Cannes 2013

[Chris Knipp]

More...

This was the one Rian Johnson rave-tweeted about. Lowery definitely is an indie director. But D'Angelo added later a compliment on Lowery's editing on UPSTREAM COLOR.

Mike D'Angelo ‏@gemko 40m
Ain't Them Bodies Saints (Lowery): W/O. I have apparently lost all touch with what most people consider first-rate indie filmmaking.

[Chris Knipp]

MID-POINT



D'Angelo has a mid-point summary (Sunday, 19 May 2013). Considering all the many selections in the whole of Cannes, it''s a thin offering:

Mike D'Angelo ‏@gemko 2h [>Twitter]
Favorite Cannes films at roughly the halfway point: 1. The Past, Farhadi (by far); 2. The Selfish Giant, Barnard; 3. Young & Beautiful, Ozon

If you look at the Le Film Francais daily collation of French reviews, you'd add A TOUCH OF SIN (Jia) and the Un Certain Regard one he said he might be too heterosexual to appreciate, THE STRANGER BY THE LAKE (Alain Guiraudie), which also have good reviews.

D'Angelo has pleaded that his walking out of four movies doesn't mean he doesn't like movies, he takes an aisle seat, but Just every movie I see by fledgling filmmakers. I don't walk out of films by established auteurs[>Twitter]. The justification for so many W/O's is that this keeps him more sane and rested to see what he considers the good stuff, and just gives him time, if he has a badge allowing him to walk in to ones he didn't originally commit to, to attend more screenings. That's me saying this. It is wise to take an aisle seat and be able to escape, for an "iffy" screening.

Anyway, it may be midpoint at Cannes (though it isn't quite -- he said "roughly"), but a lot of that "insane lineup" Johann remarked on still remains to be seen, I believe:

James Gray
Jim Jarmusch
Adelletif Kechiche
Takaishi Miike
Alexander Payne
Roman Polanski
Steven Soderbergh
Nicolas Winding Refn
Arnaud de Pallières
Paolo Sorrentino
Valentina Bruni Tedeschi

That's from the Competition slate, not including Director's Fortnight and Un Certain Regard. Plus these titles Out of Competition:

ALL IS LOST (J.C. Chandor)
BLOOD TIES (Guillaume Canet)
THE LAST OF THE UNJUST (Claude Lanzmann)

[Chris Knipp]

Those last three OUT OF COMPETITION FILMS may be pretty far-out.

ALL IS LOST is first an at-sea survival flick shot in a tank built for the making of James Cameron's TITANIC by a director (who dealt with the very different theme of the Wall Street meltdown in his successful debut) starring Robert Redford with no dialogue and no other actors.

BLOOD TIES (Guillaume Canet of TELL NO ONE) screened today (19 May): GUARDIAN first look review. "Guillaume Canet's English-language debut is a whopping cop-opera that cruises slowly round 1970s Brooklyn, Marion Cotillard and Clive Owen in the front seat, belting out the tunes at full blast." Hmmm. I don't know..... Xian Brooks gives it three out of five stars.

THE LAST OF THE UNJUST (Claude Lanzmann) just may be too solemn and disturbing to be in competition or there may be other reasons. It turns the focus onto Jewish responsibility for the Holocaust, aiming to "put a spotlight on Benjamin Murmelstein, an Austrian Jew who was appointed by Adolf Eichmann as head of the Jewish Council of Elders and rule over Theresienstadt." >A full comment on the film from Richard Brody in The Front Row, his New Yorker film blog, and also a little essay on it by Daniel Kasman in MUBI.

By the way maybe I should have explained that:

THE SELFISH GIANT, the second-best-rated Cannes film so far, is directed by Clio Bernard, whose THE ARBOR (SFIFF 2011) I reviewed, and was an exceptionally original documentary about down and out Brits. THE SELFISH GIANT seems hard to describe. It's a secular re-thinking of a Christian-themed Oscar Wilde children's tale that's very compelling without being as formally inventive as THE ARBOR, being "a more straightforwardly social realist drama in the super-evolved "Loach 3.0" style of Andrea Arnold or Lynne Ramsay" (GUARDIAN) concerning two boys trying to survive by their wits. Glowing GUADIAN review by Peter Bradshaw. Remember D'Angelo's tweet said "Had you shown this to me blind I'd have bet the farm it was Shane Meadows. Like SOMERS TOWN as tragedy." And Bradshaw ought to have mentioned Shane Meadows, a very gifted and underappreciated English filmmaker. I loved SOMERS TOWN (2009).

