Among the many bits of color one gets walking the streets of the Cannes Film Festival are the giant temporary movie billboards that line the four- and five-star hotels on the Boulevard de la Croisette, the gathering's main drag. Think of the gaudiness of Hollywood & Highland with the elegance of Bel-Air, and you get an idea of the collision of high and low that accosts as you walk down the street trying to avoid the camera-happy tourists, trophy wives and street jugglers like any right-minded festivalgoer.

Making things even more of a jumble: Some of the movies are big Hollywood productions that are coming post haste to your local multiplex, but others are highly specialized products, aimed at a niche whose makeup one can only begin to contemplate.

But the signs do serve a purpose. Since the advertisements are meant to appeal to international distributors and media, they're a pretty good snapshot of what's working internationally, or at least what studios think will work internationally. In the past, it's proved a charmingly schizophrenic but telling mix. You'll have a "Transformers" right next to a "Babies," and then a Steven Seagal special dwarfing them both. Who said Cannes was just for cineastes?

This year, the signs seem a little more scaled back, but there's still plenty of that range.

The Antonio Banderas animated adventure "Puss in Boots" gets a giant display at the edge of a pier just off the Croisette. "Cowboys & Aliens" has a prominent billboard, though it will, of course, be interesting to see how the western elements play abroad. Interestingly, "Super 8" gets some heavy treatment too, which suggests that, for all the homemade intimacy hovering over the movie at home, when you get down to it, it's a big worldwide marketing rollout like all the others.

And then there's the above billboard, for a heretofore unknown animated gladiator movie that looks as though "Clash of the Titans" tried to mate with "Shrek." What's most interesting is that the billboard is nearly as big as "Cowboys & Aliens," suggesting either that marketers at Cannes throw proportion out the window, or that we live in a very different world than previously thought.

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Cannes 2011: Festival fetes Woody Allen and 'Midnight in Paris'

-- Steven Zeitchik reporting from Cannes, France

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: A billboard on the Boulevard de la Croisette. Credit: Steven Zeitchik

Besides Katniss Everdeen, the character "Hunger Games" fans have been most eager for Lionsgate to cast in the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins' popular book, is Haymitch Abernathy, the drunken former tribute — a sort of young district representative — who reluctantly mentors Katniss and her partner Peeta Mellark as they enter a fight-to-the-death competition.

Luckily for fans, the filmmakers didn't disappoint. While both John C. Reilly and Hugh Laurie had been rumored for the role, the part ultimately went to Woody Harrelson, an actor who has just the right amount of crazy and sweet to pull off the role of Haymitch. Harrelson will join a cast that includes Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley and others in a possible franchise that from the casting side of things is showing strong potential.

The studio also announced the final two tributes for the film. "Orphan" star Isabelle Fuhrman and Alexander Ludwig ("Race to Witch Mountain") will play Cato and Clove, the teenage representatives from District 2. To see the full list of tributes in the film, check out Lionsgate's Facebook page on the movie.

Filming is set to begin shortly, with Lionsgate planning its release next March.

— Nicole Sperling

Photo of Woody Harrelson by Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times.

 


A Woody Allen premiere is as much a fixture of the Cannes Film Festival as paparazzi and overpriced hotels. This year, the prolific director landed a high-profile slot, with his "Midnight in Paris" chosen as the opening-night movie.

Allen's film, a whimsical romantic comedy, stars Owen Wilson as a nostalgia-minded writer who, while on a trip to the City of Light, finds himself transported from the present day back to the 1920s, where he meets period figures ranging from Gertrude Stein to Salvador Dali. Wilson is struggling through a bad relationship with his shrew of a fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and finds solace in an idealized past. (Said idealization, incidentally, allows Allen to film numerous beauty shots of Paris both past and present.)

At the festival Wednesday evening, Allen's film played to the tuxedoed mix of cinephiles and society types who populate the gathering's opening night, with festival head Thierry Frémaux and jury chief Robert De Niro among those who took the stage before "Paris" premiered.

The movie then screened to an appreciative crowd, which no doubt enjoyed the gauzy tones in which the director paints their capital. 

Earlier in the day, after his film screened to a largely warm reception for media, Allen spoke at a news conference about his own attitude toward the past.

