“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.

View from the Palais press terrace — 5.24.06, 3:25 pm.

And: (a) Lying duo Molly Hassell and M. Blash aboard the Big Eagle cocktail party for their film — Tuesday, 5.23, 5:55 pm; (b) Shortbus guys Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy (or is it the other way around?…sorry) at Tuesday’s Lying party; given my sentiments about the film, I didn’t feel quite right about attending Wednesday night’s Marie-Antoinette party…something of a spot decision; (c) Just before a tour bus nearly ran me down — Wednesday, 5.24.06, 7:55 am; (d) Hotel Splendid.

“I understand why some might not like Marie-Antoinette, but the idea of people actually booing it is the most hilariously hypocritical thing I’ve heard at Cannes this year. At least half the competition films that I’ve seen, many of them French, have been dull, turgid and labored. Obviously
Marie-Antoinette doesn’t invite emotional responses as strongly as Lost In Translation did, but Coppola seems to be being criticized for what she hasn’t made, as opposed to recognizing what she has. I think it’s a mistake, if not grossly unfair, of you to somehow paint the film as a failure just because of the overblown reactions of a few pompous Euro crits. The only reaction I heard at my screening was a couple of middle-aged women, one of whom remarked to the other ‘Tres, tres bon’, reflecting my response as well.” — Distribution pal who always asks for anonymity. Wells response: It’s fair to report the boos. They were loud and prolonged, and they expressed my own feelings as well as many, many other press people I spoke to afterwards. As I said yesterday, the theme, craft and tonal consistency in Marie-Antoinette qualify it as a well-made film, but the bland thoughtlessness that lies at the center of it — the complete shucking of the elements that give her story resonance — is rancid. And boooo! to that.

“I don’t know if you’d heard reports of this, but prior to last night’s preview screening for X-Men 3 there was a trailer for Snakes on a Plane and the audience went BALLISTIC! You could tell they were hip to it cause the cheering started as soon as the single word “Snakes” went up, and just thundered all throughout the fairly short teaser, which featured a few fleeting glimpses of snakes, passengers in jeopardy, and Sammy J. I think the idea that SOAP fever is dying down is bollocks. This thing is just getting warmed up.” — Max Evry, Washington, D.C.

I have this idea that Sharon Waxman‘s N.Y. Times story about 20th Century Fox execs pulling the plug on Used Guys, the Jim Carrey-Ben Stiller-Jay Roach comedy, isn’t just well reported. It’s also, I suspect, a sign of the times, a turn in the road…a shot heard round the Hollywood world. The $112 million budget meant that Used Guys would “be one of the most expensive original comedies ever made,” Waxman writes. “And in an industry with crushing marketing costs and top-shelf stars taking a huge chunk of every ticket sale, the studio decided the math didn’t add up.” Bottom-line indicator: Carrey, Stiller, Roach (the director) and other top-dollar players are going to have to start adapting to a world in which they’ll have to settle for being very well paid for their talent and name value, instead of being paid fantabulously-orgasmically. Get used to it, hombres.

Enjoyed a nourishing talk Tuesday night at the Babel party with Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro. I’m seeing GDT’s film tomorrow (Thursday afternoon), chatting formally with him on Friday afternoon. Guillermo said he’s honored that a film such as his (i.e., fantasy, wild imagination, special effects ) is playing at Cannes, but he also believes the festival prize winners have pretty much been decided at this point. (Volver, Babel, et. al.) Naturally he’s rooting for Babel, being a close Innaritu friend and ally from way back.

An Inconvenient Truth opens in Los Angeles and New York today. (I think.) Eli Pariser’s www.moveon.org says “how it does on opening weekend will determine how the movie is received in the press and even how many other cities get to see it.” He’s right, and if you want to help pledge to see the film and urge your friends, etc.

Maybe it’s my fault due to an overly complex paragraph, but that Hollywood Wiretap story that quotes my Marie-Antoinette review got it slightly wrong. I didn’t say that “the scene that seemed to most rile the crowd was one ‘in which French agitators shout angry epithets outside the bedroom of the reviled French queen.'” I made an analogy between French malcontents shouting epithets at Kirsten Dunst’s character in the film and the angry booers at this morning’s screening “as Sofia Coppola’s film ended.”

Steps of the Palais prior to Tuesday morning’s Babel screening — 5.23.06, 8:05 am.

And some others: (a) American traffic cops will ride mountain bikes, but I doubt if they’d ever putter around on cute scooters like these — Tuesday, 5.23, 3:25 pm; (b) Emerging Arists Film Festival honchos Max Ryerson and Thomas Ethan Harris, whose launch party happened a week ago last Tuesday (5.16) in Monte Carlo; (c) The Lying trio on a Big Eagle yacht late Tuesday afternoon: Jena Malone, writer/director M. Blash, Chloe Sevigny — Tuesday, 5.23.06, 5:40 pm; (d) I admit it — I’m vaguely embarassed to be running this photo.