David Poland lets Film Independent get away with this surprising announcement. I go along with the need to give the likes of George Clooney and Clint Eastwood Indie Awards--ok, they do deserve it, even if they function in big-studio land--although I had some trouble with last year's Harrison Ford, who has never experienced an indie moment in his life, in fact, he runs away from it every chance he gets--but what in hell does Transformers have to do with an indie film festival? It's oxymoronic!

It's now possible to order the DVD in France of the Cannes collection of 33 shorts, Chacun Son Cinema, although Filmbrain didn't get the one by the Coens for some reason (which is particularly funny, starring No Country For Old Men's Josh Brolin). He ordered his from FNAC.

UPDATE: According to Variety's Todd McCarthy, who couldn't score a DVD in Cannes, David Lynch handed his short in too late to make the official unveiling, so it was shown in front of Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights, and will be included, along with a second Walter Salles short, on a deluxe pre-holiday DVD in October.

The Toronto Star's Peter Howell "tried mightily to buy one in person at the FNAC store in Cannes," he writes."They sold out of all their copies on the first day of release."

I have always liked Joss Whedon. He gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity and Angel and has always been a mensch in my dealings with him. The first time I interviewed him, around the time of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, I told him that I had known his mother, Emma Whedon. (His dad was a TV writer.) She wasn't just the best English teacher I ever had (at St. Hilda's and St. Hughes on Manhattan's Upper West Side), but the formative significant inspiring English teacher that we all hope we get at least once in our lives. In a school run by uptight Canadian Episcopal nuns, she wore short skirts, and was incredibly smart, even hip. She cared deeply about what she was teaching, which was infectious. (She died young, of cancer.) Anyway, she's probably part of the reason why Joss writes such great roles for women. And launched this passionate blog plea on behalf of women everywhere.

As the sort of person who engages in trivia contests with my fellow airplane passengers, I am happy to inform you that I got 9 out of 10 on this artists in movies quiz.

The Cannes Film Festival offered Woody Allen's new film Cassandra's Dream the closing night slot, which Allen refused, hoping for a better offer. None came. The film was selling in the market, quietly, and word on the Croisette was that The Weinstein Co., which went after Match Point a few years ago and released Mighty Aphrodite and Bullets Over Broadway at Miramax, was interested. Dark Horizons wonders what's up?

Meanwhile, Allen is prepping his fourth film to be shot outside the United States, this time in Spain, starring his current muse, Scarlett Johansson, who is the first actress since Mia Farrow to star in more than two Allen films. She stars opposite the very hot Javier Bardem, who scored in Cannes in the Coens' No Country for Old Men. UPDATE: The Weinstein Co. has picked up the movie, which they will release by year's end.

The LAT's Patrick Goldstein tackles the different outcomes of two script auctions, for director Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, which sold for $70 million to DreamWorks, and director Michael Mann's untitled Leonardo DiCaprio project, which has yet to sell with a $120-million pricetag. It's simple. Jackson knows how to create commercial genre material that will appeal to the public, and is doing so at a reasonable price. Mann doesn't seem to care whether his costly films, excellent though they usually are, strike a nerve with audiences, or not. He wants to work on an A-list level, at A-list prices, on his own terms. Those prices may need to come down. Or he may need to play commercial ball to earn that freedom. Mann probably thought he was doing that with Miami Vice, is the problem. And that didn't connect either.

Interestingly, Goldstein actually publishes some of the Lovely Bones script, which is not usually accepted practice in our field, when the movie hasn't been made yet. He wouldn't have done it if someone close to the script hadn't told him that it was OK checked with DreamWorks and CAA and got full resistance from both not only for having the scripts in the first place, but for even considering publishing excerpts. He proceeded anyway, figuring that "I had a compelling reason to go ahead," he says. "I wanted to advance the story. Everybody had written about the deals. I wanted to write about the script, and show how Peter Jackson was imagining the story. I don't think running a two-inch excerpt of a 100-page script is going to have any remotely damaging impact on a movie, especially since I am clearly a fan."

