The Cannes Film Festival drew to a close on Sunday evening with the presentation of the Palme d'Or to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Filmed in black and white, it's "a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914," says Dave Calhoun at Time Out London. Haneke "solidly resists answering the 'what's it all about?' question and makes you work hard to make sense of what you're seeing." David Hudson at IFC's The Daily has gathered the reviews, some of which endeavor to answer the "What's it all about?" question.

As is often the case, the nine-member jury passed out awards to as many films as possible. The Grand Prix (or runner-up) went to Jacques Audiard's A Prophet; Special Jury Prize to Alain Resnais for Wild Grass; and Best Director to Brillante Mendoza for Kinatay. Christoph Walz won Best Actor for his performance in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress for Lars von Trier's controversial Antichrist. The complete list of winners can be easily viewed at indieWIRE. The festival's official site has a great set of award ceremony photos.

Here's a roundup of Cannes films we can expect to see in coming months. Corrections and updates will be appreciated.

CANNES TITLES WITH U.S. DISTRIBUTION

• Antichrist (IFC)
• A Prophet (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Bright Star (Bob Berney and Bill Polhad)
• Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Drag Me to Hell (Universal)
• Humpday (Magnolia Pictures)
• I Love You Phillip Morris (Consolidated Pictures Group)
• Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein Co.)
• Looking For Eric (IFC)
• Precious (Lionsgate)
• Taking Woodstock (Focus Features)
• Tales From the Golden Age (IFC)
• Thirst (Focus Features)
• Up (Disney Pixar)
• The White Ribbon (Sony Pictures Classics)

You can access all our Cannes coverage via this handy link.

Embedded above is the trailer for Armando Iannucci's political spin farce, In the Loop, which James and others had been talking up since Sundance. I suppose that's a fitting response, for them to talk about a movie that's all about talk, as the trailer capably demonstrates (well, a commenter or two on Funny or Die still demand to know what the movie's really about). I myself was initially skeptical of anything dealing with labyrinthine political dealings, but I've been assured that that isn't really the point of it all -- and I've gotta say, the phrase "difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult" still tickles me so.

IFC will release this in select theaters and (thankfully, for us non-NY/LAers) on-demand come July 24th. That's enough time for me to catch up on original series "The Thick of It," though I've been told that familiarity with it wouldn't be necessary. At least, that's what I think they said...

James Toback is a charming dude. You hear about the man's infamous lifestyle – the sex and drugs and gambling to absurd extremes – and you expect to see a hipster jerk, but the guy is genial and matter-of-fact. The highlight of the festival may be his deadpan description of participating in near-daily orgies at former Cleveland Browns quarterback Jim Brown's residence – he first made a fleeting mention of these events in an unrelated context, then elaborated colorfully in response to a brave audience questioner. He's sharp, articulate, surprising, and readily recognizable as the mind behind his singular, volatile films. And he has a charisma that sneaks up on you.

The on-stage conversation with Toback was followed by a screening of Tyson, which is already playing in some cities and will expand to more in the coming weeks. The documentary, narrated by Mike Tyson himself, also sneaks up on you. At first, Toback's perspective seems clear: Tyson narrates his well-known history with the embarrassment of a reformed man who looks back on his reckless youth with disbelief that he could be so dumb, so crazy. We feel for him. But as the film plays, we become more and more uncomfortable as the events Tyson recounts with the same sheepish regret become more and more recent. Before long, he's looking back at 2003, 2004, 2005, still shaking his head at himself. The chilling subtext of Toback's otherwise sympathetic film is that Tyson's attempts to attribute the crazy outbursts that have punctuated his career to temporary insanity – and the implicit assertion that he is a changed, newly rational man -- are not altogether credible.

Click through for thoughts on The Age of Stupid, Still Walking and (500) Days of Summer.

I tend to be skeptical of anything pitched as "an Evening with..." someone, because I don't generally melt from simply being in the presence of someone famous or talented -- they've got to, you know, do something. But when the San Francisco International Film Festival announced "An Evening with Robert Redford," they had a trump card: a brand new print of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of my favorite films that I had nonetheless never seen on the big screen. That seemed like a fair trade: you give me Butch Cassidy and I'll sit through the clip reel and onstage interview. Deal.

It was pretty painless, actually. The interviewer, the San Francisco Chronicle's Philip Bronstein, manages to just be mildly sycophantic, and Redford was thoughtful and articulate -- as charming as you'd expect. The audience questions were typically gushy and occasionally inappropriate (someone tried to pitch a documentary project, prompting a groan from the entire room -- who really thinks that a 1500-person Q&A is a good venue to talk business with Robert Redford?) but the man answered (or deflected) them with the aplomb of someone who has done this a gazillion times. At one point, we learned that Redford has not seen Butch Cassidy in the 40 years since its release, which is kind of remarkable when you think about it.

If you're anything like me, then you like fiddling around with the buttons on your cable remote. It used to be that you KNEW of all the options your remote could provide, but nowadays I have cable channels and VOD options I never knew existed. So a little while ago I clicked on a button that said IFC Festival Direct, which delivered unto me a pair of options: IFC Showcase and IFC Midnight. Yeah, try and guess where I started.

I saw a few familiar titles: Left Bank and Sauna, both of which I saw (and liked) at Fantastic Fest '08, as well as well-reviewed genre fare like The Chaser, Zift, and a Brit import called Hush that I may watch this very afternoon. Also on the docket for IFC Midnight: the indie thriller Dark Mirror, a gory South Korean offering called Cadaver, and a Dutch psycho story called Fear Me Not. Oh, and two I can definitely vouch for: the strange Canadian horror known as Pontypool and a Norwegian nazi-zombie fest called Dead Snow.

