Intrepid reporter Samantha Cheirif is currently snapping some movie marketing images from the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.  We hope to have more images in the coming days, but for now we have looks at international posters for World War Z, The Lone Ranger, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Hercules 3D, Despicable Me 2 and more.  There are also quite a few promos for films that might not even be on your radar yet, so it’s definitely worth a look.

The 2013 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 15th to May 26th.  Hit the jump to check out the images.

Director Baz Luhrmann’s highly anticipated adaptation of The Great Gatsby has been selected as the opening film of the upcoming 2013 Cannes Film Festival.  The pic was originally slated to open this past December, but Warner Bros. wisely pushed the release date in lieu of the crowded holiday season.  Now the move has had another positive effect on the film, as the colorful 3D iteration of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel is getting a wonderfully prestigious premiere.  The pic will be screening out of competition, but Lurhmann is no stranger to the festival as his first feature Strictly Ballroom screened in Cannes in 1992 and Moulin Rouge! opened the festival in 2001.

The Great Gatsby will serve as the first 3D opening film since Pixar’s Up, and fans will be graced with appearances by castmembers Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, and even Jay-Z, who penned the score for the film.  The Great Gatsby opens in 3D on May 10th, and the 2013 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 15-26.

Steven Spielberg has been named jury president for the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival.  In recent years, the likes of Nanni Moretti, Robert De Niro, and Tim Burton have led the jury.  As arguably the most important American filmmaker working today, Spielberg is an ideal candidate.  The director remarked:

“My admiration for the steadfast mission of the Festival to champion the international language of movies is second to none. The most prestigious of its kind, the festival has always established the motion picture as a cross cultural and generational medium.” [The Wrap]

Spielberg won Best Screenplay for The Sugarland Express in 1976 and premiered E.T. at Cannes in 1982.  Jane Campion will head the Short Film Jury and the Cinefondation at the 66th Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 15-26.

The Cannes Film Festival has been running for over a week now, and we’ve been bringing you snapshots of some of the sales posters on display courtesy of our correspondent Magdalena (follow her on Twitter).  We got a look at some billboards for Django Unchained, One Shot, Spring Breakers and more, and just recently we shared some sales posters for films like White House Taken starring Gerard Butler and Homefront, written and produced by Sylvester Stallone and starring Jason Statham.

Today we’ve got some sales posters of a different sort.  They’re not exactly high caliber movies, but after the jump you can peruse art from such gems as Lesbian Vampire Warriors, Zombie Ass, Million Dollar Crocodile, Vampire Dog, Ghost Shark, Dragon Wasps and many, many more.  Hit the jump to take a look.

The Cannes Film Festival is currently running over in France, and while the Fest hosts the premieres of such prestige pictures as Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and John Hillcoat’s Lawless, it’s also a place to sell movies for distribution.  We’ve already brought you some billboards and sales posters for Django Unchained, One Shot, Spring Breakers and more, and now our international correspondent Magdalena has sent over quite a few more posters.  We’ve got new looks at the Gerard Butler-fronted White House Taken, Chris Colfer’s Struck By Lightning, the drama Love and Honor starring Liam Hemsworth, a film called Homefront written and produced by Sylvester Stallone and starring Jason Statham, and many more.  Hit the jump to check out all the posters.

The Cannes Film Festival is about to get underway, and studios are rolling out their promotional material to make sure that those attending screenings of the festival’s films don’t forget about the studio releases that are still to come later this year.  Our correspondent Magdalena (who you can follow on twitter) walked around the area of the festival earlier today and snapped some photos of the posters and billboards that are on display.  In addition to a really cool banner for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, she also brought us our first look at the Tom Cruise thriller One Shot, based on the popular Jack Reacher character book series from author Lee Child.  Moreover, there’s a pretty great set-up for the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy The Dictator outside one of the Carlton hotel.

Hit the jump to check out posters and billboards for The Amazing Spider-Man, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and more.

Last week, we re-arranged our episode to avoid The Cabin in the Woods spoilers.  This week, we’re back to the good old format (“old”: the one we used for our first two episodes) of news, reviews, and recommendations.  On Episode 4 of The Collision, Adam Chitwood and I were joined by the lovely and talented Jason Barr (Dave was unavailable this week, but he’ll be back next week).  The three of us talked about viral campaigns, and how much they provide as a prologue to the movie and how well they work as a marketing tool.  We also discussed the fourth season of Arrested Development airing all at once, and we looked at the line-up for this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  On the review front, we decided to skip this week’s new release (oddly, no one wanted to see The Lucky One) and instead talked about The Raid: Redemption.

Click here to listen to our latest episode, click here to listen to our previous episode, and click here to add The Collision to your RSS feed.  Hopefully, all of our episodes will be available and easy to find on iTunes this week.  Finally, hit the jump to check out the trailers for our recommendations.

