RYDER STILL TRAUMATISED BY SHOPLIFTING CONVICTION

WINONA RYDER boycotted this month's (MAY06) Cannes Film Festival because she hasn't yet recovered from her shoplifting conviction four years ago (02), according to her co-star KEANU REEVES. Reeves and ROBERT DOWNEY JR were left to promote A SCANNER DARKLY at the festival without Ryder, who has avoided the limelight since she was found guilty of stealing from a Beverly Hill department store in 2002. Reeves explains, "Robert and I were speaking of how we miss her and wish she was here because she's such a delightful person and really good actress. "But, for her to be here and have to deal with all these other kinds of questions - I don't know if she's quite ready to do that."

Keanu in Cannes!

KEANU REEVES is "scanning" the crowd on the Croisette tonight as his new, animated sci-fi fantasy, 'A Scanner Darkly,' makes its official premiere at the 59th annual Cannes Film Festival.

A startling vision of "The O.C." of the near future, 'A Scanner Darkly' is based on the PHILIP K. DICK ('Minority Report,' 'Blade Runner') novel of spying, drugs and paranoia in Southern California's Orange County. Keanu plays a reluctant undercover cop whose two different brain hemispheres are competing for control.

The film is directed by RICHARD LINKLATER ('School of Rock,' 'Before Sunrise'), who has the honor of being the first director to have two films at Cannes in the same year. His adaptation of the best-seller 'Fast Food Nation' is running in competition, while 'Scanner' is part of Un Certain Regard.

Also starring WINONA RYDER, WOODY HARRELSON and ROBERT DOWNEY JR., the film employs the same computer animation layering technique as Linklater's 2001 film, 'Waking Life.'

And even more stars are walking the red carpet at Cannes to attend amFAR's annual Cinema Against AIDS gala, taking place at Le Moulin de Mougins. SHARON STONE, who is co-hosting a live auction, SIR ELTON JOHN, ZIYI ZHANG, SOFIA COPPOLA and GIORGIO ARMANI are just some of the famous faces raising funds for AIDS research.

Watch ET for all the Cannes highlights!

FISHBURNE STUNNED BY MATRIX FANS

LAURENCE FISHBURNE is stunned by the lengths fans of THE MATRIX will go to after learning of a fan who has his image tattooed on his back. The star played MORPHEUS in the sci-fi trilogy and admits he's relieved that chapter of his life is over because of the huge responsibility to his audience. He explains, "It was the most intense fan reaction you can imagine. "One fan sent a photo that showed this tattoo on his back of myself, KEANU REEVES and CARRIE-ANNE MOSS. "Some guy's walking around with a picture of me on his back! "I thought, 'This is really heavy!'"29/05/2006 20:03

Power plays

Film: CANNES: 2006

SIMON HOUPT

E-mail Simon Houpt | Read Bio | Latest Columns CANNES, FRANCE -- 'I'm glad to be a footnote in their history, I guess," drawls Richard Linklater. He's sitting on the lawn of the Grand Hotel a hundreds metres or so off the Croisette, reflecting on the combination of circumstances that has made him a pioneer: He is the first filmmaker to have two films at once at Cannes. Fast Food Nation is playing in the official competition; A Scanner Darkly unspooled yesterday in the Un Certain Regard sidebar program.

Stylistically and narratively, the two films are in different universes. Nation is a realistic contemporary comedy-drama that follows three separate groups of people connected to the fast-food industry: illegal Mexican immigrants working in a meatpacking plant, a teenaged employee of a McDonald's clone, and a fast-food marketing executive who searches for the source of his company's tainted meat. For Scanner Darkly, which was based on the 1977 novel by Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner), Linklater has layered animation atop live action to impart a shaky, shape-shifting futuristic vision of a paranoid society in which an undercover drug officer (Keanu Reeves) is tracked by government spies looking for substance abuse.

So they're different, but also the same: Both are, at their core, about the corporate and governmental structures that, if you're so inclined, you might say control humanity. During a press conference yesterday afternoon, sitting next to the film's stars Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr., this is the description Linklater offered for A Scanner Darkly: "It's about how government and corporations use power, and how that can alienate people from one another and themselves."

At least, he was supposed to be discussing Scanner, but it's hard to be certain since the description applies equally well to Fast Food Nation. The only certainty is that this is all a new avenue for Linklater, whose finely turned personal comedies (Rock School, Dazed and Confused) and dramas (Before Sunrise and Before Sunset) have never suggested a political philosophy beyond jovial anti-authoritarianism.

"Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've always been a political person," he says on the Grand lawn. "When I was very young I tried to do an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Possessed -- the ultimate terrorist novel. I had in mind some really radical notions of films, and ideas. You know, 'Take on the government.' But I was young and kind of crazy, and I'm glad I didn't. Those always look foolish, kind of naive."

