Fair or not, a couple films had targets on their back coming into Cannes this year. Depending on who you ask spoke with, either Walter Salles’ On the Road or Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy were ripe for disaster. Indeed, I was skeptical enough of the latter to skip it entirely (I opted for sleep—a lot of it. Which is why this dispatch arrives a little later than planned). Unlike most, however, I had no expectations whatsoever for On the Road, Jose Rivera’s adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s cult coming-of-age novel and one of many texts posited as “unfilmmable”. I’m not sure if I’d go that far, since the rough skeleton of a good film is evidenced sporadically in Salles’ version; but he and Rivera would have done well to to fortify the structure of their film, which goes all-in with the episodic nature of the novel. Yet in their resignation to it’s wandering gait, they’ve lapsed on cinematic translation, which may have, amongst other things, condensed the prose into more potent, less repetitive stop-overs.

Sony’s Bloggie Sport (MHS-TS22) is their most durable pocket video camera; it is tough enough to withstand drops (from reasonable heights), resist dirt and go underwater up to 16 feet (as they described, not tested by us). The rugged camera was released in March and now enjoys the company of similar products like Samsung’s HMX-W300. When it came down to testing it, I took it out to some shows to see what it was capable of. It measures 2 3/8” x 4 5/8” x 27/32”, weighs a mere 5.2 ounces (all technical specifications are from Sony’s website) and comes with a wrist strap so you don’t drop it.

I’ve noted the relative abundance of American productions in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film festival in a prior dispatch. But if that wasn’t curious enough, the programmers here have made the interesting decision of screening a majority of these during the last half of the festival. In fact, beginning with Wednesday’s premiere of Killing Them Softly, the final five Competition screenings are all products of the States, albeit made in some cases by foreign directors. There’s been disgruntled chatter about why these, for the most part, highly anticipated films have been scheduled in this manner, as many critics leave the fest a number of days prior to the official closing ceremony. Because of this, and considering the gradual increase in quality these last couple days, this seemed to have all the makings of a backloaded festival, whereas most Cannes line-ups reveal the goods straight away. But following the unfortunate concessions of Lawless—and bracing for the impending critical darts aimed squarely at both On the Road and The Paperboy—a lot was riding on Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik’s anticipated return to the director’s chair after a five-year pause following 2007’s contemporary classic, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Fifty years is a long time to wait for anything, let alone a prize from a festival located in a country who’s cinema you’ve helped define. But that’s where 90-year-old Alain Resnais finds himself in 2012, at the Cannes Film Festival, 53 years after his debut feature, Hiroshima mon amour, won a special prize at the fest. In a neat connection, Emmanuelle Riva, who I’m guessing takes home the Best Actress prize this year for AMOUR, starred in Resnais’ debut. His 18th (and potentially final) feature, the appropriately titled You Ain’t See Nothin’ Yet, marks his latest attempt at snatching the Palm d’Or, an award he’s arguably had coming to him for the entirety of his career, since his days unintentionally spearheading the nouvelle vague (Hiroshima, one of the movement’s key texts, was notoriously left out of Competition because of it’s subject matter). If he does win, however, it thankfully won’t only be a result of longevity and outcries of being “overdue”. The charming, slyly brave You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet finds Resnais’ aesthetic prowess in fine form, continuing a run of twilight-era films nearly as radical as what he was doing with the form in the 1960s and ‘70s.

New York’s annual Dance Parade was held this year on Saturday May 19th on a gorgeous early summer day. The festivities began near Madison Square Park where dancers began parading down past Union Square—where MCA Day (A Celebration of Adam Yauch) was also taking—then into the East Village along St. Marks before ending in Tompkins Square Park.

People came from all dances of life to tango, waltz, pole, and cheer their way along the parade route. The disco floats and the costumes were full of color, while the energy had regular people moving along to the music.