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I did a 25-minute interview with Seduced and Abandoned James Toback in his Carlton hotel room this morning (to be posted later), and around 12:45 pm I attended a fairly exclusive Inside Llewyn Davis luncheon and round-table session. Joel and Ethan Coen, Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, musical director T-Bone Burnett, director of photography Bruno Delbonnel. And that’s all so far. Paolo Sorrentino‘s La Grande Bellezza starts at 7 pm.

(r.) Inside Llewyn Davis director of photography Bruno Delbonnel; (l.) director-writers Joel and Ethan Coen.

10-inch vinyl of four or five Inside tracks.

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I was going to give Takashi Miike‘s Straw Shield (Wara No Tate) a try, but a colleague told me it wasn’t reviewed all that favorably when it opened last month in Japan. So due respect but I guess not. I’ve got a James Toback interview at the Carlton 11 am and then an Inside Llewyn Davis press luncheon/roundtable thing in the same hotel, between 12:45 pm and roughly 2 pm.

Would it be impolite to blow off a portion of the ILD roundtables? Because James Franco‘s As I Lay Dying screens at the Salle Debussy at 2 pm, and if I miss that there’s the 2:15 pm Salle du Soixantime screening of Inside Llewyn Davis, which I really want to see again. There’s a 4 pm of Valeria Bruno Tedeschi‘s Un Chateau en Italie but the big film of the day is Paolo Sorrentino‘s La Grande Bellezza, which I gather is some kind of 21st Century La Dolce Vita. It screens at the Salle Debussy at 7pm, and there’s going to be a crowd.

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MCN’s Jake Howell told me yesterday afternoon he’d heard that Serge Bozon‘s Tip Top, a “comedie policier” with Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain, was getting good buzz. So I blew off Claude Lanzmann’s Les Derniers Des Injustes, which I was skittish about seeing anyway because of its three-hour-plus length, and trekked over to the Theatre Croistte to catch a 7:30 pm showing of the Bozon.

People in line to Theatre Croisette management: “Kiss our collective ass, s’il vous plait.”

Guy with glasses: “The Theatre Croisette people have fucked me. They’ve stolen an hour from my life and it’s gone forever. All they had to do was take a head count and gives us a heads-up…assholes!”

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James Toback and Alec Baldwin‘s Seduced & Abandoned, which screened this morning at the Salle Bunuel, is a doc that basically says that it’s harder than hell to raise money to make a mid-range or a somewhat lower-budgeted character-driven film unless your marquee elements (stars, action scenes, FX) are directly marketable to a lowest-common-denominator audience in international communities. Which we know going in. It also says it didn’t used to be like this in the ’60s and ’70s and even part of the ’80s, but everything has changed these days for the worse. Which we also know going in.

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Now and then a Cannes press conference delivers some kind of newsy, nervy, stand-out quote. But mostly not. Many of the questions can be boiled down to (a) “I’m here because I liked your film and I want you to share a little about the process because it excites me” or (b) “I’m here knowing I can’t really know any more about your film than what I saw on the screen, but here’s a thought that might be fun to kick around.” That’s a long way of saying that the Inside Llewyn Davis press conference, which just ended a half-hour ago, was a little bit meh…but through no fault of the filmmakers.

(l. to. r.) Inside Llewyn Davis costar Carey mulligan, director-writers Joel and Ethan Coen.

Oscar Isaac, who plays the titular character.

Justin Timberlake, Mulligan.

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Before arriving in Cannes I wasn’t planning on catching Daniel Noah‘s Max Rose, a new Jerry Lewis film, but now I am. It screens Thursday morning at the Salle Bazin with a Lewis press conference two or three hours later. As Paul Bond‘s 2.28 THR piece pointed out, pic “teams Lewis with comedian Mort Sahl for the first time, [and] is a drama — with funny moments, of course — that delivers the message, as Lewis puts it, ‘You don’t throw away old people.’” I want nothing less than scalding self-portraiture.

I tweeted last night that when it plays before a crowd, Inside Llewyn Davis is a pellet dropped into water. The depth and the delight is in the vegetable dye that spreads out and sinks in, and though obviously emanating from the pellet, da coolness is in the mixture. The Coen Brothers period film, inspired and exquisitely made as it obviously is, is the trigger but not the all of it. And therefore some (like a big-league critic who sat near me last night) are going to sit down with it and say, “Wait…that’s it?”

And that won’t be because like-minded sorts aren’t sharp or open enough. A few knowledgable people of some influence are going to say “Well…I don’t think it quite gets there.” There’s going to be a bit of a backlash. Which always happens whenever a strong film appears that doesn’t precisely spell itself out. And such films are always the ones that expand and deepen and touch bottom over time. Or within hours after your first viewing…whatever.

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Ain’t Them Bodies Saints star Rooney Mara at late-night Niki Beach party for the film, thrown by IFC Films — Saturday, .

Ain’t Them Bodes Saints star Casey Affleck, producer Jay Van Hoy.

Food table at Hunger Games/Catching Fire party.

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Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis, which just let out, is some kind of brilliantly sombre, wonderfully atmospheric, dryly hilarious, pared-down period masterpiece — a time-tunnel visitation to 1961 Greenwich Village that feels so meditatively right and authentic and resonant that I can’t wait to see it again. I read the script about 14 months ago and I still don’t know what it’s really “about.” Well, I do but the Coens sure as shit don’t spell anything out. But I know a profound American art film when I see it. I know what exquisite less-is-more movie backrubs are all about. I know the real take-it-or-leave-it when I experience it.

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You need two and possibly three things to get into the Catching Fire party tonight at 10 pm at Baoli Beach (across from the JW Marriott). A white cardboard invitation, a silver pin worn on your lapel (first time in my life I’ve been given a special admission pin for a party), and ID to back it up. So crashers are going to have a tough time. The event is actually being called a celebration of “the 75th Annual Hunger Games.” And its going to be raining the whole time…great.

The dismissals of Arnaud Desplechin‘s Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian are pretty much universal. It’s the 2013 Cannes Film Festival’s first wipeout. And yet! It’s an intelligent, decently composed, pleasingly acted thing. Adult, probing, patient. As usual, Benicio del Toro‘s performance is steady and rooted. It’s just that you can’t understand how anyone came to believe it was compelling enough to be financed and made into a feature.