Highlights of Reuters coverage of the second full day of the Cannes film festival.

The Jolie show is in town.

Angelina is in Cannes and Cannes has gone crazy, well, the media has, and as she graces the red carpet for two films featuring at this year’s festival, the fans will soon get their chance to join them.

Of course, public and press alike all love an A-lister, but the interest has grown along with Jolie’s bump, and she has just confirmed she is expecting twins. Her flowing white dress is a valiant attempt to keep our focus on the films, not the family, but it will be to no avail.

The normally tranquil, albeit crowded Wifi press room in the main festival building predictably descended into chaos as photographers and cameramen clambered over furniture, as well as startled writers peering into their laptops, to get a shot or 50 of Jolie crossing a walkway just outside.

Security guards slid windows shut and journalists slid them open again. Guards slid them shut again … and so on and so on. There was the inevitable tantrum as one man holding a video camera had his shot ruined by the window passing in front of the lens. Swear words were exchanged, the reporter stormed off, Jolie left, so did the snappers, and tranquility was restored.

Cannes jury president Sean Penn defied French anti-smoking laws on Wednesday, lighting up a cigarette at a news conference at the start of the Cannes film festival.

Joined by French actress and fellow jury member Jeanne Balibar sitting next to him, Penn needed little persuading after one of the journalists present asked facetiously whether people with medical needs would be allowed to smoke.

Smoking in public buildings has been banned in France since 2007.

Around 40 extras dressed in giant panda suits waddled on to the pier outside the Carlton Hotel in Cannes with actor Jack Black on Wednesday to promote Dreamworks’ animated feature “Kung Fu Panda”.

The stunt, carefully orchestrated and watched by dozens of photographers and camera crews, underlined the importance of the world’s biggest film festival for promoting movies which have nothing to do with the main competition.

Black, who provides the voice of the main character Po, capered about with a series of kung-fu moves and posed with actors who voice the film in French, Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish. “Together, we’re creating an international panda sensation,” he remarked.

It is just over 12 hours until kickoff for the world’s press in Cannes covering this year’s film festival. Looking out from a swanky Wifi cafe at the Palais des Festivals, the view is the picture of tranquility — gleaming yachts bob up and down in the marina, couples stroll along the Croisette seafront as the sun sets, and glamorous girls serve coffee to reporters still tapping away at their laptops.

The calm won’t last. Reporters are advised to start limbering up for their first scrum. That is likely to be a “media event”, otherwise known as a chaotic stunt, to publicise “Kung Fu Panda“, a Hollywood animation comedy coming to town. Minutes later, there is the press screening of the opening film “Blindness”, which officially gets the 2008 edition of the festival underway.

The list of potential “flashpoints”, when sleep-deprived, highly-strung hacks attempt to get into venues more often than not too small to accommodate them, is endless.

But, as the old saying goes, someone’s got to do it, and few, if any, here in Cannes, would want to give up their place.

It may seem a little premature to be discussing who may win this year’s coveted Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes film festival. The festival doesn’t start until Wednesday, there are 22 movies in competition and only a handful of them has actually been screened to critics and reporters.

That does not stop the speculation. France’s Le Monde newspaper has an interesting point — that Steven Soderbergh’s four-and-a-half-hour epic “Che”, only just completed in time to qualify for the main competition, would not be the first “last-minute” entry to walk away with the main award.

In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola brought an early cut of “Apocalypse Now” to the French Riviera and, although it differed from the version most viewers would have seen, it won. On the festival’s Web site it is listed as “Apocalypse Now (A Work in Progress”). In 1981, Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s “Man of Iron” made it to Cannes despite reluctance on the part of the Communist authorities. It also won the Golden Palm.

There is comfort for those who come away from the glitzy festival empty-handed, however. Last year, the Coen Brothers’ “No Country For Old Men” was overlooked by the jury yet went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars.

Five days and counting.

Showbiz hacks the world over will be sharpening their pencils (and fingernails), pouring over screening schedules, brushing up on blogging banter and taking plenty of deep breaths before heading for the Riviera resort of Cannes to cover the film festival which kicks off on Wednesday. Someone’s got to do it, I guess.

The first scheduling crunch comes on the first morning, no doubt a sign of things to come. “Kung Fu Panda”, a martial arts animation movie from DreamWorks, plans a stunt outside the swanky Carlton hotel on Wednesday morning at exactly the same time that the festival screens the opening competition film “Blindness”, by Fernando Meirelles of “City of God” fame. One promises to be fun yet silly, the other harrowing yet rewarding, summing up life in Cannes during the 12-day festival perfectly.