The Tree of Life — Terrence Malick‘s “little tiny story of a kid growing up in the 50s…juxtaposed with a little, tiny micro-story of the cosmos,” in the words of costar Brad Pitt — didn’t make this morning’s official announcement of entries for the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. It was suggested in a 4.11 Variety story that an absence of Malick on this morning’s slate wouldn’t necessarily mean Tree won’t show in Cannes, only that Malick is still dithering in the editing room.

But Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job — a documentary about the causes and culprits behind the financial meltdown of ’08 — will be shown with a special out-of-competition screening. This morning’s announcement was the first acknowledgment of this film’s existence by anyone on the planet, officially or otherwise, as not even fragmentary info has leaked about this latest effort by the director of the acclaimed No End In Sight, and certainly not a mention of the title.

There was no mention of any extended product-reel screening of Chris Nolan‘s Inception, but then there wouldn’t be at an official Paris press conference. An announcement of this could happen in days to come, or so I’m hoping.

As previously announced, screenings of Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood will launch the festival on Wednesday, 3.12. And out-of-competition entries, as previously forecast, will include Woody Allen‘s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Stephen Frears‘ Tamara Drewe and Oliver Stone‘s Wall Street — Money Never Sleeps.

The top-tier competition entries include Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu‘s Biutiful, Doug Liman‘s Fair Game, Mike Leigh‘s Another Year, Takeshi Kitano‘s Outrage, Bertrand Tavernier’s La Princesse de Monptpensier and Mathieu Almaric‘s Tournee,

The whosit-whatsit competition entries (i.e., a temporary classification) are Xavier Beauvois‘s Des Hommes et des Dieu, Rachid Bouchareb‘s Hors la loi, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun‘s Un Homme Qui Crie (A Screaming Man), Im Sangsoo‘s Housemaid, Abbas Kiarostami‘s Copie Conforme, Lee Chang-dong‘s Poetry, Sergei Loznitsa‘s You, My Joy, Danielle Luchetti‘s La Nostra Vita, Nikita Mikhalkov‘s Utomlyonnye Solntsem 2 and Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

The two announced midnight screenings are Gregg Araki‘s Kaboom and Gilles Marchand‘s L’Autre Monde (Blackhole).

Besides Inside Job, the special screening roster includes Sophie Fiennes‘ Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Patricia Guzman‘s Nostalgia de la Luz, Sabina Guzzanti‘s Draquila — L’Italia Che Trema, Otar Losseliani‘s Chantrapas, and Diego Luna‘s Abel.

The Un Certain Regard roster: Blue Valentine (d: Derek Cianfrance), O Estranho Caso de Angelica (d: Manouel de Oliveira), Les Amours Imaginaires (d: Xavier Dolan), Los Labios (d: Ivan Fund, Santiago Loza), Simon Werner a Disparu… (d: Fabrice Gobert), Film Socialisme (d: Jean-Luc Godard), Unter Dir Die Stadt (d: Christoph Hochhausler), Rebecca H (d: Lodge Kerrigan), Pal Adreinn (d: Agnes Kocsis), Udaan (d: Vikramaditya Motwane), Marti Dupa Craciun (d: Radu Muntean), Chatroom (d: Hideo Nakata), Aurora (d: Cristi Puiu), Ha Ha Ha (d: Hong Sangsoo), Life Above All (d: Oliver Schmitz), Octubre (d: Daniel Vega), R U There (d: David Verbeek) and Rizhao Chongqing Chongqing Blues (d: Xiaoshuai Wang).

The full Pitt quote about Tree of Life, as initially posted on Ain’t It Cool News: “It’s this little tiny story of a kid growing up in the 50s with a mother who’s grace incarnate and a father who’s oppressive in nature. So he is negotiating his way through it, defining who he’s gonna be when he grows up. And that is juxtaposed with a little, tiny micro-story of the cosmos, from the beginning of the cosmos to the death of the cosmos. So that’s where the sci-fi — or the sci-fact — comes in.”

Spitballed titles that weren’t announced this morning include Julian Schnabel‘s Miral (which will be unveiled in Venice and Toronto, Schnabel told me last night), Guillame Canet‘s Little White Lies, Cam Archer‘s Shit Year, Susanne Bier‘s The Revenge, John Cameron Mitchell‘s Rabbit Hole, Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver, Bruce Robinson‘s The Rum Diary, Oren Peli‘s Area 51, David O. Russell‘s The Fighter, Julie Taymor‘s The Tempest, Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, Sylvester Stallone‘s The Expendables, Julio Medem‘s Room In Rome, Kevin Macdonald‘s Eagle Of The Ninth, David Mackenzie‘s The Last Word, and Peter Mullan‘s Neds.

Nor was there any mention of Bertrand Blier‘s The Clink Of Ice, Isabelle Czajka‘s Living On Love Alone, Julie Bertucelli‘s The Tree, Johnnie To‘s Death Of A Hostage (Hong Kong), or Takashi Miike‘s Thirteen Assassins (Japan).