Although there are plenty of summer blockbusters to go around this year, many critics are disappointed with Cannes’ main competition films. “Coming off another weak Berlin festival, there is a sense that 2008 is not going to be the best year for films,” Jay Weissberg of Variety said. “Even before the halfway mark, the general mood has been one of disappointment,” he added. Which might also explain why there aren’t as many sales at the Cannes Film Festival.

Most movies had mixed reactions. Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’ was loved by some, but said to be too long by others. Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ was deemed too weird. And while Clint Eastwood’s ‘Changeling’ created some very early Oscar buzz, it also disappointed a lot of critics at the festival. Lesser known documentary ‘Waltz With Bashir’ is seen as the potential winner of the Cannes Festival’s Palme d’Or. It’s an animated feature about the 1982 massacre of the Palestinians in Beirut.

Cannes is ending with mixed results. Early market activity indicated how the French festival also wasn’t able to pull the market out of the slump. And now it seems like a classic case of bulls vs. bears. On the one side Variety is reporting ‘Cannes reels in deals,’ but on the other side there’s another piece saying ‘Cannes market signs caution tune.’ Conclusion: some deals, but the dead market isn’t showing much signs of life.

“Some big deals are going down today. But overall, feedback from the market is that it’s somewhat sober,” Cannes director Jerome Paillard said. As at the other festivals this year, everybody is still cautious. Nobody wants to buy another ‘Speed Racer.’ “Too much financing created an insane number of films and more for people to buy, but (ultimately) they pick and choose the movies they want to buy,” ICM exec Hal Sadoff said.

Continue reading False alarm: still SOME deals at Cannes

Did Angelina Jolie and Jack Black hide all the money in their bellies? What is happening? No big sales at the Sundance Film Festival. Nothing at the Tribeca Film Festival either. And now Cannes isn’t even able to sell the pictures? Sony Classics’ Michael Barker blames the films. “I’m trying to find a year when we left without buying a film. If we ever did it was a long time ago. There are no gems in the market,” Barker said.

Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ is still available too. As is Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che,’ which screened yesterday (Wednesday) evening. Most North American distributers don’t want to shell out $10 million for the Spanish feature. They think it’s difficult to market, also because it’s four hours of film split into two movies.

Nobody wants to take risks at the moment. “I think there have been some really beautiful films, but none of them are particularly suited to us. It’s really, really hard in such a cluttered marketplace,” one acquisitor noted.

With a couple of days left, it will be interesting to see which pictures still manage to sell.