Welcome to our first report from this year's Cannes Film Festival, featuring Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen and Roman Polanski...
Cannes, this year as ever, is about reputations. Some live up, others don't, but in 2008 the big directors are hanging onto their mantle while the arthouse darlings are slipping. Towering over the festival this year, Clint Eastwood is easily in the former camp, bringing a fantastic new film, Changeling (or is it The Exchange? The title keeps, ahem, changing), that proves that, at 78, Eastwood is effortlessly maintaining the rich twilight of an already magnificent career.
Tonight is the second night of The Great Escape festival and, of course, the second night of Uncut's selection of bands at the Pressure Point, tonight featuring Edinburgh's Broken Records and Brooklyn boys Yeasayer.
Wandering round Brighton on my way to see our Uncut night at The Great Escape Festival, it was surprising to see that the humble Pressure Point, our home for the next few days, seemed to have the biggest queue of any venue at that time. No doubt this was because of the opening act, a certain Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver.
This gig is being recorded for BBC Four and, as with this kind of thing, there’s something slightly odd about tonight’s proceedings. We’re in the splendid hall of a restored 18th century church, sitting around tables, mindful of the cameras and lengths of cables snaking across the floor, practising clapping for the Assistant Stage Manager. If “live” is a spontaneous celebration of the power of rock’n’roll, then we’re a long way from Kansas, Toto.
It is, arguably, a somewhat incongruous environment to see Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds play, anyway.
