Indiana Jones won’t visit the Croisette until tomorrow, but today one sensed that the festival was already in full swing. On Wednesday, you couldn’t get into Sean Penn’s press conference; today you could barely get a spot at one of the televisions showing Woody Allen’s. The reception to his Vicky Cristina Barcelona is all over the map. (Bear in mind that my enthusiasm is based in part on expecting, say, another Cassandra’s Dream.) Given one of the movie’s subplots, it’s natural that someone would ask the Woodman if he was himself was interested in menage a trois. "It’s hard enough to get one person," he replied.

Crowds are everywhere, and this morning even pink-badge wearers were turned away from a press screening of Jia Zhangke’s 24 City, which had been programmed in the tiny Salle Bazin. Getting shut out of the movie slowed me down (and prevented me from catching that wacky Van Damme movie in Market, alas), but Jia’s film—shown again later in the afternoon—was worth the wait. Sort of the Chinese director’s Spoon River Anthology, the film features interviews with ex-employees of a factory that was demolished to make way for a housing complex; their remembrances, interspersed with monologues by actors (including Joan Chen and Zhao Tao), comment on a broad swath of Chinese history. Like Jia’s 2006 Dong and Still Life—which also combined fiction and documentary—24 City is concerned with the art of writing history and memorials. The stories themselves blend into one another; the movie is more about capturing images. It’s cinematic portraiture.

A slightly more conventional documentary was shown last night—specifically, James Toback’s Tyson, which consists of nothing more than the bad-boy boxer talking to the camera, with archival footage providing illustration. It’s much more compelling than it sounds. If nothing else, the movie suggests that Tyson could challenge Muhammad Ali for the designation of boxing’s brashest word slinger (though Ali has more of a knockout wit). Toback knows enough to stand back while Tyson slags Don King and the woman who accused him of rape in 1991, and also when he remembers having an urge to break things during a contentious interview with Barbara Walters. The film offers some sympathy for him, too; Tyson talks at length about his upbringing in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, which shaped his fighting style. The boxer and Toback received a curtain call after the premiere last night, but one suspects that the reception was less for Tyson—the movie never asks you to like him, after all—and more for his spectacular showmanship.

TOC at Cannes image: Nadine Nakanishi

Everything moves quickly in Cannes. On Tuesday Variety reported the bizarre news that Werner Herzog had signed on to remake Bad Lieutenant (with Nicolas Cage!), and already there’s a poster for the film in front of the hotel that houses Directors’ Fortnight.

In another case of prescience, yesterday IFC announced that it had acquired Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale for U.S. distribution, despite the fact that the film hadn’t yet screened for Cannes press. It was a good bet: As a fan of Desplechin’s Esther Kahn and someone who admired, but had doubts, about his frantic Kings and Queen, I was won over instantly by this engrossing, novelistic family melodrama, which finds Desplechin channeling his virtuosity into a more stable structure. The film concerns an extended family from which one son (the hilarious Mathieu Amalric) has been banished (his sister, played by Anne Consigny, paid a family debt on the condition that she never see him again). But now Mom (Catherine Deneuve) needs a bone marrow transplant, and the search for a matching donor occasions a family reunion, which stretches from high comedy to Greek tragedy and back again (with brief forays into biology and mathematics for good measure). It’s proof that Desplechin can be a master of pacing as well as of surprise, and based on the reaction from colleagues this morning, it’s probably the first legitimate contender for the Palme d’Or.

