Cannes Lightning Round: Prophet Soars, Coppola Counsels

· Jacques Audiard's epic, violent prison film A Prophet is earning some of the most consistent adulation of the fest's early going, drawing comparisons to GoodFellas and praise for the "raw intensity of its hyper-realistic encounters." Above all, notes Screen Daily, it's "compelling genre entertainment." In other words, meet your new Palme d'Or front-runner.

· Francis Ford Coppola dropped by the American Pavilion today to discuss Tetro and the rest of his life in cinema. Among the revelations were his tips for effective screenwriting: Write in the morning, when "no one has hurt [your] feelings yet," and don't be so hard on yourself. "When I write six pages I turn them over and never read them... Young writers have a hormone that makes them hate their writing."

· Perhaps taking Coppola's advice, Steven Zeitchik today left behind the single most dizzying critical take to yet emerge from Cannes: "Of all the thoughts you had when you saw Twilight this year -- hey, keep it clean! -- one you probably didn't have was: what would happened if someone crossed this movie with Doubt?" That's apparently Park Chan-wook's Thirst in a nutshell.

· No teenage girls were stripped and/or harmed in MTV's latest acquisition Paris, Not France, the mildly controversial Paris Hilton doc that the network plans to air this summer.

· According to VF.com, the wine culture on the Croisette has officially breached the levels of the surreal.

· Overall, though, how slow is Cannes this year? Forget the sluggish marketplace: You can get actually get a seat in the lobby bar of the Hotel Carlton. Quelle horreur!