Reps for Wong Kar Wai's Cannes opener "My Blueberry Nights" offered another peek at the movie in a film still featuring Norah Jones and Jude Law. The world premiere -- the first film from a Chinese director to open the Cannes festival -- is described as a "romantic drama" that also features David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman.

In the words of a desciption of the film...

In a Hollywood Reporter piece from Reuters, Anne Thompson reports on the tough road facing some of the notable competition filmmakers when they try to take their films to theaters back in the States:

The Cannes perennials -- Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Amos Gitai, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Michael Haneke -- are far more prized names overseas than stateside. Most U.S. moviegoers wouldn't recognize most of them.

"You almost look at this year's competition films and don't have to worry about buying anything," says Warner Independent Pictures president Mark Gill, who, having viewed about 90 films at the festival and market, might not buy any. "They may be good, but none of them are remotely accessible to an American audience."

[Cannes Dispatch and photo by Eugene Hernandez]

In the Cannes competition, for this sixth time, this year with "Three Times", filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien explained that the English translation of his new film's title is a bit misleading. Dubbed "Three Times" here, the Chinese title for the movie is "The Best Moments," or as Hou explained (in Mandarin, translated to English from French), "The best instances of your life."

[Photo: At this morning's press conference, Shu Qi and Chang Chen chat as Hou Hsiao Hsien stands to the side, while photographers shoot photos.]

The Associated Press reports on "Sin City" in Cannes, where Frank Miller defended the film:

"Sin City" isn't typical fare at the Cannes Film Festival, more accustomed to art house flicks than Frank Miller's dark world of tough guys in trench coats and scantily clad ladies. At a news conference Wednesday, where "Sin City" is competing for the top prize, a few journalists wanted to know: Is the movie sexist? And what about all that violence?

[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez]

In Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard's new collaboration, the Cannes competition entry "Don't Come Knocking", a hard living actor making a western disappears from the set and returns home to his mother in Montana where he discovers parts of a lost family. For Wenders (pictured left with Sam Shepard, center, and T Bone Burnett), this is a film about the disintegration of the family, as he explained this morning at a press conference following today's screening.

The film marks a return to Cannes for Wenders who won the Palme d'Or in 1984 for "Paris, Texas," also written by Shepard. Unable to convince Shepard to star in that film he said he was thrilled when Shepard told him that he wanted to play the lead in this new movie.

A gritty Chinese drama in competition at the Cannes Film Festival explores the clash between generations and grim life in industrial hinterlands where millions of families were forcibly moved in the 1960s. The director of "Shanghai Dreams," Wang Xiaoshuai, has seen his films censored by the authorities in the past, so when the Film Bureau allowed him free rein to shoot the film, he framed the letter and displayed it in his home. Reuters reports.

[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez]

A few days before I saw Adam Curtis' "The Power of Nightmares", the heads of two different distribution companies separately told me they consider it to be one of the most important documentaries ever made. "Ever made?" I asked. "Yes," they both answered. So I watched it.

Adam Curtis' "The Power of Nightmares", a three part BBC series is indeed a staggering work and now, Sony Pictures Classics is leading the charge to take the film to American movie theaters. "Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares," offers Curtis' provocative and surely controversial new movie that explores the parallel emergence of American neoconservatives and radical Islamists over the past 50 years. The film, which mixes potent narration with interview footage, historical images, and even pop culture clips, is a compelling, and often chilling, exploration that questions the true theat of global terrorism and states that Al Qaeda is not an organized terror network, as it has been portrayed as since 9/11 . A new two and a half hour theatrical version is being presented as a special screening in Cannes.

The dark underside of the United States has taken center stage in several films at Cannes this year, capped on Monday with a scathing attack of past and present racism in America by Danish director Lars von Trier. There are a number of other films that examine dark and depressing aspects of the United States and "American Dream" losers, filled with violence, drugs and alcohol abuse. They were made by directors from the United States, Canada and Europe. Reuters reports.

Star Wars Episode III may be the blockbuster of the moment. But the movie festival-goers were fighting tooth and nail to see yesterday was not George Lucas's latest epic, but a small Mexican film that, along with Michael Haneke's Caché, is a favourite for the Palme D'Or. But the film, "Batalla en el Cielo" (Battle in Heaven), had attracted controversy for its highly explicit sexual content even before its premiere in Cannes. Charlotte Gibbins reports in The Guardian.

Early scenes in "A History of Violence" show a loving family in small-town Indiana. This being a David Cronenberg movie, you suspect their lives are about to get very, very twisted. A.P. reports.

[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez]

Lars von Trier's latest film in his USA trilogy, "Manderlay", drew more questions about his decision to make movies about a place that he has never visited. During a press conference this morning in Cannes, after a screening of his powerful new film, von Trier addressed the issue head on, asserting that he is essentially an American.

There's more on the film, and its striking similarity with "Revenge of the Sith", in a Dispatch from Cannes just published on indieWIRE.com. A quote from today's von Trier press conference is below followed by a bit of dialogue from the film's script (via the Festival de Cannes website):

The sound of heavy Vader breathing was played over the loudspeakers outside The Palais in the hour leading up to the start of tonight's gala screening of the final "Star Wars" chapter in Cannes. Stormtroopers lined the red carpet, a live orchestra played the familiar Star Wars theme and massive crowds gathered on the streets and grounds around the theater to watch the arrivals on big TV screens (pictured above a few minutes ago). Before ascending the steps, George Lucas, Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen left the red carpet to walk behind the photographers and shake hands with screaming fans.
[Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE]

[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez]

"If you're not with me, you are my enemy," threatens Hayden Christensen, as the newly christened Darth Vader in "Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith". "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," responds Ewan McGregor coolly as the betrayed mentor, Obi-Wan. Such a line, not to mention the film's story of a growing empire that is transformed from a democracy into a dictatorship, has stirred some of the film's first viewers to question filmmaker George Lucas about the political context of the film.