[Chris Knipp]

DAY SIX: Monday 20 May

Mike D'Angelo Tweet reviews:

Shield of Straw (Miike): 64. Sure, this is schlock, but for a good while it's pretty terrific schlock. Why it's 2 hours plus is a mystery.

Blind Detective (To): 49. Responses will vary widely based on one's tolerance for super-broad HK comedy. I came around a little by the end.

Stop-Over (Bakhtiari): W/O. Making a doc about Iranians stuck in Greece is like shooting 90 mins. of people waiting for a delayed flight.

That first rating looks over-indulgent, and Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN's review gave SHIELD OF STRAW one star out of five, comment: "hamstrung by lack of plot logic." Keith Ulrich didn't like it either; his review says it "starts as a tense thriller, quickly becomes a tedious morality play," seeing it as a great falling off since Miike's "underappreciated" 3D HARI-KIRI.

The GUARDIAN'S Cannes blogger Xian Brooks's DAY SIX blog opens with a vivid account of the woozy confusion the festival causes, then provides a series of thumbnail reviews (but does not mention some of the top rated films) in his quick summary of what he's seen and reviewed so far:

And still the films keep coming. Blood Ties is brazen, cheesy and oddly enjoyable. Grand Central is stolid, earthy, yet a little undigested in its marriage of schematic romance with punchy social-realism. I love Alejandro Jodorowsky's La Danza de la Realidad – a woozy reimagining of the director's boyhood in Chile – and I try to love Hirokazu Kore-eda's baby-swap sitcom Like Father, Like Son, though it's too cute and skimpy to properly hit home. I can't see it as a Palme d'Or contender, though I have a sneaking suspicion that Steven Spielberg may like it. , , ,The Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis remains my favourite competition entry so far.

He omits mention here of THE PAST, THE SELFISH GIANT, and YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL, not to mention STRANGER BY THE LAKE. Response to Jodorovsky's return to the screen seems positive.

SHIELD OF STRAW (Miike) VARIETY (Peter Debruge) review: "enticing concept," "lackluster treatment." Slick studio look and Nolan-esque sound but, "That said, even the hackiest of Hollywood writers would have known how to fix its considerable script problems." In her 22 May NY TIMES piece Manohla Dargis describes it as entertaining and worthy of a Bruce Willis remake, just badly received because it shouldn't have been shown in competition. This from Dargis led to D'Angelo's tweet

Mike D'Angelo ‏@gemko 3h
Relieved to finally find somebody else (Manohla) who thinks SHIELD OF STRAW is good dumb fun. Wish it had premiered at TIFF instead.

BLIND DETECTIVE (To) VARIETY (Justin Chang) review: "a deranged and delirious smorgasbord of a movie," "unusually demented romp, a madcap mystery-romance that sustains a light, bouncy tone and a decent hit-to-miss laff ratio even in scenes involving strangulation, dismemberment and cannibalism". Sounds like he's gone Korean.

STOP-OVER (Bakhtiari) HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (Neil Young) review outlines the importance and wide scope of the topic, but confirms D'Angelo's negative assessment: ". . .as an evocation of stultifyingly frustrating stasis this Cannes Directors' Fortnight premiere succeeds perhaps a little too well, and may thus struggle to stand out from the pack in today's crowded non-fiction field."

THE DANCE OF REALITY/LA DANZA DE LA REALIDAD (Jodorovsky) VARIETY (Scott Foundas) review says it's "As purely personal a film as Jodorowsky has ever made, Dance features no shortage of the bizarro imagery and willful atonalities that have long been his stock-in-trade, but it all seems to stem from a more sincere, coherent place this time than in the flamboyant head movies (El Topo, The Holy Mountain)."

Apropos of two films from earlier, for A TOUCH OF SIN (Jia Zhang-ke) the director gave a lot of interviews (with an interpreter) including to Mahohla Dargis of the NY Times, whose Sunday column raves about how "wonderful" INSIDE LELEWEN DAVID (Coens) is, may perhaps buy into Jia's overt disapproval of current everyday Chinese violence in the film that D'Angelo called "a bit tract-y" and calling it (Dargis does) "his finest since his 2006 feature, Still Life."

