Wes Anderson opened the 65th Cannes Film Festival with his meticulously composed ode to young love, Moonrise Kingdom, while less mannered theatrics surrounded the annual French Riviera extravaganza.

Anderson and his star-studded cast declared the festival officially begun at the opening ceremony Wednesday night shortly after striding down the absurdly glamorous Cannes red carpet, a seaside gauntlet of tuxedos and photographers. The premiere announced the start of 12 days of the most selective festival slate in cinema, with eagerly anticipated films to follow from many of the world's most esteemed directors.

That is, when a camel isn't running amok.

Sideshows are as much a part of Cannes as the main events, a tradition kicked off this year by Sacha Baron Cohen. The comedian again promoted his upcoming film, The Dictator with a stunt, this time taking a humped mammal on a stroll down the Croisette, Cannes' famous promenade.

Who hasn't dreamed of space travel? Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté had the rare chance to visit this most exotic world, after enduring a rigorous training regimen of course, in 2009, becoming the first Canadian space tourist. Filmmaker Adrian Wills (All Together Now) followed the eccentric entrepreneur and circus man on his journey, gaining new insights into the life of astronauts along the way to the stars, and emerged with Touch the Sky, opening in select Cineplex theatres May 18.

Cineplex recently had a chance to speak with the director about making the documentary, working with Laliberté and being accepted into the astronaut community.

Read the interview after the jump.

Battleship, the unlikely action pic based on a Hasbro board game, hits theatres this month with an eclectic cast playing naval officers racing to save the world after aliens attack and, well, try to sink their battleships. There’s pop star Rihanna as a petty officer, Canadian Taylor Kitsch as a naval weapons specialist, and Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård as Kitsch's brother, the commanding officer of a U.S. Navy destroyer.

If you recognize Skarsgård, you're probably a fan of TV's "True Blood," the vampire drama on which he’s played Eric Northman for the past five seasons. The sexy soap-operatic hit has turned the 35-year-old, 6-foot-4 actor into an object of desire for men and women around the world. Before that, he was a stage actor in his native Sweden, where his father, Stellan Skarsgård (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Thor) is one of that country's most famous actors.

We recently sat down with Skarsgård in Toronto to talk about explosions, biting fans, and working with pop stars.

Fresh off her turn as freakish media creature Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games, Elizabeth Banks is freaking out again in What to Expect When You’re Expecting — albeit in a more natural, or certainly more common, way.

"I play the owner of a baby store who has been dealing with infertility," Banks says of the ensemble comedy spun off of the venerable, non-fiction pregnancy guide by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel. "I finally get pregnant and I think it’s going to be a miraculous miracle, an amazing situation — and, of course, I get the exact opposite of that. Then it's all about how I deal with it."

Ravaged by mood swings and other hormonal side effects, Banks' Wendy Cooper sees all of her idealized theories about impending parenthood shattered and her marriage to Gary (Ben Falcone) imperiled by the blessed event. It's one of five interconnected storylines in the film directed by Kirk Jones (Nanny McPhee, Waking Ned Devine) and written by Shauna Cross and Heather Hach based on Murkoff and Mazel’s book.

Charlize Theron and Kristen Stewart stepped out in sheer black gowns fit for a gothic queen and her warrior rival.  Check out the skeleton-like details on the back of Stewart’s dress!  The edgy elements seem to fit perfectly with her don’t-mess-with-me portrayal of Snow White in the Marchesa-designed gown, while the glamourous Theron donned Christian Dior Couture.

See stars Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth on the green carpet in our photo gallery after the cut!

Except for the Oscars, it's the flashiest red carpet in the world, a ruby staircase flanked by tuxedoed photographers - and a world away from financial turmoil.

Yet Cannes, the 65th edition of which starts Wednesday, fetes its directors as much as it does its stars. This year, there are plenty of both: esteemed international filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Michael Haneke to big-name talent like Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman.

Among the 22 films in competition, there's a particularly large American contingent, starting with the opening night film, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. The movie about adolescent love on the run brings a few new actors (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton) into Anderson's carefully orchestrated world.

The success of any mockumentary lives and dies by the dedication of the actors who are working to pull off the cinematic slight-of-hand and get audiences believing that maybe, just maybe, in some alternate, upside-down wacked out world, these characters could exist. The humour, of course, comes from the purposely topsy-turvey, hyperbolic perspectives and a feeling that what we're edging closer to truths buried beneath the comedy.

Actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has proven himself to be particularly skilled at turning the documentary style on its head, first on TV's "Da Ali G Show" and then with big-screen hits like Borat and Bruno where he truly mocks with abandon. Not only does he physically transform but he hits the press circuit in full regalia as the character from the movie he's promoting, happy to blur the line between fact and fiction and continue the ruse.

