Cannes, 5/20.

"The festival organizers have to feel pleased," assumes Patrick Z McGavin in Stop Smiling. "In past years, they appeared under constant institutional attack by the media for their programming choices. Right now, they are benefitting from a deep and strong lineup, while very few complaints have emerged."

On the other hand, Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE:

"Good, but not great. Accomplished, but not amazing. A consistent thread is emerging within this year's Cannes selection: Name directors are showing up with solid work that displays their talents, but doesn't transcend them or spin them into new, novel directions."

And according to Time's Richard Corliss, there's a "consensus that this session of Cannes, where more than half the competing films have already been shown, is a relatively weak one."

Must depend on who you bump into between screenings.

Regardless: "To celebrate the 61st Cannes Film Festival, Granta.com is revisiting some of its favourite writing on film."

"[S]peaking as one who has lately been wondering what [Spike] Lee has been up to this election year, I think now I know," blogs Rob Nelson, who's just seen a clip reel of Miracle at St Anna. "And, as they say in election years, I approve this message."

"What happened to me? How did I become such an arsehole?" But of course Toby Young's having a grand time in Cannes, promoting How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and knocking back a few with Simon Pegg.

Also in the Guardian:

• Xan Brooks: "Spare a thought for the ghosts of Cannes, the Palme d'Or winners of yesteryear. When Roland Joffé won for The Mission in 1986, he was hailed as the poster-boy for classy British cinema. Now he is back with his latest opus: a low-budget romance about two girls who fall in love at a t.A.T.u. gig. Suffice to say it is not in competition."

• "Jude Law yesterday swept into the Cannes film festival to explain why he was helping a documentary-maker who for the last 10 years has campaigned for an official day of ceasefire and non-violence." As Mark Brown reports, Jeremy Gilley's been working on the project, "and the result is the documentary The Day After Peace, which had its world premiere in Cannes last night."

• Geoffrey Macnab: "There was a comical moment when Tommy Lee Jones met distributors in Cannes this week to talk about his new project, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel Islands in the Stream. Jones is writing, producing, and directing the film; he will also star."

How bad is the economy this year? Scott Macaulay notes that the definitive indicator just might be found in Cannes.

"Following on from The Grudge, Sarah Michelle Gellar stars in another yet remake of an Asian horror pic with Possession, a rejig of Addicted, a supernatural(ish) thriller little seen outside of Korea," writes Variety's Leslie Felperin, having caught the film at the market. "Dully predictable Possession sees Gellar looking creeped out, or maybe just bored, when her husband's ne'er-do-well brother (Lee Pace) wakes up from a coma after a car accident with her still-comatose hubby's personality and memories seemingly uncannily transferred into his head."

Also, Yelena Nikolayeva's "late 90s-set Russian dramedy" Vanechka is " an essentially fluffy tale of a teenage girl forced to take care of a cute orphaned baby."

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2008 4:00 PM