[Chris Knipp]

DAY SEVEN: Tuesday 21st May


TONI SERVILLO IN THE GREAT BEAUTY

Mike D'Angelo tweet reviews:

The Great Beauty (Sorrentino): 58. Folks who like Fellini more than I do will flip for this. Basically his DOLCE VITA. Lovely, rambling.

Behind the Candelabra (Soderbergh): 55. A familiar trajectory distinguished only by its once-forbidden (in mainstream culture) milieu.

A Castle in Italy (Bruni Tedeschi): 24. Imagine SUMMER HOURS stripped of beauty, tenderness, grace, intelligence, and coherence.

As I Lay Dying (Franco): W/O. Yeah, no.

Note the 58 puts Paolo Sorrentino's film in D'Angelo's top eight so far at Cannes. It also has the great Toni Servillo in it, who has done some of his best work for Sorrentino,, so that's another reason for seeing it. I thought from THIS WILL BE THE PLACE (with Sean Penn) "lovely" and "rambling" was a good description of Sorrentino's structure before too.

More Tuesday Cannes to come.

Spderbergh was interviewed bu Terry Gross on PBS today about this Liberace film, which stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. Nothing insightful was provided, if there is anything. Liberace doesn't seem an interesting figure beyond the campness. Evidently a good effort by Douglas, especially after having throat cancer. D'Angelo addes another tweet:

Mike D'Angelo ‏@gemco
Douglas is pretty great, creating a real character beneath the caricature. Damon works hard to overcome being way, way too old.

(If I remember the interview correctly Scott Thorson was 40 years younger than Liberace. Check that: he was 47 years younger than Liberace.)


DOUGLAS AND DAMON IN BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

VARIETY rates Sorrentino's THE GREAT BEAUTY/LA GRANDE BELLEZZA highly, with reservations. Jay Weissberg: "Rome in all its splendor and superficiality, artifice and significance, becomes an enormous banquet too rich to digest in one sitting in Paolo Sorrentino’s densely packed, often astonishing “The Great Beauty.”" Xian Brooks of the GUARDIAN: "Did I say that Inside Llewyn Davis was my favourite film in Cannes competition? It now now has a serious rival in La Grande Bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino's inky-black satire on la dolce vita and the withering flesh. . .La Grande Bellazza is opulent, intoxicating; a film that is not so much projected as draped like velvet - or possibly hung like a mirror."

A CASTLE IN ITALY got 1 out of 5 stars from Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN:

Actor-turned-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi has given us probably the worst film of the Cannes competition so far: a smug, twee confection about a family losing their house--Bradshaw.

[Chris Knipp]

DAY EIGHT: Wednesday 22 May


ROBERT REDFORD IN ALL IS LOST

Mike D'Angelo's Cannes tweet reviews for Wednesday:

All Is Lost (Chandor): 74. Just what I'd hoped for: A survival tale pared to its purely visual essence. Ambiguous ending's a tad cute

Bastards (Denis): 63. Like DEMONLOVER, weds magnificent form to vaguely disturbing, kinda inane content. Enthralling in the moment.

Grigris (Haroun): 48. Well, it's somewhat lively, at least. But combining "falls for a hooker" + "steals from thugs" = cliché cité.

Only God Forgives (Winding Refn): 17. Gratuitous sadism smothered in the same noxiously garish notion of "style" he used for FEAR X.

Apropos of the last he says at least people have something to hate now, "bold enough to be worth despising." D'Angelo's reactions gave him a wide spread today from his lowest non W/O rating yet (lower than any last year except his 9 for Lee Danaiels' PAPER BOY) all the way up to his second favorite of the fest so far after Farhadi's THE PAST in Chandor's ALL IS LOST. (He gave THE PAST an 82; though he gave HOLY MOTORS an outlandish 88 last year).

Other critics don't rate ALL IS LOST so high, and at least one, Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN, gave ONLY GOD FORGIVES a rave, 5 out of 5 stars. Bradshaw's may be a minority opinion. but it looks like ONLY GOD FORGIVES is destined to be good box office, maybe even provide Oscar nominations. All comment on Kristin Scott Thomas' strong performance as the mother bent on revenge.

ONLY GOD FORGIVES was loved by Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN -- 5 stars out of 5.

Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn re-team for an emotionally breathtaking, aesthetically brilliant and immensely violent thriller set amongst US expatriates in Bangkok--Bradshw.