Meanwhile, the Un Certain Regard selection Soi Cowboy aggressively contends for the title of "this year’s Brown Bunny." Initially a protracted, black-and-white exercise in watching nothing happen—at length—the film observes the daily routines of an obese Dane and his pregnant, disturbingly young-looking girlfriend. He showers, he sits on the couch, he searches the Bangkok streets for a DVD of Inland Empire. Director Thomas Clay supposedly drove audiences here up a wall with his 2005 film The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, and Soi Cowboy likewise eagerly tries to throw off its audience at every turn. (In a self-flagellating joke, the main character talks to someone on his cell phone about making a deal with the Weinstein Company.) Influenced by—and possibly a parody of—Tropical Malady’s fissuring narrative, Cowboy extends a true middle finger to viewers who leave during the first half. Me? I had to leave 10 minutes before the end to catch my next movie, and it’s possible that if I’d stayed the film would have morphed into something else entirely.

Speaking of metamorphoses: The film I went to catch was Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It’s possible relocating to a new city renews Allen’s creative inspiration (Match Point, Allen’s first London-set movie, premiered here in 2005 and was somewhat overenthusiastically hailed as his return to form). In any case, the Barcelona-set Vicky is the director’s most enjoyable and fluid film in a long time—and certainly evidence that he hasn’t lost his comic timing. The story of two Americans in Spain (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson) who get roped into a romantic…pentagon by a mysterious painter (Javier Bardem), the movie is nearly stolen by Penélope Cruz—and not because she and Johansson make out while developing photos together. Their brief sapphic scenes are hardly as salacious as you’ve been led to expect—but the movie’s a lot better than you might expect, too.

Now for the point of the headline: Tomorrow and Sunday mark the annual organic plant seedling sale at Kilbourn Park Greenhouse. This sale is (1) always awesome (they have fantastic heirloom tomatoes and any other edible plant you can think of), (2) always packed, (3) the best way to save money this summer by growing your own eats, and (4) the best way to avoid nightmarish lines at Stanley’s when all you need is a handful of basil. Hit it up after you’re done cruising all the farmers’ markets on our list.

So go. Buy lots. Plant them quick. Watch them grow.

Sat 17 and Sun 18, 10am–2pm (3501 N Kilbourn Ave).

Here’s something you don’t see every day: An Internet game that combines practical, real-world skills with giant-headed freaks. Such is the beauty behind Adult Swim’s Amateur Surgeon, a gem on the TV station’s loaded site. You assume the role of the doctor, and your job is to use the given tools to perform comical procedures on your patients, who have suffered from things like "badger in the chest." The game walks you though what you need to do, including cauterizing wounds and putting pain-relief juice on them. Now, I’m no GED-taker, but isn’t stapling people’s lungs and burning them not the best practice? I disagree, says this game.

Keep a steady hand—you get docked beats per minute for pulling out shards of glass too quickly (keep an eye on your patient’s heart rate, and don’t let it drop too far) . Also, don’t do what I tried to do (at first) and play using a Bluetooth mouse. Trust me, the minor lag in response will make your head hurt.

In a nice bit of serendipity, it turns out the Artistic Home’s new home will be right around the corner from its old home. Live Bait Theater heads Sharon Evans and John Ragir made it known a couple of months back that they’d tired of maintaining their facility at Clark and Byron and were looking to sell or lease the space. Today they announced that their new tenants will be the Artistic Home’s Kathy Scambiatterra and John Mossman (both companies are run by husband-and-wife teams). That’s good news for all involved, maintaining the Clark facility as a theater. (It’s been used by numerous itinerant companies in addition to Live Bait—Artistic Home is already renting there, opening their production of Juno and the Paycock this Sunday. With multiple spaces in the building, Artistic Home will presumably continue to rent to others.) Evans says Live Bait will continue to produce its yearly Fillet of Solo festival, most likely at Lifeline Theatre.

Last year, TOC’s Comedy editor Steve Heisler and I went up against Chicagoist, Gapers Block and the Chicago Reader in a throwdown of epic proportions. Unfortunately, our elaborate mix of skits, props and dialogue resulted in an ass-handing-to in the first round by Chicagoist’s 8th grade-style mom jokes, so we spent the rest of the night at the bar. The Chicago Reader was the eventual winner, though looking back on their performance that night, I think we’ll be stealing their tactic of putting all our friends in the front for the audience voting since that seemed to make up for a lot of their lame jokes. The Reader has cowardly bowed out this year so RedEye is stepping into its place.

