Now I'm not sure if anyone of you are big arthouse buffs like I am, but if you are, you would know that the Cannes Fil Festival is ongoing at the moment.

Consisting of my favorute director, Park Chan Wok with his newst film, 'Thirst'.

However, even though my anticipation for this film is amazing, I have just got to say Antichrist.

Bloody wow.

What do you guys think?

Not my cup of tea, I'd just sit there complaining about how miserable the people are and how they should just go and make a cup of tea at home rather than going into the woods.

Best film I've seen for a long while was Midnight Cowboy (not a very recent one mind) Star Trek was also very fun.

Yeah, but neither of those were art house films?

Antichrist is.

Which is what the whole topic is about, the Cannes Film Festival.

Antichrist is a marmite film in full respect.

At the beginning the is like a really hardcore sex scene, like you can actually properly se it going in.

It's about a man and a woman who have a baby together and while they're having sex, the baby starts to climb, and accidentally falls out of the window and dies.

The woman is depressed by this because she cant get over it, and her husband takes her to this cabin in the forest by a lake, where she wrote her thesis on human behaviour.

She pretty much turns into a nutcase.

And well, I just think it's beautiful. But that is my take on it.

Didn't see any beauty in the trailer it has to be said, deliberate ugliness seemed to be the order of the day, best arthouse film I've seen recently was The Visitor, got Synedoche New York to watch when I have the time too. Where can you see the Cannes films then? Are they already released?

Like I said, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some people can see beauty in it, and others just can't open themselves wide enough to take it in.

It's actually called Festival De Cannes.

Dancer in the dark, was an amazing art house film, Bjork was awarded best actress for it when it won at Cannes.

Other, less famous directors like Kim Ki-duk with is an amazing Korean director, which did focus on prostitues, and pretty dark storylines, is also an art house director. His films, The Samaritan Girl, and The Bow are some of my all time favourite films.

You just have to be broad minded to watch them.

Ah pity, I'll leave you to it then

Have to say that Antichrist looks great visually so I may catch up with it on DVD, depends on the reviews. If it is going to be relentlessly grim I won't bother. I had high hopes for Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds but the general opinion seems to be that it is awful.

You and me both, I thought Tarantino, Brad Pitt, Tarantino's history and reputation = Win.

However sadly, it seems his reputation got the better of him.

Shane Meadows, the director of Dead Mans Shoes, said, "It's all well and good being a good director, and thinking that you have the right to be there, but each time you have to earn that right, it's no plain sailing in this business."

That is 100% true. Park Chan Wok's 'Old Boy' is one of the best films I have EVER seen, then he goes and makes 'I'm a Cyborg, but that's OK' Terrible, terrible, terrible.

I really liked that. I think if you intend watching I'm a Cyborg expecting another Old Boy then you would be sorely disappointed, but as a light-hearted story of love and relationships I'm a Cyborg is fantastic.

Mark

If you want a prime example of a good director making a rotten film, try Takashi Miike's "Happiness Of The Katakuris." Now that is terrible.

Hmm, I think there can be a touch of pretention in it as well. I'm extremely broad minded, but I'm not a sheep, I won't like something just because you have to have a certain mindset to "see the beauty," some of it's alright, some of it's sh!te, just like any other genre of anything, art, music, film, all of them have "brilliant" and all of them have "pick my brains out with a meat hook"

I think it's probably a case that "some people can see the beauty in it, and for others, it's just not their cup of tea" as with anything of that ilk.

Now for me Takashi Miike is also a mixed bag. Ichi the killer for me was bloody brilliant, so violent, yet so beautiful in it's own right. I also loved The Great Yokai War, I loved Imprint too, but then Visitor Q made me want to eat my own arm off, it was so bad. I really really hated that. REALLY.

Ah! Now I was considering renting Visitor Q, well aware that it could go either way. I'll put that to the bottom of my list then. Ichi was really good but painful to watch in places. Still, how many intro's to a film show the title of said movie being formed out of semen?

That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes a film for me.

Someone who isn't scared to go out of the norm and show just a little bit of diversity!

Watched the trailer, and to be brutally frank, I’d not want to pay to see that. Others may like it, but I am gleefully aware that there are times when the Emperor is stark naked.

This could equally be true of our dear old friend Quentin, who does like to inject a cruel sense of humour into his films. I don’t know if his current effort has that comedic cruelty about it (the trailer suggests that it does), but as it has been observed here, the reviews are mixed, so maybe it’s not hitting the target this time.

I’ve not really followed art house films, and I am unsure about what the defining qualities of them are. Hopefully they are not all self-indulgent monologues filmed in grainy film in log cabins.