Director Steven Soderbergh said he struggled five years ago
to secure funding for “Behind the Candelabra” because some
financiers thought the film would only appeal to a gay audience
and, at a cost of $25 million, would be a financial risk.

Eventually he received financing from Time Warner’s
HBO cable channel and made the film with Michael Douglas playing
Liberace and Matt Damon as Scott Thorson with whom the pianist
had a secret five-year affair.

Soderbergh said it was a coincidence that the film was being
released during a global debate on gay rights and same sex
marriage but acknowledged that it was very timely.

France last month became the 14th country to legalise gay
marriage, a move also taken in the United States by Washington
D.C. and 12 states. Liberace, a huge celebrity during his
lifetime, publicly denied his homosexuality at a time when being
gay was widely considered taboo.

“In making the film, the socio-political aspect of it was
not really in my mind but I was focused on … trying to make
this relationship as believable and realistic as we could,”
Soderbergh told a news conference, flanked by Douglas and Damon.

“When this issue comes up, of equal rights for gays, I am
hoping 50 years from now we will look back on this and wonder
why this was even a debate and why it took so long.”

Douglas and Damon said they were both keen to work with
Soderbergh who has announced his plan to retire from filmmaking
after this movie.

They were both also impressed by the script based on
Thorson’s autobiography, “Behind the Candelabra: My Life with
Liberace”, that was released in 1988, a year after the
entertainer’s death at age 67 from an AIDS-related disease.

SPECTACULAR

In the film, Thorson, a naive 18-year-old farm boy from
Wisconsin, meets 58-year-old Liberace in Las Vegas in 1977 and
moves in with him, joining his glamorous lifestyle of champagne,
jewel-encrusted cars and spectacular wardrobe.

An unrecognisable Debbie Reynolds plays Liberace’s beloved
mother Frances, with her trademark button nose hidden under a
prosthetic one, while a wrinkle-free, taut-faced Rob Lowe, is a
plastic surgeon who operates on both Liberace and Thorson.

The relationship starts to unravel as Thorson becomes
addicted to drugs, hawking jewellery given to him by his lover
to fund his habit, and the sexually voracious Liberace’s
interest moves on to other, younger men.

The two actors made light of their love scenes, with Douglas
joking about asking Damon what flavour lip balm he preferred and
Damon saying he could swap stories with Sharon Stone, Glenn
Close and Demi Moore after sharing a bed with Douglas.

Douglas, whose performance as the primped, toupeed pianist
was lauded by critics, said he met Liberace once, in a Rolls
Royce convertible while in Palm Springs with his father, the
movie star Kirk Douglas.

He became emotional, voice breaking and tears in his eyes,
when asked how he became involved in the film that Soderbergh
first raised with him 13 years ago.

“It was right after my cancer and this beautiful gift was
handed to me and I am eternally grateful … to everybody for
waiting for me,” said Douglas who was diagnosed with throat
cancer in 2010 and needed chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

“Behind the Candelabra” will premiere on HBO in the United
States on May 26 and open in foreign theatres from June 7.

The film is one of 20 movies in the main competition at
Cannes vying for the Palme d’Or award for best picture that is
presented on Sunday.

Soderbergh, 50, who won the Palme d’Or in 1989 with “Sex,
Lies and Videotapes”, said this was his last movie for a while.

“I am absolutely taking a break. I don’t know how extended
it is going to be but I can’t say if this were the last movie I
make that I would be unhappy,” he said. “It’s been a nice run.”

“Omar” by director Hany Abu-Assad, known for the 2005 award-winning film “Paradise Now”, is a political thriller interwoven with a story of trust and betrayal as two lovers are torn apart by Israel’s secret police and Palestinian freedom fighters.

Omar, a baker, is in love with Nadia, the sister of his friend Tarek who is a Palestinian fighter on the West Bank.

Arrested and humiliated by the Israeli military police, Omar, played by Adam Bakri, joins Tarek and colleague Amjad in a mission to kill an Israeli soldier and ends up imprisoned, tortured, and under pressure to betray his friends.

Earmarked a traitor, he starts to doubt Nadia’s fidelity, especially as she is also pursued by Amjad, and his life falls apart as he is pursued across the ravaged Palestinian landscape.

