Texan director Richard Linklater is a true Cannes rarity: a helmer lucky enough to have two of his movies gracing the Palais in the same year. Last week, he debuted his burger-business-bashing Fast Food Nation; today he's back on the Croisette with his freaky, rotoscoped Philip K Dick adap, A Scanner Darkly, which is showing in the Un Certain Regard category.

Joining him were stars Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr, the latter proving to be in good fooling mood at the press conference. Downey Jr jokingly referred to his own performance as "Brando on peyote", and quipped that he drew on "25 years of drug research" for his role as paranoid junkie drop out Jim Barris. Reeves, meanwhile, revealed himself to be something of a Dick fan. "I love Philip K Dick's work," he said. "My first Philip K Dick was The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, which is just fantastic."

"Keanu would call me up – he'd just got the German translated from the book and he's making sure I knew what that was," added Linklater. "Of course, I didn't. He was teaching me a lot. He really digs it. But that's his particular approach. I really admired it."

Linklater was obviously chuffed to have a pair of pics on show at Cannes 2006. "I'm really happy to be here with two films," he said, "it's better than not being here with zero films! I'd have hated to choose between them - a Sophie's Choice kinda thing. I’m glad I didn't have to do that."

Downey Jr then affected a dumb Californian voice and asked Linklater "Which one's better?" Well, if Empire were to answer that question, we'd say Scanner just about pips Fast Food. With its unhinged, meandering structure, it's probably not for everyone (Linklater himself says "I have no delusions of it being a mainstream entertainment"), but its ever-shifting, animated-graphic-novel look is fantastic, and it's full of unexpected (if you haven't read the book) humour.

Speaking of humour, Empire yesterday met up with Steve Coogan, down here with Sofia Coppola for Marie-Antoinette. Exctingly, he confirmed that his big screen version of ‘70s TV show The Persuaders is, after some delay, definitely going ahead, with Ben Stiller in the Tony Curtis role and Coogan taking the Roger Moore part. And Moore's apparently a fan – "he wrote me a letter telling me how much he liked A Cock And Bull Story," Coogan told us. Which confirms what we merely suspected - that the former 007 is a man of impeccable taste!
Dan Jolin

Another day, another controversial Cannes screening – well, controversial if you're French. This morning saw the first screening of Sofia Coppola's latest, Marie Antoinette, which, based on the novel by Antonia Fraser, follows the life of the Austrian princess turned French queen who was a symbol of late 18th century decadence and lost her head come the French Revolution.

Shot with crisp elegance and featuring a superb soundtrack (including The Cure, Phoenix, New Order and Siouxie And The Banshees, whose Hong Kong Garden plays at a masque ball with excellent A Knight's Tale-style anachronicity), it showcases a great lead performance from Kirsten Dunst, whose wigs become so immense it’s a wonder her neck didn't snap. But Coppola's decision to limit the often light-hearted drama to Antoinette's mostly frivolous time in Versailles and avoid displaying much of the revolution at all didn't go down with some French critics, who clearly felt their history was being mistold.

We're guessing it was mainly this Gallic contingent who delivered the cluster of boos which resonated around the cavernous Lumiere cinema (matched, it should be pointed out, by applause), but when this response was mentioned to Coppola at the press conference afterwards, she seemed rather flustered.

"I didn't know about the boos at the screening," she said. "That's news to me." Her cast then leapt to her rescue. Marianne Faithfull (who plays Antoinette's mother) quipped that we must be talking about the Da Vinci Code screening, Kirsten Dunst chipped in with "Well I liked the movie!" and Steve Coogan, who plays Antoinette's mentor, added, "When you make something which is personal and specific, it's inevitable there will be some naysayers and it's better to have that than to have a bland, uniform kind of response to something. I've seen the film and it's consistent with all the qualities that have made her films brilliant in the past and people who love Sofia Coppola films will love this film."

