Hey, I'm still in Cannes and didn't check in on these letters until recently. Obviously I've had my say already, and you guys get to have yours. Just a couple of things:

1. I certainly thought it was a highly favorable review, toward Gore and the film, and intended it as such. Thanks to the readers who have insisted on pointing that out. This entire piece is my opinion. I've never really liked Gore, but the movie made me like him. That's the deal.

2. I said the thing about being raised in a Washington hotel because Gore says it in the film. I repeat: Gore says it in the film. He says "hotel." He does not say "ordinary middle-class apartment building." His dad was a longtime US Senator, and to consider Gore anything other than a member of the ruling class, like George W. Bush and John Kerry, is just silly.

3. I said the thing about the accent because his accent sounds stronger to me now than during his White House years. He has lived kind of a schizophrenic existence, and of course I don't know that he's consciously putting it on. I doubt it, actually. But he is a politician, and like all politicians has a certain chameleonic ability to appear in different ways to different audiences at different times. His current, stronger accent fits the folksy new Al.

At the risk of repeating myself, this piece was a movie review, and in all such things your mileage may vary. It's inevitably affected by my political opinions, and I don't respect most mainstream politicians and rarely vote for any of them. But I wasn't damning with faint praise here. I was saying, heck, there's really something to this guy after all. Thanks for reading

That's what comes of writing on deadline in cheap French apartments without Internet connections. I filed that piece, no lie, by going and standing in the street with my laptop outside a hotel that offers wi-fi. But, no, it's not an excuse. I'm sure the catalogue offered Loach's career highlights and I could/should have avoided the holes in my faulty memory.

Yeah, there was a real trope of European colonialism and its consequences at Cannes this year. I do think you can read the festival jury as having subtly penalized Almodovar's film for not being "political" enough. But that may be overanalyzing: Who thinks Wong Kar-wai is especially interested in politics? Obviously we've got to take him on his word; if he says Loach made a great film, he clearly believes it.

In the 15 minutes of "Barley" that I've seen, there was nothing that seemed likely to change my life. But I want to resist that kind of cynicism. I've liked some of Loach's films a lot. No, I didn't think "Land and FREEDOM" was all that great, but that's really not relevant at all. "Barley" should get to the US around October, so we'll all get to find out for ourselves.

The reader who points out that Guillermo del Toro is also very political is clearly correct. I didn't mean to imply that he wasn't. In my interview with him (which should appear soon, either in print or audio form) he makes that clear. He's also a funny, humble and generally awesome guy, and the movie kicks ass. I suspect that one, easily the best thing I saw at Cannes, was subtly penalized for being fantastical. Maybe it wasn't deemed serious in the same way as Loach's or Dumont's or Bouchareb's films. Which is just silly, when you see the movie, and I hope you all will.

Let me see, six times four is ... forget it, I skipped that subject in school. A dumb mistake from writing too quickly. We'll fix it.

Glad to hear from the MLS fans out there, and yes, in DC and maybe LA & Foxboro on the right nights, the league feels real. Just consider my embitterment as a "fan" (it is to laugh!) of the Franchise Formerly Known as the MetroStars, the dark patch of suburban blight at the heart of MLS. You know things are bad when your team gets bought by a soft-drink company, which names the club after itself -- and it's a MUCH better name than the old one.

Yeah, omitting Chelsea was a bit of a provocation, I guess. Seriously, I haven't adjusted to their new status as international glory boys. They were the trendy failures for so long. (Speaking of that category, I'm a Spurs fan myself.) As for Lampard, what can I say? Tastes vary. He does poach a lot of goals, for a midfielder, and I guess you can't argue with results. He's just never struck me as a commanding player; he's one of those irritating Paul Scholes characters who just shows up out of nowhere and sticks the ball in the net. But I did pretty much come out and pick England to win, after all. (And I don't notice anyone jumping in to defend Owen Hargreaves, the non-pride of Calgary.)

I totally agree that it's a wide-open field, in the sense that we presume Brazil goes at least to the semifinals, and the other three teams are anyone's guess. Could the Netherlands, Spain and/or Portugal make it into that group? Of course they could! We all know, in fact, that some team in the final 4 will probably be unexpected (e.g., the 3rd and 4th place finishers in '02, Turkey and South Korea). Among the outliers I didn't mention in this piece, I suspect Sweden, Ukraine and Serbia -- which allowed one goal, one!, in all its qualifying matches -- are the teams to watch. Curious to hear your nominations.