Abu-Assad said he was delighted by the reception his film received at Cannes, where picky critics are known to boo films that do not meet their expectations, and he hoped the festival would help gain international attention for “Omar”.

“But my first audience is the Palestinians and the Arabs and I hope they will be engaged with it,” said Abu-Assad after the film’s premiere at the 66th Cannes festival.

“Even if they are not on the West Bank or Palestinians … it is about the youth and Arab world now and I hope they can accept it and that they can relate to it.”

PALESTINIAN FUNDING

Abu-Assad said it had taken him about a year to raise the $1.5 million needed to make “Omar” which was shot in the West Bank and the Israeli-Arab town of Nazareth last year.

He said it was the first film to be fully funded by individual Palestinians and Palestinian businesses.

“For the first time, we convinced businessmen from Palestine to invest in the film industry. It’s incredible,” he said.

A second Palestinian film at Cannes, the short film “Condom Lead” by brothers Mohammed and Ahmad Abunassar, was funded by the filmmakers themselves. It is the first time a Palestinian film has been included in the short film competition at Cannes.

“Omar” is one of 18 films being screened in the second major competition category at Cannes, Un Certain Regard, which showcases emerging directors and more daring films than those in the main competition vying for the top prize, the Palme D’Or.

Cambodian director Rithy Panh’s documentary “L’Image Manquante” (“The Missing Picture”) is one of the experimental movies in Un Certain Regard pushing story-telling boundaries.

He used small clay figures intercut with historical footage to tell the story of how his family perished in the Khmer Rouge’s brutal revolution after their 1975 capture of Phnom Penh.

Other films in Un Certain Regard to receive positive reviews include Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” starring Emma Watson in a gang of celebrity-obsessed teenagers breaking into their Hollywood idols’ homes to steal luxury goods.

“Fruitvale Station” by American filmmaker Ryan Coogler was praised by critics as provocative with exceptional performances.

The film is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, an unarmed San Francisco Bay Area resident who was shot and killed by police in the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2009.

French director Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Grand Central” about love in a nuclear power plant received favorable reviews as did “L’Inconnu du Lac” (Stranger by the Lake), a murderous gay love story by French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie.

(Additional reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Ivan Dunleavy, chief executive of Pinewood which is Europe’s
largest film studio, said it was disappointing the local council
rejected its 200 million pound ($300 million) plan for a second
time last week as it needed more capacity to meet rising demand.

Dunleavy said the company was yet to make a formal
announcement on any appeal after the plan to boost the capacity
of its studio on protected “green belt” land about 20 miles (32
km) west of central London was rejected again.

But asked by Reuters if this was likely he said: “I would
have thought so.”

The 15-year project would have involved building studios,
stages and streetscapes at the Iver Heath site but South
Buckinghamshire Council rejected the plans as “inappropriate”
expansion into green belt land encircling London.

Dunleavy said the next step was to go to the national
government which would have happened anyway if the local
authority had given the green light as higher level approval was
always needed for any change to green belt status.

“So that is the process we will work on and we will keep
going,” Dunleavy told Reuters in an interview on a yacht moored
in Cannes where the world’s largest film festival is underway.

“The government policy is to grow the creative sector as a
whole and the fact we are coming forward to work on land we own,
and put in private investment and create jobs, we think those
are the right kind of factors that will hopefully make a
national decision go in our favour.”

A more ambitious version of the planning application called
“Project Pinewood”, which included the building of 1,400 new
homes, was rejected last year, after a vociferous “Stop Project
Pinewood” campaign by local residents.

The studios, home to more than 1,500 movies over 76 years,
were used to film 23 of 25 James Bond films including the latest
hit “Skyfall”, as well as Oscar-nominated “Les Miserables”.

Dunleavy said the UK was a popular place currently for big
budget film production because of its skills, its creativity,
its fiscal regime and positive exchange rates.

“With government policy seeking to incentivise high end
television with tax credits, that might pump up the demand for
production capacity by about 30 percent so we were are very keen
to press on with this,” he said.

The bid to expand in the UK comes as Pinewood is on an
international expansion drive, last month announcing
partnerships in both China and the United States.

