On Thursday morning, Thierry Fremaux, head of the Cannes Film Festival, revealed the films that will be playing at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

American entries include Doug Liman’s (The Bourne Identity) Fair Game, a political thriller starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, which will be competing for the Palm d’Or as well as Inside Job, Kaboom, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Sundance winner Blue Valentine, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, which will open the festival, and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

See the complete list of films below:

Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf in Wall Street 2

Opener
Robin Hood, U.S.-U.K., Ridley Scott

Competition
Another Year, U.K., Mike Leigh
Biutiful, Spain-Mexico, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Burnt by the Sun 2, Germany-France-Russia, Nikita Mikhalkov
Certified Copy, France-Italy-Iran, Abbas Kiarostami
Fair Game, U.S., Doug Liman
Hors-la-loi, France-Belgium-Algeria, Rachid Bouchareb
The Housemaid, South Korea, Im Sang-soo
La nostra vita, Italy-France, Daniele Luchetti
La Princesse de Montpensier, France, Bertrand Tavernier
Of Gods and Men, France, Xavier Beauvois
Outrage, Japan, Takeshi Kitano
Poetry, South Korea, Lee Chang-dong
A Screaming Man, France-Belgium-Chad, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Tournee, France, Mathieu Amalric
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Spain-Thailand-Germany-U.K.-France, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
You, My Joy, Ukraine-Germany, Sergey Loznitsa

Un Certain Regard
Adrienn Pal, Hungary-Netherlands-France-Austria, Agnes Kocsis
Aurora, Romania, Cristi Puiu
Blue Valentine, U.S., Derek Cianfrance
Chatroom, U.K., Hideo Nakata
Chongqing Blues, China, Wang Xiaoshuai
The City Below, Germany-France, Christoph Hochhausler
Film Socialisme, Switzerland-France, Jean-Luc Godard
Ha Ha Ha, South Korea, Hong Sang-soo
Les Amours imaginaires, Canada, Xavier Dolan
Life Above All, France, Oliver Schmitz
Los labios, Argentina, Ivan Fund, Santiago Loza
Octubre, Peru, Daniel Vega
Qu’est-il arrive a Simon Werner?, France, Fabrice Gobert
Rebecca H., France, Lodge Kerrigan
R U There, Netherlands, David Verbeek
The Strange Case of Angelica, Portugal, Manoel de Oliveira
Tuesday, After Christmas, Romania, Radu Muntean
Udaan, India, Vikramaditya Motwane

Out of Competition
Tamara Drewe, U.K., Stephen Frears
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, U.S., Oliver Stone
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, U.K.-Spain, Woody Allen

Midnight Screenings
Kaboom, U.S.-France, Gregg Araki
L’autre monde, France-Belgium, Gilles Marchand

Special Screenings
Abel, Mexico, Diego Luna
Chantrapas, France, Otar Iosseliani
Draquila — L’Italia che trema, Italy, Sabina Guzzanti
Inside Job, U.S., Charles Ferguson
Nostalgia de la luz, France, Patricio Guzman 
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Netherlands, Sophie Fiennes

This year’s competition jury is presided over by director Tim Burton and also includes Benicio Del Toro and Kate Beckinsale. The prestigious festival’s 63rd competition will take place from May 12th until the 23rd.

Delivered straight to you from Miramax Films is the new trailer for the upcoming film “Everybody’s Fine”. Based off of the popular French 1990s film, it stars Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell. A widower who realized his only connection to his family was through his wife sets off on an impromptu road trip to reunite with each of his grown children. The film, directed by Kirk Jones, comes out on December 4th. Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think:

One of the biggest problems facing moviemakers, or really, any working artist seeing a project through, is being too close to your project.  Often times it takes an objective eye and a kind word to show you that you’ve gone off the rails and need to correct your trajectory.  Once you’re in production, things really start humming and you’re just running to keep up.  You don’t have time to do what you need to do, like taking a big step back every once in a while to make sure things still make sense in the big picture.  The Hollywood system feeds into this problem by pushing things even faster then they already go, giving people even less time to breathe.  Plus, if you get any notoriety you begin to gather around you a cloud of “yes men” who constantly tell you that you spin gold every time you speak.  I’m sure one or both of these happened to Whiteout, because I refuse to believe that a film can be worked on for over two years and still come out with as many problems as this film does without one of these things happening to it.

The story starts with a Russian plane flying over Antarctica in 1957 (the Russians are swigging vodka as Russians tend to do).  An ill-advised gunfight breaks out and the plane crashes into the snowy tundra with all the CG believability of a videogame.  Jump to present day, still in Antarctica, on a science base where we meet, US Marshall Claire Stetko (Kate Beckinsale sporting a decent American accent) and by meet I mean we see her strip down to white bra and knickers then take a long steamy shower.  I wonder if the director had the foresight to be clever enough to include this scene, besides for the obvious visual kick, but also for the Alien reference since Tom Skerritt is also in this film.  He plays Doc, resident physician to the occupants of this base who do….who knows what.  There was a brief, out of the way scene with people studying ice cores – and here’s where the heartache begins.  The film is full of these small plot threads that go absolutely nowhere.

A body is found and Doc and Claire are sent CSI: South Pole style to process the crime scene (snow and more snow) and recover the body found in the middle of…well, since THEY are in the middle of nowhere, the body is in the middle of the middle of nowhere.  The sight of the body sparks off a litany of flashbacks in Claire’s head.  These flashbacks tell us why Claire decided to take this position in the wastelands, plus they show us that one of the screenwriters was trying to be clever in foreshadowing how the story ends.  Pay attention and you can walk out halfway through the film.

Investigating this homicide takes Claire and Doc to a Russian base where things get really….off.  Off in pacing, off in editing, off in storylines and plots.  Where’s the intervention so desperately needed?  There’s not much else to say about the story.  People start chasing a “McGuffin” that was discovered on the plane that opened the film, there’s a masked murderer who has no coherent reason for doing what he does, and things just spiral out irrationally.

The other main character in the film is the cold and the snow.  Cold that freezes fingers within seconds of exposure, but apparently mouths and noses that are constantly exposed to the frigidness are immune.  Doc takes a good ten minutes explaining to some freezing guys what a whiteout is and that “Mother Nature never intended us to survive here.”  Do you think that this information will come in handy later in the film?  A storm is slowly approaching the base.  We see this on transparent glass wall-like monitors set up in the middle of the room like they had on Star Wars.  Do we have this technology now?  If so, what’s the use of it in Antarctica of all places?  The storm becomes a ticking clock because the base now has to be evacuated otherwise they will be stuck there for another six months.  But what about the masked murderer?  But what about the McGuffin?  But what about making people care what’s going on?  All of this is blown away to the uncaring wind, like so much lint in a snowstorm.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans has a new trailer and i must say that it stinks to high heavens. While I love Rhona Mitra, she does not compare at all to Kate Beckinsale, and yes I know she plays a different character in the movie. I by no means am speaking about talent in the acting arena.

I must say that up until now I have been a big fan of The Underworld series. A dark look at Vampires and Lycans as we know them with a little Kate Beckinsale. The women I just mentioned is the reason I watched the movies in the first place. She is among the top in my book in terms of “all out hottie” (see photo to the right). With that said what did you think about the trailer? It seems a bit of the same to me.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans arrives in theatres on January 23, 2009. Click here for HD.