I’ve been hearing about Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station since last January’s Sundance Film festival, where it played through the roof. It did the same thing here tonight at the Cannes Film Festival, or more specifically at the Salle Debussy. It’s an awards-level steamroller, that’s for sure. Perhaps more on the level of critics group and Spirit Awards rather than Oscars due to limited box-office…but maybe not. Coogler, 26, has done himself proud, and cheers also to Michael B. Jordan for his vibrant and emotionally varied portrayal of the late Oscar Grant, who was aggressively if accidentally shot by a BART cop after a melee on New Year’s Eve. Cheers also to producers Forest Whitaker and Octavia Spencer.

I attended a yacht party in Cannes today for Martin Scorsese and Silence, the long-gestating, much-delayed historical drama set in 17th Century Japan that Scorsese will finally begin directing in June 2014. Andrew Garfield, Ken Watanabe and Issei Ogata will costar. The floating soiree was thrown by Emmett/Furla Films, which is producing. The hosts were producers Randall Emmett and Emma Tillinger Koskoff.

(l.) 42West honcho Leslee Dart, (r.) director Martin Scorsese during yacht party earlier today for Silence.

Scorsese arrived about a half-hour after things began, and his publicist Leslee Dart allowed me to speak with him for about four minutes. Mainly we talked about the restored Shane (“I’m waiting to see it…I hear it looks fantastic”). He and George Stevens, Jr. conferred about Shane, he said (presumably about the aspect-ratio situation) and just before they were about to get in touch with Warner Home Video, which will release the Shane Bluray in August, they were told that WHV had flipped on the 1.66 aspect ratio position and that they’d decided to go with 1.37.

Last night’s rainstorm was miserable all around. It felt like a monsoon in early March. Windy, almost bone-chilling, damp pants and socks. I came out of Amat Escalante‘s Heli, a miserable experience in itself (although it clearly has integrity and auteurist purity) and stood at the top of the steps of the Salle Debussy and the city was under a kind of meteorological siege. Huddled groups, hunched-over bodies, wind and umbrellas. I went to an Asian place and ordered an all-you-can-eat meal for 16 euros. And then I went home and wrote until 2 am.

An apparent attempt to simulate the look of spats, which went out of fashion about 90 years ago. George Raft: “Okay, button my spats.”

My question to Bling Ring director-writer Sofia Coppola at this afternoon’s press conference was about the stupidity factor, although I didn’t use that term. Whenever I see a film about thievery I identify with the thieves, I said. I want them to succeed, and I certainly don’t want them to get caught because of a stupid mistake. Which is precisely what the Bling gang does by ignoring the fact that all pricey homes have security cameras. Plus they don’t wear surgical gloves and plastic foot wraps — standard stuff.

Sofia basically said they were too young and too caught up in their feelings of delight at stealing all the great stuff to think about security cameras. I think they were just too dumb. Wearing masks and not leaving prints or fibres during a robbery is about as basic as it gets.

There’s a self reflecting, shallow pool, empty-hall-of-mirrors vibe delivered by Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring, which just finished screening in the Salle Debussy. I don’t know what could’ve resulted from a film about fame-worship and malignant materialism, but don’t we know about the yield of shallowness going in? Aren’t the urban GenY kids who live for some kind of nocturnal proximity to the vapidly famous…aren’t they self-parodying to begin with? Weren’t the actual Bling Ring kids extremely self-mocking before they were even caught?

I paid a brief visit last Monday to the Studio Babelsberg set of Brian Percival‘s The Book Thief, which was shooting on the outdoor World War II-era “European street.” This theatrical neighborhood has been used by Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist and Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Basterds, among many other productions. During a chat with producers Ken Blancato and Karen Rosenfelt I was reminded that Studio Babelsberg has lost its lease on the section of the lot where the set stands, and therefore the entire street is being demolished to make way for residential real estate. It breaks my heart but the same thing happened 50-odd years ago to the old MGM backlot in Culver City.

Studio Babelsberg’s European WWII set adjacent to main lot — Monday, 5.13, 3:45 pm.