Coppola also proved strangely reluctant to discuss any political undercurrents in her movie. "I don't find it's my role to make political statements," she insisted. "I think there's elements of the story of how these people [in the Versailles court] are so unaware of the world outside of them that I feel it's relevant to today, but I'm not gonna go as far as talk about that topic."

Another movie which explores that topic of people being unaware of the world around them is also the funniest movie Empire's seen so far this year. We were lucky enough to be invited to a special early screening of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie, in which his clueless Kazakhstani TV presenter travels from New York to LA in order to learn from his American encounters – and seek access to Pamela Anderson's "vagin".

Structured as a series of stunts in which unwitting real-life Yanks reveal their gullibility and prejudices via Borat's ludicrous and often unbelievably offensive (in a good, ironic way) statements, it's far truer to the character's smallscreen origins than Ali G In Da House. And it made Empire laugh so much we literally had an asthma attack. In fact, it was so funny, even Southland Tales casualty The Rock, another invitee, was hooting away a few rows in front of us. Not sure it's going to go down too well in Kazakhstan, though...
Dan Jolin

While the red carpet awaited Hugh, Halle and all their X-friends for X-Men: The Last Stand's Cannes premiere yesterday, Empire discovered a very different mutation – a rather unexpected little treat, in fact – just down the Croisette, away from the Palais. Screening as part of the Director's Fortnight, Korean helmer Bong Joon-ho's The Host is a wonderfully idiosyncratic creature feature, concerning the rampage of a giant, tadpole-thing in Seoul's Han River.

Yet it's about so much more than that – as Bong explained before the screening's start, the star of the show isn't the monster so much as the dysfunctional family (including an aloholic ex-student, a narcoleptic drop-out and a bronze-medallist Olympic archer) who rather chaotically set out to try and vanquish it. Working as a slapstick black comedy, a touching family drama and a horror – while making political jabs at American interventionism along the way – it's certainly the most interesting and entertaining film we've seen here so far.

Earlier today, Empire caught up with Bong, whose last movie – the excellent Memories Of Murder – similarly toyed with the serial killer genre. "I've always been a fan of creature films," he told us, "especially Godzilla. But what inspired me to make it was imagining what it would be like if the Loch Ness monster lived in the Han River."

Another impressive movie, although one of a very different flavour, was Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel, the director's follow-up to 21 Grams, which stars Cate Blanchett and a surprisingly grey and wrinkly Brad Pitt. It's another multi-stranded, time-hopping narrative for Inarritu, involving a Moroccan goat-herding family, a Mexican nanny and her two American charges, a holidaying couple with issues, and a deaf-mute Japanese teenage schoolgirl. The connection? One rifle.

Not every critic fell for it – there were complaints of too much contrivance, in particular – but it's an effective, involving study of parent/child relationships and, more generally, miscommunication, both on a global and personal level. Inarritu's toned down the tricksy editing this time, too; "I made this film more linear because I didn't want people to be too distracted by the structure," he explained at the press conference, during which the movie's title asserted its relevance – it was a translator's nightmare, with questions and answers thrown about in Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Japanese.

Oh, and this just in about Southland Tales (about which the critical stink just refuses to disperse): it would seem that Richard Kelly's already decided to slice around 45 minutes from it. Fingers crossed it makes a difference...
Dan Jolin

On the day that Southland Tales' dirty bomb misfired, Empire was lucky enough to witness the explosive first act from Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie, World Trade Center. Stone introduced the first 20 minutes of his new movie at the 20th anniversary screening of Platoon, and while he insisted the sound was nowhere near finished, the theatre rumbled as we heard, and felt, the impact of the planes hitting the Twin Towers.

World Trade Center tells the story of Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nic Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), two members of a Port Authority Police Department squad who rushed into the building after the first plane had hit. As they bid to help survivors, they get trapped beneath falling masonary, where they remain for 12 hours, before they too are finally rescued. The footage finished as the men woke, pinned under the slabs of concrete and twisted metal.