If you're looking for recent festival fare that's not horrific in nature, then you can sift through Joe Swanberg's Alexander the Last, the steamy erotica of L A'ventura, Sam Neill in Angel, or worthwhile options like Paper Covers Rock, Rain, or Three Blind Mice. Apparently this "VOD" thing is the wave of the future, and I find it very satisfying to know that the flick YOU just saw at the Florida Film Festival is also available from my own cable box for about six bucks. For a whole lot more on IFC's home-demand offerings, I suggest you click right here and flick around a bit. (They also offer some rather fine programming that's free with the IFC service, don't forget.)

Cinematical has just received this exclusive trailer for Paper Covers Rock, which is part of the IFC Films/South By Southwest Film Program where, for the first time ever, someone at home will be able to watch films exactly as they play at a major film festival -- making it so you can experience the fest from your very own living room hundreds (or thousands) of miles away.

From writer/director Joe Maggio, Paper Covers Rock is a gripping drama about Sam, a troubled young woman who survives a suicide attempt. As Sam starts out on her path into recovery, she is confronted with a desperate fight to regain the most precious thing in her life: her daughter. You can read an interview with writer-director Joe Maggio over at indieWIRE, and make sure to check out Paper Covers Rock when it hits On Demand today, March 4, and screens at SXSW on March 13.



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Cinematical has just received this exclusive clip from the film Medicine for Melancholy, which hits theaters in New York City tomorrow before arriving On Demand next week and then expanding to other theaters on February 13. The film, which premiered at last year's South by Southwest Film Festival to all sorts of buzz, is sorta like a romantic comedy in reverse that follows two black twentysomethings through San Francisco on the day following a drunken one night stand. From Jette's SXSW review: "Sometimes I feel like I've seen too many movies about the problems of contemporary twentysomethings and their relationships, but Medicine for Melancholy is deeper, more thoughtful, and more satisfying than many low-budget first features." A lot of folks fell hard for this flick, and so I have no problem recommending you check it out real soon. Watch a clip below, then catch the official trailer after the jump.

In the Loop, which was picked up for U.S. release by IFC at Sundance, seemed tailor-made for easy summations: "It's The Office meets The West Wing," the early-screening set said, along with raving endorsements about how funny In the Loop actually was. And the latter part of that was proven right when I saw In the Loop at Sundance; it's achingly, wrenchingly, dizzyingly funny, with a bleak, bitter sense of humor that makes each laugh feel like the people behind In the Loop are not so much tickling your funny bone as they are going at it with an ice pick.

And yes, In the Loop has the handheld-yet-slightly-too-steady camerawork of The Office, where the comedy of uncomfortable silence builds and builds as the camera lingers and stays on, and it also has the petty rivalries and silly squabbles of The Office; it seems that whether you're selling paper or pushing it, work is work. And In the Loop also has the insider-y, rushed feeling of The West Wing, where many scenes are done as a walk-and-talk and we're reminded that they talk about the corridors of power because that's usually where the deals get cut.

But In the Loop also transcends those easy comparisons, and does so to great effect. The idea that government is as messy and petty and foolish as any other workplace is scary, and funny; the insider's view of politics in it isn't warm walk-and-talk idealism but the ugly, mean pragmatism of the stalk-and-talk, or even the prowl-and-growl. On the surface level, In the Loop is The Office meets The West Wing, sure; what it winds up feeling more like is as if John Cleese and George Orwell wrote Dr. Strangelove for our media-soaked age where wars are conducted in part through press releases and focus groups, or Catch-22 for the 24/7 news era.

(Warning: This one goes up to eleven...)

1. Moon -- Most were admittedly intrigued by the prospect of Sam Rockwell alone and yet potentially not on a lunar station going into the fest, and this seemed to be the first film to live up to its promise as a modest yet straight-up sci-fi endeavor (that just happened to have a Kevin Spacey-voiced robot, and just tell me you wouldn't want one of those waking you up and telling you to pay it forward all the friggin' time).

2. 500 Days of Summer -- I'd liked the vague stuff I'd been hearing about this one going into the fest as well -- namely, "Zooey Deschanel, Zooey Deschanel, Zooey Deschanel" -- and I certainly liked the teaser trailer that made its way out just hours before the film's formal premiere. Does it look like Fox Searchlight's particular brand of indie hipster quirk that's just begging to get too popular for its own good by about Labor Day? Sure, but if it's as adorable as it seems, that's a chance I'm willing to take, Zooey.

"Oh, good grief, it's Oscar."
--Lucille Bluth, "Arrested Development"

(The following post is written to the tune of Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler," which was not among those nominated for Best Original Song when the 81st Academy Award nominations were announced earlier today.)

Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free?
We'd call 'em by another name, the Academy
Have you ever seen a piece of pap that they all wouldn't eat?
If you've ever seen that Crash, then you'd agree.

Then you'd agree, The Dark Knight should've had more of a shot
Then you'd agree, Gran Torino deserved to go home with naught
Then you'd agree, I'm struggling to come up with just one more bon mot
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
We sure as hell would've asked for a whole lot more

Couldn't Let the Right One In have been recognized outside of Foreign?
If they'd even seen that movie, then they'd agree
Didn't The Reader leave most of these guys snorin'?
If they'd stayed up for this movie, then they'd agree

Then you'd agree, Dear Zachary... shouldn't have been snubbed from the start
Then you'd agree, The Fall was a tremendous work of art (direction)
Then you'd agree, they left off Gommorah too, old fart after old fart
Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?
We really would've asked for a whole lot more

Those nods that have comforted me, I drive away
For all of Milk's attention, I just cannot feel gay
The snubs here and there have caused far too much dismay

Have you ever seen a year where AMPAS actually got it right?
I'll plan to watch something else that February night...