In the view of Vanity Fair.com’s Julian Sancton, the following TFF films are worth catching: Armando Ianucci‘s In The Loop (but then I knew that), Steven Soderbergh‘s The Girlfriend Experience, Leslie Cockburn‘s American Casino, Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Still Walking, Spike Lee‘s Kobe Doin’ Work, Eric Bana‘s Love The Beast, Alfonso Cuaron‘s Rudy y Cursi, Black Dynamite, Easy Virtue and Pandora’s Box.

“My real problem with Whatever Works was the older-man-younger-woman theme, which has never been one of my favorite Woody motifs, even before it gained a real-life parallel. (Manhattan is a great film, but the Mariel Hemingway relationship is creepy and condescending, and I don’t just say that as a father of an almost-teenage daughter.) Going back to Alvy and Annie, the romances in Allen’s films often have a teacher-pupil quality, too, and in Whatever Works we get that as well as the December-May thing.

“But here, Allen doesn’t even bother to make the relationship between Larry David‘s and Evan Rachel Woods‘s characters credible. Aside from her being hot, the attraction makes no sense: She’s a moron and he’s hateful.” — Vanity Fair critic Bruce Handy in a pro-con debate with Frank DiGiacomo, posted this morning.

Most of us, I suspect, believe that closeted gay politicians who support anti-gay legislation and do nothing to support their own are tragic and despicable figures. And yet I’ve always felt that it’s a basic human and professional right to be closeted if you so choose. However loathsome or pathetic the reason for this or that gay person wanting to live secretly, privacy is privacy. I understand and sympathize with those who’ve sought to “out” these hypocrites, but I would never be party to outing on my own steam.

That said, the headliner in Kirby Dick‘s Outrage, a Tribeca Film Festival doc (showing tomorrow night) that outs closeted D.C. politicians, is certainly Florida governor Charlie Crist. He reportedly supported anti-gay marriage legislation and campaigned in Florida for John McCain last summer and fall (and, if I recall correctly, was floated as a prospective candidate to be McCai’s Vice-Presidential running mate). He’s also on the short list as a prospective 2012 Republican Presidential candidate.

In a 4.22 entry, Wilshire & Washington‘s Ted Johnson reports that Kirby’s doc “recounts a string of stories from Florida’s alternative press, along with anonymous interviews with people who claim to have had conversations with a man who boasted of having sex with Crist.” The Florida governor, he reports, has been “asked about rumors [along these lines and] denied them.”

“The doc sought out Kelly Crosby Heyniger, one of Crist’s girlfriends until the end of 2007, who didn’t appear on camera but gave them a statement about what broke them up: ‘I think I should just keep my mouth shut. Call me in ten years and I will tell you a great story.’

“One of the final scenes of the movie is of Crist’s wedding last July. In a bit of judicious editing, a la Michael Moore, Crist tells a reporter, ‘If your wife can’t help you in a campaign, who can?'”

But we obviously did. Routinely, “legally,” procedurally. Between this Fox News clip and being reportedly mentioned in Kirby Dick‘s Outrage (which will screen at the Tribeca Film Festival tomorrow night), this is definitely Shepard Smith‘s pop-through week.

Garry Shandling‘s Iron Man 2 cameo role (reported here and there earlier this month) is that of “a whiney U.S senator who’s opposed to defense contracting and who’s particularly jealous of Downey’s Tony Stark character, especially his prowess with the ladies,” a guy tells me.

As forecast by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy on 4.16 and in a more general way last February by Screen Daily‘s Mike Goodridge, the official 62nd Cannes Film Festival competition slate includes Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds, Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock, Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist, Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon and Pedro Almodovar‘s Broken Embraces.

Other competitors officially revealed in Paris this morning were Marco Bellocchio‘s Vincere, Jane Campion‘s Bright Star, Isabel Coixet‘s Map of the Sounds of Tokyo and Ken Loach‘s Looking for Eric.

The festival’s Asian competitors will include Park Chan-wook‘s Thirst, Johnnie To‘s Vengeance, Brillante Mendoza‘s Kinatay and Face, and China’s Lou Ye’s Spring Fever.

French competitors include Alain Resnais‘ Les Herbes folles, Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet, Xavier Giannoli‘s In the Beginning and Gaspar Noe‘s Enter the Void.