Still, Linklater directed some anti-Bush TV spots for the 2004 election. "What do you do to make yourself feel better about how you go through your life?" he asks rhetorically. "I felt with these films like there are so many people in the world who are extremely frustrated by the thrust of a huge corporate culture that has no human elements and, in the U.S., an administration that seems so narrow and self-interested.

"They can call it anti-American, they can call it what they want, it's not an organized thing, I didn't get talking points for the liberal agenda," he says, chuckling. "People are saying we need more humanity. That's all anyone's doing, it kind of comes from the populist notion of what's best for the greatest number of people. It seems like the time called for it, and I personally feel better for having done these two films.

"I haven't changed my life fundamentally. I sleep better at night after dealing with these issues any way I can. I'm not delusional enough to think it's going to make much difference, but you never know."

But then, it's a labour of love; no one makes a film like Scanner for the money, or even to attract the masses. The budget is only about $6-million (U.S.). As Linklater wryly noted, no studio wanted to spend even that much money on an animated vision of a dystopia where government surveillance of civilians is common and the protagonists are drug addicts. At least, no one wanted to make it until Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. came on board. Then, says Linklater ironically, "the script got a lot better." He doesn't need to add: ". . . in the minds of the studio executives."

But even though they were on board, the Warner Independent executives made themselves heard through the long, painful postproduction process, with endless notes as they tried to shape the film into a more commercial product.

"You could argue some of that didn't have to happen," Linklater says. "But I had final cut on it. I have no delusion of this being a mainstream entertainment. It's an odd film that gets at you in different ways. If you're looking to simplify it, you're not going to please anyone, really. But I'm glad the film exists as it does right now."

And with growing concern in the U.S. about both increasing surveillance and the brutal efficiency of the food industry, Linklater has one reason to smile: "I kind of have the Bush administration as my publicist on both movies," he says.

Keanu and Robert get animated in Cannnes

The official screening gave fans a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of the handsome Matrix actor, who admits he usually prefers to keep out of the limelight. In his latest role the Canadian citizen plays an undercover narcotics cop on the verge of a breakdown, whose condition worsens as he is ordered to spy on his friends.

A Scanner Darkly, which uses cutting-edge digital technology to recreate live action in an animated format, is directed by American Richard Linklater. The film is set in the near future in California, when America has become a surveillance police state struggling to win the war on drugs.

Keanu's co-star and former hell-raiser Robert joked that "25 year of drugs research" helped him prepare for his role in the sci-fi movie as Barris, one of the narcotics officer's druggie friends. The actor, who has spent lengthy periods in rehab in the past, turned his life around when he won the coveted Academy Award for his portrayal of Charlie Chaplin in 2001's Chaplin.

UK audiences will get to see the pair's new flick in August, but can catch Keanu before then when he teams up with his Speed co-star Sandra Bullock in The Lake House, due out on June 23.

Meanwhile, Good Night, And Good Luck star Robert is busier than ever and due to appear with a host of beautiful leading ladies, including Drew Barrymore in Lucky You and Nicole Kidman in Fur, later this year.

Scanner Darkly paints its stars into a paranoid corner

By DAVID GERMAIN
Associated Press

CANNES, France ? Richard Linklater, you've landed lookers such as Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr. in your science fiction fantasy. What are you going to do now?

Paint over their pretty faces to make digital cartoon characters out of them, then put the actors through a hazy narcotic nightmare in which they ramble about in manic paranoia.

A Scanner Darkly, which premiered Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival, is the bleak underbelly of director Linklater's teen-party romp Dazed and Confused. Adapted from the novel by sci-fi master Philip K. Dick, who based the story partly on his own drug abuse, A Scanner Darkly is a talky, twisted hodgepodge of sobering ideas centered on people who are anything but sober.

Linklater (School of Rock, Slacker) created the film the same way he made his 2001 philosophical ramble Waking Life, shooting the actors in live action then painting over them with shimmery digital animation.

The faces of Reeves, Ryder, Downey and co-star Woody Harrelson remain recognizable, yet the animation makes them appear as though they're wandering through a living, breathing comic book.

"I had one question for Mr. Linklater, and that was: If I chew up the scenery, can you just animate it back in later?" Downey joked.

Linklater said overlaying animation on the actors was simply a creative choice, the same as deciding whether to shoot in color or black and white.

"It felt like this was the best way to tell this particular story," Linklater said. "I think it looks cool, too. Kind of a graphic novel come to life."

A Scanner Darkly is set seven years in the future, when a new drug called Substance D has arrived on the scene and gradually turns its users from suspicion to fear to paranoia regarding everyone around them.

