“The Hollywood trades have ruled at Cannes and other film markets [in the past],” reports former Variety guy Rex Weiner, “but their dominion has dissipated with the advent of the Internet, and the proliferation of online sources of business information, including leagues of bloggers.

“Cannes advertising revenues for the trades this year are down as much as 20-30%, according to sources at both papers. Between Cannes and the awards season, this downward trend has hit The Hollywood Reporter and Variety hard, and layoffs over the past year decimated the editorial and sales forces on both sides of the street.

One result, Weiner reports, is that Variety “will for the first time in more than a decade be producing its daily Cannes edition entirely from its LA offices, cutting costs by paying overtime to a skeleton crew in LA working a two-week nightshift from opening night to the May 24th Palme d’Or awards ceremonies.

Another is that “of the 15 people the Hollywood Reporter has registered with the festival press office, only four are reporters and two are film reviewers, with editor-in-chief Elizabeth Guider holding down the fort in LA where half the show-daily will be produced.”

“The fact that the venerable entertainment industry trades are sending fewer reporters to Cannes marks the end of one of the juicier assignments in the field of journalism. As this former Variety reporter can assure you, reporting on Cannes from a cubicle on Wilshire Boulevard just won’t be the same as sitting poolside at the Hotel du Cap with a notepad in one hand, a gin-and-tonic in the other, listening to Harvey making deals from the next lounge chair, and watching the latest box-office hottie just over there smoothing on sunblock.”

That NPR-spikes-Nathan Lee‘s-Outrage-review story is so cold you could wrap fish in it. It happened last weekend and Indiewire, slow on the pickup, ran a story about it four hours ago. Forget it, dead…this morning’s news. The reason for the spiking is that NPR editors didn’t want Lee to be able use a discussion of the content of Outrage to indirectly “out Idaho Sen. Larry Craig or Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Lee, naturally, was hugely pissed about this, and tried to post a protest.explanation on the NPR site. This too was removed by NPR.

My Three Days of the Condor Bluray arrived this morning. There’s a certain level of ’70s grain in Owen Roizman‘s cinematography. It’s a New York-based film, after all, and it wasn’t shot with the idea of looking “attractive.” But it sure looks nice all the same. Some shots are so pleasing (I’ve only seen about 30 minutes’ worth) they brought a smile to my face. This may be my last post before heading out to JFK.

I wrote publicist Phil Symes this morning about my keen interest in seeing Gaspar Noe‘s Into The Void in Cannes. I’m departing Cannes on Thursday, 5.21 and the first scheduled press screening is on Friday, 5.22, so I was hoping to catch a slightly earlier market showing. But Phil dashed my hopes.

A scene from Enter The Void that resembles a similar idyll-in-a-park scene at the end of Irreversible.

“There will be no screenings prior to the 14:40 screening on Friday 22nd,” he replied. “The film is expected only to be completed the previous day. So sorry, this is not going to be possible.

I wrote back the following: “So Gaspar’s pulling a Wong Kar Wai this year, eh? I understand the exactitude and perfectionism that drives directors, of course, but a plan to have the film completed only one day before a Cannes debut seems a bit extreme. Not two or three or four days before the Cannes screening, which would be cutting it close enough, but only 24 hours before? Something manic in that.

“If Gaspar manages to finish it a tad earlier, please advise. I respect Gaspar highly and was looking very much forward to seeing this during the festival.” Phil promised to keep me in the loop if something changes.

Its reputation as perhaps the best written, best acted mumblecore bromance flick of all time more or less intact/unchallenged, Lynn Shelton‘s Humpday (Magnolia, 7.10) could/should emerge as an indie summer punch-through — here’s hoping. But isn’t it a basic rule of movie marketing that your two stars (in this case Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard) should have the same stylistic appearance on the release poster that they have in the film?

Crop from a current Humpday release poster.

Mark Duplass (l.) and Joshua Leonard (r.) as they appear in Lynn Shelton’s Humpday

Here’s the HD trailer, which went up…what, three or four days ago?

Pretty much everyone seems impressed by Star Trek‘s $72.5 million haul on 7,400 screens. Dissings from various HE talkbackers aside, the word on the street is apparently pretty good so there’s a better than decent shot at tripling the $72 mil and cresting $200 mil. But poor Wolverine‘s Sunday night figures were 68% less than last weekend’s…all she wrote.

Kara Swisher of Boom Town/All Things Digital visits the Santa Monica home of Sharon Waxman, a.k.a. headquarters of The Wrap.

“I just saw Warwick Thornton‘s Samson and Delilah, an Australian film selected for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival,” says Down Under critic Joel Meares. “It’s a tough slog that takes you into remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory (basically the outback) and is relentlessly grim in some ways. But also extremely touching. It delivers emotionally like little else I’ve seen recently.

“This is definitely one to look out for. It’s probably the best and most profound thing to come out of this country for a few years at least. Two leads, untrained actors, perfectly natural, great perfs. I said to someone today it was like a good shot of Listerine washing away the bad taste of how ludicrously Aborigines were presented in Baz Luhrman‘s Australia.”