Thus Goldstein figured he would not brook the wrath of Jackson going forward. And the story cites content in Mann's John Logan script, but doesn't actually quote it. That camp won't be happy in any case to have their high-end project tainted by its failure to sell.

So far Julian Schnabel's movies have remained in the rarified art-film realm. Will his Cannes hit The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which nabbed Schnabel the director's prize, change all that? London's The Independent delves into a portrait of the visual artist.

The world has a new fairy tale couple. Silicon Valley is abuzz over the unorthodox wedding of Google cofounder Sergey Brin (who is worth some $14 billion) and his 33-year-old bride, Anne Wojcicki, a brainy Yale grad who recently founded 23and Me—a biotech company in which Google has invested $3.9 million. According to the NYT the couple not only flew their guests on a private jet to an unknown destination in the Bahamas, but wore bathing suits and swam to a sandbar where they gave their vows:

Google has declined to disclose any details of the wedding, but according to various news reports, the location was such a closely guarded secret that wedding guests boarded the jet owned by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page unaware of their exact destination until they arrived on a private island in the Bahamas.

Guests who attended said the bride wore a white swimsuit, the groom a black one. Some guests took a boat while others — including the bride and groom — swam to a nearby sandbar, where the couple exchanged vows.

Ms. Wojcicki is known for her high energy and approachable, easygoing, personal style. People who knew her in high school in Palo Alto said that she was studious but far from isolated. While at Yale, her mother said, Ms. Wojcicki was a competitive ice skater and played on the varsity ice hockey team. She also had a job as an activities coordinator in her dormitory.

Esther Wojcicki, who has worked at Google as an educational consultant, described her daughter as “an idea factory.” In the past, she said, her daughter has had various health care related business ideas, and 23andMe is the first to come to fruition. Ms. Avey, her partner, has been involved with several start-ups in the past.

Ms. Wojcicki said that she was surprised when her daughter told her of the unusual wedding she had planned.

“She said, ‘Mom, I’m going to swim to my wedding,’ ” said Ms. Wojcicki. “And she pulled it off.”

Critics' favorite 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a hard-hitting Romanian film about an illegal abortion directed by Cristian Mungiu, took home the big prize in Cannes Sunday, while American artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel nabbed the director's prize for his French-language The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Other fave rave No Country for Old Men, from the Coen brothers, won nothing; they had taken home the Palme for Barton Fink in 1991. The animated French film Persepolis shared the jury prize with Mexican director Carlos Reygadas's Stellet Licht. There's more at Indiewire.

UPDATE: Here's Variety's Todd McCarthy, the NYT's Manohla Dargis, the LAT's Kenneth Turan and Time's Richard and Mary Corliss.

COMPETITION

Palme d'Or: "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," directed by Cristian Mungiu
Grand Prix (runner-up): "The Mourning Forest" (Mogari No Mori), directed by Naomi Kawase
Prix de la Mise en Scene (Best Director): Julian Schnabel for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon)
Prix du 60th Anniversaire: Gus Van Sant, director of "Paranoid Park"
Prix du Scenario (Best Screenplay Award): Fatih Akin for "The Edge of Heaven" (Auf Der Anderen Siete)
Camera d'Or (For best first feature): "Meduzot" (Jellyfish), directed by Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen
Camera d'Or Special Mention: "Control," directed by Anton Corbijn
Prix du Jury (Jury Prize) (tie): "Persepolis," directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud; and "Stellet Licht," directed by Carlos Reygadas
Prix d'interpretation feminine (Best Actress): Jeon Do-yeon for "Secret Sunshine" directed by Lee Chang-dong
Prix d'interpretation masculine (Best Actor): Constantine Lavronenko for "Izgnanie," directed by Andrei Zviaguintsev
Palme d'Or (short film): "Ver Llover," directed by Elisa Miller
Special Mention (short): "Run," directed by Mark Albiston
Special Mention (short): "Ah Ma," directed by Anthony Chen

Wow.

This vintage Washington Post Magazine story generated huge response last April. I'm just catching up with it. Classical violinist Joshua Bell played in the metro in Washingon D.C. and was largely ignored.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.

The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.

