Cannes, 5/25.

Cannes announces the Cinefondation awards. Jury President Jia Zhangke: "We were very stimulated by the films we saw, coming from the different countries and the different styles. They aroused my passion for film and made me want to go back to film school."

"The competition lineup has been notably strong, on occasion galvanizing, resulting in more cheers from the international press than jeers (a beloved tradition) than I've heard in the past decade," writes Manohla Dargis. "One reason for joy is that word 'art,' which isn't always mentioned in the same breath, much less the same paragraph, when Americans talk about movies."

As it happens, the New York Times is running another Cannes piece today on the other side of the movies' coin, as it were: "Amid the glamour and the French Riviera sun, more and more Wall Street banks, private equity firms and hedge funds are coming to the 12-day Cannes festival - the world's largest international film market - to try to arrange and finance entertainment deals," reports Liza Klaussmann for the New York Times. "More money is streaming into the industry, and that has helped raise the number of American firms present at Cannes, which is up 7 percent this year, compared with a 3 percent rise in overall participants, according to Jerome Paillard, who heads the film market, which is where the deals are done."

"[T]he foreign appetite for US productions is tumbling, with foreign markets turning to their own locally produced movies to fill the void," reports John Horn in the Los Angeles Times. Also: Second chances at Cannes for Death Proof and Expired.

The Guardian's Xan Brooks bids farewell to Cannes: "In the gangway I run into Razia Iqbal, the BBC's arts correspondent. We mull over what we saw and what we didn't, and I mention that I didn't think much of Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights. 'He's on the plane,' she says. 'Go over and tell him.' Obviously I don't do this. One, because it wouldn't be polite, and two, because by this point I am fed up with the whole gaudy fandango. All I want is to be home."

For the Independent, Sheila Johnston looks back on what, for her, were the highlights.

"Everyone seems to agree that there have been quite a few fine films at the Cannes Film Festival this year," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "What they entirely can't agree upon is which films they are." He checks around.

Posted by dwhudson at May 25, 2007 8:58 AM