Pop Culture Mania (...the week Cannes begins...)

it's 4:33 am. (where o'where has my sleep schedule gone?) but! I just found all this pop culture yumminess (well, at least it all *arouses* my taste buds!!)

So...here is what we have to look forward to.

Pedro Almodovar + Penelope Cruz = Volver

"The third day of this 59th edition of the Festival de Cannes is marked by return in the Official Selection - seven years after All About My Mother, Prize for Best Director, and two years after Bad Education -, of Pedro Almodóvar, come to present in competition Volver. In this film, the Spanish director looks back to his roots and draws the portrait of three generations of women confronted by madness, lies, superstition and even death. There is Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), married to a man out of work, and her fourteen-year-old daughter; Sole (Lola Dueñas), her sister who manages a hairdressing salon at home; and their mother (Carmen Maura) who died a few years earlier in a fire. The latter reappears one day and seems to have scores to settle with her daughters..."

For Spanish speakers native to this continent...no me olvidé de usted!

Babel directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros) (w/ Brad Pitt (sans Jolie) & Cate Blanchett)

Babel: n. 1. In the Bible, a famous tower built by a united humanity to reach toward heaven, causing God in his anger to make each person involved speak different languages, halting the project and scattering a confused and disconnected people across the planet.

The pretentious film of the summer. (Chambre 666 directed by Wim Wenders)

Location: Cannes, Room 666 at the Hotel Martinez.
Godard, Fassbinder, Spielberg, Antonioni and other famous directors answer the question: "Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?"

i already mentioned Marie Antoinette (see: 4.30.2006: You don't have to speak French.)

Richard Linklater!! (Complete with trailer & website) (um, is that Avril Lavigne I see in the credits...along with Greg Kinnear, ETHAN HAWKE (er, i love you but how dare you cheat beautiful uma!), wilmer valderrama...

And the rest of the cannes lineup for feature films.

The *BEST* pop culture news, CW PICKS UP VERONICA MARS!!!

So WB's Gilmore Girls will be paired with UPN's Veronica Mars on Tuesdays, and UPN's top series, America's Next Top Model, will lead into WB's One Tree Hill on Wednesday. UPN's wrestling will remain on Fridays.

but, i have some major beef. i was telling someone i know that upn has a lot of black shows on & i was wondering if CW was going to pick them all up (while i simultaneously said that NO show black, white, orange or purple could get in the way of Veronica Mars). But, now that she (er, it...the show) is safe...

The article about CW:

UPN's Monday block of urban comedies will shift to Sundays, led by Everybody Hates Chris, the sitcom from Chris Rock inspired by his Brooklyn childhood.

Left in the dust are WB's Everwood, Pepper Dennis, Modern Men, Bedford Diaries, What I Like About You, Twins, Living with Fran and Related, and UPN's Eve, One on One, Half and Half, Cuts and Love, Inc. (UPN had seven comedies with largely black casts at the start of this season; CW will now have only four.)

i know that 24 has (or had?) a black president (i don't watch & kirk is only on season 3 & that show is crazy so i can only guess about President Palmer & his resignation...) but seriously folks. I think we need more black primetime not less.