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The Cannes film festival rolls out the red carpet Wednesday, with "Dirty Harry" and "Indiana Jones" leading this year's line-up at a 12-day movie extravanganza offering new talent as well as star veterans.
Clint Eastwood, turning 78 this month, makes a new try for Cannes' coveted Palme d'Or for best film with a drama set in the 1920s starring Angelina Jolie.
Despite failing to take home the award with "Mystic River" in 2005, Eastwood "asked to be in competition, running the risk of not winning a prize," Cannes director Thierry Fremaux told AFP. "Clint Eastwood is a gentleman."
With celeb-addicts swarming in Cannes, Eastwood might just trigger a riot by attending a public screening on a palm-fringed beach of a restored version of his 1971 "Dirty Harry", part of festivities marking the 85th anniversary of Warner Bros studios.
The Riviera city swells three-fold to 200,000 during the yearly orgy of glitzy movie promotion, parties and screenings that brings together industry types, movie-buffs and people-fans.
Also now-over-60 but still cracking a whip, Harrison Ford flies in to the planet's pre-eminent cinema showcase for the release of Steven Spielberg's fourth episode in the "Indiana Jones" saga, arguably the world's most-eagerly awaited film.
Other A-list stars set to walk the famed red carpet at the May 14-25 fest include Robert De Niro, who will hand out the Palme, Madonna, Julianne Moore, Jack Black, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem.
And sporting giants Diego Maradona and Mike Tyson are expected as well.
On the film front , organisers have given the 2008 edition a strong "Latino" touch, and Brazil's twice Oscar-nominated Fernando Meirelles kicks off the fest with his third movie adaptation of a novel, "Blindness" based on a book by Portugal's Nobel winner Jose Saramago.
-- 'No such thing as a hyper-movie and a less-movie'--
Swivelling his sights from grand larceny to grand guerilleros, Steven Soderbergh brings a four-hour epic on the life and times of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, portrayed by Benicio Del Toro.
Among the heavy-duty line-up competing for the prestigious Palme d'Or trophy with Eastwood and Soderbergh are previous winners, Canada's Atom Egoyan with "Adoration", Germany's Wim Wenders showing "The Palermo Shooting" and Belgium's Dardenne brothers with "The Silence of Lorna".
Cinephiles swayed by the seriously arty side of Cannes will be served by new offerings from Brazil's Walter Salles, China's Jia Zhangke, Filipino Brillante Mendoza, Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan and a first-ever feature from Charlie Kaufman of the United States (the writer behind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind").
This year as usual, organisers who picked out the 22 films selected to run for the Palme among 1,792 features submitted, went for a savvy blend of stars and veterans, arthouse fare, and new international talent.
"There is no such thing as a hyper-movie and a lesser-movie," Fremaux said. "Events and glamour are as much a part of the history of the Cannes film festival as are auteur films."
Undeniably the world's premiere filmfest, with around 1,000 films screened and 30,000 registered visitors, Cannes shapes what movie-goers see over the coming year.
Among young helmers in competition this year are Israel's Ari Folman, offering a new-genre animated documentary on the Sabra and Shatila massacres, while two film-makers from Argentina, Pablo Trapero and Lucrecia Martel, are running for the trophy for the first time ever.
Star attractions outside of competition are a South Korean "kimshi" western set in Manchuria titled "The Good, The Bad, The Weird", Woody Allen's latest Spanish-set "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", and a kicking and punching "Kung-Fu Panda" from Dreamworks.
In all, the countdown per continent for the Palme is Asia (three), Europe (eight), Latin America (four), the United States (five) and a film each from Israel and Turkey.
Ironically, Africa's sole representative will be Madonna, in town to present a documentary about children orphaned by AIDS in Malawi. The country looks set to grant the pop star full adoption rights over David Banda, for whom she won interim custody in 2006, a high court official said this week. - AFP/ar
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