The NYT's Tony Scott praises this year's Cannes selection and the great actresses performing in the movies.

Here's the NYT's Cannes coverage.

I'm back home after flying West all day, from Nice to JFK with a long stopover, and finally, to L.A. I caught up with many back issues of Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker. I finally saw The Bridge to Tarabithea, which wasn't bad at all. I cried over the ending of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, a powerful book which proved a perfect match of material and filmmakers. In retrospect, Joel and Ethan Coens' movie is their best ever: taut, lean, and deeply moving. I'll be pleased if either the Coens or Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) take home the Palme d'Or on Sunday.

Before I left I saw We Own the Night, James Gray's first movie in seven years, since The Yards. The set-up is great--it's a brother vs. brother story about high-rolling nightclub manager Joaquin Phoenix, who is madly in love with Puerto Rican firecracker Eva Mendes, and uptight cop-on-the-rise Mark Wahlberg, who's chasing a Russian mafioso who's running drugs through the nightclub. Robert Duvall is the father, another cop. Gray has a strong no-nonsense unpretentious style. But the story goes wrong, somehow, in the second half, despite a terrific rain-drenched car chase. It may come down to one thing: we like Phoenix so much as a rebellious party boy who isn't a cop, that we don't buy him wanting to become one. The sellers did the right thing showing the film to buyers only before the press got to it. (Columbia picked it up for $11.5 million.) There were boos. But it seems to be playing well with the public and mainstream press.

Entourage appears to be obsessed with Variety. Not only did the HBO show shoot several recent episodes at our offices in L.A., but they've followed us here to Cannes. Various Entourage sitings are being emailed to me. One person saw Jeremy Piven getting into a limo. Another saw Adrian Grenier exiting La Pizza. They threw a press conference this morning --opposite my surprisingly well-attended Am Pav screenwriting panel.

Ramin Bahrini talked about his second film, written in Persian and translated into English, Chop Shop, set in the mammoth junkyards of Queens, which is in director's fortnight. He was thrilled that Abbas Kiarostami came to see his film. (Born in North Carolina, Bahrini has both U.S. and Iranian citizenship.) John Sloss is selling Chop Shop in North America.

Juan Antonio Bayona discussed his Spanish-language feature debut The Orphanage which is in Critic's Week and will be released by Picturehouse. Guillermo del Toro, who is presenting and publicizing his protege's film, carried the pint-sized Spaniard on his shoulders at the screening. Antonio Bayona has made many shorts and commercials.

Raised in Italy and college-educated in America, Cecilia Miniucchi talked about writing and shooting Expired, her sexually frank English-language film that debuted at Sundance and closes Critics Week. Her two stars, Jason Patric and Samantha Morton, were both shooting films and couldn't make Cannes.

Blake Nelson was hilarious talking about being a Portland writer who has long known local hero Gus Van Sant and always knew his skateboarding novel Paranoid Park would make a good Van Sant film. It turns out he was right. UPDATE: IFC picked up the film at fest's end.

Raucous laughter hit the Palais during the morning screening of Oceans Thirteen, which was followed by an equally entertaining press conference as Steven Soderbergh and his Oceans Thirteen gang goofed on themselves and the assembled press corps.

When asked about the quality of scripts today, master quipster George Clooney replied that Oceans Thirteen is one for the history books. "This film is a cry for peace," he said with a straight face. "We thought we were in competition."

While the fate of a fourth Oceans is in the air, the ensemble seemed good to go. But Damon won't do a fourth Bourne, he said: "We have ridden that horse as far as we can." He admitted to feeling like "a bit of a prostitute for putting out two number threes in one year."

"That's better than three number twos," added Clooney.

When asked about one of the film's running gags involving Oprah Winfrey, Andy Garcia confessed, "I had to sleep with Oprah in order to do the show."

"That's the headline," sighed Clooney.

Brad Pitt, while insisting that The Assassination of Jesse James missed its first fall deadline but will make its second, noted that the absent Al Pacino, who stayed in Los Angeles to attend his American Film Institute tribute. "took notes from each of us, and settled in after a few weeks. He raised our respectability and we brought his down."