With The Dictator set to rule this weekend, we took the time to reflect on our 5 Favourite Mockumentaries.

Get the list!

Expectant stars have been very generous about demonstrating what it takes to be pregnant and stylish. Everyone from new mom Jessica Simpson to three-time maternity expert Reese Witherspoon can show you how to bundle up your growing bod while you await your bundle of joy. And leave it to Jennifer Lopez, one of the film’s stars, to deliver the mother of all style tips that’s just in time for summer.

Pick up some hot styling tips from the stars after the cut!

The Cineplex store boasts over 25,000 titles, from the newest hits to award-winning classics, indie fare and even your favourite TV shows. Come back here every Tuesday to find out what new movies you can BUY or RENT on DVD, Blu-ray or as a DIGITAL DOWNLOAD and how many SCENE points you can earn with each purchase. We make it easy to catch up on all the movies you may have missed or finally start the first season of that series everyone is talking about.

So what are you waiting for?

Get your fill of Hollywood at home or on the go with this week's list of the hottest releases.

The Avengers is taking a page out of Superman's comic book - flying faster than a speeding bullet to the billion-dollar mark at the box office.

The superhero blockbuster took in $103.2 million to lead for a second-straight weekend, raising its domestic total to $373.2 million, according to studio estimates.

With $95.4 million more overseas, The Avengers lifted its international receipts to $628.9 million and a worldwide haul of just over $1 billion, only 19 days after it began rolling out in some markets.

"You never think that it can happen this quickly," said Dave Hollis, head of distribution for Disney, whose Marvel Studios unit produced the ensemble film after a long buildup in its solo superhero outings. "You hope you can get to this day, and the fact that it is happening this early is a testament to a lot of work that went in on the Marvel side over the last six years to get us to a place where people wanted to see the Avengers assemble."

The Avengers easily fended off Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's vampire romp Dark Shadows, which had a so-so domestic start of $28.8 million to finish a distant second place.

That's far below such past Depp-Burton collaborations as Alice in Wonderland, which opened with $116.1 million, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which debuted with $56.2 million.

Considering his gig as MTV Music Video Music Awards host back in 2009 yielded him a wife, okay ex-wife, in Katy Perry after the two met backstage at the teen-centric ceremony, Russell Brand sure has set the bar pretty high in terms of how good this night can go.

The hirsute and verbose Brit is returning to offend celebs with his rapier wit and typically polysyllabic disses but this time, he's got the film world in his sights as he's been chosen to emcee the MTV Movie Awards, for which he himself scored a nom in 2010 thanks to his hilarious turn in Get Him to the Greek.

Brand has already started dispensing with the timely jokes, saying: "This MTV Movie Awards will be more impressive than The Avengers, and you won't have to wait an hour for someone to Hulk out." Okay, so he's clearly starting with more of a softball approach to humourous zingers but considering he's a fearless, sometimes-offensive entertainer, no one is safe and those with sensitive egos - so, HOLLYWOOD - are going to be in for a rough night.

In the first trailer from Ruben Fleischer's The Gangster Squad, Nick Nolte gurgles a line about L.A. being a damsel in distress, which means that a few good men are needed to save the endangered lady and who better than Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Anthony Makie, Michael Pena and Giovanni Ribisi to face the gun-toting mobsters with their own brand of violent justice?

With a putty-faced Sean Penn as lead gangster Mickey Cohen, emboldened by a serious God Complex, Fleisher's period piece gives us tailored suits, tilted hats, Tommy guns and Emma Stone as the sexy forbidden fruit whom Gosling's Sgt. Jerry Wooters doesn't so much want to help as, you know, bed.

Watch the first trailer right now!

Like American outlaws Jesse James and John Dillinger, in the late 1940s and early 1950s Canada had Edwin Boyd, our own notorious bank robber who somehow managed to gain public support and become a media darling.

In director Nathan Morlando's Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster, Toronto native Scott Speedman (The Vow, Barney's Version) plays Boyd, a World War II vet who returns home to Toronto with dreams of becoming a Hollywood star. But he also has a wife (Kelly Reilly) and young family to support, and after being rejected by a Toronto acting school and quitting his job as a bus driver, he starts robbing banks to pay the bills, using his charm and flair for the dramatic to do it with style.

We spoke with Speedman, who earned a Best Actor Genie nomination for his performance, after the movie’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Though this meta story is ideal for a big-screen adaptation, it's safe to say most don't know the details that lead to the spectacularly inventive rescue mission of six Americans who were detained during the Iranian revolution since it was, well, classified.

An article in Wired by Joshua Bearman in 2007 shared the details of desperate government officials who devised a way to get those detained out of Tehran - pretend they were part of a Hollywood film crew - and now their story is becoming a Hollywood movie directed by and starring Ben Affleck. Whoa.

