Cannes Daily Blog Day 7

Wide eyes and long lenses were locked on the wispy white hair of Clint Eastwood and the still-very-pregnant belly of Angelina Jolie as strode into Cannes to unveil Clint's true-life '20s drama Changeling. But by this time, Changeling had changed. It's now called The Exchange. And it's split critics down the middle. Angelina Jolie is excellent as a woman whose nine-year-old son vanishes, only to return months later. Trouble is, she's convinced that this boy is not hers. He's three inches shorter, for starters. The police won't listen. Jolie ends up in a loony-bin. And out in the LA desert, unspeakable horrors are taking place... It's a dark, gripping story - but one that's been packaged into a glossy, unsubtle Hollywood Oscar-begger. Hope and heart, tears and triumph - you know the drill. That said, many swallowed it whole. Trade bible Variety called it "emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed".

A very different American heart-tugger arrived in the shape of intimate romantic drama Two Lovers, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow. Powered by Phoenix's superb performance as a young man torn between two women, it's small, delicate and surprisingly moving. The same could not be said of Los Bastardos (no translation needed), a Mexican art house bore-a-thon about two boys hired to kill a woman. Painfully little happens - until a horrific finale that might be the Cannes 2008's most shocking screen moment. Shame is can't save the film.

Away from screening rooms and the red carpet, LOVEFiLM also chatted to the producers of Terminator 4, the first in new trilogy of sequels (yes - three more Terminator films) to James Cameron's sci-fi saga. Christian Bale stars as John Connor, but The Halcyon Company kept schtum about whether the Big Oak would re-appear or if No Country For Old Men star Josh Brolin will be replacing him as the mean machine. In other news, Mark Damon (the uber-producer of Das Boot, The Lost Boys and Monster) revealed to us that he's casting Bruce Willis in a "Sixth Sense style" project that's one of the best scripts he's ever read. Hmm…

Right now, everyone is steeling themselves for tonight's four-and-a-half-hour screening Che, Steven Soderbergh's massively ambitious two-part epic starring Benicio del Toro as Cuba's iconic revolutionary. Will Soderbergh handle his most serious material since Traffic? Will this bum-numbing double-whammy be edited into a single, shorter epic before hitting UK cinema screens? And why did the Cannes programmers decide to screen Che at the same time as Champions League Final? Check back tomorrow for all the answers…

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