Cannes 2007: What to read

I'd love to give you the on-the-ground Cannes report, but Wesley and I are stuck here reading blogs like everyone else. Maybe next year. Still, the only festival in the world that could get away with letting Jerry Seinfeld float overhead dressed as a giant bee (promoting his upcoming kid's movie "Bee Movie") is worth keeping tabs on. Personally, I triangulate between Variety's Anne Thompson, Premiere's Glenn Kenny (to whom thanks for the Seinfeld photo above), and Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, currently engaging in impassioned knockabout on the merits of "My Blueberry Nights," Wong Kar-wei's first English-language film. Wells hates it, Thompson loves it, and Glenn, bless his cross-referencing little heart, is "the Derek Smalls of this debate -- the lukewarm water to Thompson's fire and Wells' ice." Without seeing the movie -- as if that's stopped me before -- I will note the legions of great filmmakers who have crashed on the Scylla and Charybdis of English dialogue and name stars. (Bergman? "The Serpent's Egg." Truffaut? "Fahrenheit 451." There are plenty more, but the only one who turned it to his advantage while biting the hand that wrote the checks was Godard with "Contempt.")

Other Cannes blogs: Time's Richard Corliss, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis at the Times (warning: video podcasts), the folks at IFC, the excellent GreenCine Daily, Cinematical, and the U.K.'s Guardian (they hate "My Blueberry Nights" too). There are plenty more out there, from pishers and panjandrums alike. If you find one you like, send me the link and I'll post it.