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It’s one thing to doze off during a print or radio interview, but on camera? It’s too blatant — it must be a form of subtle commentary. On some deep-down, perhaps-repressed level Morgan Freeman allowed himself to doze off during this Now You See Me chat because (again, I’m talking about deeply submerged feelings) he thinks the film is basically another negligible programmer and a paycheck job. If he were being interviewed for a major James Cameron or Alfonso Curaon film, do you think he’d allow himself to nod off? Nothing is accidental. Everything we do is intentional self-expression.

(Tip of the hat to Vulture‘s Amanda Dobbins.)

Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight, which opens Friday, has one of the all-time-highest Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores. Todd Phillips‘ The Hangover Part III doesn’t have one of the lowest (RT 22%), but it’s pretty damn low. Anyone with half a brain knows that this final installment is going to take a huge dump on your face. And so it’s naturally going to earn impressive coin this weekend while Before Midnight, playing in far fewer theatres, will do respectably among those with indie-ish, somewhat rarified tastes.

Why? Because apes like the guy depicted above will probably steer clear of Before Midnight for the most part and probably flock to Hangover III, although I’m presuming it’s going to make less that the other two Hangover films. He and his brethren are real, they exist and they’re as much of a blight upon humanity as Bachar el-Assad.

At the end of today’s Roger Ebert tribute at the American Pavilion, the speaker-panelists (moderator Annete Insdorf, Chaz Ebert, Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips. L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan and Indiewire critic Eric Kohn) joined the audience in posing for this thumbs-up “hail, Roger, good fellow” pic. Nice.

Like Sasha Stone, I’ve succumbed to an emotional downshift attitude as far as the Cannes Film Festival is concerned. Tomorrow is my last full day. James Gray‘s The Immigrant at 8:30 am, Jim Jarmusch‘s Last Lovers Left Alive at 7:30 pm and in-between a Nebraska round-table session at the Carlton. I don’t feel like seeing or doing anything more than these three things. I’ve just about had it with the 18-hour days. I’m getting a little ornery about this stuff.

I saw Nebraska this morning and then Blue Is The Warmest Color, which took me into the early afternoon, and then I did some writing in the Orange cafe, blah blah. And then I began to feel a little bummed about the Payne. I guess I was secretly looking for an emotional-aesthetic Nebraska uplift of some kind, and when it didn’t manifest according to expectations, I went into a private tailspin. I felt as I was in a B-17 over Germany with one of my engines on fire. I bailed out with my parachute and I landed somewhere near my apartment at 7 rue Jean Joseph Mero, dazed and shaken and asking myself “What happened? Who am I? Why do I feel this way?”

I spent three hours watching Abdellatif Kechiche‘s Blue Is The Warmest Color (11:30 to 2:30) and then I ran right into the Jerry Lewis press conference and I’ve been diddling around in the Orange press cafe since so I haven’t had time to post anything. And I have to leave for a 5:30 screening in about 15 minutes or so. It’s an involving, very intimate, emotionally readable film about a lesbian love affair…but just one about a love affair, really. People tumble, they’re entranced, they dig into their lives, complications develop and differences occur.

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The only presumption that makes sense about why the 11 am press screening for Daniel Noah‘s Max Rose was cancelled is that the sales guys were afraid that the critics would savage it and that they might be forced to take less money as a result. The Rose team wanted the public screening (which is happening at the Salle du Soixantieme this evening at 7:30 pm) to be the only venue, but the festival pushed for a press screening. Or so I gather. At least I got to attend the Jerry Lewis press conference, which happened at 2:30 pm.

Lewis is 87, and he’s still plenty sharp. I laughed out loud several times. He’s cruel and dismissive, okay, but he’s fucking funny.

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I don’t want to put Nebraska down too much. I “liked” it as far as it goes, but so much of it is about capturing the banality of sedentary midwestern lifestyles, and the whole thing just feels overly measured and mid-range and almost resigned. Bruce Dern‘s Woody Grant reminded me of my cranky, cantankerous dad during his last days, and Will Forte does a very decent job as a loving if somewhat conflicted and resentful son. It’s a very commendable mood-and-atmosphere piece from a respected, first-rate filmmaker, so I don’t want to be snide or dismissive. It’s fine.

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I’m in this glorious Cannes realm, surrounded by devout Catholics. And then there’s the outside world, the real world, the Jason Sudekis-Jennifer Aniston world.

The word is so good on Blue Is The Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adele) that I’m going to catch it at 11:30 am, and in so doing bail on the 11 am screening of Daniel Noah‘s Max Rose. Update: Max Rose press screening cancelled so that settles it. Lesbian flick is three hours long, but people are creaming. The length of Blue means I’ll also miss today’s Jerry Lewis press conference at 2:30 pm.

J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost has completely blown everyone away at the Cannes Film Festival. (I didn’t see it until this evening.) It’s a knockout –a riveting piece of pure dialogue-free cinema, a terrific survival-on-the-high-seas tale and major acting triumph for Robert Redford, who hasn’t been this good since…what, Brubaker? All The President’s Men? A long time.

Robert Redford during post-screening yacht party in Cannes — Wednesday, 5.22, 9:55 pm.

Two years after Margin Call, director-writer J.C. Chandor has achieved the exact opposite of a sophomore slump.

Has there ever been a mostly-dialogue-free commercial film that has worked so successfully since the advent of sound in 1927? What a landmark this film is. And every minute is absorbing. It has you by the head and the throat, and it never lets up. And it ends so beautifully and succinctly.

The question on everyone’s mind tonight was “why wasn’t this film chosen to play in competition?” If it had been All Is Lost would be a clear contender for the Palme d’Or and Redford would certainly be neck-and-neck with Behind The Candelabra‘s Michael Douglas and Inside Llewyn Davis‘s Oscar Isaac for Best Actor, and perhaps on the verge of edging them out.

I was told during tonight’s after-party that the festival honchos didn’t want All Is Lost in competition because it was “too commercial” What? Nothing about All Is Lost says “overtly commercial” It may turn out to be a hit and good for Chandor, Redford and Lionsgate if that happens, but it’s going to be a bit of a struggle to get Joe and Jane Popcorn to pay to see an almost entirely talk-free movie about an older guy struggling to stay alive on the open seas. But I’m telling you straight and true it’s one of the most powerful, absorbing, original-feeling survivalist dramas ever made.

In this alone-at-sea aspect, it’s five times better than The Old Man and the Sea and far more interesting that Life of Pi.

All Is Lost director-writer J.C. Chandor, publicist David Pollick.

All Is Lost producer Neal Dodson, Redford.

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