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.

The Cannes Film Festival brought us these new ‘Synecdoche, New York’ pictures, the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman.

‘Changeling,’ the new thriller by Clint Eastwood, is one of the three Hollywood titles standing out on the list of competitors for a Palme d’Or award. Then there is the Charlie Kaufman movie we mentioned earlier, called ‘Synecdoche, New York.’ And Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che,’ a $40 million biopic about Che Guevara.

Outside the competition is Woody Allen, with his spanish comedy ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona.’ And of course the one and only Steven Spielberg with ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,’ still a way too long title.

You can find the full list of movies in competition after the jump.

Continue reading Eastwood, Allen and Soderbergh at Cannes