The Morning Feed: Lynne Ramsay Wows Cannes with ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’

The 64th Cannes Film Festival entered its opening weekend with Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay receiving the lion’s share of acclaim so far for her family drama We Need to Talk about Kevin.

Ramsay adapted Lionel Schriver’s bestselling novel for her first feature since 2002’s Morvern Callar; making the argument that her enthusiastic Cannes reception was well-earned.

Festival press including TheGuardian’s Xan Brooks raved about Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly as parents of a troubled teen (Ezra Miller) who murders several classmates, a teacher and a worker at his high school, the tense storytelling as well as the artful production work of Ramsay and cameraman Seamus McGarvey.

Fans of Ramsay’s earlier features Morvern Callar and Ratcatcher, myself included, wouldn’t expect anything less from the talented Ramsay.

Visitors to The Jewish Museum in New York enjoyed the chance to view more than 50 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by modern masters Renoir, Gauguin, Courbet and van Gogh. More importantly, they learned the story of the incredible sisters Etta and Claribel Cone and how they traveled from their Baltimore home at the turn of the 20th century to Paris and became major patrons of Matisse and Picasso.

The Cone sisters began their art collecting with a $300 gift from an older brother and by the time of Etta’s death in 1949 acquired nearly 3,000 pieces.

“This exhibit is really the first opportunity to tell the story of the Cone sisters and their significance in the art world,” curator Karen Levitov told Vogue.

The Cone Sisters donated their collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art but the exhibition Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore at the Jewish Museum through September 25 promised to tell their amazing story to new audiences.

NPR reported on the Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment partnering to launch the National Jukebox, the largest online collection of historical recordings available to the public.

“This represents a strong step in the Library’s efforts to return out of ciculation recordings to public access,” Gene DeAnna, head of the Library’s Recorded Sound Section, told NPR.

The Library of Congress, Sony and the University of California, Santa Barbara via its Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Records made available 10,000 historical recordings for free bit streaming (no downloads).

Highlights included the first recording of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra’s Rhapsody in Blue Parts 1 and 2 with composer George Gershwin at the piano and Woodrow Wilson’sspeech on labor from September 24, 1912.

The latest chapter on the ongoing Charlie Sheen meltdown story came to a conclusion with The Hollywood Reporter breaking the news that actor Ashton Kutcher agreed to replace the recently fired Sheen on his hit CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men.

Sheen doused any chances of his being rehired with recent rants against Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre.

While Sheen wrapped his stand-up tour to mixed reviews, Kutcher looked to finalize his Two and a Half Men deal with a reported paycheck of $1M per episode.

Kutcher earned the best reviews of his career on the FOX sitcom That 70’s Show and executive produced the hit MTV hidden camera series Punk’d.

Returning to TV might turn out to be the smartest career move Kutcher ever makes.

 

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