The French film "The Class," a frank tale about classroom life using real students and teachers at a junior high school, won top honors yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Laurent Cantet, "The Class" was the first French film to win the main prize, the Palme d'Or, at Cannes since "Under Satan's Sun" in 1987. The win was a unanimous decision among the nine-member Cannes jury, said Sean Penn, who headed the panel that included Natalie Portman and director Alfonso Cuaron. Italian films won the second-place grand prize and third-place jury prize. Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah," a study of the criminal underworld in Naples, took the grand prize, while Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo," a lively portrait of former premier Giulio Andreotti, won the jury award. Benicio Del Toro won the best-actor prize for "Che," Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus epic about Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. Presented as two films, "Che" follows Guevara and Fidel Castro's triumphant guerrilla campaign to overthrow Cuba's government in the late 1950s and Guevara's downfall and execution after trying to foment a similar rebellion in Bolivia in the 1960s. Sandra Corveloni was chosen as best actress for "Linha de Passe." Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan was named best director for "Three Monkeys." Belgian siblings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time winners of the Palme d'Or, received the screenplay prize for "Lorna's Silence." The prize for a film by a first-time director went to British filmmaker Steve McQueen's "Hunger," set at a Northern Ireland prison where IRA volunteer Bobby Sands and other inmates seeking Irish independence staged a hunger strike in 1981. The Cannes jury awarded special prizes to Clint Eastwood, who directed the competition film "Changeling," and Catherine Deneuve, who appeared in two films at Cannes this year. (AP)
The fantasy adventure "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," in which 65-year-old Harrison Ford reprises his role as an intrepid archeologist, unearthed $126 million during its first four days in North American theaters, its distributor said yesterday. "Crystal Skull," directed by Steven Spielberg, is the first movie in the lucrative "Jones" franchise to hit theaters in 19 years. Ford, who delivers a few self-effacing remarks about his age in between some old-fashioned stunt work, is joined by Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf. Last week's leader, "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," slipped to No. 2 with $23 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period, a hefty slide of 58 percent. "Iron Man," meanwhile, fell to No. 3 with $20.1 million, taking its total to $252.3 million. (Reuters)
A Kentucky museum dedicated to George Clooney's late aunt just wanted the actor's helmet from the movie "Leatherheads." Turns out, the museum for singer and actress Rosemary Clooney will get the leather headgear and the rest of the football uniform. The actor's costume will be placed among his aunt's memorabilia. Henry said the new display at the Rosemary Clooney House Museum is scheduled to be unveiled June 7. (AP)
