Cannes, 5/16.

"It's probably not an exaggeration to say that were it not for Cannes, directors like myself would not get the chance to make the kind of films we are compelled to." Duane Hopkins, whose Better Things screens as part of Critics' Week, blogs for the Guardian.

"The real Cannes, like the festival itself, is a diverse and many-storied thing," writes the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "It can be found on the Rue d'Antibes, with its gaudy boutiques and its coterie of wealthy old women with their poodle sidekicks. It can be found in the picturesque side-streets of the old town up the hill, and it can be glimpsed in the peripheral landscape we whip through on the way from the airport; a place of forlorn car showrooms, take-outs and sex shops. The real Cannes exists cheek-by-jowl with the festival Cannes but the two camps rarely fraternise. It's as though each has agreed, by mutual consent, to ignore the other."

"Cannes grafts many parts and forms of the French cultural identity - a bruising, sometimes blunt collage of the institutional, political, artistic, and nationalist," writes Patrick Z McGavin for Stop Smiling. "But the festival is quite possibly the only time of the year when director-driven movies are granted equal footing with the technological and cultural apparatus that is Hollywood."

"The trailer for Tsui Hark's She Ain't Mean - a collaboration with My Sassy Girl's Kwak Jae-Yong - looks surprisingly light and airy and fun," notes Twitch's Todd Brown.

Another special section, but for those who read French: Le Nouvel Observateur.

Online viewing tip. Variety's Anne Thompson talks with Michael Moore about his sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11.

Posted by dwhudson at May 16, 2008 2:11 PM