But we’re not the best reason to take the North Avenue bus tomorrow, oh no! Claire Zulkey and Steve Delahoyde will be there, bringing the noise. And Hood Internet will be on-hand with the ass-shaking jams, while JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound will add some soulful goodness.

Be at the Hideout tomorrow at 9pm. Cover is $10.

(via Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes. For more information, see this article by C-Monster.)

Chalk it up to the fairly elaborate set pieces (long, flowing curtains that resembled a jail cell scratched with hash marks and a computerized window that flashed animations of eyes and the moon), but any of the raw stand-up magic I associate with a truly stellar performance was lost on me. Izzard—who sets out to talk about religion and how, in his eyes, God either doesn’t exist or isn’t doing so great a job—stayed on point only half the time. The rest was a mix of elaborations (like how even people who spoke Latin thought it was a stupid language) that, had they been less polished, would have actually come off as funnier. Instead, everything—every gesture, every accidental turn-of-phrase, even the gag where he looked up the etymology of the word assassins on Wikipedia real-time on his iPhone—was polished to a shine. A shiny stand-up robot.

To be fair, it was a very well-programmed robot. Izzard likes having fun with his Biblical joke writing ("Moses had a staff that could turn into a serpent…when is that ever helpful?"), and it’s rare to see someone who can command a room the size of the Chicago Theatre by mimicking the Nazi goosestep. Fans of Izzard certainly won’t be too disappointed. But the rest might leave wondering what else is out there.

If you have, how sad was it that Jim couldn’t propose? How fantastic and mini-Michael is Andy Bernard? (He keeps a ring in his wallet for six years on the off-chance he meets someone, and thinks Mr. Andy Bernard has "a nice ring to it?" Ha!) How amazing was the writing for Kevin? How sad were you for Michael when he found out Jan had gone to a sperm bank WHILE SHE WAS DATING HIM? That’s like getting kicked in the nuts every day for your entire life. Also: Sweaty Schrute!

Wow. Really, I thought it was a fantastic episode. But more importantly, the hour-long format actually worked. For the first time, it didn’t feel like two storylines smooshed together to fill an hour-long block. And the more we see of Michael and Toby together, the better. It’s sad that this was ostensibly Toby’s last episode, though there’s got to be much more where that came from, right?

Also, is the spinoff going to be Oz with Ryan?

Let’s hear what you all think.

Not a ton of exciting stuff to talk about today re: Lost—last night’s episode was a building block to the finale, which begins its multiple week run in two weeks. But this is Lost: There’s always something. More after the jump.

- Liz smartly pointed out in a previous post that Jack seemed to know he was related to Aaron. "He’s not even related to you," he had yelled at Kate. Now we know for sure. Which means…it’s even more infuriating that Jack wants nothing to do with the boy for so long.

- We know that Jin’s not one of the Oceanic Six, and Sun says at the press conference that he was killed on the plane. I wonder if that means he’s going to be dying in the season finale. I mean, he’s trapped in a room full of explosives, and every one of the Six (except Sun and Aaron, who I assume will get back on a boat) are on the island still.

- What was up with that press conference, btw? Lamest interview questions ever. One woman was sort of getting at something: "So Kate, does that mean you were six months pregnant while the feds were after you?" But when Kate didn’t really respond, she laughed it off and asked something else. "What’s your favorite color?" Something like that.

- When I told a friend that I was watching Lost last night, she said she had heard the show was going down hill. No, I brilliantly retorted. But truly during season three, I had that fear. So what’s making Lost so compelling this season? It can’t simply be that they’re providing answers. The show’s more driven to an an end now—and for the first time, we can sort of see where things are going to move to. Here’s a question for everyone: Do you think they’ll get off the island this season? And do the rest of the show on the mainland?