"This really came out of the Vietnam era," Lucas said today of his six-part story about the transformation and rise of Darth Vader. But he admitted during this afternoon's press conference here in Cannes that there are parallels between Vietnam and Iraq and added that such themes have recurred throughout history. But, he feels that "Star Wars" is especially relevant today. "When I wrote Star Wars, Iraq didn't exist. We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction, we weren't worried about him."

The BAFTA ward-winning "The Power Of Nightmares," by British documentary-maker Adam Curtis, is one of the political heavyweights in the (Cannes) Official Selection. The powerful film looking at how fears over an organised Al-Qaeda terror network have come to dominate US and UK politics was shown on the BBC last year. Caroline Briggs reports for BBC.

Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer have turned gumshoe with "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," a murder mystery that could have been called "Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink" for its relentless yet loving tweaks at Hollywood film-noir conventions.
The film, which debuted Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, both mocks and embraces the cliches of the hard-boiled private eyes of years past taking to nearly outlandish levels the genre's improbable coincidences, impossible action, and detectives who take endless lickings yet keep on ticking. A.P. reports.

At this afternoon's press conference in Cannes, Samuel L. Jackson, George Lucas, Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen.
[Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE]

[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez, photo by Brian Brooks]

In Cannes for the eighth time, his fourth festival in competition. French filmmaker Michael Haneke unveiled his latest, "Caché" (Hidden) on Saturday morning. The film is the story of a French family (Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, and Lester Makedonsky) terrorized by a stalker who delivers secretly shot video tapes and bloody caricature drawings that become increasing personal, ultimately leading to the revelation of secrets from the past. At the press conference following this morning's screening, Haneke pleaded with journalists to avoid giving away too much of the plot.

Atom Egoyan's new film, "Where the Truth Lies," might be too racy for U.S. censors. The film, which features sex and orgy scenes with stars Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon, premiered at Cannes. Erik Kirschbaum reports for Reuters.

[Cannes Dispatch by Eugene Hernandez, Photo by Brian Brooks]

In Gus Van Sant's "Last Days", which had its press screening this morning ahead of tonight's premiere, Michael Pitt stars as Blake, a musician who looks and lives a lot like Kurt Cobain. At today's press conference I asked Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth about a scene in the movie in which she urges Blake to seek help to avoid becoming a rock music statistic.

"It was a situaton of this psychosis where Kurt was alienated from what he thought he wanted and was entrapped by it," she explained, "Basically it was just kind of...in a sense I sort of felt like the character knew what would happen. But yet you want to treat somebody as an adult -- obviously, you can ony protect them so much." She added, "Everyone had their own idea or thoughts about who Kurt was or what happend. I think part of the idea of the film is that you can never really know somebody, and the disparity between image and what goes on with a person day to day."

For an Iraqi filmmaker on location in his homeland, one of the biggest hassles was getting hold of a key prop: a statue of Saddam Hussein. "Kilometre Zero" is the first Iraqi film competing at the Cannes Film Festival. Director Hiner Saleem, an Iraqi Kurd who fled the country as a teenager, returned to his homeland to shoot the movie after Saddam's fall. A.P. reports.

Cannes returns this year with a lineup of international heavy hitters such as Lars Von Trier ("Manderlay"), Jim Jarmusch ("Broken Flowers"), Atom Egoyan ("Where the Truth Lies"), David Cronenberg ("The History of Violence"), Wim Wenders ("Don't Come Knocking"), and Gus van Sant's ("Last Days"). With a "return to recognized mid-career international directors without treating the festival like a shrine to cinematic styles of the past," Iam Lacey (for the Globe and Mail) examines this year's lineup and the festival's ongoing struggle for relevance.

The Cannes Film Festival started today with a slate of darker than usual films to bring a shadowy buzz over the sunny skies of the Côte d'Azur. Dark entries include: Dominik Moll's "Lemming", the story of two couples whose lives turn to tragedy and fear, Gus Van Sant's "Last Days", a minimalist take inspired by Kurt Cobain's suicide, Lars Von Trier's "Manderlay", his followup to the brutally misanthropic "Dogville", and "Revenge of the Sith", George Lucas' ultraviolent coda and final entry for Star Wars. Reuters reports.

The HBO film "Last Days" by director Gus Van Sant is among the 20 competing for the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this week. Based on Kurt Cobain's life, the film will hit the big screen this summer and most likely, won't be seen on the premium cable channel until next year. David Bauder of the Associated Press reports.

The 58th Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday, with this year's contest already being touted as a battle of the arthouse heavyweights. Previous Palm d'Or winners Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders and the Dardenne brothers are back to lock horns for the most prestigious prize in film. Caroline Briggs reports in BBC.

Gus Van Sant's new film is about Kurt Cobain's last days. Or is it? Even the director doesn't seem sure. The haunting Last Days opens and closes with a recording of Jancquin's La Guerre, a powerful 14th-century French chorale piece. Resonating with grace, it perfectly bookends Gus Van Sant's spare, empathetic film about the anguish, demise, and resurrection of a Kurt Cobain-like rock star. Howard Feinstein reports in The Guardian.