While David Lynch prepares to team up with Werner Herzog to make a guerilla-style murder drama, his daughter is doing quite well on her own, thank you very much. indieWIRE reports that Surveillance, the first film by Jennifer Chambers Lynch in 15 years, has been picked up by Magnet Releasing for distribution in the US. The thriller will be playing out of competition at Cannes next week in one of the three Midnight screening slots.

Surveillance is set in the Santa Fe desert, where a blood-curdling killing spree has been unleashed, according to the official synopsis. The FBI arrives and listens to three eyewitnesses, including an eight-year-old girl whose family was brutally murdered. It becomes clear that the little girl knows something about the FBI agents ... and then two more bodies are found.

Creepy, eh? But not nearly as creepy as Lynch's first film, Boxing Helena, in which a surgeon held a woman captive and started amputating her limbs, all in the name of love. Based on the premise, Surveillance sounds much more straightforward, but perhaps the younger Lynch has some surprises up her sleeve.

The film stars Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman (David Lynch's Lost Highway) as the FBI agents, Pell James, Ryan Simpkins, and Kent Harper as the witnesses, and Michael Ironside as the local police chief. French Stewart and Cheri Oteri are also featured. Harper co-wrote the script with Lynch. Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, plans a fall theatrical roll-out.

Bonjour! Before I run out to the luncheon and roundtable for Blindness, I thought I'd get up a gallery with some scene pics around the festival and the lovely town of Cannes. I hope they'll give you something of a feel for what it's like to he here.

Cannes is a beautiful city -- lots of old buildings and winding streets, little shops, cafes and restaurants. There's so much to see and do here (besides, of course, watching tons of fabulous films) -- between the view of the Mediterranean Sea, the boats and yachts in the harbor, the islands off in the distance, and the people in designer clothing and fancy cars, it's a bit overwhelming to the senses.

Later in the fest, I plan to get out to wander through the Old Town area of Cannes, and hopefully will take the ferry across to at least one of the islands -- either the Île de Saint-Honorat, which houses a monastery, or the Île Sainte-Marguerite, where the Man in the Iron Mask was held captive. Later tonight or tomorrow, I'll also post some photos of the black-tie folks heading to premieres. Until then, merci, au revoir!

If you're a fan of Red Road, and were itching for the next part of the trilogy, I'm sorry to say that this isn't it. (Is the trilogy plan even continuing?!) It is, however, the second feature for the film's director, Andrea Arnold. Variety reports that Artificial Eye has pre-bought the UK rights to her next film, Fish Tank.

Unfortunately, the piece then goes on to talk about Eye's other projects and executive info, rather than the film. So, we've got this mysterious second picture. However, thanks to the Internet, I can fill in a tiny hole at least. According to MoveThat.com, Arnold was/is looking for her female lead for the film. "We're looking for young looking, white 16-19 year old girls who speak with strong London/South East accents who have attitude and who can street dance. Female breakers, poppers, lockers, and krumpers all very welcome."

UK readers out there, you'll have to fill us North American folk in on the slang, but I think it's safe to say that this is going to be some girl-headed film about dancing. Unfortunately, because of the language request, it'll probably also have really annoying English subtitles that don't match up with the words like Red Road.

That's all Google is allowing me to find right now, but please comment below if you've heard anything else about this feature.

The Cannes Film Festival got off to a kind of dark and depressing start, with two movies about the worst side of humanity screening. But hey, it wouldn't be a film festival without some nice movies about human suffering to brighten your day, right?

Seriously, though, we can see light-hearted rom-coms anytime; a festival like Cannes is where you go to see movies that make you ponder life, wax philosophical with friends about the use of voice-over in film and the deeper metaphorical meanings of this or that scene, and geek out over things like editing and cinematography.

