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French director Laurent Cantet (L) and actor and teacher Francois Begaudeau of “The Class”

“The Class,” a film shot in a rough Parisian classroom that picked up the Palme d’Or prize at Cannes, has sold in 43 countries with talks under way in dozens more, its French distributor said Wednesday.

“The film has sold in 43 countries. Right now we are in negotiations with the rest of the planet,” said Emilie Georges, director of Memento Films International.

Based on a best-selling novel by French teacher Francois Begaudeau, “The Class” on Sunday became the first homegrown French movie in two decades to claim the coveted top prize at the Cannes film festival, the world’s biggest cinema Read more »

Actresses and Mothers Both, Angelina and Cate Wowed the Red Carpet
For celebrities who want to seduce the red carpet paparazzi, the latest trend at Cannes this year was motherhood.

Cate Blanchett, left, Gywneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie attend the Cannes Film Festival.

Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy-chic made it to the tabloid front pages, while other famous mothers gave TV interviews revealing details of their most important roles — moms.

Celebrity spotters loved the new maternal icons. Even fashion houses accepted the challenge by choosing to dress the round bodies.

Many actresses have taken breaks from their work since becoming pregnant. From British actress Kate Winslet to Mrs. Tom Cruise Katie Holmes to France’s own Vanessa Paradis, all have abruptly stopped their careers to focus on family.

Gwyneth Paltrow just returned from her own pregnancy pause and at a press conference at Cannes she expressed her fears about coming back.

“I really did not know if there would be a place for me anymore. … Especially Read more »

French movie The Class, about life in a tough Paris school, has won the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

The prize, awarded by a jury headed by Sean Penn, came at the end of the world’s most prestigious film festival.

Directed by Laurent Cantet, The Class uses real students and teachers to chronicle a year in their lives.

Hunger, a portrayal of the last six weeks of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands’ life, took the Camera d’Or prize for best first feature film.

Director Laurent Cantet was joined by his cast of students at Cannes

Benicio Del Toro won best actor for his lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s biopic of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

“I’d like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara,” he told the audience.

Del Toro won the best supporting actor Oscar for starring in Soderberg’s 2000 movie Traffic.

Brazilian star Sandra Corveloni won best actress for playing a pregnant mother of four in Sao Paolo in Line of Read more »

CANNES (AFP) - A French film about an inspired teacher in a tough urban school won the Palme d’Or top prize at Cannes, the first homegrown movie in 21 years to claim the coveted award.

“The Class” by 46-year-old director Laurent Cantet features a multicultural cast of amateur child actors plucked from French schools. It beat out 21 other contenders to claim the trophy.

“It is a microcosm of the world, where issues of equality or inequality play out,” Cantet said, flanked by more than a dozen of the Parisian pupils, as he accepted the trophy from actor Robert De Niro.

“The Class” is Cantet’s fourth feature and picks up on early themes in his work about social alienation.

The best actor prize went to Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro for his virtuoso performance as “Che” Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour-plus epic Read more »

Robert De Niro plays a movie producer whose professional and personal life lurches from crisis to crisis in a new comedy on the cut-throat world of Hollywood and its relationship with the Cannes film festival.

The final scenes of “What Just Happened” play out in the Riviera resort where De Niro’s picture has its premiere, making it a fitting closing film for the festival on Sunday.

Sean Penn and Bruce Willis also send themselves up in the satire based on the memoirs of veteran Hollywood producer Art Linson and directed by Barry Levinson, who made “Rain Man”.

De Niro plays Ben, who must juggle two ex-wives and their families, a pill-popping bi-polar director, a ruthless studio boss demanding radical changes to his picture and Willis steadfastly refusing to shave his beard for an action hero role.

The film casts an ironic eye on the process of getting movies made, how cash outweighs quality almost every time and how no one in Hollywood is safe from the whims of studio bosses, superstar actors and the movie-going public.

“It really is a place where most people are not doing well,” said Linson, when asked about how Hollywood was perceived. “I know it’s hard to believe.

“Most people are there doing their best not to be asked Read more »

Spike Lee arrives on the red carpet before the screening of “Maradona by Kusturica” by Serbian director Emir Kusturica at the 61st Cannes Film Festival May 20, 2008.

Spike Lee is in Cannes to promote a new film, but he couldn’t resist taking a few swipes at some fellow directors, including Joel and Ethan Coen and Clint Eastwood.

Speaking about his World War II drama “Miracle at St. Anna,” Lee said that, unlike the Coens, he was respectful in the way he portrayed death.

“I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don’t,” Lee said at a news conference Tuesday. “Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It’s like, ‘Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!’ I see things different than that.”

Speaking about the casting for his tale of four black American soldiers in Tuscany, Lee said that black actors appear in war films too infrequently.

“Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen,” Read more »

An animated documentary about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and a courageous portrayal of the Naples mafia are among the frontrunners at the halfway stage of the Cannes film festival.

Film goers are generally impressed with the quality of 11 competition movies screened so far and critics have also highlighted several discoveries outside the main lineup.

“Usually at this stage we would have seen more absolute stinkers,” said film critic and author Mark Cousins, who is covering his 18th Cannes festival. “For me it’s a rather high standard, though we don’t know what’s coming, obviously.”

Among his favorites for the Palme d’Or, which goes to the jury’s choice of best film, Read more »