As I have slowly emerged during the past week from my French fog into the harsher realities of Hollywood, the likely effect of the 68th Cannes Film Festival on this year’s Oscar race has come more into focus. I consider Cannes a “soft start” to the awards season, not as key obviously as the fall trifecta of Venice/Telluride/Toronto but one that puts some early players in the game. Last year in the official Competition, Foxcatcher managed to win a Best Director prize for Bennett Miller and then vaulted all the way to five Academy Award nominations including major acting, writing and directing nods (it lost them all). But, oddly, the biggest winner out of Cannes was not in the main Competition or even Un Certain Regard. It came in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, with the Sundance champ Whiplash. And although that film won no prize in Cannes, it went on to big Oscar recognition, including a Best Picture nom and three Oscars including Best Supporting Actor. Many films that play Cannes in one way or another are able to traverse the ensuing nine-month road to Oscar, but in the nearly seven-decade shared history of the two titan events, 1955’s Marty remains the only movie to take the top prize at both (although I am convinced that Roman Polanski’s 2002 The Pianist probably came very close to pulling it off).

Read More at  www.deadline.com