CANNES, France (Reuters) - Critics rank Michael Moore as one of the favourites to land the top prize at the Cannes film Festival after his blistering anti-Bush documentary won a standing ovation.
"Fahrenheit 911" is now firmly in line to be the first documentary to land the Palme d'Or since Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle's marine epic "The World of Silence" in 1956.
CANNES, France (Reuters) - American film-maker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", a savage critique of President George W. Bush's handling of Iraq and the war on terror, has been warmly applauded by critics at its first press showing.
The fast-paced film by Oscar-winning Moore is a telling work of propaganda by a moviemaker whose zeal to deride Bush exudes from every frame.
Two years ago, the director's anti-gun lobby documentary "Bowling for Columbine" grabbed the headlines at Cannes and then went on to gross $120 million (68 million pounds) worldwide and win him an Oscar.
Fahrenheit 9/11 has already whipped up an international media storm after the Walt Disney Company barred its Miramax film unit from releasing such a politically polarising work in a U.S. election year.
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CANNES, France (Reuters) - U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore says there was pressure from the beginning to stop him making his controversial documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11". The film focuses on how Americans and the White House responded to the September 11 attacks and traces links between the Bush family and prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden.
Following the recent slew of zombie flicks and the zombie comedy Shaun Of The Dead, surely what we need right now is... another zombie comedy.
Boy Eats Girl is a Stephen Bradley film being touted at the Cannes Festival. It concerns a Dublin boy who's brought back to life by his mum, having died on the night he declared his love for his girlfriend.
This year's Cannes Film Festival got off to a controversial start with Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education as the opening film.
The Spanish director said about his film, which features paedophile priests: "It's not necessary for my film to be anti-clerical, the church is going through its own problems, for example destroying itself when it speaks to the press. At least in Spain the church's worst enemy is itself."
Comic actor Steve Martin will star as a new Inspector Clouseau in a fresh "Pink Panther" movie due out next summer, the film's makers have said.
Martin, who will be starring alongside Beyonce and Oscar-winner Kevin Kline, said he was intimidated at first by the thought of following in actor Peter Sellers' stumbling footsteps as the hapless Clouseau, but he got over it.
"They have different James Bonds," he quipped at a news conference on Friday.
Others in the cast of the MGM Pictures film that should reach movie houses by next summer include French actor Jean Reno and Tony Award-winning actress Kristin Chenoweth
PARIS (Reuters) - The French government is seeking to appease angry show business workers threatening to disrupt the Cannes film festival.
Restaurant owners also plan separate protests in the Riviera resort because of fears they will lose business during the May 12-23 film showcase if demonstrators cause havoc.
The event's organisers were due on Tuesday to meet unions representing 60,000 to 100,000 part-time actors and technicians who plan protests against cuts in their welfare benefits.
Veronique Cayla, who is running the festival, said on Sunday there was no reason to fear it could be cancelled and hoped to find a platform for unions to express themselves peacefully.
Disney has banned its film company subsidiary from distributing controversial director Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which criticises President George Bush's handling of the September 11 terrorist attacks and connects the Bush family with Osama bin Laden's.
Disney chief executive Michael Eisner said yesterday the company "did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we're such a non-partisan company and our guests, that participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides".
Moore, behind the Oscar-winning Bowling For Columbine documentary that challenged America's gun culture, claimed The Walt Disney Co was worried the documentary would endanger tax breaks the company received from Florida, where Bush's brother Jeb is governor and where Disney World is located.
But Jeb Bush said: "What tax break? We don't give tax breaks, that I'm aware of, to Disney.
"I appreciate the fact that Disney creates thousands and thousands of jobs in our state."
Moore said he officially found out on Monday that Miramax Films, owned by Disney, would not be allowed to distribute the film, but his agent learned this a year ago.
"They had told my agent last year -- Eisner himself told my agent, Ari Emanuel -- that there was no way they were going to release this film, and he told him why. Because he did not want to anger Jeb Bush in Florida," Moore told The Associated Press.
"He wasn't going to let a little documentary upset the Bush family."
But Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein wanted to go ahead with the film, and spent �4 million finishing it, Moore said.
"Harvey thought he'd change their minds. We went ahead and made the movie anyway," he said.
Moore said only when it was announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would make its world premiere as one of 18 films screening in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins on May 12, did Disney "finally decide to deal with it".
Shock jock Howard Stern is set to produce a remake of Porky's, the 1982 gross-out comedy that is Canada's top- grossing English-language film.
Although no director or actors have been attached to the project, Stern has drafted screenwriters Craig Moss and Steve Schoenburg to pen the script.
The original, which followed the sexual misadventures of a group of teenage boys, was made during Canada's tax- shelter era on a budget of $4 million US. According to the Internet Movie Database, it pulled in over $105 million in North America alone.
"It's the highest-grossing Canadian film ever," Don Carmody told CBC News Online Wednesday. Carmody, along with director Bob Clark, produced the original Porky's.
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Directed by Jon Amiel
I wasn't sure I wanted to see this in the theatres. There was something fishy about the trailers -- there were two distinct trailers: one which played on the whole "journey to the core of the earth" fiasco; and one which was much more interesting, touting the whole "government weapon conspiracy which wrecked the world" angle. I was more partial to the second one, and there wasn't really much of this in the film. It was mostly about putting together enough duct tape logic to get a machine that could travel inside the Earth. Unfortunately, the film played a little rough and tumble with the science, using it only when it suited them, and sweeping it under the carpet in other circumstances, hoping no one would notice.