Pinewood already owns studios in Canada and Germany and is
building facilities in Malaysia and the Dominican Republic.

“If you look at the places we have gone to, we are being
very strategic and we are trying to appeal to new markets,” said
Dunleavy.

“In each case, while we would be very happy to see big
budget films going into one of those studios, it is more about
the regional market there … which are growing quite strongly.”

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Mark Potter)

With parties, pitching and paparazzi already in overdrive at the world’s premier movie market, director James Toback on Sunday showed “Seduced and Abandoned”, the story of how he and actor Alec Baldwin talked to directors, investors and studio heads at Cannes last year to seek funding for a film with no A-list star.

They never intended to make the film, but its seemingly bankable plot about a spy and a journalist in Iraq turned out to be no compensation for its lack of big names.

Baldwin himself was dismissed as a mere television actor, and the female star, Canada’s Neve Campbell, star of the “Scream” films, was said to have little box office power.

“Money follows stars,” says Toback in the documentary, acquired by Time Warner’s HBO.

As well as being the world’s top cinema showcase, Cannes brings together up to 40,000 professionals to buy and sell films and seek funding for projects, but many of these never see a film.

One investor tells Toback that he doesn’t even read scripts but decides whether to back a project based on the stars involved, as the marketing of a movie has become more important than its content.

Small wonder, then, that the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake and Emma Watson are not merely promoting finished movies showing in the 12-day Cannes festival, but also taking advantage of the limelight to talk up their new projects and seek distributors.

CELEBRITY AS SUBJECT

And Baldwin and Toback are not the only ones taking celebrity and its occupational hazards as their subject.

Former “Baywatch” star David Hasselhoff, 60, was in town with his 32-year-old girlfriend Hayley Robert to promote “Killing Hasselhoff”, his yet-to-be-shot film about a man who hires a hitman to kill a celebrity – Hasselhoff himself – to win money in a bet.

Paris Hilton, never shy of publicity, attended a party for Sofia Coppola’s film “The Bling Ring”, premiered in Cannes, in which she plays a cameo role as a gang of celebrity-obsessed teen burglars break into their idols’ homes, including Hilton’s house.

DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese announced their next movie venture, “Silence”, while Timberlake and his wife Jessica Biel held a disco-themed party for buyers of “Spinning Gold”, their planned biopic of record executive Neil Bogart.

Jennifer Lawrence, who won the Oscar this year for best actress, was working the floors with Australian actor Liam Hemsworth to promote the second and third “Hunger Games” movies, which start shooting in September.

Kung Fu star Jackie Chan rolled in with China’s big screen darling Fan Bingbing talking about next year’s comedy action film, “Skiptrace”.

Elsewhere, actresses Liv Tyler, Jane Fonda and Eva Longoria, models Cindy Crawford and Cara Delevingne and pop singer and DJ Boy George were among those partying and pressing flesh around Cannes to talk up their projects, or merely using their celebrity status to be “brand ambassadors”.

Beyond promoting films and careers, Cannes does provide at least a few occasions to put celebrity to more altruistic use.

Sharon Stone, Jessica Chastain, and Janet Jackson are all on the guest list for Thursday’s annual amfAR gala to raise money for AIDS research, where the bill of performers includes Shirley Bassey and Duran Duran.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

The largest Indian contingent to date is on the French
Riviera at the world’s leading cinema showcase to promote their
country, which has the world’s biggest film industry, making
over 1,000 films a year compared to about 600 in Hollywood.

Movies from Mumbai-based Bollywood and other regional India
films have struggled at the global box office with Indian cinema
largely dismissed as lengthy, song-and-dance numbers.

But the industry sees the 66th Cannes festival, where India
is “guest country” to mark its centenary, as a chance to
showcase a new genre of Indian movies globally and to promote
India as a place to both make films and win a massive audience.

“If you use the term Bollywood it really represents the
song-and-dance, credibility-stretched story kind of film,”
director Amit Kumar, whose gangster-cop thriller “Monsoon
Shootout” held its premiere at Cannes on Sunday, told Reuters.

“We need to portray Indian cinema as more international and
I hope our presence at Cannes will make the world realise that
Indian cinema is most than just about Bollywood.”

