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Cannes '11: Five Lessons From This Year's Festival

After 12 long days and even more sleepless nights for hundreds of people, the Cannes Film Festival finally came to an end Sunday. As with each year at this massive spectacle of media chaos and cinematic discovery, many moments and images (not to mention movies!) will continue to reverberate.

Some people have compared Cannes to “Groundhog Day” for its repetitive nature: The red carpets, the crowds, and even many of the filmmakers are bound to look the same after a while. But even as Cannes sticks to its traditionalist roots - “Cannes is Cannes,” as artistic director Thierry Frémaux told me in a recent interview - each year manages to leave many distinct impressions, although sometimes you have to squint through the spotlight to see them.

Having reviewed 25 movies and seen a few more than that, I’m still unpacking the experience. Here are a few of my takeaways from this (typically) wild 64th year.

The “scandal” never tells the whole story.

By this point, the whole world knows that Lars von Trier made some unfortunate comments during the press conference for his new movie, “Melancholia” (and they weren’t the ones about shooting a porn with Kirsten Dunst ). Anyone could have predicted that von Trier would aim to say something memorable when the microphone was put in front of him, but in this case he stumbled across an imaginary line and the movie’s reputation may have suffered as a result.

But did it? “Melancholia” has not only been widely praised by critics , but the jury even awarded Dunst an acting prize, and jury president De Niro said that he would have given the film the Palme d’Or if the entire jury felt it deserved the award. The festival waited until after the movie’s big premiere in the Palais des Festivals to announce von Trier’s vaguely defined “persona non grata” status , so “Melancholia” still got the same glamor treatment as every other movie in competition. While an Argentinean distributor dropped the movie from its slate, U.S. distributor Magnolia Pictures will release the movie in the fall and most likely bring it to more high-profile festivals. Von Trier, it seems, actually benefited from Mel Gibson’s appearance at Cannes; frequent comparisons to the shunned actor made the director look downright respectable.

THEY CALL ME SAUSAGE FINGERS: Lights....Cameras.....Action.....

We received a call at the shop on Monday from a mother of a boy in the league, she said the she was not at the game on Saturday so her father went with her son and he bought the action shots of his grandson. He was waiting for the match to start and was approached by a father who asked where he got the pictures. "Over there by the massive tent with the signs that say ACTION SHOTS SOLD HERE TODAY!" According to the grandpa the man wandered over to our tent to look at the pictures of his son. A bit later on the grandpa saw the man and asked him if he bought any pictures, the man told the grandpa the the action shots of his boy were very good but instead of buying them he pulled them off to the side and took cell phone pictures of them. The grandpa was well disgusted with the other man but unfortunately he bit his tongue not wanting to start any trouble. Later that night the grandpa was so upset that he called his daughter and told her to pass the story on to us. Times are tough I know, we ended up giving away hundreds of dollars worth of product to people who bought just a little and If asked I would have given the thief a discount if needed. This bastard so boldly took from me and my family not some giant corporation. I have 2 kids in this league and I missed most of their games this season so I could be out there shooting action of other children. While my 2 boys played at one end of the complex I was shooting at the other end, I know that this is not  the end of the world and the revenue lost is not life altering but the thought of someone taking from me just paces away from my position irks me to the point of violence..... So here it is, we have about a month before we shoot again and will spend much of that time finding out who you are, then I will give you the real professional action shots gratis, how does that sound? Then you can explain to your son where the other pics came from.

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