Russian director Alexander Sokurov apparently declined Cannes' "personal" invitation to screen his new film “Gjirokastra” at the prestigious festival. Why? Sokurov vaguely explained that the film was "too serious to participate at Cannes”.

As reported here last week, Mia Hansen-Løve‘s “One Fine Morning” was announced to be part of the 54th edition of La Quinzaine Des Realisateurs — Director’s Fortnight.

There’s no question one of the most anticipated movies of the year is Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.”

We are 1/3 of the way through the movie year and it seems as though most of the great movies are being kept for the fall.

Kirill Serebrennikov had started to shoot his next film, “Limonov” (adapted from Emmanuel Carrère's classic novel) in Moscow before Russia's war in Ukraine. Then filming stopped and now that he's moved to Berlin, it seems that the sets will have to be rebuilt in another country.

In my final Cannes predictions, I correctly got 13 out of the 18 competition titles announced. The ones I missed were Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Les Amandiers,” Mario Martone’s “Nostalgia,” Saeed Roustaee’s “Leila’s Brothers,” Tarik Saleh’s “Boy From Heaven,” and Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Hi-Han.”

We were all wondering where Mia Hansen-Løve’s “One Fine Morning” was going to end up. After all, she was already in Cannes competition last year with “Bergman Island.” A French filmmaker cracking the official competition two years in a row is a very rare feat.

I’m not hearing good things about David O. Russell’s “Canterbury Glass” which recently had a test-screening in the East Coast earlier this week. This feels like a bomb in the making, I truly hope I’m wrong:

It’s being reported that Mickey Rourke has joined the cast of Roman Polanski’s “The Palace,” which has been filming at the Gstaad Palace for a month now. Rourke even confirmed it on Instagram.

An Italian media is reporting that Paul Thomas Anderson is in talks to be the next Cannes jury President. I have no idea how reliable the Intel is with this one, but PTA at Cannes would be a beautiful thing to see.

The complicated relationship between Netflix and Cannes has made it damn-near impossible for the streaming giant’s films to screen on the Croisette the last 5 years.

Not film news, but today’s bombshell that Elon Musk is attempting a hostile takeover of Twitter brought a real twinkle to my eyes.

It took Claire Denis 34 years to finally return to Cannes competiton. The French filmmaker will be vying for the Palme d’Or as the very-late-submitted “The Stars at Noon” was included in the lineup of 18 competition titles.

What happened to Ari Aster’s “Disappointment Blvd”? I’m hearing he’s out of the lineup now. We all know he has a 4-hour cut of the film that needed to be trimmed down. Was it too much for the Cannes selection committee?

I’m sure you’ve heard about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s ongoing public feud, which has hit the four-year mark this year, and has led to Depp finally countersuing his ex-wife and “Aquaman” actress in a $50 million lawsuit for defamation.

Despite Variety confirming yesterday that a new David Lynch film would world premiere at Cannes (not to mention Kaleem Aftab doubling down on the rumor) Lynch went on a denial spree today, telling the media he had no idea what the hell people were talking about.