The Indian visitors to Cannes are also keen to lure
investment to their film industry, which is forecast to grow to
$5 billion by 2014 from $3.2 billion in 2010, according to a
report by Ernst & Young.

India’s presence has been high-profile since the start of
the 12-day festival with acting legend Amitabh Bachchan on the
red carpet on opening night to mark his Hollywood debut in Baz
Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

Actress Vidya Balan also walked the red carpet in the
pouring rain that night as one of nine members of a jury led by
U.S. filmmaker Steven Spielberg that will decide the coveted
Palme D’Or award for best picture on the final day, May 26.

A gala dinner to mark Indian cinema’s centenary was due to
be held on Sunday and attended by a list of stars including
actresses Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor and Freida Pinto.

“SHACKLES”

There is no Indian film in either of the two main
competitions at Cannes. The last Indian film selected to vie for
the coveted Palme D’Or was “Swaham” in 1994 while “Udaan”
competed in Un Certain Regard for emerging filmmakers in 2010.

But four Indian films will be screened – “Monsoon Shootout”,
another thriller “Ugly”, a tribute to the industry centenary
called “Bombay Talkies”, and love story “Dabba” (Lunchbox).

Anupama Chopra, Bollywood author, columnist and critic, said
Bollywood was a tag that independent film-makers had to fight.

“Maybe one day (Indian filmmakers) will break free of the
shackles of Bollywood and make a completely global film in terms
of aesthetics,” he said.

In 2011 India saw a 42 percent jump in the number of
Hollywood movies shot there with several Hollywood studios such
as Disney, News Corp’s Fox, and Sony
entering deals with or buying stakes in Indian companies.

There has also been a surge in the number of Hollywood
movies released in India, where 3.6 billion film tickets were
sold last year. Hollywood studios have been releasing their
films in India simultaneously with their North American releases
and also dubbing films in various regional Indian languages.

Uma Da Cunha, programme advisor at the 2012 Mumbai Film
Festival, said studios wanted a slice of the huge Indian market.

“The big and significant change in Cannes is that the Indian
film industry is being given space and attention on the
international film scene and it is attracting business and ties
from global film interests,” she told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Shipla Jamkhandikar; Editing by Pravin
Char)

Upham features in “Jimmy P. Psychotherapy of a Plains
Indian”, focused on the relationship between World War Two
veteran Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot, and Georges
Devereux, his psychoanalyst.

Upham said like Picard, played by Puerto Rican actor Benicio
Del Toro, she is Blackfeet, the largest tribe in Montana state.
She said she was a direct descendant of the last chief and grew
up on the reservation where much of the movie was filmed.

“I had no dreams and no way to make a dream. I had to leave
the reservation,” Upham, 30, told a news conference on Saturday
ahead of the premiere of the film’s premiere by French director
Arnaud Desplechin.

“So 18 years later … (I am) coming a full circle to the
reservation I left to fulfil my dream.”

Upham says and another “Jimmy P.” actress, Michelle Thrush,
a Cree from Canada, are the first Native American women in the
official selection at Cannes, although organisers of the
festival, now in its 66th year, were unable to confirm it.

One of 20 films competing for the main prize at the 12-day
event on the French Riviera, the movie was inspired by a true
story in Devereux’s 1951 book “Reality And Dream”.

Set in 1948, the film follows Jimmy as he checks into a
military hospital in Topeka, Kansas, that specialises in mental
illness for war veterans to be treated for numerous symptoms,
including temporary blindness, hearing loss and dizzy spells.

The doctors are baffled by his psychological problems and
decide to call in anthropologist and psychoanalyst Devereux
(Mathieu Amalric) a specialist in Native American culture who
spent two years living with the Mojave Native Americans.

Del Toro, who won the best actor award at Cannes in 2008 for
“Che”, said it was important for him to understand the history
of Native Americans to get to grips with his character.

The oppression of Native Americans remains a stain on the
history of the United States following the seizure of land,
removal of children from families, and violation of treaties.

The 2010 census found 5.2 million people in the United
States identified themselves as American Indians and Alaska
Natives, while government figures this year showed they had the
highest poverty rate in the country, at 27 percent, from 2007
through 2011.