Andrea Arnold‘s Fish Tank and Elia Suleiman‘s The Time That Remains will also compete.

Alejandro Amenabar‘s Agora will screen out-of-competition; ditto Jan Kounen‘s Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky and Terry Gilliam‘s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Sam Raimi‘s Drag Me to Hell will get a midnight slot.

As previously confirmed, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson‘s Up, the animated 3D pic from Pixar, will start the festival.

The Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week slates will be announced on Friday.

Add-on: For some inexplicable reason a 4.16 summary of Todd McCarthy’s Cannes forecast story wouldn’t click through. I don’t have an explanation but it’s water under the bridge — let it go.

Woody Allen‘s Whatever Works, which opened the Tribeca Film Festival this evening, is a kind of dry farce that isn’t naturalistic for a second and is basically about manner and whimsy and bile, and it certainly doesn’t go for broke. But it’s fairly enjoyable. It’s sometimes hilarious, especially when it rips into idiocy and thoughtlessness among the populace, and particularly red-state characters and values. It contains some wonderful zingers including a beautiful anti-NRA joke — if only Charlton Heston had lived to hear it! And a gem about automatic toilets, and another about Barack Obama and taxis.

(l. to r.) 42West partner Leslee Dart, Woody Allen, Soon-Yi Previn.

But it’s also partly stiff and unconvincing and perhaps a bit too mean-spirited, even for a film about a bitter misanthrope. And yet it turns around and goes easy at the end, which I oddly liked and didn’t like at the same time. It sure as hell isn’t about realism, and yet the fakeness of Whatever Works is pleasing. And I was often delighted that the people-are-no-damn-good humor is as scalding as it is.

Whatever Works star Larry David outside Ziegfeld following Tribeca Film Festival opening-night screening.

Set in lower Manhattan, Whatever Works is about a unlikely “comfort” affair (as opposed to a genuine love affair) between a grumpy genius mathematician (Larry David) and a bright but uneducated Southern girl (Evan Rachel Wood) that reminded me at times of Annie Hall, but only somewhat. Think of that one scene in Hannah and Her Sisters when Max Von Sydow, playing a cynical painter, rails against money-mad Christian preachers, and then multiply it 100 times and then make it a bit meaner.

Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert DeNiro, wife Grace Hightower.

But what the characters say and finally do in Whatever Works isn’t cause for anyone’s misanthropy. The story is about people changing and adapting and going with the flow, and it ends on a gracious and generous note.

Sony Classics co-chiefs Michael Barker (l.) and Tom Bernard (r.) flanking David.

I’m too whipped to write further but I’l jump into this tomorrow morning.

Allen, Soon-Yi Previn.

Regards to Movieline‘s Kyle Buchanan for mentioning yours truly in a summary of noteworthy Hollywood bloggers who feud (or have feuded). But I must again dispute that among other peeves I “regularly rail against Hispanics,” as Buchanan has written.

If I rant about “Hispanic party elephants” who live above my apartment, I’m simply saying that these coarse and thoughtless people happen to be Hispanic. (Should I say they’re German?) It’s not railing to report that a mother of apparent Hispanic ancestry has taken her two year-old daughter to see Eli Roth‘s Hostel 2. Ditto if I happen to notice a group of overweight Hispanic teenagers hanging at Carl’s, Jr. These observations have triggered judgments, okay, but they began as simple observations.

Five days ago news broke that $99 Bluray players are coming from China, probably by the end of the year. The rumble says this will goose Bluray sales big-time. Will it? If you ask me the price of high-def plasmas and LCD screens also have to come down. $500, say, for the 42-inchers, and $750 for the 50-inchers.

In a Time magazine q & a with Roger Ebert about his Overlooked Film Festival (today through 4.26), movie maven S. James Snyder (formerly of the New York Sun) asks, “I try to keep up on movies, but I’ve never heard of two of this year’s selections: Sita Sings The Blues and Nothing But The Truth. Why haven’t I heard about these, and why have you chosen them for the festival?” Does anyone believe that Snyder has been living in a mile-deep mine shaft? I hate it when journalists are disingenuous.

I like this Al Pacino/Devil’s Adovocate rap better than his big devil speech at the end. “That Florida stud thing…’scuse me, ma’am, did I leave my boots under your bed? Not the Trojan army — just little ole’ me. How the hell did that happen? They don’t see me comin’ — that’s what you’re missing.'”