• As the red carpet unfurled Tuesday at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival and Jim Jarmusch's zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die was set to premiere, jury president Alejandro Inarritu criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for a Mexican border wall and lamented his tweets as "bricks of isolation." Inarritu, the Mexican-born filmmaker of Birdman and The Revenant, is the first Latin American to preside over the jury that decides Cannes' top honor, the Palme d'Or. Addressing reporters on the festival's opening day alongside fellow jury members, Inarritu drew a parallel between the rhetoric of Trump to that of the 1930s. "We know how this story ends if we keep with that rhetoric," Inarritu said. "We think we are evolving with the technology and social media. It seems every tweet is a brick of isolation attached to ideological things and is creating a lot of isolation and paranoia." This year's Cannes arrives with the usual swirl of celebrity and controversy. Among the starrier films debuting at the festival on the French Riviera will be Quentin Tarantino's 1969 Los Angeles tale Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the Elton John bio-pic Rocketman. Also on tap are the latest from renowned auteurs Pedro Almodovar, Terrence Malick and the Dardennes brothers. Also of interest will be the debut from Mati Diop, Atlantique, which marks the first black female filmmaker in competition in Cannes.
• Former New York congressman Anthony Weiner left a New York halfway house on Tuesday after completing his prison sentence for illicit online contact with a 15-year-old girl. "It's good to be out," Weiner said, according to the New York Post. "I hope to be able to live a life of integrity and service. I'm glad this chapter of my life is behind me." Weiner, 54, was ordered in April to register as a sex offender as he neared the end of a 21-month prison sentence. The judge designated Weiner a Level 1 offender under the state's version of what's known as Megan's Law, meaning that he is thought to have a low risk of reoffending. The now disgraced Weiner was once a rising star in the Democratic Party who served in Congress for nearly 12 years. Prosecutors said he had a series of sexually explicit Skype and Snapchat exchanges with a North Carolina high school student and encouraged the teenager to strip naked and touch herself sexually. He pleaded guilty in May 2017 to transferring obscene material to a minor. He still faces three years of court supervision. Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, filed for divorce in 2017. But the two, who have a young son together, later agreed to discontinue the case in order to negotiate their separation privately.
A Section on 05/15/2019