"[It] sounds seductive but it's a trap," said Allen, now 75. "There was no air conditioning; when you went to the dentist there was no Novocaine. There weren't a lot of the things we've gotten used to that make life bearable."‪ ‪

Of her off-putting character, McAdams told the news conference that she "was so excited when Woody told me, 'You won't be playing the object of desire.' "

Marion Cotillard, who plays a period muse but was not at the news conference, said in an earlier interview with The Times that, despite the neurotic and sometimes dark tone in Allen's work, little of that was in evidence on the set.

"He has this vision of things that's a mix of humanity, love, humor and sarcasm," she said. "Most of it is this smile he has in everything he does, the smile he has in his eyes when he looks at someone, with tenderness and humor."

Allen's last two releases, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" and "Whatever Works," were relatively low profile after his 2008 hit "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." "Midnight in Paris" will open in the United States on May 20.

As for his inspiration, Allen said that "I was going to do a film set in Paris and first I thought of the title, which sounded romantic. But I didn't know what was going to happen at midnight. Months went by and I couldn't think of anything," he said. "Then it occurred to me one day that a car would pull up and take him someplace. This time I was lucky -- I could have thought of something foolish or I could have thought of nothing and changed the title."‪

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-- Steven Zeitchik in Cannes, France

Photos: Top: Rachel McAdams and  Woody Allen attend the "Midnight In Paris" premiere in Cannes, France. Credit: Getty Images. Bottom: Owen Wilson and Lea Seydoux with Allen prior to the screening.  Credit: Associated Press

Downtown Los Angeles better get ready to roll out the red carpet.

After announcing the bulk of its lineup last week, the Los Angeles Film Festival on Wednesday revealed its slate of more glamorous screenings and events. The annual festival, which is sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, will welcome Guillermo del Toro as its guest director, and his film "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" will close the festival. That means star Katie Holmes and maybe even husband Tom Cruise should be on hand to lend some star power to the movie gathering, which runs from June 16 to 26 at L.A. Live. It's taken a long time for the movie to get a premiere date: The horror film was produced by Disney's Miramax film unit, but its release was held up when the parent company was shuttering and selling off the specialty film division. Although Del Toro is credited as the film's producer and co-writer, he was a very active participant in the film's making.

The festival's special screening will be "Green Lantern," the highly anticipated film based on the popular DC comic and starring Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. That likely means the crowd will be comprised of more fanboys than last year, when "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" played in that slot and hundreds of teen girls camped out in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Robert Pattinson.

Meanwhile, two smaller but also buzzworthy films will be shown in the gala screenings program. One is "Drive," which stars Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan and is about to have its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The other, Chris Weitz's "A Better Life," is about an illegal immigrant's quest to start over in Los Angeles. It will have its world debut at the festival.

Continuing his quest to make an appearance at every significant cultural event, James Franco will sit down for a conversation about "film, poetry and pushing the creative envelope," according to the festival's release. He will also present a film he wrote, directed and stars in, "The Broken Tower," about gay poet Hart Crane. 

LAFF will also welcome Julie Taymor, who recently came under creative fire for her involvement in the highly criticized and troubled "Spider-Man" musical on Broadway. She will be discussing how one takes source material and makes it work in theater or film.

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2011 Los Angeles Film Festival lineup unveiled

--Amy Kaufman

Twitter.com/AmyKinLA

Photo: Katie Holmes stars in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." Credit: FilmDistrict.

Keira Knightley has taken some grand turns in her young career -- epic romances "Pride & Prejudice" and "Atonement" and three high-profile action films of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.

But she's hit pause on the big and sweeping to do some smaller, more intimate roles. The British actress isn't in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which opens next week, but instead can currently be seen in theaters in the romantic drama "Last Night." The film, which was shot several years ago, comes out after Knightley's 2010 release "Never Let Me Go" also took a nuanced, at times dark view of humanity in exploring romance and sacrifice.

"Indies aren't the only places to go," she said Monday, speaking in the New York offices of Tribeca Film, which is releasing "Last Night." "I guess I just happen to have found quite a few recently that I like." Incidentally, she says she doesn't miss "Pirates." "I loved doing it. But I did it from when I was 17 to when I was 22, which was quite a long period of time."