"We try to bring the classy guys down," added Clooney.

On a more serious note, continuing one of the themes of this year's globally-conscious festival, Clooney admitted that he used Cannes as "an international platform to raise awareness of something that's important to all of us," the crisis in Darfur, he said. The Oceans gang also turned up at Wednesday night's AMFAR event, which raised a record $7.5 million and sold a Clooney kiss for $350,000.

Soderbergh, who won the Palme d'Or for sex, lies and videotape 18 years ago, insisted that making a romp like Oceans 13 is nonetheless hard to do. "There's an assumption that if we're making an entertaining film we're not as engaged, interested or passionate about it," he said. "I don't think any of the people here feel that way. The Oceans films are more difficult, more tricky than the films I've gotten attention for."

UPDATE: I showed up at the Baoli Oceans Thirteen party Thursday night too late to see the gang, who had already fled the glassed-in VIP room for something more private. By the time I got in they were gone. Offering $1000 chips for roulette and black jack was a nice touch, but the lines were too long.

Miramax Films has nabbed Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for about $3 million for North America. A major Oscar campaign is in the offing, and it didn't hurt that Miramax topper Daniel Battsek is just coming off his rousing success with The Queen. He also knows the Pathe UK folks who were selling the film quite well.

The Manchester music movie Control is another sale in the works, but being shot in black and white has proved a detriment to homevideo sales. DVD drives everything. I know I'm supposed to already know this, but it really drives it home when you hear the would-be buyers discussing the way they put these deals together. They do crunch the numbers and when video doesn't crunch for a black and white or foreign title, it doesn't make people comfortable, no matter how much they love a movie.

I was sure I wasn't going to make the 7:30 PM Palais screening of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I had about an hour to walk all the way from the Sofitel on the point to the Variety office behind the Grand to get my ticket and rush to my apartment behind the Carlton, put on my black tie duds and makeup and hustle down the crowded Croisette on high heels to the Lumiere. But I really wanted to see this film and wasn't going to give up. Luckily I had an orchestra ticket, which gives you more breathing room and lets you walk up the red steps. I scooted behind Sharon Stone as she posed for photogs and found my place and tried to cool off as we all watched the big-screen monitor showing the last arrivals--they string the cast in one long line as they make their way up the steps.

It was a good night for bear-like Julian Schnabel, surrounded by gorgeous French actresses. The movie is achingly sad. Max Von Sydow as the father of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French editor of Elle whose mind is trapped inside his paralyzed body, is heartbreaking. So is Mathieu Amalric as Bauby, who is astonishingly expressive. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. I want to read the book that Bauby painstakingly spelled out, one blink at a time.

Ronald Harwood, Schnabel and Janusz Kaminski's cinematic adaptation is elegantly imaginative and quite beautiful. Afterwards the applause went on for a good twenty minutes (not unusual). Schnabel looked embarrassed as he took his shades on and off. He tripped and saved himself as he brought Before Night Falls star Javier Bardem over to stand with the cast. (At a roundtable today Schnabel admitted he was so nervous, he popped half a xanax.)

I applaud the filmmakers for not taking the Hollywood route that was originally contemplated (with DreamWorks and Johnny Depp) and instead making the film in its native setting and language. Producer Jon Kilik felt strongly about this. The end result is quite accessible. Some distribs are put off by its "smallness." This is not a film whose language should be a barrier (except on DVD, where arty foreign language movies don't usually sell, with the occasional exception of such genre films as Pan's Labyrinth and House of Flying Daggers.)

The great thing about small dinner parties like Paramount Vantage and Miramax's evening by the beach for No Country for Old Men is that everyone is accessible. You're all in the same swim. When you go to a jumbo-sized cluster-fuck, basically, the trick is to get into the VIP room where many of the principal players are. On my way out of last night's Deathproof party at the Palm Beach Casino, the site of many massive events in the past, I noticed producer-partners Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy hovering by the entrance door, as Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell made their way through the red carpet press.

The two couples greeted each other enthusiastically and made a bee line for the VIP room. I followed in their wake, my date in tow, and talked to Kennedy about her two films here, Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and SPC's animated Persepolis. "You're becoming an indie filmmaker!" I said.