"I've not only done political movies," said Stone,"I've done lots of different kinds of movie and this is a human story, not a political one."

The same is true of Platoon, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. As part of those celebrations, they key cast members were reunited at Cannes for the first time since they finished filming in the Philippines all those years ago. Along with Stone, Empire nattered to Charlie Sheen, Willem Defoe and Tom Berenger.

"We've not all met up as a collective since," said Berenger,"although we have bumped into each other. Of course, I've worked with Charlie a few times since. In fact, the last time we met he gave me this really nice scarf."

"I wondered where that had gone," laughed Sheen. "I want that back, I've been looking for it for ages."

Berenger noted that the last time he'd seen Stone was in a parking lot. "That sounds dodgy," joked Sheen.

"Was there something sexual going on?"

They may not have seen each other together for 20 years, but the friendship the platoon enjoyed on set, bolstered by the time they spent in Capt. Dale Dye's training camp, seems to have lasted as well as the movie itself...
Will Lawrence

Despite your profile, director Bill Condon actually made you audition, didn't he? Why were you so determined to play this role?
Because I just had that feeling, "this is gonna be my role". And I'd been hearing about it for years and I thought, "what an amazing opportunity." And I knew I could do it - I knew I had the, y'know, the chops.

So how was the shoot?
Every day I was so happy to come to work. It didn't feel like work, I felt that I was doing it for me. And it's fun because I don't need to act, I don't have to act to survive - I'm cool. I'm doing it just for the love. Just because it's fun for me. And it's something for me to learn - it's a challenge. I get very bored. And it keeps my life exciting. And to be able to mix music, acting, dance, fashion, all of that, the things I love, together, is perfection.

Did you see much of yourself in your character, Deena?
Deena's so different from me. And I know people might think our lives are similar, because in the beginning, I started out in a group, etcetera, etcetera, but the way she thinks, the way she sings, the way she dances, the way she looks - everything about her is so different from me. And it was great to be able to dissect something and create this character. I took a lot of my inspiration from Diana Ross and the Supremes, Cher, Barbra Streisand and created this new person.

Deena is loosely based on Diana Ross, and you actually met up with her before shooting, didn't you?
I did. I met her quite a few times. She was very lovely. She told me she was happy I was doing the movie and she told me she was a big fan, which was the biggest compliment.
Dan Jolin

Yesterday, Empire referred to Southland Tales as our most anticipated movie of the festival. Well, as we all well know, anticipation can be a dangerous thing, hyping expectation above reasonable levels. Even so, even detatching ourselves from the sweet memories of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly's difficult second movie sadly proves a heavy-duty disappointment.

Indeed, the critical reaction has almost unanimously been negative, with some seasoned Cannes-goers insisting it's actually the worst movie they've ever seen in competition here. During the screening, the walkouts started at around 20 minutes in, and there was a slow haemorrhage of audience members throughout. During the closing credits, Blur sing, "Come on, come on, come on, get through it" – a sentiment which most viewers sympathised with as they shuffled out following just over two-and-a-half hours of… Well, what exactly?

After opening with a chilling home-video witnessing of a rogue nuclear explosion in Abilene, Texas in 2005, the story jumps forward three years to a bizarre parrallel-reality Los Angeles where the ensuing energy crisis has led a bunch of people who look like the future dudes from Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure to invent a perpetual motion machine that harnesses the ocean's power to produce a fuel they call "fluid karma".

Meanwhile, movie star The Rock wakes up on a beach with amnesia, hooks up with porn star Sarah Michelle Gellar, and together they try to hawk a script about the world's end, which is apparently an unwitting prophecy. Supposedly guiding us through all this via an overused voiceover is Justin Timberlake's facially scarred Iraq-veteran, who simultaneously relates the tale of Seann William Scott's kidnapped cop and his treacherous identical twin, who becomes involved in a "neo-Marxist" plot to spark a riot.

