CANNES 2010 (May 12-23)

5/23/10 - Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" won the Festival de Cannes' top honor, the coveted Palme d'Or, as the 63rd annual Festival de Cannes wrapped Sunday night.

Charlotte Gainsbourg joined jury president Tim Burton to present Weerasethakul with the prize at the traditional closing-night ceremony held in the Palais des Festivals, as the world's most famous film festival wrapped its 12-day run.

5/23/10 - Tim Burton and a jury of his cinematic peers (which include Kate Beckinsale and Benicio Del Toro) have a tough task ahead: sorting through a mixed bag of 19 entries competing for top honors at the Cannes Film Festival.

Among the handful of films that earned largely favorable reviews are the British ensemble drama "Another Year" from director Mike Leigh and French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois' "Of Gods and Men," a tale of martyrdom based on the true story of seven monks beheaded during Algeria's civil war in 1996.

Two other past Palme d'Or winners also are in the running — Britain's Ken Loach ("The Wind that Shakes the Barley") with his Iraq War thriller "Route Irish" and Iran's Abbas Kiarostami ("Taste of Cherry") with his cryptic love story "Certified Copy," starring Juliette Binoche.

Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, whose "Babel" won him the Cannes directing prize in 2006, is competing again with the well-received "Biutiful," featuring a stellar performance from Javier Bardem as a father supporting his family through various criminal rackets in Barcelona.

South Korea's Lee Chang-dong also earned warm reviews for "Poetry," his gentle drama about a grandmother who finds solace writing poems amid the onset of Alzheimer's and troubles with her broody grandson.

The lone American film in competition — Doug Liman's "Fair Game," starring Naomi Watts as outed CIA operative Valerie Plame and Sean Penn as her husband, Joe Wilson — received solid but restrained praise.

The competition was heavy on emerging talent, unlike last year's Cannes festival, whose contenders included films from such established directors as Ken Loach, Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodovar, Ang Lee, Jane Campion, Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke, whose "The White Ribbon" won the Palme d'Or.

This year's big names mostly screened their films outside the competition, among them Ridley Scott with opening-night premiere "Robin Hood," Oliver Stone with "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," Woody Allen with "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" and Stephen Frears with "Tamara Drewe," a light, breezy tale that Cannes crowds cheered amid the generally gloomy tone of the awards contenders.

5/22/10 – According to inside-finance crowd at Cannes, the pre-sale market has dried up and is never coming back. That, combined with fewer banks lending to producers, means equity investment is more important than ever. Even those private lenders still left in the game, say they want to fully finance their own movies with equity.

The trend at this year’s market has been for sales agents to make one or two key pre-sales, encouraging financiers in. But distributors have been folding their arms, waiting for completed product. Buyers used to jump in throughout a movie’s production, locking distribution rights for themselves. No more.

“We’ve converted into a completed film market, unless it’s a bigger project being sold by a handful of sales companies,” one financier tells me. “It’s changed forever and I don’t think it’s ever coming back.”

As for all those hot projects being talked up before the market, there’s been silence. Nothing about Tony Scott’s Potsdamer Platz, starring Javier Bardem, Mickey Rourke and Statham again; nor about McG’s adaption of Broadway musical Spring Awakening; no sales news about Nu Image’s Kane and Lynch, starring Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx.

There wasn’t much interest in finished projects either. Normally, there are three or four completed films that get buyers salivating. Not this Cannes. Sony Pictures Classics has been the only studio to flash its cash so far, buying domestic rights to three titles: Another Year, Of Gods and Men and In a Better World. Relativity Media bought US sci-fi movie Skyline. And IFC acquired US rights to Xavier Dolan’s Un Certain Regard entry Heartbeats. And that – for the most part – has been it.

5/19/10 - In its second swift acquisition, IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” and Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats.”

The news of the deal for a U.S. release of the film, which stars Juliette Binoche, includes word that the film has also been acquired for a release in a number of key international territories. Sales company MK2 said today that the film has been sold to Madman (Australia/New Zealand), Atlantic Film (the Nordic countries), CDI Films (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and South Cone), Yega Entertainment (Korea) and First Distributors (Hong Kong).

On a separate note, the SXSW thriller Brotherhood has been picked up by Phase 4 Films. The plan is to release Will Canon's film later this year and Match Factory has picked up The Future by Miranda July.

5/18/10 - About halfway through the Cannes Film Festival, there are, amazingly, still no sales of films. Such is the life of an Indie. The market, where many mainstream films are sold and where much of the business takes place, isn't faring much better; too many tire kickers and not enough buyers.

Several potential buyers, including the Weinsteins and Sony, are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to pounce on a filmmaker with a below market offer. It's always about the negotiations at these things -- and given the rough market, expect discussions to bog down over price.

