Cannes Adds 7 More Titles To 2012 Official Selection ("Gimme The Loot" Made The Cut)

13 Comments

• | Reply

• NOBRAINER | May 1, 2012 2:50 PMReply

  @ Richochet... Oh, I saw more than half of them. So much for assuming, asshole!

• CRITICAL ACCLAIM | May 1, 2012 11:47 PM

  Came to read smart insights and saw this insane comment. Taking 15 seconds to type this -- GET A LIFE! YOU'RE ARGUING TO A GHOST ON A MESSAGE BOARD!!!! lmao.

• NO Dice | April 30, 2012 6:24 PMReply

  White hipster privilege. Pure and simple. They want to see white boys depict us than our own depictions of us. Why were Pariah, Medicine for Melncholy, Gun Hill Road, Middle of Nowhere, LUV, Oversimoliciation of her Beauty, Wolf, Nght Catches Us out in. Answer is easy.

• PRISS | May 1, 2012 12:11 PM

  No Dice and Jay: you are both exactly right and very onto something important. Whether you call it white hipster privilege or the white entertainment industrial complex, it is real and jeopardizing the Black filmmaker. It gets back to the circular question -- what is a Black film? Are these white men making stories featuring Black faces giving us a Black film? We of course know the answer, but Cannes and Sundance and SXSW award the white man's take on black life like it's gospel, when it's actually a distortion.

• Jay | April 30, 2012 10:58 PM

  @No Dice. I'd go one step further: more accurately, the white-entertainment industrial complex. It's not just hipsterism, it's fetishistic -- urban culture projection as commodity. And a white filmmaker can get away with that when the cast is mostly impressionable and post adolescent. I'd like to see him try and pull this narrative with someone like Viola Davis.
  The other fact is more obvious: where does this kind of film first get play? SWSX, MoMA, and now Cannes -- elitist, film-goer liberal guilt. Just the kind of audience that would share in that objectification, that exoticism. Read Armond White.

• Richochet | April 30, 2012 8:28 PM

  mr. leon is indeed not of any kind of color. http://www.indiewire.com/article/nd-nf-futures-gimme-the-loot-writer-director-adam-leon-brings-his-new-york-love-letter-home. and to
  nobrainer: your name is accurate. i doubt you've seen half the films listed. moron.

• NOBRAINER | April 30, 2012 7:33 PM

  Well it's a no brainer why those films weren't selected. Pariah is the only one worth anything.

• Darkan | April 30, 2012 7:27 PM

  @ What?, No, he isn't. He's white.

• Ali | April 30, 2012 7:17 PM

  Most films that played US festivals are rejected.

• what? | April 30, 2012 6:39 PM

  The director and writer of "Gimme The Loot" isn't black?

• Jay | April 30, 2012 4:37 PMReply

  Caught "Gimme the Loot" at MoMA ND/NF. Lukewarm response. I'm guessing, in part, the film's a model case study on the self-congratulatory world of distributors, programmers and press agents. Can't ever underestimate hype, too. Once "Sundance" brands it ... well, it must be good, right? And ND/NF --- the cinephile/programmers glitterati. How could Cannes not take it?
  
  It's marketed as a "graffiti writers film" and nary a scene of tagging is shown. Instead, it suffers from long, meandering sequences of "walkie/talkie" and a few, built-in "obstacles" to create slivers of momentum to compensate for a pretty thin structure. With more seasoned actors, it may have worked. And I'm certainly no apologist for always staying on the line of the classical narrative structure. But this story chose to ignore it all at its own peril.

• Clayton | April 30, 2012 4:27 PMReply

  Also, everywhere I go I'm getting nothing but green, no trailer. I can hear the audio but no trailer, that included the one embedded here. Is it just me?

• Clayton | April 30, 2012 4:22 PMReply

  Congratulations to everyone involved with the making of "Gimme the Loot." I'm betting it's worth seeing, screening at the top film festival in the world. Last year, they premiered "The Artist." Five years ago, they premiered "No Country For Old Men." They're in good company. Ignore the naysayers.