Cannes' glittering 60th edition opens

NDTV: "Director Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights starring Norah Jones and Jude Law, was the first screening in an 11-day fete of cinema, parties and deal making.

Movies on Cannes' lineup range from Ocean's Thirteen to Michael Moore's Sicko, to films from Russia to Mexico to South Korea.

Other stars at the premiere included China's Gong Li, Aishwarya Rai and France's Juliette Binoche. Hong Kong director Wong is a Cannes favourite, and My Blueberry Nights is his first English-language movie.

Cannes was founded in 1939 as an alternative to the Venice Film Festival in Mussolini's Italy but almost as soon as it opened, the festival was cancelled because World War II broke out.

For a feature-length homage to the movies, it commissioned 35 shorts from directors including Wong, Roman Polanski (The Pianist), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel), the Coens (Fargo) and Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire.)

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese has been enlisted to give a master class on moviemaking.

DiCaprio brings his environmental documentary The 11th Hour, and celebrity super couple Pitt and Jolie will appear for Ocean's Thirteen she for A Mighty Heart, in which she plays the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Those films are screening out of competition, as is Sicko by Moore, whose Fahrenheit 9/11 won the top prize at Cannes in 2004."