Flanders:  Stupid, sexy Flanders!  That was one of several things I cursed after getting up early to sit through Bruno Dumont's Grand Jury Prize winner from Cannes.  I've been burned before by Dumont and the Cannes juries who heap accolades on him (see L'Humanité), but this time, the French director had the common courtesy to put Flanders out of its misery nearly an hour quicker than the aforementioned bloated corpse of nothing.

Samuel Boidin plays Demester, a farm boy who has been having a fling with farm girl Barbe (Adélaïde Leroux) but won't commit to her.  On the eve of shipping off to some mysterious, ill-planned and unnamed war somewhere in a desert, Barbe takes up with another soldier-to-be named Blondel (Henri Cretel), which means you'll soon be faced with the inevitable moment where Demester must dramatically decide whether to save a wounded Blondel or leave him for the sand fleas to feast on.  As if that weren't exciting enough, it's all done with Dumont's patented minimalist style, and that's just a secret code for "boring."

Death of a President:  Two backstory items.  The first is that the festival is calling this film D.O.A.P. for reasons unknown.  The second is that I arrived one hour early to this press/industry screening, and I barely got in.  Usually, 30 minutes early will get you your pick of seats.  I guess everyone is just super-excited about the prospect of watching Dubya gunned down.

President is about Dubya getting gunned down, in case you didn't pick up on it in that last paragraph.  It's a faux-documentary, made by Gabriel Range and Simon Finch, who have made a handful of similar "What If?" docs for British television over the last few years.  This one poses the following question: What if George W. Bush was assassinated in October 2007 following a speech in Chicago?  Unless you're a troglodyte, your answer should be "Sit back and wait for the government to pin everything on Al Qaeda as they continue to trample your civil liberties."

President is a slick looking picture, and aside from a very obvious moment during Dick Cheney's memorium speech, you'd have to look pretty hard to see which images and television clips have been doctored.  That's pretty cool.  Plus, you get to see Dubya gunned down!

Fay Grim:  Remember when Hal Hartley was The Shit in American independent filmmaking?  You could almost feel his success/bravado building with each film.  Amateur.  Flirt.  And then his crowning achievement, Henry Fool, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 1997.  Wondering what happened in the intervening decade?  Hartley has made a few short films, as well as a Beauty & the Beast modernization that didn't play in most cities (No Such Thing), and something called The Girl from Monday, which I didn't even know existed until right this second, when I looked it up on the IMDB.

So what's a guy in a funk meant to do?  Make a sequel to the film that brought him his original glory.  That's right, kids -- we're talking about that Fay Grim, sister to Simon Grim, and lover of Henry Fool himself.

Cinematically, more than just 10 years have passed since the original film ended.  Fay (Parker Posey) is now the single mother of a rebellious 14-year-old son named Ned (Liam Aiken).  She married Henry and lived with him for seven years, until he vanished.  Simon (James Urbaniak) is in the clink for aiding Henry's mysterious disappearance.  Fay looks like she's on the brink of a breakdown, and then the Feds show up and tell her Henry is dead.

This, of course, isn't true because it happens 10 minutes into the film.  What follows is a bizarre yet highly entertaining romp as Fay and crew try to piece together the facts as they relate to Henry's multi-volume "confessions" and his Zelig-like ability to appear at major political hot spots since the '70s.  It's all intentionally played for high melodrama, and it's all very silly and very fun.  Funner if you've seen the original.

Election:  Johnnie To has three films playing at this festival: The first two installments of Election, and Exiled, which we'll talk about in a few days.  Election just swept through the Hong Kong Film Awards like a ravenous cougar, and it's easy to see why a sequel was quickly cranked out.

The film is about the Wo Sing Triad Society (a/k/a the Mob) and its curious election for the position of Chairman, which lasts for one single two-year term.  The two contenders are Big D (Tong Leung Ka Fai) and Lok (Simon Yan).  One is the favorite to win, but has a temper that scares some Triad members.  The other has a much cooler demeanor.  Once the election dust settles, I expected a big blowout (something akin to the opening of To's Breaking News) between the winner and the loser, but it never really happened.  At least that way.  Still, Election's running time flew by quicker than any other film at this festival, and that means I liked it.

Election 2:  I can't recall ever seeing a sequel here at the festival, and here I am, on my second of the day.  Strange, that.

I'm a little uncomfortable talking too much about the plot for Election 2, since doing so kind of gives away the ending of the original film (in terms of who lives and who dies and stuff).  Two years have passed, and it's time for another election.  The favorite this time around is Jimmy (Louis Koo), but things are never as simple as they appear in the Wo Sing Triad Society.  It's really more of the same, with one key ingredient added: Jimmy providing what might be the greatest pep-talk in the history of modern cinema.  And can we talk about the music?  It sounds like something that should be playing during the closing credits of Deadwood, not a Triad flick.

Rescue Dawn:  Werner Herzog's last few pictures have been documentaries (including the Oscar snub of the year, 2005's Grizzly Man), so I just assumed this Dawn was, as well.  It's not, though.  It's a feature-length drama, and it's probably Herzog's most accessible picture ever.  If you're looking for Fitzcarraldo, that's probably bad news, but if you've dreamed of someday seeing a Herzog movie in the running for a Best Picture Oscar, you might be barking somewhere near the right tree.

Returning to the story that netted him an Emmy nomination (1997's Little Dieter Needs to Fly), Herzog wrote and directed Dawn, a story about a German-born US fighter pilot getting gunned down over Laos on his first combat mission.  Dieter (Christian Bale) enlisted only because he always dreamed of flying planes, but during the escalating conflict in Viet Nam, he quickly finds himself plummeting toward the jungle with hardly any survival skills or equipment.  He is quickly discovered by the NVA and tossed into a makeshift bamboo prison with a handful of others, including a batshit crazy Jeremy Davies, who channels both Charles Manson and Crispin Glover.

But Dieter is a relentlessly chipper and upbeat guy who always looks on the positive side, and you know what that means, don't you?  Prison break!  Dawn shows that good old fashioned American never-give-up-itude spirit.  Except, you know -- from a German guy.

Dawn is perfect Oscar bait, and even though I tend to steer clear of any kind of emotional investment in that kind of thing, I was a little choked up at the end.  There.  I said it.  Now it's time for bed.