The full line-up for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival has been announced, and there are some heavy hitting debuts making their premieres.  As we’ve previously reported, Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom will open the festival.  This year’s Cannes will also include Cosmopolis (directed by David Cronenberg), The Paperboy (from Precious director Lee Daniels), Lawless (from The Road director John Hillcoat), Killing Them Softly (from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik), Mud (from Take Shelter director Jeff Nichols), Rust & Bone (from A Prophet director Jacques Audiard) and On the Road (from The Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles).

Click on the corresponding link for more on each film, and hit the jump for the full line-up.  The 65th Cannes Film Festival runs from May 16 – 25th.

Moonrise Kingdom will premiere in Cannes on May 16, opening the 65^th annual edition of the world’s biggest film festival. Directed by Wes Anderson who co-wrote the screenplay with Roman Coppola, the film will be released in French cinemas on the same day as its screening in Cannes and on May 25 in the US. Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacobs commented:

“With Wes Anderson opening the 65th Festival de Cannes, young American cinema will be celebrated on the Croisette.”

Produced by Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales and Jeremy Dawson for Focus Features and Indian Paintbrush, Moonrise Kingdom stars Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Jason Schwartzman. More details and the trailer after the jump.

The Cannes Film Festival is celebrating its 65^th anniversary this year and has chosen one of the most iconic faces of movie history for its poster. Photographed by Otto L. Bettmann , Marilyn Monroe is blowing a candle on a birthday cake. Looking at it, her unforgettable rendition of  “Happy Birthday”, which she sung to President Kennedy in 1962, springs to mind…

It is also a touching tribute to the actress. August 5^th will mark the 50^th anniversary of her death.   Check out the poster after the jump.  The 65th Cannes Film Festival runs from May 16 -27th.

It’s been a bit of a wait for the follow up to Cristian Mungiu‘s terrific 2007 feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but it looks like a festival release for his next film is on the horizon.  Deadline reports that Wild Bunch has reteamed with Mungiu for the new film, which is “set in an Orthodox convent in Romania,” and “centers on a young woman’s descent into madness, her subsequent exorcism and the police investigation it sparks.”  I’m sick to death of exorcism movies, but I’ll make an exception for Mungiu.  Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval says that the movie “has elements of 4 Months, but with a much more intense twist.”  Hopefully, that twist does not involve sending the audience to a website.

Pre-sales on the untitled film will go down in Berlin, with a possible release at Cannes in May.  Wild Bunch is also planning to submit Rufus Norris‘ Broken, which centers on “the father of an 11-year old girl living in North London who witnesses a violent attack which changes the way she looks at the world around her.”  The film stars Tim Roth, Cillian Murphy, Rory Kinnear, and Bill Milner.

Which is more likely: That filmmaker Lars Von Trier, known for making provocative statements, decided to come out at Cannes as a secret Nazi-sympathizer or that he was making a bad joke in response to dull press conference questions?  The Cannes Film Festival has apparently decided it’s the former and banned the Danish director from the festival indefinitely by declaring him “persona non grata”.  While Von Trier’s new film, Melancholia, is still eligible for the Palme d’Or, Von Trier will be unable to receive it if the film wins.

Hit the jump for what Von Trier said yesterday, his apology, the statement from Cannes, and my thoughts on the festival’s hypocrisy.

Just days before its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, a clip for Polisse has been released, offering a sneak peak at Maïwenn’s first official entry at the fest.  The actress, screenwriter and director, who was once married to Luc Besson, is one of the many female filmmakers selected for the official competition this year. She also has a supporting role in the film.

Read the synopsis and check out the images after the jump.  The 2011 Cannes Film Festival starts tomorrow and runs through May 22nd.

The Skin I Live In, the latest from writer/director Pedro Almodovar, is going to be weeeeeird.  I suppose we knew this from the logline: while plotting his revenge against the man who raped his daughter, a plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas) imprisons and torments his partner (Elena Anaya) in an operating theater in his basement.  The new teaser trailer drives the point home, packing plenty of disturb into thirty seconds.  The Skin I Live In will premiere later this month at the Cannes Film Festival — where prior Almodovar movies All About My Mother and Volver have won awards — before a theatrical release in November.

Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, Roberto Alamo, Blanca Suárez, Eduard Fernández, José Luis Gómez, Bárbara Lennie, Susi Sánchez, Fernando Cayo, and Teresa Manresa also star in the film, based on the novel Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet.  Watch the trailer after the jump.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer constantly justify our hatred with a slew of awful spoofs movies: Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and last year’s Vampires Suck.  But darn it if I didn’t chuckle at the title of their latest, The Biggest Movie of All Time 3D.  It will still be awful, of course.  According to Variety, Icon Entertainment will grant The Biggest Movie the opportunity for global atrocity with a deal for the worldwide sales rights secured at the Cannes Film Festival.  Peter Safran (Buried) will produce.

In more promising acquisition news, Variety reports Sony Pictures Worldwide has picked up the North American rights to the thriller Retreat, led by Cillian Murphy, Thandie Newton, and Jamie Bell.  Hit the jump for more on Retreat.