When we got to the VIP section on a white balcony overlooking the dark water, we talked our way in on her coattails. The two couples sat on a white sofa for the entire night, enjoying each other and sending the signal, don't approach us. Harvey Weinstein made his way over, and introduced Wong Kar Wai, wearing his trademark shades, but as of 2 AM, no Quentin Tarantino. "He's tired," one Weinstein Co. staffer said.

Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan were bearing down on the VIP velvet rope as we left. (Word is the fest, which adored Tarantino's 114-minute Death Proof, would have nothing to do with Planet Terror. It wasn't for them. His recut version with trailers will go to Venice instead.)

At the packed and noisy Screen International party, also by the beach, they screened a mind-numbing 12-minute music-video plea for peace, Nassiri, featuring a lip-synching guru with a fake blissed-out smile surrounded by a chorus of fresh-faced children. The horror.

Cannes always offers fleeting moments to remember: Today at the American Pavilion, Faye Dunaway sat alone on the deck facing the water, booking a flight on her cell phone on Iberia.

Yesterday at the Majestic Hotel, Peter Bart, Tim Gray and I waited for an elevator with the very tall Mischa Barton, wearing form-fitting rust-colored silk.

The other night as I walked back from the Palais along the Croisette, the open air cinema on the beach was screening The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. An impossibly young Catherine Deneuve was singing.

New Line Cinema's Golden Compass, which put on a big dog and pony show in Cannes, has a nifty website where you can find your inner daemon. Yes, I confess, I was a mouse.

During a SuicideGirls.com interview with Robert Epstein on Angel-A, French filmmaker Luc Besson trashes The Weinstein Company:

DRE: Arthur and the Invisibles did very well all over the world except in America. Why do you think it didn’t connect here? Luc: I’ve worked in the movie business for 30 years now and for each film I work 40 different distributors around the world. The American distributor on Arthur [The Weinstein Company] was the worst I have worked with in my entire life, in any country. I think this is the essence of all the problems. Why the critics didn’t like Arthur was because they changed so much of the film and tried to pretend the film was American. The critics aren’t stupid. They watched the film, they vaguely smell American but they can feel the film is forced for an American audience. The film is European. It’s made by a Frenchman. This was the only country where the film was changed. The rest of the world has the same film as France.

[Posted by Shalini Dore] Helmer Paul Freedman confessed that it was a little strange to be partying at a Goldie Hawn yacht party in Cannes when the subjects of his Sand and Sorrow docu were still suffering in the Sudan.

The doc may have some Hollywood heavy-hitters behind it, including George Clooney who narrated, but Freedman said few people realized what was happening in Darfur.

Just calling it “genocide” was insufficient, he said passionately.“We missed what happened in Rwanda, couldn’t bring ourselves to use the word. And now we think that just regurgitating the word is enough.”

As the fest winds down, here’s an update:

Julian Schnabel’s intense tearjerker The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is being chased by distributors after its debut press screening this morning. It’s a French art film, so it will be interesting to see if any distrib comes up with the $5 million asking price for North America that Harvey Weinstein would have had to pay in order to take the film off the table in Paris pre-fest. I hear Pathe would have made that deal, but the filmmakers agreed to wait and see how the film played in Cannes.

A Mighty Heart: A modest success here, Michael Winterbottom’s well-paced, intense ensemble docu-style drama could be a marketing challenge stateside despite one of Angelina Jolie’s best performances to date. While the movie is a tough story well-told, it lacks a deeper resonance.

Paranoid Park: Gorgeously shot by Chris Doyle, Gus Van Sant delivers another small installment of his teenage trilogy. It should sell to a small distrib. After the screening last night, Geoff Gilmore, Steve Gaydos and our dates debated whether as parents we would want our child to tell us that they had killed someone accidentally. (In the movie, the teen skateboarder can't tell anyone.) What if they went to jail? I argued that I would want to know, in any case.

The Coens' No Country for Old Men: the best received movie of the fest on all fronts is the top contender for the Palme d’Or and a likely Oscar contender as well.