It's an overambitious muddle of a satire, referencing everything from TS Eliot and Robert Frost to Dungeons & Dragons and dodgy ‘80s action movies (Christopher Lambert cameos as an arms-dealing ice cream van driver). The most obvious movie touchstones are Alex Cox's Repo Man, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (in fact, Kelly describes Southland Tales as "a spiritual remake" of that ‘50s noir masterpiece) and Kelly's own Donnie Darko.

When told about the walkouts afterwards, Kelly conceeded that, "I always thought the film would certainly push buttons, and I think it will continue to."

"The film is meant to be a tapestry of ideas," he went on, "all related to some of the biggest issues that we're facing right now. Homeland security, alternative fuel, our increasing obsession with celebrity and how celebrity now intertwines with politics… The problem we're facing isn't simple, and I think the film is meant to experienced like a puzzle. I think this is a film that needs to be experienced in more than one viewing, to fully comprehend the intricacies of it."

With that movie getting on for three hours long, Kelly's asking a lot of his fans. Here's hoping the Cannes reaction will prompt a merciless re-edit; even so, though – and it chokes us up to even be typing this – it's hard to see what can be salvaged. Sob...
Dan Jolin

Taking the stage at the Martinez Hotel's opulent ballroom (not an easy place to get into even if you are invited – Empire received the requisite stonewall treatment from security, while A-list US critic Roger 'take no shit' Ebert spat impressively shouty rage at one unimpressed guard beside us), Condon looked and sounded somewhat overwhelmed. "We only wrapped this six weeks ago!" he half-complained, referring to the fact that we're not going to see the finished version until late in 2006.

Still, the 20-odd minutes he then rolled looked bold and polished, revealing a few key scenes and numbers in this musical celebration of Motown's breakout, as told via the fortunes of made-up girl group The Dreamettes – loosely based on Diana Ross' Supremes. Even disregarding the usual studio-payroll whoopers, it went down very well; Empire was certainly bemused by the Japanese journo who was rather bizarrely-but-touchingly weeping, she was so impressed with what she'd seen.

Eddie 'no press' Murphy was absent, but Jamie Foxx was more than happy to speak for him when Empire caught up with him earlier today. "It's been a long time he's been this excited about a movie," said Foxx. "It's a different look [for him] – the look of it is not just the regular comedy that he does, this is a drama for him. This is a chance for Eddie to turn it on – you're gonna go 'Oh my goodness,' because he really goes through it with his character.'"

An Oscar-nomination for Eddie Murphy? Stranger things have happened...
Dan Jolin

The Cannes darling so far is indisputably Volver (place an accent on the last syllable to prevent conversational difficulties), the latest from arthouse poster-boy Pedro Almodóvar. Lauded as a delightful return to form for the Spanish director, Empire couldn't find a single critic with a bad word to say about it; indeed, Almodóvar should be particularly applauded for drawing a career-best turn out of Penelope Cruz (sure to win a gong come the festival's awards ceremony) as a young mother neglected by her husband, and reminding us how great she can be when not acting in English.

Another favourite is Shortbus the latest from John Cameron Mitchell, who had a culty little hit a few years back with Hedwig And The Angry Inch. With its gratuitious scenes of 'real' sex (including fisting and, mmm, rimming), you'd have thought it'd be coasting on the kind of shock value that surrounded Michael Winterbottom's Nine Songs, but surprisingly most have found it rather warm, engaging and likeable. Think Woody Allen with hardcore sex.

Also surprising us was William Friedkin's Bug, starring Ashley Judd as a waitress being harangued by her ex-con husband (Harry Connick, Jr), who forms a relationship with a troubled man (Michael Shannon) who believes he has bugs crawling around under his skin. Unlike pretty much all of Friedkin's recent output, it's an effective low-key drama, the director drawing a superb performance from Judd.

