Liberace’s poodle is top dog at Cannes:
Canine glamour was honoured on Friday in Cannes, with pampered poodle Baby Boy from Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic “Behind the Candelabra” winning the film festival’s unofficial Palm Dog prize.
The Hollywood pooches from Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” were named runners up in the contest for best four-legged performance.
The award was founded in 2001 — its name is a play on Cannes’ top prize, the Palme d’Or — and is judged by a panel of film critics. Previous winners include superstar terrier Uggie from Oscar-winning movie “The Artist.”
“What a remarkable canine year it’s been,” said judge Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian newspaper. He noted that while there was a lot of canine bling onscreen at Cannes, it also “has been a year of canine suffering and pain,” with dogs meeting sticky ends in US drama “Fruitvale Station,” Mexican drug-war thriller “Heli” and other films.
Prize founder Toby Rose said this year judges also had to deal with “the interloper issue,” in the form of the scene-stealing, audience-pleasing cat from Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis.”
The feline character, Ulysses, played by half a dozen different cats, was ruled ineligible for the Palm Dog.
Kylie Minogue is shocked by french protests:
Pop star Kylie Minogue, who attended amfAR’s AIDS fundraiser in Antibes, says that she’s shocked by recent vocal anti-gay marriage protests around France, and the case of a man who was victim of a homophobic attack in Paris.
“It’s shocking and surprising. With the Cannes Film Festival, and all the fashion shows in Paris (that are tolerant to gay people) you’d think there would be no problem with equality in this country,” she said.
“I hold my position. Gay people deserve the same rights as everybody else, to marriage and whatever it may be,” she added.
Kylie joined movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jessica Chastain, Janet Jackson, Milla Jovovich and Goldie Hawn for the celebrity auction that raised $25 million for AIDS research.
Swarovski not worried about Cannes jewel thefts:
There have been two high-profile jewellery thefts during the Cannes Film Festival, but team from Swarovski, which is providing baubles for stars to wear on the red carpet, isn’t too worried about its inventory here.
“Our position is not as high as Chopard,” Xavier Hottinger, a rep for Swarovski, said Thursday. The jewels he deals with just “look like precious stones.”
Swarovski has been lending, and in some cases gifting, celebrities some of its famous crystal designs at the festival for more than a decade. Stars, or their stylists, have come into the famed crystal jeweller’s luxurious white hotel suite during the festival to borrow items, including rings, earrings, necklaces and clutches.
This week, some of the stars who wore Swarovski included Frieda Pinto and Milla Jovovich. Some of the jewellery is still quite expensive: the dark gray earrings Jovovich wore on one red carpet cost about $321,000 (dh1.1 million), said Hottinger.
But that’s nothing compared with the diamond jewellery that Chopard stocks.
“To steal $1 million worth of Swarovski products, you would have to steal a trunk,” he said.
Thieves stole about $1 million worth of jewels from Chopard after ripping a safe from a wall of a hotel room in Cannes last week, shortly after the festival began. The jewellery was stolen from a Novotel hotel room of an employee of the Swiss-based watch and jewellery maker.
A second theft was reported this week at the nearby posh resort of Cap D’Antibes.
Hottinger said Swarovski felt safe at the heavily guarded Martinez hotel, which is on the Croisette, the main strip in Cannes for the festival and where several stars are staying. It’s also where Chopard has its official suite, which was not burglarized.
Unlike other jewellery brands who lend for red-carpet events, Swarovski doesn’t use bodyguards to monitor the stars who borrow their items, which likely makes them feel more comfortable, Hottinger said.
“They have freedom, so they can go to a party without worrying,” he said.
Alec Baldwin says stars should avoid media (while talking to media):
Alec Baldwin did the publicity tour at the Cannes Film Festival for the documentary “Seduced & Abandoned,” but he recommends other stars be publicity-shy if they want to maintain their careers.
“Those people now who survive, like you look at Leo (DiCaprio), or you look at Russell Crowe or anybody who really is at the top of the pile, they avoid the press as much as possible,” he said during an interview earlier this week.
“Half the press you deal with are malicious and out to destroy you, and they want to trip you, and when you fall down the stairs they want to cheer. They cheer when you fall down the stairs, and that’s a very, very, very haunting reality for someone in my position to deal with,” said Baldwin, who has had several tangles with the press.
“The way that you survive is you stay away from the press. You don’t see Leonardo DiCaprio go on [David] Letterman. He does as much of that as he needs to and then he’ll avoid that like it’s a disease. It’s terrible.”
Baldwin also had harsh words for movie studios, assigning them blame for Lindsay Lohan’s downward spiral.
“One minute Lindsay Lohan was one of the most promising young actors of her generation. She was an enormously talented actor: Now she’s a punch line,” he said.
“Well, the company that did both those things, the company that developed her talent, is the same company that assassinated her in public. So that’s the problem. . Not only do you not have a studio which mentors you, that cares for you, no one cares for you anymore, no one takes care of you anymore. “