Upham, who plays the mother of Jimmy’s daughter, said the
film recognised the different approach needed to treat
psychological illness among Native Americans.

“We believe in spirits. We believe in ghosts. We believe in
shape shifting. We believe in medicine and curses. We are very
spiritual people,” said the actress, best known for the 2008
film “Frozen River”.

“What somebody else would call delusional, to us it is
normal. That is why they had to create a new way to see what is
going on in our minds without confusing the spirituality.”

“Jimmy P.” is Desplechin’s fourth film selected for the main
competition at Cannes, with the prestigious Palme D’Or for best
picture to be awarded on the festival’s final day, May 26.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

At the Cannes film festival to promote his upcoming film “Skiptrace”, the Hong Kong actor said at 59 he could no longer do his own stunts as it took so long to recover from any injury.

“I am not a superhero,” Chan, in a white polo-necked shirt and Chinese-style jacket, told Reuters on Friday in an interview at a beachfront restaurant on the French Riviera.

“I really want to be like an Asian Robert de Niro who can do all kinds of things – comedy, drama, heavy roles,” he said, adding that he would love the chance to play a villain.

Chan, who has starred in more than 150 films in a career spanning more than 40 years, last year said he would retire from big action movies after “Chinese Zodiac 2012″, released in December.

It was quite an announcement from an actor who made his name flying across the big screen in hand-to-hand combat and car chases in films like “Rush Hour” and “Police Story”.

“I am not young any more … and I don’t want to break my ankle or my arm again,” he said, adding that he currently needed a shoulder operation.

His next film is an action movie, “New Police Story 2013″, the sixth in the franchise, that had its first public screening last month at a film festival in Beijing where Chan now lives, and will hit theatres later this year.

“Skiptrace” is an action comedy in which he joins forces with rising Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, known from “X-Men: Days of Future Past”. The film is due to start shooting in September for release next year.

The story follows a Hong Kong detective who forms an unlikely partnership with an American gambler as they try to track down Hong Kong’s most notorious criminal and embark on a wild journey across China.

Chan said he had wanted to write “Skiptrace”, a road movie through China, for about 20 years but it was only now that the time was right to make the film as China was now more accessible and well equipped for the film industry.

But he admitted it was another action movie.

“Every action star always wants to say they (will stop) but at the end they have to do it again. Like (Sylvester) Stallone. He never stops. Like me, I will never stop,” said Chan.

“But an action star’s life is so short. I want to let audiences knows that I am an actor who can fight. I am not an action star who can act.”

Chan was one of a crowd of Chinese actors and directors at Cannes for the world’s largest film festival where the main competition of 20 films includes “Tian Zhu Ding” (“A Touch of Sin”) by director Jia Zhangke. The film received mixed reviews.

A new film by Chinese filmmaker Johnnie To called “Blind Detective” will be screened at a midnight showing on May 19.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

“The Bling Ring”, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, is based on a real-life gang fixated by glamour who tracked their targets’ whereabouts online and stole $3 million of luxury goods from celebrities including Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

Watson, 23, proved her days as Hermione in “Harry Potter” are long gone as she donned skimpy outfits and perfected a Los Angeles accent to play a fictitious version of one of the Bling Ring gang, who were caught in 2009 and sent to jail.

She said her main challenge was to work out why these teenagers, from mainly wealthy backgrounds, were so preoccupied with celebrities. Her research involved watching reality TV shows like “Keeping up with the Kardashians” and “The Hills”.

“I enjoy the chance to transform into new roles and work with new creative people,” Watson, dressed in a short, black dress and black stilettos, told a news conference on Thursday where her presence creating a frenzy among photographers.

“Harry Potter seems like such a long time ago,” she said.

“The Bling Ring”, which opened the Cannes category “Un Certain Regard” for emerging filmmakers, starts with the teenagers seeing on a gossip website that Paris Hilton is in Las Vegas and guessing she would be the kind of person to leave a key under the mat.

They find her address and in they sneak, returning several times to party in the house and then to other celebrities’ homes, helping themselves to Birkin bags, Louboutin shoes, Rolex watches, bling and cash to fund their drug- and alcohol-fuelled party lifestyle, boasting about their acquisitions on Facebook.

