Cannes Film Festival: The Harvey Weinstein Show

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CANNES, France - If there are lines separating art and commerce in the film world, they are obliterated annually at the Cannes Film Festival. The world's most respected auteurs premiere their films in the Grand Palais, just above the Marché, the international film market, in the basement, where distributors sell the rights to those same films as well as to B-movie action sequels like “Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz” - whatever that is and wherever it's rising from.

And, in one of the festival's oddest new traditions, Harvey Weinstein is now the host of a grand dog-and-pony show for all his new films - a dog-and-pony show of trailers, lubricated by a midday Champagne open bar, that has become one of the buzziest events of the festival.

“We have a member of the jury with us tonight, and she has to go for a jury meeting to hopefully decide which movie of mine wins the Palme d'Or,” Mr. Weinstein, buttoned into a tuxedo, joked in front of a temporary screen set up in a Majestic Hotel conference room.

Last year, Mr. Weinstein stole some of the buzz from the festival's competition when he previewed footage from three unfinished films - “Django Unchained,” “The Master” and “Silver Linings Playbook” - which all made it to the Oscars. “Last year was as good as any year we had at Miramax,” he boasted. Then, with a display of star power, he brought up Nicole Kidman, and the showman began selling the Weinstein Company's expansive 2013 slate of nine coming films.

The audience sat patiently through trailers for the Sundance hit “Fruitvale Station” and teasers for those two Cannes competition films, Nicolas Winding Refn's “Only God Forgives” (in which Ryan Gosling wordlessly endures a vicious rant from his on-screen mother, played by Kristin Scott Thomas) and James Gray's “The Immigrant” (in which Joaquin Phoenix shouts down Marion Cotillard).

The offerings ranged from Wong Kar-Wai's new kung fu film, “The Grandmaster,” which has already opened in Asia to mixed reviews, to “One Chance,” which appears to be a sentimental biopic of British reality television's opera-singing star Paul Potts. Shane Salerno's documentary “Salinger,” about the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger, was sold as a thriller-mystery with famous talking heads: Tom Wolfe, Edward Norton, Gore Vidal.

Lee Daniels's next film, “The Butler” - starring Forest Whitaker as a character based on Eugene Allen, who served eight American presidents in the convulsive years from 1952 to 1986 - was sold with notes of “Forrest Gump” and a dollop of “The Help.” Plum attention was also paid to Oprah's supporting role, and the female moviegoers Mr. Weinstein said he hoped she would draw.

Nicole Kidman plays Princess Grace in “Grace of Monaco,” though a volcanic Tim Roth, as her husband, Prince Rainier, seemed to steal the trailer. And Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts face off in the John Wells adaptation of “August: Osage County.”

Of course, Mr. Weinstein does love a good controversy, and the most intriguing footage may have been “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” based on Nelson Mandela's 1994 memoir. In the footage, Idris Elba delivers impassioned speeches, sure, but he's also seen making bombs, blowing up buildings and ripping off his shirt to reveal a buff, action-star chest.

“This is not Mommy's Mandela,” said Mr. Weinstein, who dismissed HBO's “Invictus,” starring Morgan Freeman. “You're going to see stuff that's pretty controversial, and it was all in the book - his relationship with his first wife, before Winnie.”

Mr. Weinstein said the recent Boston Marathon bombings did not make him consider cutting scenes of Mandela making bombs and exploding government buildings. “They made the bombs,” he said. “They didn't blow up anybody, but they blew up buildings, and somebody could have inadvertently been hurt. We tell it the way he told it.”

But, wait, there's more: “Crouching Tiger 2″ is the second of five planned films based on the Wang Dulu book cycle, and the company announced that it was picking up “Philomena,” a Stephen Frears film about a mother (played by Judi Dench) who reconnects with the adult son (Steve Coogan) she put up for adoption decades before.

“We reached, and we had the wherewithal,” Mr. Weinstein said in an interview, after a fan baffled him by asking to take an iPhone photo with him.

“And it's not about the Oscars,” he continued. “It's about, can we sustain a series of good movies over the course of a year? We've never done that. We've always said, here's three Oscar movies in the fourth quarter. We're going to do nine movies every year and see if there's an audience in March - and there may not be. I know there's an audience in August because of people getting sick of the superhero movies. By Aug. 1, you just want to see something where people speak.”