Cannes This Festival Get Any More Amazing? (Part One)

I skipped a day of blogging about the festival. Lemme make up for that right now.

So, yesterday. AMAZING. First day of the festival and everybody was rocking. We arrived in the morning in time to catch the beginning of Trash Humpers, but me and Natalie wound up leaving about thirty minutes in. After we left Trash Humpers, we ran into a few other people from our group and we all caught I Am Kalam. It was a sweet, sweet movie about two boys, a prince and a servant, who become secret friends after the prince notices the servant calming a camel in his palace courtyard. One of the little boys from Slumdog Millionaire was a main character and he was absolutely adorable; I smiled through the whole movie. Following I Am Kalam came Mother's Little Helpers, a film about a group of boys pimping out themselves to Cougars in order to pay for private school. It was a quirky Canadian film that was surprisingly entertaining.

In between the films we had time to hop on by the pavilion area and get a look at the yachts in the harbor. The pavilions are these fancy white tents divided as one each for countries represented at the Cannes Film Festival. We accidentally stumbled into the French Market tent, but soon after found our way to the American Pavilion and checked in to get our pavilion badges and our slips for two free drinks. Ooh la la! I haven't used mine yet; I'm saving it for later in the week when I will probably need it more.

After Mother's Little Helpers, we went to the bathroom to change into our formal wear so we could successfully beg for tickets to the Robin Hood premier. I walked in heels for hours. It felt like longer. I stalked up and down and tried a hundred different places and faces in order to score a ticket, but to no avail. About half our group got lucky and made it to the Opening Ceremonies, but the rest of us had to settle for dinner at Cafe Roma and holding signs again to try for tickets to the 11:30 showing.

Did I score tickets to the 11:30 showing? Yes. Yes I did. It was fantastic, but first I have to talk about something else that happened before we walked the red carpet. In the process of getting my ticket, I also got invitations to a film called 2B from the actual producer of the movie. His associate was the one who gave me my ticket for Robin Hood, but while we were still talking, Richard Kroehling walked up and introduced himself and gave me about 20 invitations for an added showing of his film on Friday at 4:00.

Anyway, the part you all scrolled to the bottom for... Red Carpet time. Unfortunately, to rub it in that we didn't get into the Opening Ceremonies, Cannes decided to literally rain on our parade. The whole time we were eating at Cafe Roma we could see the lightning in the distance. The rain came as soon as we scored our last ticket for Ben Sidoti. We waited inside the Palais until the line began to move and we wormed our way in the middle instead of having to move the back of the line. Eric and I both had Orchestra seats so we wound up on the bottom and a few rows back from the front. If we had had those seats during the Opening Ceremonies I would have been only a few hundred feet from Tim Burton...

We walked the carpet though, dang it. And we walked it hard. There are pictures floating around on someone's camera that I will be tagged in on Facebook sometime which I can then put up here. I did not see anyone famous. The inside of the Grand Lumiere Theater was amazing. I wish cameras had been allowed so I could show you. I may try to sneak some pics the next time I get into the Lumiere. Anyhoo, there was a Tim Burton illustration on each of the posts we passed inside. I almost fainted. Eric can attest to that. We checked our bags and headed through the actual theater doors to the biggest theater I have ever been in, except maybe the Fox. I dunno, it was hard to tell. It definitely had the biggest screen I've ever seen.

Robin Hood itself was sort of meh. Ridley Scott did a great job showing Robin in an emotional setting and it was cool to see a back story, but the set up of a lot of the characters was a bit confusing and there were definitely some very cheesy lines: "This is for you, Walter." The end credits were stunning, however.

We hitched a couple of cabs back to the hotel and at 3 AM got started preparing for the next full day of films.
STAY TUNED FOR: Cannes This Festival Get Any More Amazing Part 2