Panda-Monium At Cannes 2008 Launch

There was panda-monium at the launch of the 61st Cannes Film Festival today, as Jack Black and a whole host of black and white furry friends arrived at the event to promote hotly-anticipated animation 'Kung Fu Panda', which is one of this year's premieres at the festival.
The first screening at the festival will be Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' new movie 'Blindness', which takes place this evening.
The packed programme also includes premieres of the fourth Indiana Jones movie, 'Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', which stars Harrison Ford, Shia LeBeouf and Cate Blanchett, and 'Kung Fu Panda', which features the vocal talents of Jack Black, Jackie Chan and Dustin Hoffmann.
Robert De Niro's new film, an adaptation of Art Linson's book 'What Just Happened?' about a Hollywood producer's attempts to get a film made, will close this year's festival.
Merielles, who directed 'City of God' and 'The Constant Gardener', has his latest film, which is about a plague of blindness sweeping the world and stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, in the running to win the festival's prestigious Palme D'Or prize.
Twenty-one other films are also in the running, including Clint Eastwood's latest directorial offering 'Changeling', a drama about a child kidnapping starring Angelina Jolie; 'Che', Steven Soderbergh's epic movie starring Benicio del Toro as the Argentinian revolutionary; and Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, 'Synecdoche New York', which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theatre director who attempts to create a scale model of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
No English films are in contention for the Palme D'Or this year, but 'Hunger', the directorial debut of acclaimed British visual artist Steve McQueen about the 1981 IRA hunger strike in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison, will open the festival's secondary competition, Un Certain Regard.
(KMcA/JM)