I spent three days at the very first Marfa Film Festival, plus two days in transit -- more than 1,000 hard miles of driving -- and it was worth every effort to get there; even the post-fest illness that felled me for an entire week. I saw wonderful outdoor screenings, enjoyed some good docs and short films, and witnessed the debut of two music videos directed by Heath Ledger. Oh, and met many friendly local residents, talented filmmakers, and visiting film lovers.

Located in West Texas, roughly halfway between El Paso and San Antonio, the town of Marfa (population 2121) has the rare distinction of being the setting for two recent films that won Academy Awards: No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Some of the sets for the latter film are still standing, and I traveled there on a sunny afternoon with a small group of intrepid friends over a bumpy, curving, tail-bouncing dirt road that stretched for miles across a ranch just south of town. After depositing our load of bottled water for the opening night reception that would begin a few hours later, we wandered around the fictional town of Little Boston.

As authentically aged and real as the buildings look, it's not a real town, of course, it's a set, meant to evoke Bakersfield, California, circa 1911. Check out the gallery for pictures of the Blood set, visiting filmmakers and other sights of the festival. Read on for more about the festival itself.

The horrors of war and the atrocities of which humans are capable of have, of course, been documented extensively in film since the birth of the medium. From the recent slew of documentaries on the Iraq war to Atom Egoyan's controversial 2002 Cannes debut Ararat (about the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman empire); from Schindler's List to The Killing Fields; from The Battle of Algiers to Apocalypse Now; from Ousmane Sembene's last film, Moolaadé (inspired by the genital mutilation of young girls in Burkina Faso) to The Devil Came on Horseback (a documentary chronicling the genocide in Darfur), recent cinematic history is filled with tales of human suffering, inflicted not by natural disasters, but by human beings upon one another.

Waltz with Bashir documents the struggle of the filmmaker, Ari Folman, to come to terms with the gaps in his memory surrounding the part he played in the first Lebanese war and the 1982 massacre of Palestinian civilians in the West Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Where Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (to which this film will be inevitably, if somewhat inaccurately, compared) used stark black-and-white animation based on Satrapi's graphic novels to tell the history of one girl growing up during the Iranian revolution, Waltz with Bashir uses vivid, hand-drawn animation to bring to life interviews Folman conducted with friends who were involved in the Lebanese war in the early 1980s to bring to life harrowing memories of death, guilt and regret.

Baby, when I met you there was peace unknown. I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb..

Okay, sorry. I couldn't resist. Like Ryan back in January, I had to start this with a little "Islands in the Stream," Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers style. (Btw: Did you know it was written by the Bee Gees?) Anyhow, back in January, we learned that Tommy Lee Jones was circling a new adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's first posthumous novel, Islands in the Stream. Now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Jones has signed on to adapt, direct, produce, and star in the project, which will be presented to buyers at Cannes.

Stream follows an American painter, Thomas Hudson, tucked away in the Bahamas. Through three acts, the reader is introduced to Hudson's life, from the arrival of his sons to his island getaway, to alcoholism and naval reconnaissance during WWII, to Hudson's desire to pursue a ship of German soldiers who killed an entire village. At one point, there was also a fourth part, but it was removed and became the epically popular The Old Man and the Sea.

Next time Terry Gilliam gets down about his bad luck, he should talk to Constantin Film about Pope Joan. In October of 2006, Franka Potente signed on. In April 2007, John Goodman got sued for backing out of the feature. That made production stop. Then director Volker Schlöndorff was fired over comments he made to a paper. Last we heard, there was a new director, Sönke Wortmann, but that was last August.

And I just had to go and say: "How funny would it be if she could no longer do it? Also disappointing, since I'd love to see her really command a period piece." The Hollywood Reporter posts that due to scheduling conflicts from the rampant delays, Franka is out and German actress Johanna Wokalek is in as Pope Joan. That news just, well, sucks. It would've been a great opportunity for Franka, and Wokalek isn't well-known stateside, which could affect the production further.