Reeves plays an undercover cop assigned to spy on the activities of his circle of associates, including Ryder, Downey, Harrelson and Dazed and Confused co-star Rory Cochrane.

Abusing Substance D to maintain his cover, Reeves' character loses himself in a schizoid personality disorder, a crisis that plays out externally in the cloak he and other undercover operatives wear to conceal their identities from one another by projecting ever-changing features on their faces.

The film is Linklater's second to screen at this year's Cannes festival, which ends Sunday. Linklater's consumer satire Fast Food Nation played in the festival's main competition, while A Scanner Darkly was in a secondary competition.

A Scanner Darkly debuts in U.S. theaters July 7, and Fast Food Nation opens next fall.

The reality-bending fiction of Dick, who died in 1982, has been frequently turned into films, including Blade Runner, based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the short-story adaptations Minority Report, Total Recall (from a tale titled We Can Remember It For You Wholesale) and Paycheck.

Keanu says turning 40 pushed him into therapy

By BRUCE KIRKLAND

CANNES ? Turning 40 inspired Keanu Reeves to go into therapy for the first time, the actor said yesterday.

Reeves is at Cannes with Richard Linklater’s sci-fi animated film A Scanner Darkly. He surprised a small group of reporters ? including the Toronto Sun ? with the news during interviews for the movie.

Reeves rarely reveals anything about his personal life.

“What have I done with my year? Good question,” Reeves mused after revealing he has not worked on a film for the past 12 months (Scanner wrapped shooting 18 months ago).

“I started some therapy. I was doing some personal work. This guy (his therapist) kind of changes his deal. If we’re talking about youth stuff, he tends to be Freudian, it seems. And then, as we kind of go into more newer stories, it seems like a Jungian kind of thing.”

Asked, “Why now?” Reeves replied: “Why not now? It had to happen some time. I guess it was just time.” The experience of shooting The Matrix trilogy spurred some interest in the process because he read a lot of books on philosophy, spiritualism and religion as research, Reeves indicated.

“And I think I just (came to it). I had that classic moment of turning 40 and all of that kind of stuff. And working a lot. And it was just time to stand still for a second. But now I’m ready to go work.”

Next story: Spanish armada

Linklater's too busy to see his Cannes competition

Special To The Chronicle

C ANNES, FRANCE - Richard Linklater would see as many as four films a day in the 1980s, bouncing between Houston's Greenway Plaza, River Oaks and Rice Media Center.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Linklater is too busy to watch movies. In fact, he is the one being watched. The 45-year-old Houston native has become the first director in the 59 years of the festival to have two films here, one in competition and one in another category.

Godard never did it. Not even Scorsese.

"With the thousands who would like to be in these official selections," Linklater said this week, "I would have thought they would say, 'We'd show one film by this guy, not two.' That's flattering."

Linklater's Fast Food Nation, which already premiered in competition, forges an ensemble drama out of Eric Schlosser's unsavory expose of the burger giants. A Scanner Darkly, which makes its official premiere Thursday night, animates Philip K. Dick's novel of spying and paranoia in California's Orange County.

The Chronicle chatted with Linklater on several occasions during his his historic fortnight on the French Riviera. He appeared unruffled despite a grinding schedule: interviews from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with seven minutes for lunch. Panels with celebrity journalists like Roger Ebert. Parties with cast members such as Fast Food Nation's Wilmer Valderrama (That '70s Show) until 4 a.m. And, of course, the red-carpet walks to his premieres.

"I relax in ways that you can sneak it in," he said. "I'm relaxing right now, man. Don't feel sorry for me."

At this moment, Linklater was wearing pin-striped cargo shorts and sandals, as if he were at a clam bake. But while the beach setting and Onassis yacht offshore made for a fun atmosphere, he was all business. He switched subjects at the flick of a tape recorder, never confusing his films.

"I'm very compartmentalized," he said "Most filmmakers are."

This is the easy part, Linklater has learned. It's sitting through the premieres in his tuxedo ? the same one he wore at the 2005 Oscar ceremony when nominated for his Before Sunset screenplay ? that jangles his nerves. Thousands of cinephiles and critics gather at the Palais to judge. Often vocally.

"Here they really do focus on the director," he said. "Walking into the Palais the other night, there's a big camera on you the whole time. You feel like a prize fighter going into the ring."

Linklater absorbed no fatal blows that night for Fast Food Nation. Some in the audience yelled "Merci!" French for "thank you." But he did receive some brickbats in the next morning's reviews.

"Your chin's out there and they're taking swings at you," Linklater said to complete the metaphor.

If anyone is equipped to handle both praise and punishment, it is Linklater, according to his actors.