WORLD OF EXCESS

Even when their make-believe celebrity world comes crashing down, the teenagers seem oblivious to the gravity of their crimes and more interested in hyping their new-found notoriety.

Alongside Watson, Katie Chang plays Bling Ring leader Rebecca, while Israel Broussard is her submissive lieutenant with Taissa Farmiga and Claire Julien making up the gang.

The film received favorable reviews after a press screening on the second day of the 12-day Cannes festival, described as a “wily critique of celebrity culture” and an “intuitive and atmospheric tale” with a great soundtrack.

This was a welcome reaction for the American Coppola, whose third film “Marie Antoinette” was booed in 2006 when it made its debut at Cannes, the world’s biggest film festival.

Coppola said “The Bling Ring”, which opens in the United States in June, was a comment on culture today – both the teenagers’ obsession with the celebrity life and the celebrities themselves with houses overflowing with expensive goods.

Paris Hilton, the celebrity heiress, allowed them to film in her real home with shots of a room wall-to-wall with shoes and a pole-dancing table in the middle of a nightclub area.

“The world this film shows is a world of excess,” said Coppola. “(Paris Hilton’s) house is very exotic. I have never seen anything like it before.”

Coppola, 42, whose film “Somewhere” won the top prize at the Venice film festival in 2010, said she met two gang members as she wrote the film to garner extra details but she changed the names in the movie, not wanting to add to their celebrity.

She dismissed complaints by some of the Bling Ring members that the film was “trashy and inaccurate”.

“It is not a documentary. I am not too concerned with their reaction,” she said.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

But her transformation into a humanitarian campaigner and now poster girl for the fight against breast cancer with her revelation that, faced with a high cancer risk, she had undergone a double mastectomy has elevated her to heroine status in the media.

Her deeply personal account of the decision to undergo the operation, published in the New York Times, won her wide praise for her courage and Pitt’s support of her move has put the couple in a new light in and beyond Hollywood. Jolie said she made the difficult choice in order to “tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”

“This week they have shown that they are real people and a real couple with a solid relationship,” said Wendy Mitchell, editor at trade magazine Screen International, speaking at the world’s largest film festival in Cannes.

“They have both grown up and even though the tabloid press will still chase them, there is a new respect there for them.”

Jolie, 37, has managed to put her wild reputation behind her, staying out of the public spotlight with Pitt and their six children and only taking to the stage to promote films and causes in which she is involved.

In April, she stood alongside British Foreign Secretary William Hague at a G8 meeting in London, her hair in a bun and in a business suit more typical of Wall Street than Hollywood, to pledge an end to sexual violence and rape in war zones.

A month earlier, in her role as a special envoy for the U.N. Human Rights Council, Jolie accompanied Hague to refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo, never giving an indication of the personal health traumas she was going through at that time.

The actress, whose past roles have included the “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” films, still makes big studio entertainment such as next year’s “Maleficent,” a twist on “Sleeping Beauty” in which she stars as the wicked sorceress who puts a curse on the princess.

She also has combined her humanitarian campaigning with filmmaking, marking her directorial debut with 2011′s “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” a love story between a Muslim woman and a Serbian man with the Bosnian war as a backdrop.

Industry insiders at the Cannes film festival this week, the year’s biggest movie industry gathering, were stunned by Jolie’s mastectomy announcement but said the way she released the news, in her words in the Times, was a sign of her maturity.

Jolie and Pitt, 49, also are talking about marriage.

“She’s somebody who has transformed herself in so many ways from the very beginning when she was dismissed as more or less some kind of kooky bimbo,” said Jay Weissberg, a movie critic at industry publication Variety.

“She has pushed that idea of the public figure having responsibility to the public … coming forward to be a spokesperson for cancer, it’s not only going to help her in Hollywood but help her outside of Hollywood as well.”

RESPECT FROM MEDIA

The headlines following Jolie’s announcement signaled enhanced respect for the actress.

“Angelina Jolie praised for revelation over double mastectomy,” said British newspaper The Guardian, while CNN’s headline read “Angelina Jolie’s brave message.”