Meanwhile, Andrea Arnold's Red Road was keeping the Brit's end up, proving an astute study of obsession as CCTV operator Kate Dickie spots a disturbing figure from her past on one of her screens. And the extremity award goes to Danish animé (yes, you read that right) Princess, which rather graphically details a priests rampage of revenge after his porn-star sister becomes a drug addict.

Still to come, of course, though is Empire's most anticipated: Southland Tales. More on that tomorrow…
Dan Jolin

The director is in Cannes promoting his latest effort, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, which is in competition. He announced at a press conference that he’ll next work on These Times, “a contemporary story set in Britain.”

The film will be written by regular Loach collaborator Paul Laverty and starts shooting this autumn in Scotland. Film Four are handling the release and sound delighted to be working with the director again.

"Ken Loach is a filmmaker who has never compromised his vision," Channel 4 commissioning editor Liza Marshall told The Hollywood Reporter. "We hope this new project will be just the kind of urgent, questioning and passionate film Channel 4 is proud to make."

Empire watched with barely concealed bemusement as a host of stars trundled up the red carpet: first the nobodies, then an odd collection of minor celebrities (a lot of saucy French stars, the Dardennes brothers, some L’Oreal models), then the jury (including Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Jackson, Tim Roth, Zhang Ziyi and Monica Bellucci), before we got to the main attraction.

Despite all the hoohah, nobody seemed at all fussed about The Da Vinci Code’s apparently sacrilegious message, although they did seem bothered about the leading man’s hair. Tom Hanks (announced as “Tum Onks”) led a weighty charge up the red carpet, followed by director Ron Howard, freaky haired producer Brian Grazer, petite starlet Audrey Tautou, writer Dan Brown and a retinue too numerous to mention. As the group posed at the top of the stairs, Sir Ian McKellen sat on the steps in front of them, leading to great hilarity when the others moved inside without telling him, leaving him sat there on his own for a few awkward moments.

Once inside, master of ceremonies Vincent Cassel hosted a 20-minute preamble that left us fairly agape, complete with guest appearance by Sidney Poitier and an opera singer paying tribute to the works of Jury president Wong Kar-Wei. It added even more time to a film that, at two-and-a-half hours already, could do without the extra weight.

The earlier press screening of DVC hadn’t gone down at all well, but at the official screening the audience was better behaved, giving the cast and crew a standing ovation before they’d even seen it. The reaction afterwards, however, was a slightly muted. Though it has adequate patches that hint at the book’s selling power, The Da Vinci Code really is a monumental misfire, no matter how well intentioned. Everything – from the writing, to the pacing, to the casting – is off-kilter, and it seems odd that such a leaden film would be used to raise the curtain on the world’s best known film festival, especially one that is trying to divest itself of some of the baggage of the past (indeed, a decent opening night film is a very recent phenomenon in Cannes).

The party afterwards was suitably low-key and felt more like a cocktail party than a rave, although nobody told the DJ as he spun his, ahem, banging tunes, including a Hi-NRG mix of the Brokeback Mountain theme. Few stars, DVC or otherwise, made the event, although we’re told that Paul Bettany – lovely man, good actor, what the hell was he thinking when he took the role of Silas? – made the effort. Disappointed by the lack of fireworks, and miffed at the absence of goodie bags, Empire made do with lots of free champagne and enjoyed what advertisers describe as a convivial atmosphere before heading off to hang with the Brits at the Petit Majestic pub.

The talk there was upbeat but not overly excited; it’s fair to say that the 2006 festival is a rum one indeed, and although there are some surefire talking points – Volver (the new Almodóvar), Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette – this year’s edition may actually be a festival of discoveries for the first time in quite a while. John Cameron Mitchell’s sex drama Shortbus is high on the list of under-the-radar possibles (playing out of competition), but buzz has already started on British film Red Road, by Andrea Arnold. Tonight we’ll get a glimpse of the recently wrapped Fast Food Nation, the non-fiction adaptation by Richard Linklater that suggests a cross between Super Size Me and Soylent Green. Expect the verdict tomorrow...
Damon Wise