The festival is cranking up now and the things-to-get-done list is starting to overwhelm. Fissures of sea water are starting to shoot out from the dike. Once Cannes starts rolling it’s about one aonizing decision after another…see this and you miss out on that. All you have to do is hesitate a little bit and suddenly you’re behind the eight ball. I’ve only seen five films over the past two days — Ken Loach‘s The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Lou Ye‘s overpraised Summer Palace, Richard Linklater ‘s Fast Food Nation, Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver and the surprisingly spritzy anthology film Paris Je’taime …and yet I’ve written stuff about only two of them. Now it’s 4:35 pm, which is only got an hour and a half until this Paramount Vantage launch party starts at 6 pm on the beach (which means having to blow off the 6 pm screening of Andrea Arnold’s Red Road). And then there’s the Dreamgirls shindig at 8 pm. Maybe I’ll jump back and do some more filing from 10 pm to midnight, which is when the Fast Nood Nation party begins. I know, I know…eliminate the parties and you’ll start to see light breaking through the clouds.