Cannes Film Festival

For years, filmmakers flocked to the Cannes Film Festival to sell their independently financed movies, confident they'd soon see their work exhibited in movie theaters. Like so many show business dreams, those visions have been vanishing quickly as numerous distributors of film-festival fare closed their doors after losing money or corporate support. But there's a potential savior on the horizon called video on demand -- and it may be hiding somewhere inside your cable television box.

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.

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."

It's fascinating to look at the blog postings Wednesday from the Cannes Film Festival of the premiere of "Inglourious Basterds," Quentin Tarantino's WWII Nazi-scalping action fantasy (he has the Reich apparently coming to an end not in Hitler's bunker but in a Paris movie theater). To me, the postings reflect each blog's rooting interest in the film and the director, whose PR campaign is orchestrated by the Weinstein Co., which will release the film later this summer.

CANNES, France -- "Che," an epic drama about the Cuban revolutionary, and "Baby on Board," a low-budget sex comedy, have scarcely anything in common except actors speaking lines in movies projected on a big screen. But both have come to the French Riviera with the same goal: finding distribution in an increasingly unreceptive market.

CANNES, France -- The entertainment industry attracts all sorts of unusual investors, but the people behind a new movie premiering at the Cannes Film Festival couldn't be further removed from the Hollywood scene: They are Kansas doctors eager to tell a story about stem cell research.

CANNES, France -- Abel Ferrara's new film, "Chelsea on the Rocks," represents a kind of homecoming for the Bronx-born director and longtime chronicler of the New York City underbelly. Ferrara, best known for urban tales of damnation such as "Bad Lieutenant" and "King of New York," moved to Italy several years ago, fleeing a city transformed by the Rudolph W. Giuliani regime and the Sept.

Film fans, it's time to get your passports stamped. When the AFI Fest begins Thursday night, it will kick off 11 days of screenings and events that will bring some of the best films from the international festival circuit here to Los Angeles, including highlights and award winners from Berlin, Cannes, Toronto and smaller fests around the globe.

British film director Stephen Frears will lead the jury at the 60th Cannes Film Festival in May. Frears -- whose latest movie is "The Queen," starring Helen Mirren -- first came to public attention in 1985 with the offbeat film "My Beautiful Laundrette," which was followed three years later by "Dangerous Liaisons." "Of course, it's an honor, but it's also a treat to be able to watch terrific films from all over the world in such heady surroundings," Frears said in a statement.

A Chinese producer and director who screened an uncensored movie at the Berlin Film Festival last month have so far escaped punishment, the producer said Tuesday, adding that the filmmakers will continue to test censors' tolerance with their work. The fate of the filmmakers behind "Lost in Beijing" has drawn attention because two of their Chinese counterparts were banned from making movies for five years after showing a film at the Cannes Film Festival last year without government approval.