Guy Lodge in HITFLILX li goes into detail about its stylishness and seems mesmerized by it, while recongnizing its serous flaws

"Only God Forgives" is dull, but it's also oddly transfixing, and not just in the sheer splendor of its craft.--Lodge

Peter Debruge of VARIETY disliked the film but focused less on offensive violence and more on how uninvolving the film is and how lacking in affect Gosling's performance:

The wallpaper emotes more than Ryan Gosling does in “Only God Forgives,” an exercise in supreme style and minimal substance from “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn. In retrospect, the controlled catatonia of Gosling’s previous perfs is nothing compared to the balled fist he plays here, a cipher easily upstaged by Kristin Scott Thomas’ lip-smacking turn as a vindictive she-wolf who travels to Bangkok seeking atonement for the death of her favorite son. As hyper-aggressive revenge fantasies go, it’s curious to see one so devoid of feeling, a veniality even “Drive” fans likely won’t be inclined to forgive.--Debruge.

Debruge calls Gosling's "turn" "near-catatonic." Gosling was reportedly booed -- in absentia, according to Peter Howell of the TORONTO STAR,, having begged off appearing, perhaps to avoid "facing a firing squad of disappointed journos." Gosling was not present for the Cannes Q&A.

LINDON AND MASTROIANNI IN THE BASTARDS/LES SALAUDS

ALL IS LOST got a rave from Justin Chang in VARIETY, who said Chandor "avoids the sophomore slump" with "an impressively spare, nearly dialogue-free stranded-at-sea drama starring a superb Robert Redford." Andrew Pulver of the GUARDIAN also called Redford's performance "impressive" but gave the film only 3 out of 5 stars and said it's "a little too pared down for its own good."

THE BASTARDS/LES SALAUDS by Claire Denis got mixed reviews. Xian Brooks of the GUARDIAN gave it only 2 out of 5 stars and said it is "not Denis at her best." Brooks asserts that Denis was "snubbed" in effect by the film's inclusion in the Un Certain Regard section rather than the main competition but this is logical because it really "intrigues more than it actually delivers." D'Angelo in effect acknowledges this. But it can be satisfying spending time with Denis. This film for example has a typically appealing cast that includes the great Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Michel Subor of THE INTRUDER, Lola Créton of SOMETHING IN THE AIR, always cool Denis regular Grégoire Colin, and another superb regular, Alex Descas (also notable recently in Jarmusch's THE LIMITS OF CONTROL and Belvaux's RAPT). David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER gave the film a detailed review I wouldn't want to summarize, again making it sound utterly fascinating even if ultimately unsatisfying. It too is a revenge flick, and has elements of THE INTRUDER (which D'Angelo doesn't like but was what made me a Denis convert).

GRIGRIS seems a film it's agreed is a creditable if minor effort by a significant African director, with great dance sequences. David Lodge has a nice review of it in VARIETY. In the GUARDIAN Bradshaw gives it 3 out of 5 stars and says:

A minor work from the emerging master of African cinema, Mahamat Saleh-Haroun, this is elevated by a heightened female perspective and some rousing dance scenes

FRENCH POSTER FOR ONLY GOD FORGIVES.
IT OPENED IN FRANCE TODAY, 22 MAY

French press for ONLY GOD FORGIVES good so far -- Allociné 3.6, only 6 reviews in.

[Johann]

Amazing thread here, Chris. Many thanks.

Peter Howell of the Toronto Star has been (brilliantly) covering Cannes once again, and I'll post later about his takes and my thoughts on the festival this year.

Go Polanski!

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, Johann, I'm glad you're following it and look forward to info on Peter Howell of TORONTO STAR's Cannes reviews. I will start checking them out myself. In fact I've already added a link to his piece on ONLY GOD FORGIVES and Gosling's festival no-show, Scott Thomas' distancing herself from its genre and her character despite her star turn in the film.

[Chris Knipp]

DAY EIGHT: Wednesday 22 May (cont'd)


STILL FROM BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

On the right is Léa Seydoux, who keeps being one to watch.

D'Angelo had a busy day and has yet another tweet review:

Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Kechiche): 69. Like CANDELABRA, a very basic rise/fall relationship tale. But the extra hour makes a difference.

The run-time of BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is 175 minutes; CANDELABRA's is literally an hour less, 118 minutes. This is now D'Angelo's third highest rated Cannes 2013 film. In his DAY SIX AV Club column he gave CANDELABRA a B (tweet rating 55) , as he did Sorrentino's THE GREAT BEAUTY (which he gave a 58 to).

