Cannes ready to roll out red carpet

Michael Moore and Quentin Tarantino will be joining Canadian filmmakersincluding Denys Arcand and Sarah Polley onthe red carpet at the 60th annual Cannes Film Festival.

The festival opens Wednesday with My Blueberry Nights, an English-language film by Hong Kong's Wong Kar-wai about a cross-country odyssey. It stars Norah Jones.

The festival will close 12 days later with an out-of-competition screening for Canadian directorArcand's L'Âge des ténèbres (The Age of Ignorance).

In between, it promises to be a star-studded celebration of celluloid and celebrities, with starsincluding George Clooney and super-couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in attendance.

"Every one of my films has benefited from being in Cannes," Arcand said in an interview with USA Today.

"For us in Canada, it's very important, much more so than for Americans. All the U.S., Italian, Australian and French distributors are there — the whole world, really — and they can see your film instead of you putting it in a suitcase and schlepping it all over the world."

Arcand is a Cannes veteran, having won acclaim there for The Decline of the American Empire in 1986.

Also returning are fellow Canadians David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, who have created short films celebrating the art of cinema for the May 20 showcase To Each His Own Cinema.

Festival organizers asked 36 directors, including greats such asRoman Polanskiand Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu,to create the three-minute shorts in honour of the festival's 60th anniversary.

Canadian actor/director Polley is a member of the international jury that will award the Palme d'Or and other prizes to the 21 films in the official competition.

A cache of cash

Polleywillbe judging new works by directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen, who have entered No Country for Old Men, a film about a hunter who stumbles on a cache of cash, and Tarantino, whose Death Proof is half of the double bill shown in North America as Grindhouse.

Also in competition are:

• Paranoid Park: directed by Gus Van Sant, about a teen skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard.
• Promise Me This: directed by Serb Emir Kusturica, about an old man who urges his son to marry.
• Persepolis: directed by Vincent Parannaud and Marjane Satrapi, about a young girl growing up after Iran's Islamic revolution.
• The Edge of Heaven: directed by Turk-German Fatih Akin.
• The Man From London: by Hungarian director Bela Tarr, about how a man's life changes after he witnesses a crime.
• Stellet Licht (Silent Light): by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, aMennonite melodrama which features Winnipeg's Miriam Toews, author of A Complicated Kindness, in her film debut.

Clooney and Brad Pitt are to be in Cannes to promote Ocean's Thirteen, Leonardo DiCaprio will bring environmental documentary The 11th Hour, and Jolie is promoting A Mighty Heart, in which she plays the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl.

Moore's documentary about the U.S. health-care system, Sicko, is screening out of competition.

The producers say they spirited the main print out of the country when the U.S. started investigating Moore, a Cannes favourite, for violating the ban on ties with Cuba in making the film.

Canadians make their debut

Two first-time Canadian directors, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, are entering their short film Madame Tutli-Putli in the parallel International Critics Week screenings.

They made the 17-minute animated film for the National Film Board of Canada.

The NFB is also sponsoring a short film competition whose winner will be announced at the Cannes on May 23.

Ten entries from France, Great Britain, Argentina, the U.S. and Canada were chosen from among 1,149 entries for the Online Short Film Competition Cannes Special 2007.

The Canadian entry Eau Boy by Eric Gravel is abouta young man suffering from excessive sweating whois blown away by a strange encounter.

Viewers can vote on them online on YouTube and on the NFB website.