"He was the most laid-back, competent director I'd ever worked with," said Ethan Hawke, who performed in Linklater's Before Sunset (2004) and Before Sunrise (1995), in addition to Fast Food Nation. "You know the stereotype of the director as mad man pulling his hair out, fighting for his dreams? Rick lets everything come to him."

"Some guys give a feeling that they know what they are doing. Rick never raises his voice or gets excited," said Fast Food Nation's Bobby Cannavale.

Linklater, now Austin-based, maintains the squat, muscular build of his baseball days. He says he hit over .400 at Bellaire High School his senior year, earning a scholarship to Sam Houston State University. He later dropped out to work on an oil rig, commuting by helicopter from Houston.

The experience forged a handy social consciousness. "The hard hat, the boots," he says. "It's the very bottom of an industry that gives you perspective on the world that I'm glad I had. I wouldn't have been interested in Fast Food Nation had I not had that."

A Scanner Darkly exercised different attributes, including patience. An arduous edit to reproduce the live-action anime of his previous Waking Life (2001) had Linklater finishing both Darkly and Nation at the same time. He concluded filming Darkly more than two years ago.

Darkly will have a more immediate impact on the marketplace. Warner Independent will release it in July with hopes of luring fans of the author Dick, Linklater and the film's star, Keanu Reeves. Fast Food Nation, however, should ignite more controversy when Fox Searchlight opens it in the fall. Its depiction of sleaze and gore in fast-food manufacturing includes footage of the characters interacting in a real slaughterhouse.

"We're already getting reaction from the fast-food industry," Linklater, a vegetarian, said. "They've hired agencies that will be there when we come out as a movie in the States. I've never made a movie that's threatening someone's corporate bottom line, not that I think the movie can do it. I think McDonald's is doing just fine."

This is Linklater's first Cannes. In the '90s, he was more of a domestic indie darling, breaking through at Sundance with Slackers, his low-budget look at a ne'er-do-well generation, in 1991.

But in one magical trip to Europe he is making up for lost time. After the commercial disappointment of his remake of Bad News Bears last summer, he is celebrating one of his greatest artistic triumphs.

Twice.

The Silver Surfer joins Fantastic Four

As previously rumoured, popular Marvel comic book character The Silver Surfer is set to join The Fantastic Four on screen, for the blue crew’s next adventure.

Though once rumoured to be debuting in his own film, Surfer will now be popping up as a key player in “Fantastic Four 2”. Though there are two different scripts that the studio has to choose from  one by “Twin Peaks” scribe Mark Frost and another by Don Payne, of “Super Ex-Girlfriend”  they both apparently feature the probably Surfer, according to Variety.

Keanu Reeves, The Rock, and Vin Diesel are just some of the actors whose names have been branded about for the role of The Silver Surfer - a galaxy-cruising protector endowed with superhuman strength, who is able to control and direct cosmic energies, with enough force to destroy a city  in the past, when it was initially going to be it’s own stand-alone project. The budget of this film is probably so far blown it won’t be able to stretch anymore for as big a name  so wouldn’t expect any of those guys to be riding the board.

“Fantastic Four 2” will be rocking into theatres July 4, 2007.

Sandra Bullock & Keanu Reeves team up again

After the blockbuster 'Speed', actors Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are back together in 'Lake House'. Like in their previous film, the onscreen couple are battling time again.

When the distance is familiar, you could scale it, bridge it, cover it. But what if the love of your life is on the other side of something as unreal as time. What if the one meant for you, is situated two years away from you? For one, how will you ever choose a dating joint?

And what if you decide that something as unreal as that is more meaningful than reality itself? She's more real to me than anything, I've ever known. Just because a story is not real, it doesnt mean it isn't true. Romantic drama 'The Lake House', will see Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock re-kindle their onscreen chemistry for the first time after the blockbuster 'Speed'.

A remake of a Korean film, Bullock plays a doctor who once lived in an unusual lakeside home, whose new resident is a frustrated architect played by Reeves. The pair exchange letters through the house's mail box, and begin to fall in love but soon discover to their dismay, that they actually live two years apart.

'The Lake House' is all set for US release this June.

Aparna Nadig

Chris Klein's Keanu confusion

2006-04-29 09:50:04

Chris Klein says he constantly gets confused for Keanu Reeves.

The 'American Pie' actor said he the first time he got recognized was not for his spectacular performance in the teen comedy, but because someone thought he was the 'Matrix' star Reeves.

Klein - who previously dated Tom Cruise's fiancee, Katie Holmes, who has just given birth to her first child with the actor - told Britain's More magazine: "People are always telling me I look like Keanu Reeves. It's cool. Actually the first time I ever got recognized was on a plane, the flight attendant thought I was Keanu Reeves.'