Eastwood Receives Special Palm d'Or

The Cannes Film Festival has bestowed a special Palm d'Or on director Clint Eastwood for his great career in directing movies. The award comes a few months early to the festival actually taking place, but it is a well deserved award. The special award is actually nicknamed the Golden Palm, but it looks very similar to the real thing. This is like one of those Honorary Oscars that the Academy gives out to actors and directors who have an impressive body of work but has, for some reason, never actually won an Oscar. These Oscars are normally dubbed by people as the "Opps, Sorry We Screwed Up" award. Most actors and directors actually don't like receiving honorary awards though and would prefer to win the award right out (see Peter O' Toole, who asked the Academy if they could choose someone else because he wanted "to win the little bugger out right").

Cannes is usually more diverse and more forward thinking then the Oscars usually are. They gave Martin Scorsese a Palm d'Or for "Taxi Driver" way back in 1976 while it took the Academy until 2006 to honor him with an Oscar for "The Departed." That said Cannes also has yet to honor Spielberd with a Palm d'Or while the Academy has honored him with two Oscars for directing. I'm not exactly sure what the reasoning behing giving Eastwood this award since he is still very much active, but since he's getting old in age it may be one those things where Cannes felt it was crazy he hadn't won yet and decided to rectify that mistake before it was too late. Right now Eastwood is filming his latest film "The Human Factor," starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. If released this year expect lots of Oscar potential.

Foreign Poster of 'Docter Parnassus'

Though the Joker will most likely always be considered Heath Ledger's swan song it's not the last time we'll see him on the big screen. That's because he filmed some of Terry Gilliams next film, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Despite his death Gilliam was determined to salvage Ledger's footage. We'll see whether he was successful or not in a few months, but for now we have an international poster for the film. And judging from what I see here...

...it's going to be vintage Gilliam weirdness. Gilliam is a director who is one of the more ambitious ones working today. The problem is when he fails, he fails BIG! Sadly he tends to fail more then he succeeds, and he directed Ledger and Matt Damon in one of their worst movies ever. This poster doesn't seem to let on that Ledger is in this movie, or his other co-stars, or even what the movie is about. Will it get Oscar consideration? Perhaps. Ledger may be up for another Oscar nod if the Academy can benefit from his wave of praise. Will the movie do well at the box office? I have no idea. Once again though we'll just have to wait and see.