Bob Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University, said that while Jolie’s decision to write about her surgery may bring an added “gravitas” to media stories about the actress, it is unlikely to end tabloid attention.

“I don’t know if suddenly this couple is going to be elevated to a new status and talked about and treated in a different way,” Thompson said.

“(Jolie’s surgery) is a different subject from the usual stories but there will still be speculation on whether she and Brad Pitt are getting married or breaking up, and that’s not going to change very much.”

As for Jolie’s status as a sex symbol, Thompson said that while he hoped it would not diminish her appeal within audiences regarding her as such, he added that the surgery may bring her a “street cred” from a wider public.

“This personal story gives her a sense of street cred that comes from having gone through something particularly trying … Angelina might get some gravitas from this simply because it’s a serious and frightening experience,” he said.

Amongst their peers, the Hollywood power couple have won respect for using their status to make a difference.

Thierry Fremaux, the director of the Cannes film festival where Jolie has been a frequent guest with films such as “Changeling” and “A Mighty Heart,” said the actress has been an avid campaigner for her causes.

“There is no difference between the star Angelina Jolie and the woman Angelina Jolie … She has pledged to end sexual violence and rape in conflict in an historic announcement,” Fremaux said.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Mary Milliken and Bill Trott)

Already showing in theatres in Canada and the United States,
the adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is a rare case
when Cannes, the year’s most important cinema gathering, has not
kicked off with a world premiere.

After the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio screened to the
press, and ahead of a glitzy red carpet evening gala, Luhrmann
appeared unmoved by those critics who had said the film was a
case of style over substance.

“I never get one of those big, high critics scores,”
Luhrmann told a news conference, flanked by cast members
including Tobey Maguire and Amitabh Bachchan.

“I just care people are going out and seeing it.”

The movie, estimated to have cost $105 million to make,
received mixed reviews, but opened in North America last weekend
with a larger-than-expected $51 million for distributor Warner
Bros, a unit of Time Warner Inc..

The opening night kicks off 12 days of world premieres,
champagne parties and celebrity spotting along Cannes’ chic
waterfront Croisette, with Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Ryan
Gosling, and Emma Watson among big names in town this year.

In Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”, DiCaprio plays the title
role Jay Gatsby, a millionaire pining for a lost love during the
height of the “Roaring Twenties”, while Maguire is narrator Nick
Carraway. Rapper Jay-Z produced the soundtrack.

DiCaprio, remaining calm despite the crush of reporters and
photographers following his every move, said he was fascinated
by the character of Gatsby.

“One of the most powerful things about this novel is that it
is still discussed nearly 90 years later,” he said.

Cloudy skies did not deter badge holders and passers-by from
cramming cafes around the main festival building, while dozens
of gleaming luxury yachts in the nearby harbor prepared to
welcome their wealthy guests.

CELEBRATION OVER COMPETITION

With the film’s feast of lavish costumes and hedonistic
parties, festival veterans are eager to see if Luhrmann will top
his last opening at Cannes in 2001, viewed as the last truly
over-the-top launch party.

In that year he filled the red carpet with can-can girls to
promote his movie “Moulin Rouge”.

“For a few years the mood at Cannes was a bit more subdued
but the economy has picked up a bit and business is good so
people are expecting a big opening,” said Wendy Mitchell, editor
of trade magazine Screen International.

Some industry insiders said Cannes’ decision to invite
Luhrmann to open was a concession indicative of the cosy ties
between Tinseltown and the French festival that champions
eclectic, low-budget movies while also courting Hollywood.

After the opening night the focus will shift to hundreds of
other films screening at Cannes, including 20 movies from 10
countries competing for the coveted Palme D’Or award presented
on the final day, May 26.

The list, which regularly features Oscar contenders come the
awards season, includes five U.S. movies – the highest number in
six years – from directors Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch,
Alexander Payne, the Coen brothers, and James Gray.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg is heading a
star-studded jury to decide the prizes along with Australian
actress Nicole Kidman and two of 2013′s Oscar winners,
Taiwan-born director Ang Lee and Austrian actor Christoph Waltz.

“I look at this as two weeks of celebrating film, not two
weeks of pitting one film against the other,” Spielberg told a
news conference.