year’s supporting actor Oscar Winner Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men), as well as Penelópe Cruz and Scarlett Johansson.
This year’s festival includes films by two Latin American directors, including a debut by Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel, who competes with La mujer sin cabeza. Brazil’s Walter Selles, whose own film about Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Diarios de motocicleta premiered in Cannes in 2004, this time competes with Linha de passe.
Opening and closing films were not announced, but an expected contender for the first slot is the latest one by another Brazilian director, Fernando Meirelles. The English-language film is Blindness, based on the novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago.
In a related film item, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, whose own El laberinto del fauno competed in Cannes in 2006, will spend the next four years in New Zealand working with producer Peter Jackson on The Hobbit and its sequel.
Del Toro will direct both films based on the J.R. Tolkien book. Jackson directed the Oscar-winning trilogy based on another Tolkien series of books, The Lord of the Rings. Del Toro has a sequel of his own coming soon to theaters: Hellboy II: The Golden Ammy.
ONE LINERS: Jennifer López will charge $1.5 million to appear next June in a Russian awards ceremony by the MUZ TV channel… The nuyorican star will appear in a yet-untitled reality series for TLC, which will offer a behind-the-scenes into her life as actress, recording artist, businesswoman and new mother. While it was unclear if husband Marc Anthony will appear in the show, the cable channel also announced a production deal with the husband-and-wife team of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. For the second year in a row, the ABC sitcom Ugly Betty has won the outstanding comedy series honor at the 19th annual Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards in Los Angeles last week. Hispanic Link.