Massy Tadjedin's "Night" follows a couple (Knightley and Sam Worthington) as they spend a night apart facing temptation. The movie follows in the spirit of recent romantic dramas such as "Blue Valentine" and "Monogamy"; there's as much heartbreak as romance and far more gray than black and white.

"It's a view of the adult world that isn't romanticized," Knightley said. "There aren't any rights or wrongs, morality is a very tricky thing and temptation is ever present." The actress said that although she liked epic romance, she enjoyed this take on romance because it's "a reflection on life and something that requires the audience to put their own lives and morality into the piece."

Knightley will next shoot a similarly human story when she pairs with Steve Carell in "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World," which tells of two people whose lives converge while the threat of a catastrophic ending to the world hovers over them.

The Michael Bay explosions won't be anywhere nearby, however. As Knightley says, "it's the idea that you have 20 days left and a question of what you do with that and what becomes important."

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Massy Tadjedin is "Last Night's" driving force

--Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Keira Knightley in "Last Night." Credit: Tribeca Film

Every year at the Cannes Film Festival, there’s a movie with some kind of quirk or novelty that gets people talking before the proceedings even get underway.

Last year, it was “Carlos," which had journalists and festival-goers sounding like triathletes as the festival opened; who, went the Croisette conversation, could make it through the entire 5 1/2-hour run of the period biopic when the film screened the following week?

This year, as the festival prepares to kick off Wednesday night, there’s an almost equal amount of buzz, for very different reasons, about another movie: Michel Hazanavicius’ French film “The Artist."

Hazanavicius is best known for a movie with a somewhat different scope, the James Bond spoof "OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies." But that’s only part of what makes this a conversation piece.

"The Artist," set in Hollywood during the transition from silent films to sound, is itself a silent film. And because the director wanted to film in real Hollywood locations, he brought his French stars (Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo) to Los Angeles and added U.S. actors including John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller to the mix.

U.S. rights to the movie, which are available, are being pursued by several distributors, including the acquisition-happy Weinstein Co., which made a number of buys at the Sundance Film Festival this year. It's the kind of movie Harvey Weinstein likes to make some publicity hay with, though the extent of the U.S. market for a silent film remains to be seen.

Cannes organizers are doing their own part to contribute to the hype: “The Artist” was upgraded from its out-of-competition slot to one of the 20 films in competition, which means it will gets a lot more media attention and also has a shot at the Palme d’Or. In one way, however, it is conventional: The movie has a standard 100-minute running time.

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Cannes Film Festival 2011: Seven movies people are talking about

Cannes 2010: The Day of the Jackal. Literally.

-- Steven Zeitchik and Kenneth Turan in Cannes, France
twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: "The Artist." Credit: Wild Bunch

Almost immediately after "Fast Five" posted the biggest opening weekend at the box office of any film this year, the obvious question in Hollywood became: "So, how soon can we expect a sixth movie?"

As it turns out, the answer depends on which player involved in the franchise featuring souped-up cars  you ask. But the financial incentives are high. Consider that "Fast Five" has already raked in $140 million in North America in just over two weeks and is a blockbuster overseas, where it could hit the $200-million mark within days. (For more thoughts on why the "Fast" movies are so successful, check out this Monday Calendar story.)

Not surprisingly, Universal Pictures -- which has fewer big franchises than most other studios -- seems ready to churn out another "Fast" movie. Studio Chairman Adam Fogelson said "everyone involved in the franchise is proud not only of the business result, but of the product on screen, and everyone involved wants to do it again."

And Neal Moritz, who has produced all five "Fast" films, said he would "be surprised if we didn't do" another film. He added that after changing genres from underground car-racing to heist in the fifth installment, the sixth film would probably move on to another genre, which he declined to identify, and would hit theaters in April 2013.

One person less certain about his future involvement in the franchise, however, is director Justin Lin, who has helmed the last three "Fast" movies. Before signing on to direct "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" in 2003, Lin was best known as an indie director whose film "Better Luck Tomorrow" was well-received at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

Speaking from Taipei, Taiwan, after "Fast Five" premiered there last week, Lin said he had yet to decide whether he would return for another film, or move back to the world of independent filmmaking.

