Cannes, 5/16.

"Our premiere yesterday was attended by French people," blogs Stephen Winter, producer of one of the most talked about movies of the year, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation: "[N]ot cinephiles, not industry folks but French citizens who bought a ticket, stood in line and sat their asses down. We have been told that the French are not exceptionally effusive people, especially about American films. They only give it up when they want to give it up and they only go nuts when they really feel like going nuts. After Tarnation, they went nuts." No wonder the entry ends with, "I love Cannes!"

Jason Solomons finds "a reinvigorated Cannes, already making up for last year's feeble effort when cinema failed to respond to the world's shifting landscape." What follows in his piece for the Observer is a quick dismissal of Tarantino's insistence that politics won't play a role this year, and then, capsule reviews of the films screened in competition so far. Also: A bit of trash and Vic Groskop chooses six names to watch.

Via Movie City News, Whit Stillman briefly reviews Henry-Jean Servat's In the Spirit of Cannes for the New York Post.

The Independent's Jonathan Romney catches Shrek 2, and it's fine, he says, but the real news here was unveiled at the press conference where DreamWorks "announced that in future it would be deploying two computer animations a year. It is a serious threat to Disney..."

Posted by dwhudson at May 16, 2004 10:19 AM