Cannes Do

Arguably the most important film festival in the world, even after last year's unspectacular showing, the Cannes Film Festival starts again, with movie screenings around the clock, preening stars, and deals being made furiously. Why is Cannes important? In a nutshell, it helps films get launched, whether they're American films looking for a bigger audience (think Pulp Fiction and Mulholland Drive) or foreign films looking for American distribution. Films Gothamist is interested in that are playing in the Feature Film competition are 2046 by Wong Kar-wai, Clean by Olivier Assayas, Nobody Knows by Kore-Eda Hirokazu, The Motorcycle Diaries by Walter Salles and the very hot Farenheit 911 by Michael Moore. However, it should be noted that in recent years, the Un Certain Regard sidebar has had many notable films (last year, there was American Splendor); this year, one to watch is The Assassination of Richard Nixon from Niels Muleler. And then there's Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, which is "not quite autobiographical" and opens up the festival tonight, out of competition. Gothamist loves us some Pedro.

This year's competition jury has three Americans: Novelist Edwidge Danticat, Kathleen Turner, and Quentin Tarantino, who is the chair and has already been on a Cannes panel about piracy: "I would be a liar if I was to say, across the board, no piracy."

The Independent has a great list of the A-Z of Cannes And this poster for the Cannes Film Festival? There are about a thousand and six jokes for this, but Defamer sums it up well. And since we're dorks, we'll be watching the Cannes opening ceremonies rebroadcast tonight on IFC.