Todd Haynes

It happened when he was 8, a boy in Encino, but Todd Haynes, sitting on a hotel rooftop as the "dizzying experience" of the Cannes Film Festival unfolds below him, still can feel its power. "I went to see '2001' with my dad and it was like we took a drug trip together," the writer-director remembers. "It was like 'We're going somewhere, we don't know where, but the more mysterious the better.' I wanted to make a movie like that, that fuels the imagination with ideas.

Hearing filmmaker Todd Haynes and actress Julianne Moore talk about the "unusual synchronicity," the "simultaneity" and the "unspoken connection" they share, it's hard not to feel there's some kind of shared voodoo at work -- or at least a common language. Their latest collaboration, "Far From Heaven," is up for four Academy Awards, including best actress for Moore and best original screenplay for Haynes.

Todd Haynes' five-part HBO miniseries "Mildred Pierce" is not just great television, it's a revelation. Wresting James M. Cain's original story of ambition and maternal morality from the camp-classic embrace of the 1945 Joan Crawford film, Haynes has created not only a rich and nuanced vehicle for his A-list cast ? among them Kate Winslet, Evan Rachel Wood and Guy Pearce ? he has given us a rare and valuable gift: an American melodrama about class. In the last half-century, Americans have become increasingly uncomfortable with conversations about class.

IN her memoir, "A Killer Life," independent film producer Christine Vachon tells how her directing dreams died. It's not depressing, but hopeful: An artist realizes her strengths, and one of independent cinema's most fruitful relationships is born. But that's the kind of statement Vachon, thoroughly unsentimental, would dismiss with an eye roll. After graduating from Brown in the '80s, the New York native made short films with titles such as "Don't Look Up My Skirt Unless You Mean It."

"I'm Not There," Todd Haynes' quirky biopic on Bob Dylan, may have puzzled mainstream critics and audiences with its surrealistic vision of casting several actors and actresses as the famed troubadour -- a deep knowledge of Dylan and an open mind are recommended -- but the indie world has embraced the film, as evidenced Tuesday by its domination of the first major award nominations of the season.

English-language films about oppression fared well at the 59th Venice Film Festival, with Peter Mullan's powerful drama, "The Magdalene Sisters," an expose of the order's cruel regime in 1960s Ireland, winning the Venice Film Festival's top laurel, the Golden Lion. Julianne Moore's bravura performance as a 1950s housewife (modeled vocally on Doris Day), trapped in a racist and homophobic society in Todd Haynes' melodrama, "Far From Heaven," garnered best actress.

The product tie-ins to writer-director Todd Haynes' "Velvet Goldmine" may prove more interesting than the film itself. Those in search of a little glam can check out Girl Cosmetics' Velvet Goldmine collection premiering at Bloomingdale's today and Saturday at the Sherman Oaks, Beverly Center, Newport Beach and Century City stores. The makeup line was developed by Shawn Haynes (Todd's brother), along with the film's makeup artist, Peter King.

AS an ardent Dylan fan, I must compliment Ann Powers on her review of Todd Haynes' forthcoming biopic, "I'm Not There" ["Tangled Up in Clues," Nov. 11]. It seems to me that Haynes may have been inspired by Dylan's own films. The surrealistic "Renaldo and Clara," filmed during 1975's Rolling Thunder Tour, was filled with a who's who of Dylanesque characters who switched roles and identities throughout the film.