Cannes Film Festival

French actress Isabelle Huppert will head the jury of the 62nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival in May. Huppert, 55, who has starred in more than 90 films, has twice won the best actress award at the prestigious film festival on the French Riviera. "I am very glad and very proud," the actress said in a statement after organizers announced her selection Friday. "I've had a long relationship with Cannes, and this next meeting will definitely seal my love for the festival and thus for global cinema."

The Cannes Film Festival is making a statement at this year's gathering: We still really like Americans. The main competition will feature four directors from the U.S. -- Alexander Payne (“Nebraska”) Joel and Ethan Coen (“Inside Llewyn Davis”), James Gray (“The Immigrant”) and Steven Soderbergh (“Behind the Candelabra”) -- equaling last year's strong total of North American helmers in competition. In addition, new movies from U.S. filmmakers James Franco, Sofia Coppola, James Toback and J.C. Chandor will play in other sections.

The yachts will still cruise in, but there won't be as many. The parties will continue well into the night, yet not with the same excesses. And while most American distributors will still come to the French Riviera, some others won't. Given all that's gone wrong in the economy, it's not surprising that this year's Cannes Film Festival will be more restrained than in recent years.

The Cannes Film Festival has a long tradition of showcasing independent global cinema. But in a twist, this year's lineup also includes movies from a wide range of Hollywood entities: Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., CBS Films, the Weinstein Co., even HBO. The selections revealed Thursday morning reflect a festival leadership that, for all its auteur leanings, is happy to thicken its lineup with American glamour. And while past slates have included a smattering of Hollywood films, the docket this year suggests that studios and networks are - for reasons having to do with marketing and keeping their talent happy - particularly eager to bring movies to the festival despite the hefty price tag. Cannes-related expenses, after all, can run a studio as much as $5 million.

Burt Lancaster was the first movie star I ever met. I've encountered others since, but the circumstances have never been so dramatic. The year was 1971 and I was a young reporter for the Washington Post covering the Cannes Film Festival on my own dime. Few Americans made the trek in those days, which is why Lancaster's publicist contacted me and asked if I wanted to be part of a small lunch the actor was giving for journalists at the glamorous Hotel du Cap, a legendary spot perched just above imposing rocks that jut boldly into the Mediterranean.

Cannes is always the film festival that critics have to go to, but this year it's shaping up as a place you actually might want to be. With Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" opening its 64th edition Wednesday night, Cannes is known as an event where art and commerce coexist uneasily, where the 20 presumably rarefied films in the official competition share time and space with the sprawling Marche du Film, a marketplace where 4,079 companies from...

The Cannes Film Festival is again going with an American brand-name for its jury president. Organizers announced Thursday morning that they'd chosen Robert De Niro to head the jury for this year's edition, the 64th in the gathering's history. He follows Tim Burton, who served as president in 2010. The 2011 installment runs May 11-22 in the southern Riviera town. De Niro is no stranger to film festivals, having founded the Tribeca Film Festival a decade ago; that group spun off another international film convocation, the Doha festival, two years ago. The announcement marks the latest involvement for De Niro with the French festival.

Woody Allen's 41st feature, "Midnight in Paris," starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (wife of the French president), will open the Cannes Film Festival on May 11, organizers announced Wednesday. But if you're not in Cannes that night, you still might be able to catch the romantic comedy ? it's to be released in some 400 theaters across France on the same day. "'Midnight in Paris' is a wonderful love letter to Paris," festival director Thierry Frémaux said in a statement.

"I always have a problem giving films titles," Mike Leigh says, thinking about it. "That comes last, and this film was a real tough one, a bummer. At some stage we thought we should just call it 'Life,' but you can't call it that, it's bloody pretentious." "Another Year" was the appropriate title eventually selected, but the truth is that Leigh's exceptional new film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, really is about the turning wheel of life as dramatized by the hand of a master, about the pleasures and jealousies, disappointments and insecurities, destroyed dreams and rekindled hopes that make up our daily lives.

The Cannes Film Festival has a long tradition of showcasing independent global cinema. But in a twist, this year's lineup also includes movies from a wide range of Hollywood entities: Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., CBS Films, the Weinstein Co., even HBO. The selections revealed Thursday morning reflect a festival leadership that, for all its auteur leanings, is happy to thicken its lineup with American glamour. And while past slates have included a smattering of Hollywood films, the docket this year suggests that studios and networks are - for reasons having to do with marketing and keeping their talent happy - particularly eager to bring movies to the festival despite the hefty price tag. Cannes-related expenses, after all, can run a studio as much as $5 million.

