Wrapping Cannes 08.

Any entry gathering overviews of this year's just-wrapped Cannes Film Festival for the next week or so needs to begin with Manohla Dargis and AO Scott's in the New York Times. Just about all the angles are covered - critical evaluations, awards, sales and future prospects for the films on hand - and livened up with commentary and quotage.

Updated through 5/31.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw looks back on the highs and lows. Then, a bit more on the festival as an enduring brand from Toby Rose.

Karina Longworth indexes the SpoutBlog's coverage and lists her five favorite films.

Anthony Kaufman lists his "Cannes Top 11, and the Ones that Got Away."

"As always with Cannes, some of the most satisfying films were not found in the official competition," writes the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan.

ST VanAirsdale checks the status of the New York films that screened at Cannes.

Updates, 5/27: "The festival began smashingly and ended beautifully," writes Patrick Z McGavin at Stop Smiling.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir presents a list of his "top 10 films from the 61st Festival de Cannes. First and foremost they're movies I liked, but they're also films that come out of here with some critical momentum, and that ought to show up on art-house-type screens all over the world in the coming year. I've tacked on a handful of more problematic films that didn't thrive here but deserve a second look, away from all the overcaffeinated, underslept craziness of Cannes."

IndieWIRE indexes its coverage.

Online listening tip. John Powers talks Cannes for half an hour on NPR.

Another online listening tip, another half an hour: the IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore.

Daniel Kasman indexes his reviews for the Auteurs' Notebook.

"Missing kids, dead kids, wayward kids - they haunted the frames, drove the plots, and without necessarily ever taking center stage at the 61st Cannes Film Festival, stood out as a recurrent presence at this year's prestigious world movie showcase: a collective symbol of lost innocence, perhaps, or a looming dread about the future of the human species." Anthony Kaufman at FilmCatcher.

Update, 5/28: Cinematical wraps it up.

Updates, 5/29: "And slowly, with 'les stars' and their entourages now gone, the Cannois began to re-emerge on the streets of their own city, blinking a little, as if seeing the place for the first time," writes Steven Erlanger in the New York Times. "Monday is the 'Day of the Cannois,' and as a gesture to the residents, who rarely venture out during the festival unless they work in service industries, the Palais shows the prize-winning film on Monday to all who can prove, with their electricity bill, that they live here. By Tuesday, the judgments were in. There was pride that a French film had won the Palme d'Or for the first time in 21 years. But..."

"[O]ne can reliably emerge from seeing a near masterpiece only to discover that everyone - or at least the influential industry trade newspapers - has declared the very same movie une catastrophe!... This is Cannes, after all, where dismissing movies out of hand and storming out of screenings before the end are points of professional pride for some festival vets - as if they had somewhere better to be." Scott Foundas turns a must-read overview into the LA Weekly.

"Throughout its 61st gathering, Cannes proved especially strong in the unexplored regions outside the main competition, particularly in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar, which celebrated its 40th year mainly by a having a solid program of independent cinema from around the world." Eric Kohn in the New York Press.

Anne Thompson looks back on the "Best of the Fest." Topping that list: Il Divo.

A profile from Rob Nelson: "Minnesota-based filmmaker Aleshia Mueller is working the market at the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France. For her, that means putting up fliers - 'propaganda,' as she jokes - for her film Lady of the Woods, a 10-minute documentary portrait of octogenarian North Country cookbook author and botanist Alma Christensen."

Rob Nelson's got a list, too: "I can earnestly recommend the half-dozen below - all of which, with the exception of the potentially unmarketable Ché, seem likely to make it to our local artsyplex within the year."

"[A]fter 12-plus days of looking at a selection of tasteful, well-made and entirely bleak movies, society's rules were breaking down into sweaty anarchy," writes Matt Singer in his wrap-up at the IFC.

Andrew O'Hehir has an acquisitions update.

Update, 5/30: "It was 21 years ago when I filmed part of Let's Get Lost in Cannes, as well as screening my first documentary, Broken Noses, at the Jean Cocteau theatre and photographing for Per Lui," writes Bruce Weber in the Guardian. "Yes, there was a lot of confusion, but that was the best way for me to be with Chet, because if he didn't show up, we always had something else to do. But guess what? There he was, on time, hair slicked back, trumpet case in one hand and his girlfriend in the other."

Update, 5/31: Online listening tip. James Rocchi and Glenn Kenny discuss this year's edition.

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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 26, 2008 3:06 PM