NB: Though some of the Engnlish-language reviews may not mention it, the French title is La vie d'Adèle - Chapitres 1 et 2 ("The Life of Adele - Chapters 1 and 2"), or just LA VIE D'ADELE, the way it's given on Allociné (9 October French release). It is based on a 2010 graphic novel by Julie Maroh, Le bleu est une couleur chaude ("Blue Is a Hot Color"). A review of BLUE the film by Jordan Mintzer in Hollywood Reporter supplies plenty of detail of context, source, and relation to Kechiche's oeuvre; this is seen as a return to his roots, and it even takes off from Marivaux, as does L'ESQUIVE/GAMES OF LOVER AND CHANCE, his breakout 2003 film that won all the Césars, as did his next, THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN. BLUE is the story of a teenager (part two ten years later) who grows up in the arms of an older woman (Seydoux). Like THE STRANGER BY THE LAKE, it has unsimulated same-sex sex, only female this time, or so some viewers think.

Manohla Dargis of the NY TIMES has a 22 May Cannes columm that has little good to say about Winding Refn. We learn why VARIETY said the wallpaper was more expressive in this movie than Ryan Gosling: there's a lot about the wallpaper, more about that than about motivation. The question remains why D'Angelo and Peter Bradshaw like this so much. Dargis says Thierry Frémaux the Cannes main programmer "is credited with' injecting more mainstream and commercial titles including action and horror. But it has not worked well with the press, who generally rejected ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Dargis thinks SHIELD OF STRAW is a more fun version of crazy violence and would have been better received in another section of the fest. She thinks SHIELD OF STRAW could have been a much earlier Hollywood studio picture, only with shorter run-time. and that difference I think is key. I just watched the over-two-hour PAIN & GAIN, and can vouch for the fact that nutty violence palls well before that amount of time. Older films had a stronger sense of structure and with it a stronger sense of economy and of timing.

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (Kéchiche) as VARIETY notes, must be a surprise coming from this director, though his last big picture (BLACK VENUS, NYFF 2010, which I did not like) was also a big change of pace from his earlier work. Justin Chang summarizes BLUE thus:

A searingly intimate character study marked by the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory.

All this unfolds in Kéchiche’s signature style of long, flowing conversations marked by overlapping dialogue, performed in a vein of seemingly artless naturalism, but sculpted with unerring precision and a strong sense of drive.

CANERA D'OR: The prize for the best first film. Robert Kohler of the FSLC has a column for FILM COMMENT describing the best candidates he's seen, in his view, ILO ILO, BENDS, AND THE LUNCHBOX.

[Chris Knipp]

FRENCH PRESS RATINGS OF CANNES FILMS SHOWN SO FAR (als listed for Wed. in LE FILM FRANCAIS "DAILY")

In descending order:

COMPETITION

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA 3
LLEWYN DAVIS 2.9
THE PAST 2.9
TOUCH OF SIN 2.78
JIMMY P. 2.56
BORGMAN 1.9
CHATEAU IN TUSCANY 1.8
JEANNE & JOLIE 2.13
GATSBY 1.3
HELI .4

UN CERTAIN REGARD

GRAND CENTRAL 2.6
OMAR 2,66
STRANGER BY THE LAKE 2.25
MIELE 1.75
BLING RING 1,7
LACKING IMAGE 1
DEATH MARCH 1
FRUITVALE STATION .9
BENDS .5

NOTE: ONLY GOD FORGIVES on Allociné based on six reviews has a 3.7, but it's not listed on LE FILM FRANCAIS yet; they include up to 15 publications. THE SELFISH GIANT is not listed because it was in Directors Fortnight. Of course many other films have been reviewed but these are the main contenders as listed by that magazine.

P.S. All this changed later. See below.

[Chris Knipp]

DAY NINE: Thursday 23 May


BRUCE DERN & WILL FORTE IN NEBRASKA

New D'Angelo tweet review for Thursday 23 May:

Nebraska (Payne): 71. "Does he have Alzheimer's?" "He just believes things that people tell him." "Oh, that's too bad."

D'Angelo adds to a query that though in his system this normally means a B+ (not an A), it is still one of the best films he's seen at Cannes this year. In fact 71 ranks NEBRASKA third among the films D'Angelo has rated so far, after THE PAST (82), ALL IS LOST (74), and above BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (69), THE SELFISH GIANT (68) and YOUNG & BEAUTIFUL (66). Note that these are not all Competition.