The fabulous-looking U23D marks the launch of a new motion picture genre: the 3D live concert film. Numbers of imitators will follow.

Leo DiCaprio’s earnest The 11th Hour is only one of the inevitable rash of coming environmental consciousness-raisers, but I hope I don’t have to sit through too many more of them.

Sicko: Michael Moore delivers a whiz-bang entertaining political call to arms. I can only hope it scores big time and does some good and gives Weinstein Co. some much-needed breathing room.

My Blueberry Nights: Modest but unassuming Wong Kar Wai, which I bet will play to women back in the States. It’s languorous, yummy fun.

Still to come: Oceans Thirteen and We Own the Night, which interestingly, sold to Columbia Pictures for $11.5 million before the press here had a chance to see it.

It was fun taking a breather at the Hotel du Cap Saturday to interview Leo DiCaprio. Warner Independent shuttled various journos from the Palais along the Mediterranean coast to the Cap d'Antibes. We walked through the sun-dappled woods to a series of cabanas by the water, where we hung out until Leo arrived. He was wearing Prada shades, a blue shirt and jeans, but eventually took the shades off; he was smart and charming. Here's the story I filed on the web. And here's Variety's review.

Personally, I found the movie informative and terrifiying. It offered a wider perspective than An Inconvenient Truth and some alternatives to the way we live now. Back in town I filed some stories and reported to our Variety party at the Majestic hotel, blackberrying madly with Elizabeth Guider, as the We Own the Night sale to Columbia story was closing.

I stalked up the Croisette to the Carlton to say hi to Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who were celebrating their Cha Cha Cha deal with Universal. Alfonso Cuaron was also there; his younger brother Carlos will make the first film; Alfonso Cuaron, Gonzalez Inarritu and Del Toro's films will be farther down the line. Alejandro looked tan, clear-eyed and healthy after an extended Spanish hiking tour. He and Del Toro are excited about the freedom they'll have to make their films without interference. Alejandro is developing some material, and isn't sure what he'll do.

Alejandro was also in town to be part of the Chacun Son Cinema program of 32 three-minute films assembled to celebrate the festival's 60th which has its public screening tonight. I'll be putting on my evening duds. Meanwhile Del Toro is here in Cannes with the horror flick The Orphanage screens tomorrow; Picturehouse is releasing stateside. He is presenting the film and helped get it made; he believes passionately in young Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, whose shorts and music videos he had admired. When he saw the script by Sergio Sanchez he loved it and helped put the project together and assemble a cast, including Belen Rueda (The Sea Inside, Savage Grace) and Geraldine Chaplin.

After dinner with some pals at La Mere Besson, I went over to the gala dinner at the Noga Hilton for the Coens' No Country for Old Men. We go back a long way; I visited the set of Raising Arizona. Ethan admitted that while there's hardly any music in the movie, there is a little. Diane Lane was grinning, proud in the knowledge that her husband Josh Brolin has finally broken through--his taciturn performance as a young Vietnam vet is a star-making role. Javier Bardem admitted that he tried to eliminate all traces of his Spanish accent as the villain who is relentlessly stalking Moss. He wanted to not be Mexican, not be anything traceable, to be No Man from Nowhere. He's gotten skinnier than he was in the film for his role in Love in the Time of Cholera, which just wrapped production.

I got so caught up in conversation and dinner that I forgot to rush down the Croisette to see U2 perform three songs on the red carpeted steps of the Palais. Messed up priorities, I know. But I was having fun, the DJ was excellent and there was dancing to the likes of vintage Michael Jackson and Prince on the beach. What can I say? Finally, I dragged my tail to the Sicko party at another plage but the folks hadn't arrived from the premiere and I was just too tired and went home to bed.

UPDATE: I took these photos at the No Country for Old Men roundtables the next day. Joel Coen, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin look real happy, if you ask me.

Word on the Croisette is Wild Bunch is selling Woody Allen's new Spanish film starring Javier Bardem, and CAA is selling director Larry Charles' follow-up to Borat, starring ace interviewer Bill Maher. The movie challenges the religious beliefs o