Lots of promising films debuting at Cannes. Cronenberg's A History of Violence and the first new Atom Egoyan film in 3 years are the two I'm most looking forward to seeing, I think.

It's interesting - more and more I find myself paying attention to directors and producers rather than the cast when choosing to get excited about a film. I think it's a symptom of old age. The calculus of movie-watching takes less and less account of explosions and pretty faces as one moves into ones dotage. College got me hooked on Atom Egoyan with Calendar and Exotica, and Darryl, in more recent times, introduced me to the twisted mind of David Cronenberg (how, he asks me, can a David Lynch/Chris Carter hanger-on not have seen eXistenz?), so that what would before have been Viggo Mortensen/Colin Firth (!) movies to me are now not.

In related though possibly contradictory news, I have a strange, self-destructive urge to go and watch Sahara