Cannes kicks off with panda power


Black's antics were a hit with onlookers in Cannes



An invasion of panda bears has helped launch the 61st Cannes Film Festival which is getting under way in France.
Comic actor Jack Black arrived by boat with 40 people in giant panda outfits to promote Kung Fu Panda an animated tale of a bear who loves martial arts.
Julianne Moore was also in Cannes ahead of the premiere of thriller Blindness which is competing for the festival's coveted Palme d'Or prize.
Highights over the next 12 days include the new Indiana Jones film's debut.
Jack Black provides the voice of Po in Kung Fu Panda

Harrison Ford will be among the stars flying in on Sunday for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which is screening out of competition.
Black who provides the voice of lead character Po in Kung Fu Panda performed twirls and kicks for the amusement of onlookers at the Carlton Hotel pier before posing for pictures with people who have provided the voice of Po in different languages around the world.
"Together we will create an international panda sensation" he told reporters.
The film screening out of competition has its premiere in Cannes on Thursday.
Bleak opener
Despite Black's antics the festival is opening on a downbeat note. Julianne Moore joined director Fernando Meirelles to promote Blindess about an epidemic in an unnamed city which cases people to lose their vision.
Julianne Moore met the press to talk about Blindness

Meirelles said it was both a pressure and an honour to open Cannes but added: "To be honest I still don't think this is the best film to open a festival."
Moore called the choice "kind of odd". Asked why she had agreed to act in Blindness soon after starring in another bleak movie Children of Men she replied: "I like the apocalypse."
"Movies don't predict they reflect culture" she added.
"I think we're reflecting what we're feeling in our own culture."
Some 22 films are in competition for the festival's top prize the Palme d'Or including Blindness and Robert De Niro's Changeling.
Other films in competition include the directorial debut of Being John Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.
Kaufman's film Synecdoche New York is a typically idiosyncratic tale of a theatre director - played by Philip Seymour Hoffman - who tries to build a scale model of New York City in his attic.
Choice of films
There are no English films [in competition] this year but let's hope to have more next year


Thierry Fremaux
Cannes artistic director

No British films feature this year but artistic director Thierry Fremaux said the choice of films should be judged over "four or five years" rather than just one.
"There are no English films this year but let's hope to have more next year" he said.
Mr Fremaux who has been Cannes' artistic director since 2001 said he often fell foul of countries who felt they deserved to have films at the festival.
"Last year we didn't have any Italian films in the competition so my reputation there was very bad" he told the BBC.
"This year we have Italy back with two films in competition so my reputation is very good in Italy." He also noted that Hunger a film by first-time British director Steve McQueen was opening the festival's secondary competition Un Certain Regard. The film portrays the last weeks in the life of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands who died in prison after refusing food for 66 days in 1981.