But here's where things get weird. It seems that although he was sued and left eons ago, "Constantin said Wednesday that it remains in talks with Goodman and that the actor could still join the cast." That would certainly help foreign cred, but is he really still around? Is this just due to the lawsuit? The whole production just seems like a mess.

Should I even bother saying that principle photography is now set for August, with the film's release set for 2009? Will this come to fruition, or are more problems on the way?

The deals are already flying fast and furious in Cannes. As befits an international marketplace, most of the action involves far-flung territories, but we're keeping an eye out for US distribution deals too. indieWIRE has a great round-up of the first day's activity, which includes the news that IFC Films has acquired distribution rights to two films.

Good buzz about 24-year-old Joshua Safdie's feature debut The Pleasure of Being Robbed began when it world premiered at SXSW in March. Somehow, the Cinematical crew missed seeing it (hey, we're only human, we miss things sometimes), but David Lowery at Spout raved: "It's pure cinema, and as such it's one of the best films I've seen this year." The comedy revolves around a kleptomaniac, played by co-writer Eleonore Hendricks, with a philanthropic streak. Pleasure is the only US title in the Director's Fortnight this year.

In 2005, Tom Hall declared: "There is not a more important filmmaker working today than Arnaud Desplechin." He previously made Kings & Queen and Esther Kahn, among other critically-acclaimed work. The French filmmaker's latest, A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), features Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon and Mathieu Amalric "in a contemporary family drama set in France." The film plays in Official Competition and has its first screening on Friday night before opening theatrically in France next week.

We'll have to wait to hear about IFC's specific plans for distribution.

But can Sisto deliver them from evil?

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Kristin Chenoweth is going to star with Jeremy Sisto in an upcoming indie drama called Into Temptation. And finally, a link in my brain is showing up on the big screen. News of Chenoweth (Running with Scissors), always makes me think of Sisto, the Chenowiths, and Six Feet Under, so it's about time the two were combined.

And just like the dead-filled show, this is far from an upper. "Chenoweth will play a suicidal prostitute who confesses to a priest her plans to end her life on her birthday. The priest (Sisto) then searches for her to intervene."

Firstly, I really like the idea of a priest getting emotionally involved with a story he hears during confession. It breeds a million possibilities, but really -- do we need a struggling stripper on the big screen YET AGAIN? I feel like a broken record saying this, but it keeps continuing, so how can I not? There's enough flipping strippers on the big screen, people. Use those creative juices of yours to come up with new material!

The film is written and will be directed by Patrick Coyle, and production begins next week.

Fernando Meirelles's new film Blindness begins with the rush and push of urban life; traffic, crowds, activity, purpose. And then, one man cries out: "I'm blind." He eventually makes it to an ophthalmologist, but there's nothing physically wrong with his eyes; he simply can't see. "It feels like I'm swimming in milk," he explains, and we see, through his eyes, the blank, empty swirl of what used to be the world. And then another person says they are blind, and then another, and soon those few, frightened voices form a chorus of chaos as "the White Sickness" spreads like wildfire and leaves a ruined world in its wake.

Adapting Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel, Blindness feels like a curious mix of highbrow literary aspirations and lowbrow genre fiction; as the White Sickness spreads from person to person in a clear chain of connection and things fall apart, it'd be easy to dismiss Blindness as Dawn of the Dead for NPR listeners or Outbreak for grad students. Meirreles has taken a similar two-pronged approach before -- The Constant Gardener is an excellent critique of the failings of modern capitalism that also works as a strong, suspenseful thriller -- and while Blindness may not work as well as that film, it's also a clear case of a film, and filmmaker, failing to hit the mark occasionally only because they've set the bar so high for themselves.

I'm fascinated by pre-production news that make the movie sound different each time. Just a few days ago, Monika Bartyzel told us about a report in Variety that A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy would begin production this month in North Carolina. Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudeikis was set to star as an immature 30-year-old man who enlists his friends to help him throw one last summer bash -- an orgy -- before his rich folks sell their vacation home in the Hamptons. Will Forte and Leslie Bibb will co-star. It sounded like a silly little SNL star vehicle with potential.