“I’m going to head back to L.A. in two days, and I have six projects sitting in front of me, from huge tentpole movies to smaller things,” he said. “I want to see another [‘Fast’ film]. I want the journey to continue. But I take it very seriously. And I would have to ask a big question: ‘Why would we make another one? What would it be?’ If neither of those things are answered, I shouldn’t be a part of it. I have to be excited, because you get up at 4 in the morning and there’s a lot to accomplish.”

Paul Walker, who has starred in four of the five "Fast" movies, said he would return for a sixth film only if Lin was on board. Actor Vin Diesel, on the other hand, seemed eager to begin production on a new chapter in the franchise.

"I didn't start production on 'Fast Five' until the studio proved they had the treatment for a sixth film," said Diesel, who now serves as a producer on the films as well. "When I returned to the franchise for the fourth film, I envisioned a trilogy following."

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'Thor' a pretty super box-office warrior

-- Amy Kaufman

Twitter.com/AmyKinLA

Photo: Paul Walker, left, and Vin Diesel star in "Fast Five." Credit: Universal Pictures

EXCLUSIVE: Over a remarkable 40-year acting career, Sissy Spacek has been nominated for an Oscar six times, played roles as diverse as Carrie and Loretta Lynn, and worked with directors as iconic as Terrence Malick, Costa-Gavras and Brian De Palma. But she's never taken a turn behind the camera. 

That looks likely to change very shortly. The actress is preparing to direct her first film, says Jack Fisk, Spacek's husband and Malick's longtime production designer. (The couple met on the set of the director's 1973 debut, "Badlands.") 

Spacek will helm "Buttermilk Sky," a 1930s drama based on a novel about a young mother called "Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky" by Julia Oliver. [Corrected: An earlier version of this post referred to the book as containing supernaturally-inflected short stories.]

Oliver's book centers on various relationships in Depression-era Alabama. Publishers Weekly has said that, in her writing, Oliver offers what are "essentially parables of modern life, often profiling people at a pivotal moment after the death of a spouse, divorce or some other milestone." [Update, 7:52 p.m.: A spokesman for Spacek says that the film has now been renamed "Sweet Tea" and will also feature a script from C. Gaby Mitchell ("Blood Diamond").]

Spacek, who will next appear in the Southern drama "The Help,"  has held the option on "Buttermilk Sky" at various points in the 10 years since it came out.

The cast is being lined up and will be announced in the coming days, Fisk said, with Spacek not expected to star herself. But given the sort of acting talent the performer has worked with over the years, it's easy to imagine a long list of notable names.

--Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Sissy Spacek in "In the Bedroom." Credit: Miramax

Veteran actor Stanley Tucci seems to make every movie he's in a little better. So it's encouraging that the actor, probably best known for his comedic role in "The Devil Wears Prada," has signed on to play the flamboyant television host in "The Hunger Games." Lionsgate announced Monday that Tucci will play Caesar Flickerman in the first film of the highly anticipated franchise.

Tucci can next be seen in this summer's "Captain America," playing scientist Abraham Erskine. He will also be in the fall release "Margin Call" with Kevin Spacey and Paul Bettany.

With "The Hunger Games" set to begin shooting shortly, casting is almost complete. The film adaptation of Suzanne Collins' bestselling book centering on a dystopian future where children are forced to compete in annual televised fight to the death still must cast the roles of Haymitch, Cinna and Professor Snow.

With Gary Ross directing a script from Billy Ray, "The Hunger Games" is to open next March.

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-- Nicole Sperling

Photo: Stanley Tucci on the Paramount Pictures lot in November 2009. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times 

Critics were mixed on Mel Gibson's "The Beaver" at the start of the weekend — some found it a touching story of mental disassociation; others an ill-fitting mix of the quirky and the dour. Lovers and haters agreed, however, that they sometimes found it difficult to separate the star's on-screen issues from his real-life ones.

As it turns out, viewers had the same problem — that is, if they even bothered to see the film.

Gibson's turn as a depressed toy executive who turns to a puppet for help this weekend took in a dismal $104,000 on 22 screens, a per-screen average of under $5,000. To put that in lay terms, that means that in the markets the Jodie Foster film opened, very few people came out to see it To put that in other lay terms, the average was lower than that for the recent opening of "Atlas Shrugged," a movie so unpopular it prompted its producer to contemplate retirement.(For those who might wonder if the figures are misleading because "The Beaver" opened in only a limited number of theaters, the per-screen metric accounts for that; it's essentially a measure of a movie's box-office power adjusted for the size of its release.)