VARIETY's Scott Foundas compares it to Kurosawa's IKIRU and David Lynch's STRAIGHT STORY, which sounds good, but how good is a bit hard to say, though he is admiring of the "career-crowning performance" of Bruce Dern (the lead), and impressive work by Will Forte and Stacy Keach. This may be another Cannes Best Actor contender, along with Michael Douglas for BEHIND THE CHANDELIER.

GUARDIAN's Peter Bradshaw's 'first look' review of NEBRASKA gives it 4 out of 5 stars. Bradshaw says "Kate. Squibb [as Dern's wife], who played Jack Nicholson's wife in About Schmidt, could now be in line for a best actress award with this far juicier role, challenging Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos from Blue is the Warmest Colour." So, some great performances in this low-key, modest, black & white film. Bradshaw notes that "After the glossy and faintly implausible Oscar-bait picture, The Descendants," this is a return to "a more natural and personal movie language"; he sees links with the work of Bob Rafelson and Hal Ashby.

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's review by Todd McCarthy (who let's remember used to be VARIETYs top critic) confirms that while this is less commercial than THE DESCENDANTS, it's clearly destined for critical accolades and solid art house box office. I'm mentally penciling it in to my Enlish/American 2013 Ten Best List already, sight unseen.

[cinemabon]

I cannot begin to express my appreciation for your complete reporting here, Chris. I'm looking forward to "Candelabra" premiering this weekend on HBO.

[Chris Knipp]

Let us know what you think. I don't have HBO myself.

[Chris Knipp]

Updated ratings of competition films screened so far:

Mike D'Angelo ‏@gemko 3h
So INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and A TOUCH OF SIN are the favorites, followed by THE PAST and THE GREAT BEAUTY. Coens the only runaway hit.

There is a Reuters article giving the competition films and the 1-4 rankings here. I'll collate it later.

REUTERS SCORES
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS 3.3
A TOUCH OF SIN 3.0
THE PAST 2.8
THE GREAT BEAUTY 2.8
BDHIND THE CANDELABRA 2.5
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON 2.5
JEUNE & JOLIE 2,4
JIMMY P. 2.0
HELI 1,6
A CASTLE IN ITALY 1.6
SHIELD OF STRAW 1.3

[Chris Knipp]

MORE DAY NINE


STILL FROM QUEMADE-DIEZ'S THE GOLDEN CAGE

GUARDIAN's Peter Bradshaw has a review of the Un Certain Regard film THE GOLDEN CAGE/LA JAULA DE ORO by Spanish director Diego Quemada-Diez who worked as an assistant director with Ken Loach, has made a film about young Guatemalans suffering a grueling trip through Mexico on the way to "El Norte," which he says is closer to the gritty, simple style of the master than current British acolytes like Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard. He found it moving and beautiful, as well as realistically free of any kind of feel-good finale.

Oh, Cannes... you just can't get enough publicity!
--cinemabon

Never enough publicity dep'd, cont'd: There was another big jewel theft in Cannes.

CANNES (Reuters) - The Cannes film festival was hit by a second suspected jewelry heist on Thursday after a diamond necklace worth 2 million euros ($2.6 million) disappeared during a star-studded party, according to upmarket jeweler De Grisogono and somebody passed himself as a Korean director and got entree into stuff, posed for snapshots with people etc.

Plus:

Bucking Gangnam Style star Psy was treated to the full works during his appearance in Cannes – the only problem for organisers is that it wasn’t actually him.

A man posing as the South Korean YouTube sensation partied with the stars, was lavished with bubbly and danced on French TV as fellow stars at the film festival scrambled to hang out with him.

Cannes 2013 films yet to be screened or get ratings:

THE IMMIGRANT by James Gray, USA
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Joaquin Phoenix, Marion Cotillard. Synopsis: An immigrant is forced into a life of burlesque until a magician tries to save her and reunite her with her sister.

MICHAEL KOHLHASS by Arnaud des Pallières, France
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Melusine Mayance, Delphine Chuillot. Ali Mosaffa. Synopsis: A period revenge drama which centres on a horse dealer in 16th century France.

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE by Jim Jarmusch, USA
Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, Mia Wasikowska. Synopsis: An underground musician and his enigmatic lover are together for several centuries.

VENUS IN FURS/LA VÉNUS À LA FOURRURE by Roman Polanski, France
Stars: Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric. Synopsis: An actress tries to convince a director to give her a role.