Cannes Film Festival

When Carolco Pictures Chairman Mario Kassar cruised into last year's Cannes Film Festival on a 203-foot yacht stocked with the best food and drink, he instantly became everyone's favorite party animal. The Gatsby-like goings-on aboard the boat earned Kassar nearly as much attention as the picture he had come to promote. And that's saying a lot, since the movie was "Terminator 2: Judgment Day."

You can tell by their titles — the Oscar-nominated "No End in Sight" and "Inside Job," which is having its world premiere at the Festival de Cannes — that the documentaries Charles Ferguson makes are not heartwarming documentaries. But that isn't what sets him apart from other filmmakers and isn't what makes his films so extraordinary. Because of his personal and professional background, his intelligence and his inclinations, Ferguson is especially well-suited to creating knockout documentaries that cogently and carefully lay out all the particulars of a significant situation.

Color faxes from Cannes. . . . Day 1 Bonjour, Mes Amis: Well, as you can see from the postcard photo below (does she have an "all-over" tan or what!!!), I'm here. First day Cannes '95 and it is gorgeous on the Cote d'Azur (especially on the beach, if you get my drift). Flying into Nice was breathtaking. Beautiful green hills rolling down to a turquoise sea, and the taxi ride over to Cannes was like drifting through a lush landscape painting. What a dream spot!

Jane Campion has been many things, including the only woman to win the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and an inspiration, she only recently found out, to Quentin Tarantino, who confided that her success with "The Piano" emboldened him to feel "you could keep your own voice and find an audience." But she never thought she'd end up as a disappointment to the video split operator on her latest film, "Bright Star."

Los Angeles police Officer Brett Goodkin is about to make his big-screen debut, playing a bit role as a cop in “The Bling Ring,” Sofia Coppola's movie about fame-obsessed San Fernando Valley youths who burgled the homes of celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. But as the director prepares to unveil the film at the Cannes Film Festival next month, the LAPD investigator is hardly basking in the glory of his 15 minutes of fame. Instead, he's facing the imminent prospect of losing his job, as a disciplinary panel prepares to rule on the results of an internal investigation into his simultaneous involvement in the real-life case and the film.

- It's been 42 years since I first covered the Cannes Film Festival. Arriving on the French Riviera this week, I was struck by how Cannes has remained the quintessential place for film, despite enormous changes in the cinema landscape. Cannes was more casual back in 1971, of course. You could hang out with Italian director Luchino Visconti without much planning or go see Jack Nicholson in his hotel room and spend the afternoon discussing his first directorial effort, "Drive, He Said," with no more preamble than running into a friend of his on the street.

Cassian Elwes and Rena Ronson, who head the independent film finance packaging division of the William Morris Agency, have two operating speeds: turbo and light-speed. Turbo means that a meeting lasts 20 minutes, while light-speed suggests that business can be transacted in less than five.

She's a 26-year-old former party girl with social anxiety issues, a motorcycle-riding iconoclast who dropped out of USC and attends meetings in Led Zeppelin T-shirts. Megan Ellison is also the most powerful new producer in Hollywood, running a burgeoning movie company from her $33-million compound in the hills above the Sunset Strip - and giving a critical boost to the kinds of adult dramas the major studios have all but abandoned. Hollywood has long attracted wealthy, star-struck investors who don't appreciate the difficulty (or "complexity")

Don't be fooled by its deceptively simple title or the hesitant, unassuming way it begins. Writer-director Sarah Polley's "Stories We Tell" ends up an invigorating powerhouse of a personal documentary, adventurous and absolutely fascinating. Unexpectedly moving in unanticipated ways, this unusual film is a look at the complexities of one specific family's story as well as a broad examination of the interlocking nature of truth, secrecy and memory, not to mention the endless intricacies of human relationships.

The French seem rather blase about this year's Cannes Film Festival. Film critic Kenneth Turan puts it all in perspective.