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You wouldn’t necessarily know it from the line of stragglers still snaking in front of the press office to pick up credentials, but Cannes Day one is in the books. The crowd of journalists is due to the 4000 some credentials which have been assigned for this 70th edition, and the hottest item in the lines is sunscreen: the weather is picture perfect but the sun in the Riviera’s azure skies can take a toll on critics’ delicate complexions.

At 70, the Cannes Film Festival – opening today with the gala screening of Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts - feels as young and fresh as ever. There’s a notable presence of works from young filmmakers, from the US’ Sean Baker, of Tangerine fame, in the Directors’ Fortnight with his newest, The Florida Project, to France’s Arthur de Pins, directing an animated featured based on his comic book series Zombillenium.

A little party never killed nobody. from the Great Gatsby The word party may not be French, but it might as well have been invented for the Cannes Festival.

With Venice, Cannes is the grande dame of film festivals one of the last bastions of pure cinema in its original form: an art form made to be seen in a theater. But even these last bastions of cinematic purity there are intimations of growing pains.

The HFPA delegation at the Cannes Film Festival is comprised this year of nineteen journalists who will screen the films of this 70th anniversary edition. The Hollywood Foreign Press has also been collecting celebrity tributes to the world’s preeminent festival as it marks the seven-decade milestone.

King Arthur couldn’t draw the sword from the stone and Snatched grabbed its share of the Mother’s Day pie, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hung on to the top prize once again.

It was a room full of enthusiastic young students at the Writers Guild Theater on Sunday night as the CSUN Cinema and Television Department unveiled the winners of the documentary and narrative shorts thesis projects from the graduating class of 2017. Earlier this year that department of the California State University of Northridge received a grant of 2 million dollars from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to be assigned to their television production studios and for student scholarships.

Alien: Covenant is the sixth film in a series that began in 1979 and has made film history. Emanuel Levy looks back at the franchise.

I Love Dick. The very title titillates.

Algerian-born Sofia Boutella will soon be seen in the title role of the upcoming film The Mummy starring Tom Cruise. Sofia started out as a dancer for, among many others, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Nike.