If a deal happens, a filmmaker will get to see his movie in a theater. The fact that a film will go for comparatively less money, and have fewer buyers competing for them, is bad news. It means that a winning company can commit to spending less on marketing, which in turns means that fewer people are likely to hear about the films, which is bad for the filmmaker.

5/15/10 - 900 million viewers can’t be wrong. And the China Movie Channel, Official Sponsor of the Cannes Market Party will deliver them to see your movie! The Chinese put on a spectacular show last night with state-of-the-art-never-before-seen fireworks which all of Cannes must have enjoyed. Luckily the good weather held though sometimes the waves looked like they might wash over the party and take away the sand. At the Majestic Beach, international buyers, sellers and producers mingled and talked about film. This event officially kicks off the market with 1,500 screenings - 65 in 3D - 4,500 projects on offer and films combined, 450 international sales agents licensing films to 2,500 distributors from some 100 countries doing business to a tune of approximately 1 billion US dollars.

Since its first edition in 1946, the Cannes Film Festival has always celebrated the passion for cinema. Over the years, the steady growth of its participants and the emergence of new economic issues has made the Festival the key annual meeting of film professionals. The festival’s first Film Market was created in 1959 with a few dozen participants and one projection room built on the canvas roof of the old Palais Croisette. This tiny market gradually emerged as an international event designed, organized and planned with one goal: success for all cinemas. 50 years later, the market attracts 10,000 participants who take advantage of this unique environment for present and discover almost 4,500 films and projects in more than 30 screening rooms and 1 out of every 3 equipped to show 3D and digital projections.

After the opening of the Riviera in May 2000, then Lerins few years later, the center of the market has been around the Palais des Festivals and the “International Village”, instead of the bars and terraces at the Majestic, Grand, Carlton and Martinez hotels along the Croisette. The 2009 satisfaction survey of the market showed that the environment was acclaimed by 97.8% of professionals present.

5/14/10 - Reviews are pouring in positive for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps as Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas arrived for this morning’s press conference flanked by Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella and Carey Mulligan.

Stone said that capitalism has become riddled with tremendous inequalities and injustice. He pointed out that 70% of Goldman Sachs’ profits were not made on behalf of its clients, but through its own financial dealings. The whole idea of financial institutions servicing their clients has disappeared.

Douglas added to the sky-is-falling-on-our-heads feel of the press conference by implying that the Iceland volcano eruption was somehow tied in to the financial sector. “The Earth seems to be speaking,” Douglas intoned.

LaBeouf spent time on Wall Street trading floors to understand how traders work. Stone noted how banks were only too keen to throw their doors open this time around. Back in 1987 all the big investment banks refused to cooperate. Many of those who now run Wall Street grew up thinking of Gordon Gekko as a hero, something which alarms Douglas.

Douglas said the financial crisis had also affected the indie film sector. Remember, Douglas really started out as a producer, not as an actor. “It’s cleared out a lot of mediocre indie films,” he said, “but that doesn’t bode well for the future.”

On another note, Lindsay Lohan is rolling the dice in her DUI probation case in a big way -- because TMZ heard that she’s heading to Cannes ... not her alcohol ed class. TMZ reported that the judge has ordered Lohan to show proof next Thursday that she had completed 13 alcohol ed classes, but she's only completed nine. If Lindsay doesn't complete at least four more classes, she's in violation of probation and the judge has made it clear that she could an issue a warrant for her arrest and that Lindsay could go to jail.

Note from Jeffrey: Maybe she'll attend an AA meeting in Cannes. Ha!

5/13/10 - The skies are dim, the breeze is chilly and the muted weather is matched by the prevailing mood at the 63rd edition of Festival de Cannes. Perhaps it was fitting, then, that "Robin Hood," which stars Russell Crowe as the 12th-century legend, kicked off the festival. "Robin Hood" received mixed reviews, ranging from admiration of its pristine production values to boredom with its talkier sequences and two-hour-plus running time.

Blame it on the freak 30-foot wave that drenched this harbor city just last week. Blame the volcano in Iceland, which delayed the flights of several festival-goers, resulting in a more jet-lagged and grouchy audience than usual. Or just blame it on the economic jitters that have swept the European Union. Perhaps all those current events account for the relatively subdued mood of the festival, which used to be known for buxom starlets and outrageous publicity antics.

The Croisette, while busy, is devoid of splashy billboards hyping upcoming projects. Lavish, over-the-top bashes have been nixed.

USA Today reporter Anthony Breznican said he sensed "mild disappointment" on the part of festival-goers at the absence of mainstream American titles this year. "But in their absence, there's now an eagerness and a sense of potential surprise for movies that probably would have been overshadowed totally by higher-profile behemoth Hollywood movies."