Now comes word from The Hollywood Reporter that Michelle Borth has joined Orgy, and the brief article describes it as an indie film with the premise that "eight friends, all heading into their 30s and all on the verge of major life changes ... decide to celebrate their last Labor Day together." So that makes it sound like a more serious-minded ensemble piece about aimless adults -- which, sadly, sounds like a thousand other indie dramatic comedies.

Borth is an immensely appealing actress -- not just because she was willing to strip down and push the limits in fictional televised sex on HBO's Tell Me You Love Me, but because she transcended the limitations of her character as written. I imagine that she was hired more for her thespian abilities than for her apparent lack of inhibitions, but she is an intriguing and sexy addition to the cast.

Fidel Castro might be showing up as a character in Steven Soderbergh's Che flicks, but it looks like his daughter, Alina Fernandez, is getting a bit more involved in the movie biz. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Crash co-writer and Oscar winner Bobby Moresco is bringing her story to the big screen. Fernandez will consult, Moresco will possibly direct it, and the project is currently out to writers. However, this won't be a straight biopic.

It seems that her story will somehow be intertwined with the stories of others, like Crash, to "show the Cuban and American perspectives and ideologies along with Fernandez's story." Basically, she's the product of an affair Castro had while married to his first wife. She "spent her childhood in the country's shadow, only learning at age 10 that the man who visited her at night and whom she saw on TV every day was her father." In the '90s, she disguised herself as a Spanish tourist and fled to Spain, and then the US, where she now lives.

Fernandez is involved to try "to make people be a little more aware of how glorious we are and how many limitations we have." I'm sure that will depend on how the film is portrayed and then perceived by audiences. I happened to really dig Crash, but many people were put off by it, so it'll be interesting to see if this project takes on a different tone to circumvent comparisons.

James Rocchi and I got into Cannes this afternoon, checked into our flat, and then promptly headed out to the Croisette to get our press badges and take a slew of pics. Movie posters abound on the Croisette. They're draped on luxury hotels and adorning the sidewalks; pretty much everywhere you look, it's movie marketing central around here. I'll have a Live from Cannes post up later with some other pics of the Cannes scene and the lovely Croisette, but in the meantime, here's a bunch of movie poster pics for your viewing pleasure.

We'll be up bright and early tomorrow to catch the opening film, Blindness, and we'll be posting regularly throughout the fest, so keep checking back for more. Let us know what you're most interested in hearing about from the fest, and we'll do our best to oblige.

Apologies for the one-day delay, but, as it happens, the indie weekend charts changed in the interim. Early on Sunday, estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo indicated that Tarsem Singh's The Fall (Roadside Attractions) won the weekend, but when the figures were tabulated, Lloyd Kaufman's Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (Troma) sneaked into the top position with a take of $10,624 at one theater in Manhattan. Ed Gonzalez of The Village Voice says the film "chronicles what happens when a fried-chicken shack goes up on a Native American burial ground" and called it "a predictably hit-and-miss yukfest."

Doug Pray's Surfwise (Magnolia) surged near the top, grossing $10,304 at another theater in Manhattan. The doc follows a doctor who abandoned his practice to become a surfer and live in a camper, packing along his wife and nine children. All 12 critics whose reviews are listed at Rotten Tomatoes were positive.

The Fall fell to third place, earning $8,845 per screen at nine locations. Reviews were mixed (57% positive, per Rotten Tomatoes), though even the naysayers acknowledged the visual beauty of the film. We've previously pointed to the trailer, posted exclusive stills and a clip, which definitely confirm this impression. In the words of our own Eric D. Snider, it is "a visually stunning fable where a man in a hospital tells a little girl a story, and that story is craaaazy."