This year’s Cannes Film Festival has reached its end, and, upon much reflection, I’d like to inaugurate a bullshit award for the festival’s “Most Entertaining Photograph With Optional Subtext.” In this category, the competition was fierce, but this coveted honour has been bestowed only upon a winner as well as a close runner-up. Second place goes to this photo of Willem Dafoe & Charlotte Gainsbourg at a photo call before the screening the bizarre ball-bashing & clitoris-snipping Antichrist film, which I have not seen. However, I have read the statement of director Lars von Trier, who doesn’t care about his audience but does acknowledge the much-discussed acts that took place in his film. Interestingly, the Cannes jury did name Gainsbourg as Best Actress, so she must have done a marvelous job of smashing Dafoe’s balls before jerking him off and taking the scissors to her own pleasure point. After all that, I’d imagine a very awkward reunion conversation at this photo call:

Dafoe: “So… how’s the clitoris doing?”

Gainsbourg: “Yeah… sorry about your balls… and bolting you to that grindstone… and the whole ejaculating blood thing…”

See how fun this is? What a hilarious photo. However, this next one, which shows Eli Roth aping his own hype, uses a baseball bat to absolutely smash in the skulls of the competition:

This photo arrives courtesy of Life, which also provides the following description of the “Lucky Basterd” pictured:

“It is a really crazy thing for him to be so famous,” says photographer Jeff Vespa of Eli Roth, who, as the second-billed actor behind Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino’s buzzy “Inglourious Basterds,” is thoroughly enjoying his time at Cannes. Here the actor, wearing a bathrobe and holding a bottle of champagne, leans out a bathroom window of the InterContinental Carlton Cannes hotel, where the facade was plastered with posters for the movie. (Photo by Jeff Vespa/LIFE.com/ContourPhotos)

In the wake of our Cannes coverage, I’ve received a few emails about Eli Roth, so I will make reference to one particular discussion (& semi-heated comment section) that partially explains why he is actually a decent human being and not some psychopath that spends his time dreaming up new ways to torture women in his films. The continuing reaction to that post has been interesting, to say the least. In fact, for several months, every time that a movie-related discussion would pop up, friends of mine have awkwardly danced around the topic of Roth. Obviously, they aren’t comfortable with my acceptance of his films, and they’ve sort of been wondering what the fuck certainly must be wrong with me. Yet, these otherwise logical, intelligent people have only justified their own opinions by citing hearsay examples from Roth-written-and-directed films that they’ve never actually seen. One particularly stunning and oft-repeated example, given to me as the basis of an argument, discusses a non-existent (portion of a) scene from Cabin Fever that never appeared anywhere within the film itself or its DVD supplementary material. WTF? Uh… I’d suggest that, at minimum, these people should watch one of Roth’s films before attempting such an ill-conceived argument. Hell, if you want to argue about women-hating directors, I can say with all certainty, after watching a few Tyler Perry films and reviewing Why Did I Get Married?, that writer/director Perry really is an unabashed misogynist and (for bonus points) a bit of a racist too. For fuck’s sake, go focus your vitriol on Perry instead. He’s earned it.

Now, back to Cannes, where Director Michael Haneke received the Palme d’Or for The White Ribbon, a film that takes place in northern Germany on the eve of World War I, an oft-neglected period of world history. Hell, in the U.S., this is a war treated as a mere afterthought, which is sadly reflected by the memorials in our national capitol. If you’ve travelled to D.C. lately, you’ve seen the extravagant World War II memorial that just recently joined the tributes to the Korean War & Vietnam War on the National Mall. Then, on one side of the Reflecting Pool, there exists a tiny offshoot path, almost hidden by overgrown trees and shrubbery, which leads to a crumbling, gazebo-like structure that is the pathetic memorial for WWI. Nice.

Of course, I don’t mean to underscore the magnitude or significance of WWII, which is, of course, the topic of Inglourious Basterds, a film that received an exceedingly long standing ovation. The Cannes jury has confirmed rumours of the outstanding acting in this film and has bestowed the The Best Actor Award to Christoph Waltz, who gave the following acceptance speech:

Madame President of the Jury and dear members, please let me thank you for this altogether extraordinary honor, and this moment, unlike any other, in the life of an actor. I want to thank all those who participated in this extraordinary adventure, in this incredible experience. They carried me through the film, from beginning to end. I couldn’t have done it alone. Of course, I thank the Weinstein Brothers company, Universal, all my friends in Germany, who proved their support to me. Thank you, Brad, for meeting me on eye-level and allowing me to be your partner. But especially and above all, I owe this to Colonel Landa and his unique and inimitable creator Quentin Tarantino. Quentin, I need to answer you: you gave me my vocation back!

Well said, and I can’t wait to see Waltz’s performance in the film itself. The following illustrative photos of Waltz are provided by the Tarantino Archives, which has worked tirelessly to cover its subject before, during, and (surely) will continue to do so after the Cannes premiere:

UPDATE: Flea on Roth (with perfect opening paragraph) & Roth gives haters a reason to keep hating by narrowly escaping an inferno while filming Basterds.