On Sunday, studio Summit was, interestingly, pointing the finger at its film more than its star. Domestic-distribution president Richie Fay told my colleague Amy Kaufman that he didn't think the results were "as much a repudiation of Mel and his personal life as it is about a film with difficult subject matter” and suggested that a planned expansion later in the month may be more limited than previously thought. “As it turns out, I think the film is more of an art-house specialty kind of movie than a broader commercial film,” he said.

Bridges are the key theme of this weekend's "Thor," a film that bridges us from the doldrums of spring releases to the flashier, if not better, world of summer blockbusters. It also serves as another step in the bridge from the first "Iron Man" in 2008 to next summer's superhero all-star jam, "The Avengers." And within the film itself, a superhero actioner about the Norse god of thunder and his adventures in his home of Asgard and on Earth, a rainbow bridge connects the well-regarded Asgard sections of the film with the less successful Earth sections, set in Puente Antiguo, N.M. (which means "Old Bridge").

According to Times critic Kenneth Turan, the film also attempts to bridge director Kenneth Branagh's high-minded Shakespearean intentions with Marvel Entertainment's bottom-line-oriented need to crank out entertainment product. However, Turan doesn't exactly see it as a bridge: "Think of 'Thor' as the ultimate Superhero Smackdown." Surprisingly, he finds no winner. Both titanic forces fight to a draw in his estimation. He writes, " 'Thor' has its strengths, but it is finally something of a mishmash with designs on being more interesting than it manages to be."

Neil LaBute burst onto the film scene in 1997, when his provocative study in primal male behavior, "In the Company of Men," became a festival breakout and cultural talking point. Ditto for Aaron Eckhart, LaBute's Brigham Young University classmate who caught moviegoers' attention as a charismatic sharpie who toyed with a deaf female colleague while manipulating a male one.

LaBute's dark sensibility and Eckhart's charm proved an explosive combination, and the writer-director and actor would collaborate on three more films in the five years that followed.

It's been nearly a decade since they last worked together meaningfully on a film project (the 2002 A.S. Byatt adaptation "Possession"). But the two will reunite in an independent feature titled "The Geography of Hope," according to the film's producers, with Eckhart attached to play a lead role.

LaBute will direct the movie from his own script, and Eckhart will be joined in the cast by Ed Harris, who starred in LaBute's one-man stage drama "Wrecks" and is also attached.

"Hope" has some similar themes to "Company." In the 1970s-set story, two crooks (Eckhart and Harris) flee to Baja, Mexico, after a robbery in a San Diego convenience store goes bad. There they encounter several American women, and they find themselves torn between the impulse to grift the ladies and romance them.

The script was written years ago by LaBute, before his film and theater career jumped to the next level; it stayed on hold while he worked on projects in both mediums. (His most recent movie was the dysfunctional-family comedy "Death at a Funeral.")

Collaborating with LaBute on "Hope" are the principals at Sundial Pictures, the producers behind Sundance hit "Pariah," who confirmed news of the LaBute project, and the sales company Preferred Content. The idea, the Sundial producers said, is to shoot as soon as this year in Puerto Rico, where there's a hotel of faded charm that will stand in for 1970s Mexico. Representatives for the film personalities could not immediately be reached for comments.

LaBute has remained unapologetic and controversial with much of his work in the years since "Company" first prompted a debate over whether he was critiquing despicable male behavior or glorifying it.

In the meantime, screen representations of masculinity have changed. "Company" came well before the emo male of indies like "(500) Days of Summer." Eckhart, too, has made some switches, sanding the edges with parts in commercial romances such as "Love Happens" and playing a heroic military man in "Battle: Los Angeles" and the likable, grief-stricken father in "Rabbit Hole." If anyone could sharpen those edges again, though, it's LaBute.

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Aaron Eckhart at the 2011 Spirit Awards

-- Steven Zeitchik
Twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Aaron Eckhart, right, and Matt Malloy in "In the Company of Men." Credit: Sony Pictures Classics