Jeremy Renner

James Gray’s long-awaited period drama, “The Immigrant,” finally screened in Cannes early this morning. Featuring the excellent cast of Joaquin Phoenix, Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Renner, “The Immigrant” centers on a conniving pimp (Phoenix) who manipulates a destitute Polish immigrant (Cotillard) into a life of prostitution. Saddled with a sick sister, she works to pay for her medicine and her dismal life seems hopeless until a curious magician (Renner) enters it. Our reviewer called the film “carefully poised and slowly building to a resonant climax,” and that sounds like a James Gray film alright. Mostly unappreciated at home in the United States (but beloved in France), Gray generally makes melodramatic family tragedies disguised as crime dramas (“Little Odessa,” “The Yards,” “We Own The Night”), but “The Immigrant” is somewhat of a gear shift, with its 1920s period setting and having a woman as the lead character. While Joaquin Phoenix was absent (see why below),...

Would you pay $1.5 million to go to a few Oscar parties? Or $1.8 million to fly to the moon on Virgin Galactic with Leonardo DiCaprio?  Someone did — and more. That’s what made Harvey Weinstein smile when we spoke after amFAR’s annual Cinema Against AIDS Cannes Film Festival gala got a very special 20th anniversary present Thursday night. Co-hosts Weinstein and Kenneth Cole announced to a roomful of very high rollers that the event, held of the Hotel Du Cap, had raised $25 million, smashing last year’s record total of over $10 million. Before the ultra-high style  party that has been a staple of the Cannes festival for the past two decades, Weinstein had told me if they just made a dollar more than the previous year they would be happy. But these multimillionaires and billionaires obviously came to play this year and really stepped up to the auction that featured numerous stars including jury members Nicole Kidman and Christoph Waltz, along with Jessica Chastain, Jeremy Renner, Rosario Dawson, Heidi Klum, Goldie Hawn, Janet Jackson, Adrien Brody and major fundraiser and auctioneer Sharon Stone. Weinstein said the event — which he, Elizabeth Taylor and Dr. Mathilda Krim started in 1993 — changed up the rules this year and decided to focus primarily on just 10 major items rather than 20, and the crowd responded. The things being auctioned off included original art by the likes ... Read More »