As Hollywood packs for the Cannes Film Festival—checking the readiness of formal wear and credit cards (the better to buy $26 cheese sandwiches)—it's heartwarming to realize that the French still really, really like us.

At least in terms of this annual cinema binge.

Take a look at the selections for the festival's many and varied awards. The most coveted section is movies In Competition, with the big winner taking home—and to the marketplace—the Palme d'Or.

Of the 85 Palmes d'Or (once called the Grand Prix) awarded between 1946 and 2007, the United States has won 19, which is eight more than runner-up Italy.

Candid Cannes Scenes from last year give a taste of what's coming at the world's premier film festival.

That history may be why most of the English-speaking press, at least, greeted the festival's announcement of films in the In Competition category with something resembling the Associated Press' take: "Eastwood's 'Changeling' Leads Cannes Film Festival."

(One could add without cynicism that with Eastwood, who's had four previous tries for the Palme, they got Jolie, as Angelina plays the mother of a kidnapped child in this based-on-a-true-story film set in 1920s Los Angeles, as covered in L.A. Weekly by Scott Foundas.)

Other accounts put Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che in their headlines as also part of the In Competition lineup, as well as Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a theater director.

There was even a later American addition, from a director whose old-school grittiness has perhaps cloaked his artistry at times: James Gray will offer Two Lovers, with Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow.

They will all be up against offerings from perennial entrants like Wim Wenders and Belgium's masterful Dardenne brothers.

Vying with the above pictures are films from eight directors new to the festival. They are part of an effort to focus more strictly on artistic merit, as festival president Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux, delegate general, made clear at a recent press conference.

"Cinema is evolving and the Cannes festival with it," Jacob said, and the decision to focus on art "was taken serenely...to show less films and help them live."