Even at 60, Cannes knows how to put on a show.
The world's biggest film fest will launch next month with a lineup that includes films from Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, the Coen brothers and Gus Van Sant facing off for the illustrious Palme d'Or.
Kicking off the 10-day extravaganza on May 16 will be veteran Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai's first English-language film, My Blueberry Nights, featuring the big-screen debut of Grammy-winning singer Norah Jones on a road trip across America. Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman also star.
Organizers hope the film will set the tone for the 60th annual festival with a higher level of artistry than last year's opener, The Da Vinci Code, which was panned by critics.
My Blueberry Nights is one of 22 films in competition, a slate that includes the return of several Croisette favorites, including Tarantino, who won the Golden Palm in 1994 for Pulp Fiction. He'll screen the Kurt Russell-powered Death Proof, the second half of his and Robert Rodriguez's tag-team retro thriller Grindhouse.
Van Sant, a 2003 Palme d'Or winner for his Columbine-channeling Elephant, is back with Paranoid Park, a new teen drama about a skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard; the Coens, Palme d'Or winners for 1991's Barton Fink, will showcase No Country for Old Men, a new tale of crime and woe centering on a hunter who stumbles on some dead bodies, heroin and $2 million in loot; and Bosnian enfant terrible Emir Kusturica, one of the few two-time Palme d'Or recipients, will contend with Promise Me This, a drama about an old man who prays for his son to get a wife.
Other notable returnees include Fincher, with his serial killer mystery Zodiac, Russian avant-garde maestro Alexander Sokurov with Alexandra, about a woman seeking to talk with her soldier grandson, and native daughter Catherine Breillat's latest sexually charged drama, An Old Mistress.
The 2007 competition also features some upstarts. Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas will unspool his latest, Silent Light. Fatih Akin, the Turkish-German helmer who won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival for his hard-hitting relationship drama Head On, will be on the Riviera with On the Other Side, the second film in a planned trilogy. And South Korea's Kim Ki Duk will debut Breath, a love story about a convicted prisoner.
Michael Moore, a French favorite and the only filmmaker to ever win the Palme d'Or for a documentary, 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11, will screen his latest sure-to-be-controversial expose, Sicko, which critically examines the U.S. health care system, out of competition.
And then there's the usual star quotient.
Red carpet RSVPs are expected from George Clooney, Matt Damon, Al Pacino and Brad Pitt, whose Ocean's Thirteen is screening out of competition; Pitt's partner, Angelina Jolie, is due for the screening of the Pitt-produced, Michael Winterbottom-helmed A Mighty Heart, in which she stars as Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; and U2 will drop by for the premiere of the band's new 3-D concert film. Other planned attendees include Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Ed Harris, Jake Gyllenhaal, Eva Mendes, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall.
And Jane Fonda will be on hand for a tribute to her late father, the legendary Henry Fonda.
Organizers have tapped newly minted Oscar winner Martin Scorsese to teach a master class in cinema, while Oscar-owning composer Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings) will present a master class in film music with Canadian director David Cronenberg.
This year's jury will be headed by Oscar-nominated British director Stephen Frears (The Queen), and will also include actresses Toni Collette and Maggie Cheung, French screen star Michel Piccoli and Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.
The fest will close May 27 with Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand's The Age of Darkness.
Here's a complete rundown of the 2007 Cannes slate.
In Competition:
- My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar-wai, China (opening film)
- Auf Der Anderen Seite (On the Other Side), Fatih Akin, Germany
- Une Vieille Maitresse (An Old Mistress), Catherine Breillat
- No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen, United States
- Zodiac, David Fincher, United States
- We Own the Night, James Gray, United States
- Les Chansons d'Amour, (Love Songs) Christophe Honore, France
- Mogari No Mori, Naomi Kawase, Japan
- Breath, Kim Ki-duk, South Korea
- Promise Me This, Emir Kusturica, Bosnia
- Secret Sunshine, Lee Chang-Dong, South Korea
- 4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Cristian Mungiu, Romania
- Tehilim, Raphael Nadjari, France
- Stellet Licht (Silent Light), Carlos Reygadas, Mexico
- Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, Iran and France
- Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Julian Schnabel, United States
- Import Export, Ulrich Seidl, Austria
- Alexandra, Alexandr Sokurov, Russia
- Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino, United States
- The Man from London, Bela Tarr, Hungary
- Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant, United States
- Izgnanie (The Banishment), Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia
Out of Competition:
- L'Age des Tenebres (The Age of Darkness), Denys Arcand, Canada (closing film)
- Sicko, Michael Moore, United States
- Ocean's Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh, United States
- A Mighty Heart, Michael Winterbottom, Britain
- Go Go Tales, Abel Ferrara, United States
- U2 3D, Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, Ireland and United States
- 11th Hour, Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners, United States
- The War, Lynn Novick and Ken Burns, United States
- He Fengming (Chronicle of a Chinese Woman), Wang Bing