Cinematical’s James Rocchi on the Cannes films he’s walked out on. I don’t know if walkouts are worth it over here. If the film is a stinker and you haven’t got anything pressing to get to for an hour or so, just nod out. It’s easy with the 19-hour days and the pounding pace of it all.

The opening-weekend predictions on X-Men 3, dead certain to be the #1 film over the coming Memorial Day weekend, are being modified. I was hearing a week and a half ago that the four-day total could be way way up there. Now Variety is saying that The DaVinci Code “will suck away a chunk of the adult audience and will likely keep X-Men from reaching the boffo $85.6 million bow of X2 three years ago. Fox will be very pleased if it reaches that figure over four days, instead of the three it took X2.”

“To be honest, Paris Hilton is my perfect model. She has charm and is classy. She has everything. We have nothing, really.” — 15 year-old Claudia Sorrentino in Cannes, quoted by Reuters reporter Kerstin Gehmlich in a piece about young girls who stroll the Croisette in hopes of getting noticed by rich or half-connected Eurotrash guys, and perhaps becoming a faux-VIP for an hour or two if she wangles an invite into the right party and chats with a celeb, or at least gets her picture taken.

However much the Breakup tracking upticks, which, as expected, it is now doing, Vince Vaughn‘s staunchly alpha-male rat-a-tat-tat smartass schtick is an absolute must-have…as long as the movie he’s in agrees with and salutes who and what he is. Is that movie The Breakup? An above-average portrait of the 36 year-old comedy star by USA Today ‘s Susan Wloszczyna pretty much lays iton the line as far as Vaughn’s pre-Breakup situation through a quote by Jon Favreau: “This movie will determine how his career goes. He could either be a well-paid hired gun or, if this film is successful, he could be somebody who gets to create his own material and decide who and where and how he is going to work.”

Words about the powerlessness of film critics in this Guardian story that’s mainly about the critic-proof DaVinci Code.

The great Guillermo del Toro, director of the extremely well-received Pan’s Labyrinth, following our Martinez Hotel chat — Friday, 5.25.06, 12:15 am.

(a) (l. to r.) Lying‘s Jena Malone, director M. Blash, Chloe Sevigny, director Gus Van Sant at a post-screening dinner at Indochine, where the most elegant and gastronomically pleasurable affair of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival was hosted last night — Thursday, 5.25, 10:50 pm; (b) Spread from Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro’s note-and-sketch journal, from which he wrote the screenplay and used to draw the first images of monsters and phantoms from the film — snapped in the Martinez Hotel lobby on Thursday, 5.25, 11:35 pm; (c) Another spread from the del Toro workbook — Thursday, 5.25.06, 11:36 pm; (d) French film scholar and author Michel Ciment and director Sydney Pollack during a “Master Class” interview with Pollack at the Salle Bunuel — Thursday, 5.25.06, 5:15 pm; George Clooney cappucino ad in Wednesday’s print edition of the Herald Tribune;
A marginal lack of press enthusiasm over Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth was indicated, I thought, by three nearly empty rows in the Salle de Presse prior to the Truth press conference earlier this week. Many journalists attended and much coverage resulted, but there were no empty seats during the X-Men 3 press conference.

“Sharon Waxman‘s piece about the end of Used Guys is good, but there may be another reason for its demise: Jim Carrey has gone flakey, to put it mildly. He’s been telling everyone who will listen, journalists included, how he’s tired of doing the madcap comedy that made him wealthy. More alarmingly, he’s been babbling about his fascination with the number 23 — he’s actually making a movie by that name — and how he thinks it connects with everything in the world. Maybe he’s on to something, but maybe he’s become just a little too wingy for studios to roll the dice on. Especially since Fun With Dick and Jane did okay but not spectacular numbers.” — Journo pal

So it turned out that two youngest American filmmakers with films in competition here — Southland Tales‘s Richard Kelly, 31, and Marie-Antoinette‘s Sofia Coppola, 35 — got slammed the hardest. Had to hurt. For what it’s worth, the Southland Tales team said they were on schedule to finish the film in mid-June, and when they heard they’d been accepted (they expected to show it out of competition, at best) it was general quarters, no notes handed to Kelly, not enough money to finish some of the things they had to finish and rush-rush-rush. I’m certain there will be another big critics’ viewing down the road (maybe in Toronto) and by that time some of the length and clarity issues will, I presume, be resolved.

“It’s Marie Antoinette gets bored, Marie Antoinette goes shopping, Marie Antoinette gets laid” — a Cannes critic quoted by Variety‘s Alison James and Adam Dawtrey.

Back on the blue wi-fi couch on the outdoor press balcony, and I’ve seen Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth. But I can’t enthuse about it online until after the official press screening on Saturday. If I don’t hold off a couple of U.S. publicist pals will be sent to the guillotine…mais non!

The Palme D’Or never means much in terms of U.S. box-office, but at least bestows a stamp of esteem amogn critics. The winner, as everyone has acknwoledged, will be either Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu ‘s Babel or Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver. I’m a Babel guy but there’ll be no fretting whichever way it goes. Pedro’s film is about women, warmth and family, but it disappointed me a bit when it gave up the ghost, so to speak. Alejandro’s is also about family (in a more strained and anguished sense), but it’s a fuller, more complex and penetrating work. Both are superbly made.

I’m sitting in the outdoor balcony area adjacent to the press room, and there’s a wonderful cool breeze coming off the bay. The air smells fresh and vaguely salty, the sky is the clearest blue and flecked with little white cloud puffs. It’s amazing what good weather and a little rest can do for your outlook…for everyone’s. It’s 11:25 am, and I’m off to see Pan’s Labyrinth.