Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:

The Coen brothers' resurrection of the pre-Dylan folk scene in Greenwich Village serenaded Cannes with its period music and melancholy tale of a self-destructive, feline-toting musician.

There's something nasty lurking in the woods - and inside the characters' heads - in darkly comic Cannes Film Festival entry "Borgman."

Little could lessen the fever-pitched excitement for "Hunger Games: Catching Fire," but heavy rain nevertheless dampened the film's lavish Cannes party.

The magic and glamour of Cannes can be hard to spot on a day when rain is lashing the palm trees, roiling the gray Mediterranean and pooling in puddles along the Croisette.

It took an international production starring a Puerto Rican and a Frenchman to bring the Native American tale "Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian" to the big screen.

Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:

An incident apparently involving a gun briefly interrupted a French television interview with actors Christoph Waltz and Daniel Auteuil at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday and sent nearby pedestrians scurrying for safety.

A live outdoor television broadcast from the Cannes Film Festival was briefly interrupted Friday when what sounded like gunshots sent crew and spectators scurrying for cover.

Two directors from countries with tough film censorship brought bold and probing movies to the Cannes Film Festival on Friday - one exploring China's social problems, the other delving into the mysteries of the human heart.

Before "Fruitvale Station," Michael B. Jordan was glimpsed sporadically in supporting roles on TV shows like "The Wire" and "Friday Night Lights," and in films like "Chronicle" and "Red Tails."

ORLANDO, Fla. - Few personal documentaries can boast of the sort of notices the Canadian actress / director Sarah Polley has earned for her film "Stories We Tell." This dissection of her family history - her actor father, the actress / casting director mother who died when Sarah was 11, the secret that they kept from her - plays like "a mystery uncovered like a detective story, wrapped in a love letter," raves The New York Daily News, a film informed by Polley's own "deep sense of personal ethics." (New York Times).

MINNEAPOLIS - Michael Shannon has quietly become one of the most interesting and original actors of his era. Climbing a ladder of indie gems, he's established himself as the natural heir to Christopher Walken, but with a jolt of broad-shouldered menace. He can take your head off in roles as diverse as Ashley Judd's deranged lover in "Bug" or glam-rock enfant terrible Kim Fowley in "The Runaways."

IRWINDALE, Calif. - A loud screeching sound echoed across the oval racetrack as a driver burned rubber, revving the engine of a silver Mercedes-Benz and spinning the vehicle a full 360 degrees while kicking up a cloud of dust and smoke.

Before "Fruitvale Station," Michael B. Jordan was glimpsed sporadically in supporting roles on TV shows like "The Wire" and "Friday Night Lights," and in films like "Chronicle" and "Red Tails."

Thieves ripped a safe from the wall of a hotel room near the Cannes Film Festival and made off with around $1 million worth of jewelry, in a brazen late-night burglary just hours after the screening of a film about break-ins at the homes of Hollywood celebrities, French officials said Friday.

Regard the hands of Ricky Jay. Watch them making cards do things cards never have done before, things cards didn't even know they could do. And for this master of manipulation, cards are just the beginning.

It is night in an upscale Manhattan apartment. A child, tucked safely into bed, drifts toward sleep to the sounds of her parents tearing each other apart in the next room. Her eyes close, the fighting rumbles on, their words wielded with lethal precision at each other's most vulnerable spots.

"The English Teacher" is a tragedy masquerading as a comedy and doing a disservice to both. The same could be said for the film's normally fine cast. Julianne Moore, Greg Kinnear, Nathan Lane and Michael Angarano have all had better days.

Effortless and effervescent, "Frances Ha" is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true. It's both a timeless story of the joys and sorrows of youth and a dead-on portrait of how things are right now for one particular New York woman who, try as she might, can't quite get her life together.

Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival:

The protagonist of "Simon Killer" wanders the streets of Paris alone, often shot from the back so we see what he sees, the City of Lights never having looked this seedy and dangerous and menacing. Simon (Brady Corbet) has just graduated from college and broken up with his longtime girlfriend, so he decides to take a European vacation and clear his head. France is his first stop. He'll stay there a lot longer than he anticipated.

Everywhere in the culture, there's another monologuist or filmmaker placing herself at the center of a question, or a series of questions: What's up with my family? How did I get here? How can one charismatic family member hold so many secrets?

Everywhere in the culture, there's another monologuist or filmmaker placing herself at the center of a question, or a series of questions: What's up with my family? How did I get here? How can one charismatic family member hold so many secrets?

"Black Rock" pits three women, camping on a remote island off the coast of Maine, against a trio of U.S. Army veterans back from messed-up tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is where we find ourselves with the legacy of America's Iraq invasion: Apparently enough years have passed, coinciding with the proper quota of well-meaning screen portrayals of psychologically and / or physically damaged military personnel, so that a movie just out for a jolt or two can go the "crazed Vietnam vet" route with impunity. But with a more recent war.

The "Star Trek" movie series has lived long at the box office. But is it time for Capt. Kirk and Spock to really prosper?

Sofia Coppola was just 8 years old when she first came to the Cannes Film Festival. Her father, Francis Ford Coppola, was there to premiere a work-in-progress cut of a film he had spent years wrestling with: "Apocalypse Now."

ADMISSION 2 1/2 stars. Tina Fey stars as a Princeton admissions officer, Paul Rudd is a hippie-dippie progressive school head lobbying for one of his students, in this odd mix of romantic comedy, improbable soap and Ivy League satire. 1 hr. 57 PG-13 (sex, profanity, adult themes) - Steven Rea

The Hollywood Reporter's list of its 10 best stories of the week:

Emma Watson is reveling in her post-"Potter" freedom at the Cannes Film Festival, relishing a Valley Girl role far from her wise-beyond-her-years Hermione.

ORLANDO, Fla. - At some point as she was hitching up her fishnet stockings and having her lips painted bee-sting bright to play the working class tart Myrtle in "The Great Gatsby," Isla Fisher had an attack of conscience.

LOS ANGELES - Divorce and its impact on children caught in its crossfire may be thought of as an issue of recent generations, but more than 115 years ago, Henry James made it the foundation of his novel "What Maisie Knew." A new film version of the 1897 book, updating James' story of a young girl's emotional education to contemporary New York City, opens Friday in Los Angeles.

Cannes has been the birthplace of many a star, and the latest candidate to shine is Marine Vacth, who plays a teenager confronting the complexities of adolescent sexuality in Francois Ozon's "Jeune et Jolie" ("Young and Beautiful.")

Julianne Moore sometimes identifies with the characters she plays but when it came to playing a bad mother in "What Maisie Knew," she couldn't relate.