So how, past midpoint is the race for the Palme shaping up? According to the dailies, the Coen brothers crime thriller, No Country for Old Men, leads the pack, while 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, the miserabilist abortion drama from Romanian Cristian Mungiu, follows close behind.

Frankly, I'm hoping a beaut from the coming lineup will edge them both out. My own informal survey, conducted at the various A-list events clamoring for my presence, revealed no critical consensus. Some critics find the competish films weak overall; others consider them the most exciting in years; while a third group prefers what's out of competition, such as Michael Moore's Sicko and Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart.

Paranoid Park [pictured above] from Gus Van Sant may not be Palme d'Or material – too particular, too hermetic – but it's damn brilliant anyway. Though the critics turned out in droves – with the overflow corralled into a newly erected theater -- many feared a snore-mongering reprise of Elephant, and a camera fixated on boys-from-behind, loping down highschool halls. Well, there's a bit of boys in halls in “Paranoid,” as a kind of Van Sant signature. But unlike “Elephant” and Last Days, this film packs an emotional wallop, generating sympathy for its adolescent Alex, a skateboarder who has inadvertently caused a horrendous death.

In Van Sant-land, 16-year-old boys don't do much communicating, least of all with divorcing parents and girlfriends, so this kid is bottled up within himself, an accidental felon, unable to deal. The fractured narrative takes the form of a “letter” Alex is writing to sort out what happened, and the disordered sequence mirrors his internal disarray.

As in the past, Van Sant has shot the film in the so-called Academy ratio of l:33, an almost square frame, tighter than what we're accustomed to, but one that enhances close-ups. As Alex, Gabe Nevins (plucked from MySpace and beautiful as a Renaissance prince), wears a blank mask of teen befuddlement that reminded me of No theater. Some critics faulted the character's lack of affect. But Van Sant has long moved away from naturalism. More than anything, it's Leslie Shatz's sound design, a thing of genius, that conveys Gabe's turmoil. By layering snippets of music over murmuring voices, the whirring of bobbins -- and occasionally bird calls -- Shatz captures the equivalent of mental “noise,” the sound of consciousness, our waking dreams and nightmares. Sometimes, to keep us off balance, he plays against expectations, layering some jaunty Nino Rota over a scene where Alex blows off his girlfriend. If anyone merits a prize so far in this fest, it's Leslie Shatz.

Yesterday, managed to shoehorn a a small, exclusive press conference by Michael Moore -- in the American Pavillion – into my crammed schedule. Wearing his usual red baseball cap, shorts and black tee shirt, America's favorite gadfly looked like he could use a stay at Canyon Ranch. I say this only because thinner, you live longer, and I want him to make many more films.

Moore is not only sharp as a tack – he really engages with and respects journalists. What he does as a filmmaker, after all, is a form of investigative journalism. Moore said he doesn't need Cannes to launch a film – “Michael Eisner launched Fahrenheit 9/11 by refusing to distribute it. I come here for the sun.” The accuracy of the facts in his films is impeccable, he claims, and he rarely gets sued. (Except when the U.S. Government is on his case for going to Cuba?) What about his next film? “I said 3 years ago in Cannes that I was doing the health care system, and the pharmaceutical companies went on red alert. They actually trained employees to get me off the subject by asking me about sports and complimenting me on my weight loss.” So this time round, Moore will stay mum about his next project.

Angie and Brad on the telly again. What must all that adulation do to a person? I mean, Brad must look down at himself in the morning and say, wow.

Despite the near-chaos that is Cannes there remain pockets of charm. Like the "coaches" in the Wifi room, ever ready to assist the visiting technophobe; and the "hostesses" (Sorbonne students, according to my interviews) poured into their white toreador pants like Manolete. And the Frenchmen jogging along the Croisette, only to head for a Tabac for a pack of Marlboros. And the guys outside the Chas Addams Arms at 7 A.M., who apparently stay up all night, because they're hitting the caffeine still in evening clothes. And those trucks with power hoses that scrub the streets ... And the niceness without exception of cops, guards, all the French personnel working this event ... Hell, I might even miss the place.