Do the Michael Haneke Panky! His film, The White Ribbon, won the king shit prize, the Palme d'Or.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.You may know the Austrian director from his sadism-happy foreign fare like the awesome Caché (American remake on the way) for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2005, and Funny Games (American remake already made). It's a (get this) sadistic movie that received mostly tepid applause about a German village that takes place around WWI, and opens with someone falling off a horse. It's a Michael Haneke movie, so nobody's going to really be able to explain it to you (or why you'd want to watch it) until you actually see it.

The best director prize went to an underdog, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza, for his graphic hitman drama Kinatay, a film that was hugely buzzy before the festival, not so much during. Variety more or less said it sucked, and it sounds too much like last year's Gomorra for American audiences to really care.

Finally, British director Andrea Arnold won a second jury prize for her film Fish Tank; she's sharing it with South Korean director Park Chan-Wook (director of the incredible Oldboy. American, Will Smith-helmed remake on the way. Seriously.) for a film called Thirst, about a vampire-priest. No word on what the Vatican or vampire blog Bloodcopy have to say about this, but chances are that it - like anything American film execs would care about at Cannes that isn't in English - will eventually be given the shitty American remake treatment itself. Foreign languages: fail.

The action star is now working on the third installment of the Universal Soldier franchise. Our tipster says the film is falling behind schedule.

Maybe the Belgian needs more time transition out of his role as a washed-out movie star in his last film, the indie, satirical auto-biopic JCVD. Learning to kick ass again can take a little time. Especially when you're prekalyava-ing night paries.

Q: I’m from Argentina. I’ve actually seen you [in Argentina] a long time ago, in a beach resort called Pinamar.
A: I tell you what, I don’t know if I remember you because I went there many years ago, but I became more handsome. Fernando, why is that? For my fans—my real fans in Argentina—you can tell them he’s more ugly then before. His body’s still good but he still kicks like a mule.

Translation: Jean-Claude Van Damme is either better-looking or uglier than before, but no matter what, he is still an ass.

What’s this movie about? Is it an action movie?
...I think [in] Full Love we want to represent the persona, the people, into the movie as a real person. I don’t want to say the actor because then they will be acting, so I don’t want ourselves to ... go into another direction of thinking, from rich to poor, from dishonest to honest, or vice versa, which means from real life to not real life, which is a real movie so we’re trying that with Full Love.

Translation: Van Damme's JCVD follow-up, Full Love, is going to be like Synecdoche, New York with more flexed glutes.

Why do you think the movie will have lots of critics in a bad way?
Because what’s good sometimes is bad, and what’s bad sometimes is good. We will try to tell what is bad, and if we can do this, maybe the movie will become better, but we are taking the audience into the movie to believe it’s a great film, and it becomes more and more into reality. Wow, we never expected that from “Oh yes, we know.” Because I’m gonna put that in the script, “Oh yes, we know.” It’s a script, it’s a quotation. The people saying it. “Oh yes, we know.”

Translation: Oh yes, we have no idea.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Jean-Claude Van Damme, He’s Fine! [BlackBook]

After all, Rourke — an Oscar frontrunner for his turn in The Wrestler — once grazed on Hollywood's A-list pasture, from which banishment amounted to losing an opportunity that genre hero Van Damme never really had. He's still technically in the action ghetto, by most estimations, but he told Details that he exceeded his Timecop-era chops by just skipping the "acting" part altogether:

I didn't play — it was a truthful situation. That's why it's so good. Thank God I was 47. It was a good timing for me to peel back the skin and show the inside of the fiber — and that dry blood, those scars, you know? It's very strange — movie therapy. [...] Sometimes you have tears about memories, but in that sadness you find joy. The drama and pain of being alone helps you when you go back to normal. You can appreciate it much more.

The "inside of the fiber"? Can you elaborate, Jean-Claude?

I saw myself on the screen — I was disturbed. I was not like, "Wow, I made a great movie, some great action." No, no, no — I was disturbed for a couple of days. The truth is like, why did I open myself so much? I opened the fruit, I peeled the skin, I cut the pulp. I put the pit, and I cut the pit, and I show inside the pit to the audience. I didn't just cut the pulp, you know what I'm saying?

Not really, though it sounds Oscar-friendly enough, and in any case, we really can't wait to see how this applies to the just-announced third installment of that famously introspective franchise Universal Soldier. Just give him the trophy already.

• 60 SECONDS WITH JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME [Details]

• ‘JCVD’ Star Jean-Claude Van Damme... [Vulture]

There's just one problem:

...namely, Peace Arch kind of sucks. Though they occasionally give halfhearted, unprofitable releases to Sundance duds like Chapter 27 and The Go-Getter, they're far more adept at putting out straight-to-DVD titles like the Tom Green snowboard comedy Shred and something called American Poop (unrated edition!). We'd trust them to release a Lou Diamond Phillips actioner, but JCVD isn't that run of the mill. Just check out this excerpt from Variety's review:

Freshly spurned by preteen daughter, jetlagged from trip back to Belgium, and electronically dissed at the hometown ATM, JCVD loses his cool while seeking a post-office wire transfer of euros, only to find he has stumbled into in-progress heist for which he'll be blamed by cops — and credited, oddly or not, by hordes of placard-waving fans (e.g., "Free Jean-Claude!").

As before, bulky thesp's acting is as flat as his pecs are sculpted, but here said limitations are more clearly part of joke within hollow mirror world, where JCVD loses key role to Steven Seagal because latter negotiated to topline sans ponytail.

All this, plus the film ends with "a tear- and prayer-filled Van Damme monologue that must be seen to be believed"? Peace Arch, don't screw this one up — hasn't a man who once popped a boner on live TV (and in bleached jeans, no less) been through enough already?

• Peace Arch gets "JCVD" [Variety]

• Jean Claude Van Damme: The critics' darling [Guardian]

• Jean Claude Van Damme Hides Boner [YouTube]