The police thriller "Zulu," set and shot in South Africa, will close the 66th Cannes Film Festival on May 26. Starring Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom, the film is directed by Jerome Salle. An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Caryl Ferey, the screenplay was co-written by Salle and Julien Rappeneau. Described as part crime noir and part social study, the English-language story follows a police investigation during apartheid. Two policeman, a black (Whitaker) and a white (Bloom)

After making "Route Irish," a dark 2010 drama about private security contractors who had been in Iraq, British filmmaker Ken Loach and his partner, Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty, were searching for their next project. "Paul will go away and start writing a few characters down, and we will decide if we want to do it," explained Loach, 76, best known for his uncompromising political and sociological dramas such as 1998's "My Name Is Joe" and 2006's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

Burt Lancaster was the first movie star I ever met. I've encountered others since, but the circumstances have never been so dramatic. The year was 1971 and I was a young reporter for the Washington Post covering the Cannes Film Festival on my own dime. Few Americans made the trek in those days, which is why Lancaster's publicist contacted me and asked if I wanted to be part of a small lunch the actor was giving for journalists at the glamorous Hotel du Cap, a legendary spot perched just above imposing rocks that jut boldly into the Mediterranean.

It's only fitting: F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in the south of France, and now his most famous character, Gatsby, is heading there. Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" will open the Cannes Film Festival on May 15, festival organizers announced Tuesday. The 3-D film was originally planned for a Christmas 2012 release, but was postponed. It's now scheduled to debut in the U.S. on May 10. Fitzgerald reportedly finished writing "The Great Gatsby" while living on the French Riviera.

Movie producing was in Dick Zanuck's blood. Zanuck, who died Friday morning of a heart attack at age 77, won (with his wife, Lili Fini Zanuck) the best picture Oscar for 1989's “Driving Miss Daisy.” He also earned best picture nominations for producing 1975's “Jaws” and 1982's “The Verdict” with David Brown. His success in films was perhaps to be expected.  The youngest of three children born to longtime 20th Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck and his wife, Virginia Fox, young Zanuck grew up privileged in Hollywood, partying with Shirley Temple as a kid. He began his own film career at 19 in the story department at Fox and by 24 had produced his first film, 1959's "Compulsion.

Ernest Borgnine , who died Sunday at age 95, worked with some of the greatest directors of the 20th century. He first caught the eye of moviegoers in 1953 in Fred Zinnemann's Oscar-winning best film "From Here to Eternity," in which he played the savage Fatso Judson, the sergeant of the guard of the stockade who beats Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra) to death. Two years later, the burly character actor became a bona-fide star as a lonely Italian butcher desperate for love in "Marty," directed by Delbert Mann and penned by Paddy Chayesfky.

Nicholas Edmiston, yacht broker to billionaires, ambled down Jetee Albert Edouard in the Old Port here, the premier pier at one of the premier events for the yachting set each spring, the Cannes Film Festival. To the genial, roly-poly Englishman with thinning red hair, the boats stationed near the street — mere putters that go for $3 million to $5 million — are something of a tacky affront. Most are festooned with signs for European film companies and promotional banners ("Mazars: accountants to the media sector")

Robert Favre Le Bret, the founder and ongoing inspiration of the Cannes Film Festival, has died at the age of 82 only days before the 40th anniversary of the international cinema extravaganza, festival officials said Tuesday. Favre Le Bret died of cancer Monday at his home in Switzerland.

CANNES, France - Watching a film get an award is rarely as moving and emotional as watching the film itself, but that was the experience Sunday night at the Cannes Film Festival when Michael Haneke's"Amour" won the Palme d'Or. The applause for the Austrian Haneke, who also won the Palme in 2009 for"The White Ribbon,"increased as he called onto the stage his film's pair of veteran French stars, 81-year-old Jean Louis Trintignant and 85-year old Emmanuelle Riva. "It is their film," the director said.

Hip-hop superstar and aspiring filmmaker Kanye West took to the Cannes Film Festival to show his new short film. It's titled “Cruel Summer” - though so far, West's summer has been anything but. He showed up to the festival with reality star and girlfriend Kim Kardashian on his arm, and the two celebrated West's half-hour film, which plays over seven screens in a specially designed pop-up theater (in typically understated Kanye fashion)....