Chacun Son Cinema
The Age
Thursday June 18, 2009
Chacun Son CinemaMadman, M, 110 mins3/5AN AMBITIOUS omnibus movie that was made for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. Director Gilles Jacob commissioned more than 30 directors, including many past Cannes prizewinners, to make a short work, around three minutes long about the nature of cinema. Chacun Son Cinema (To Each His Own Cinema) is subtitled "that thrill when the lights dim and the movie begins". Directors were invited to convey "their current state of mind as inspired by the motion picture theatre". Although there are some comic contributions, this aspect of the brief - the movie house - has led several of the filmmakers to look back to their early movie-going experiences, to celebrate cinema's past or mourn its present. The filmmakers aren't identified beforehand, so there's a certain pleasure to be had in guessing who did what - spot the Lars von Trier, pick the Wong Kar-wai, guess the David Lynch. There's also a menu option that allows you to cut to the chase and select the film you want. It's a curious mixed bag of pleasures and disappointments. The clunkiest film is Roman Polanski's creakily obvious contribution, while one of the most striking is David Cronenberg's offering, in which he also plays a character defined as "the last Jew in the world in the last cinema in the world", preparing to commit suicide.Recently releasedLead Balloon Season 2Roadshow, MBRITISH television comedy about comedian Rick Spleen (Jack Dee), who has an unerring ability to put himself in embarrassing situations. It's been compared to Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm but Lead Balloon does not have the creative misanthropy of David's show: it's an entertaining comedy that revolves around Spleen's shameless combination of incompetence and overconfidence. The supporting cast - particularly his self-absorbed daughter and her slacker boyfriend, his lugubrious housekeeper and the neurotic guy whose cafe he frequents - are nice comic counterpoints. -- PHILIPPA HAWKER
© 2009 The Age