Take a look at the first trailer for Argo and see if you spot all the amazing actors who make up the impressive ensemble cast.

Acclaimed commercial director Rupert Sanders' cinematic take on the legendary fairytale is not for the faint of heart. Though, upon closer inspection, neither is the classic story. Malevolent majesties, stealthy assassins, omniscient mirrors, dark magic? That source material is more nightmarish than I remember.

So it shouldn't be that surprising that the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman is dark, gothic, action-packed and, as star Kristen Stewart succinctly puts it, "otherworldly."  The epic adventure finds Stewart playing the familiar heroine, aka the only person in the land fairer than the deliciously evil queen (played here by Oscar winner Charlize Theron). The wicked ruler will stop at nothing to destroy her competition and the threat to her reign. So far, so familiar...right? But here's where things get interesting. Instead of confronting a gentle girl in a cottage, the Queen finds herself up against a beautiful and powerful young woman trained in the art of war by a certain (handsome) huntsman (Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth), the man originally dispatched to kill her. But where are the dwarves? Don't fret. They're there too.

Now that you're up-to-date on the bare bones of the plot, catch Stewart, Theron, Hemsworth and co-star Sam Claflin (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) as they give us their take on the film and the enduring love of audiences for the tale of Snow White. Check out the sneak peek now!

Released just last year, Starbuck is about a middle-aged man named David who discovers that he unwittingly fathered 533 children thanks to a major mix-up at a sperm donor clinic.  David sets out to meet his children anonymously while the clinic’s failings come to light in a public trail, sparking a media frenzy in the search to uncover the identity of the mysterious donor known only as “Starbuck.”

Ken Scott, the writer and director of the original French-language version, is revisiting both those roles in the English-language remake.  The film is tapped to start filming later in the year, but so far only Vaughn’s name has been mentioned in conjunction with the project.

Read more about the Starbuck remake beyond the cut!

We don't blame you if you've never heard of the TV series "Dark Shadows," which aired between 1966 and 1971, and on which Tim Burton's latest creation is based. It gathered quite a cult following, but that was a long time ago. Fast-forward five decades and Burton is introducing a whole new generation to the creepy, kooky family that clearly played a part in forming his Gothic aesthetic.

The film stars Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, who was turned into a vampire and buried underground for more than two centuries after unwittingly breaking the heart of a vengeful witch (Eva Green). Finally freed from his tomb he returns to his family home only to find life in 1972 is vastly different than what he recalls from the 1700s. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the household's current matriarch, and one of Barnabas's descendants, who's hired a live-in psychiatrist (Helena Bonham Carter) to help make sense of this dysfunctional family.

Dark Shadows is Burton's eighth collaboration with Johnny Depp and his seventh with his off-screen partner Bonham Carter. We sat down with the director in London to find out more.

Traditionally summer at the movies means an abundance of spandex, Lycra and other stretchy fabrics that allow our heroes, both super and self-made, to comfortably leap buildings, battle baddies and make hasty exits.

And while those blockbusters are the bread and butter of the season, we're also interested in movies where no characters wear latex suits, unless it's ironic, and nary a skyscraper-leveling alien shall be seen. Yes, many other fine films operating under the mainstream radar are worthy of our attention and should you be of the ilk inclined to mix big-budget, epic, good-versus-evil battles with smaller-scale, quietly powerful films that manage to whisper to us while the other movies are happy to shout, this list is for you.

So follow us along the path less travelled as we investigate a handful of titles that are must-sees in their own ways and follow topics ranging from infidelity, time travel, young love, thievery and summer camp and whose characters are more likely to be sporting corduroy than capes.

To the list!

The Cineplex store boasts over 25,000 titles, from the newest hits to award-winning classics, indie fare and even your favourite TV shows. Come back here every Tuesday to find out what new movies you can BUY or RENT on DVD, Blu-ray or as a DIGITAL DOWNLOAD and how many SCENE points you can earn with each purchase. We make it easy to catch up on all the movies you may have missed or finally start the first season of that series everyone is talking about.

So what are you waiting for?

Get your fill of Hollywood at home or on the go with this week's list of the hottest releases.

Maurice Sendak didn't think of himself as a children's author, but as a writer who told the truth about childhood.

"I like interesting people and kids are really interesting people," he explained to The Associated Press last fall. "And if you didn't paint them in little blue, pink and yellow, it's even more interesting."

Sendak, who died early Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. at age 83, four days after suffering a stroke, revolutionized children's books and how we think about childhood simply by leaving in what so many writers before had excluded. His kids misbehaved and didn't regret it and in their dreams and nightmares fled to the most unimaginable places. Monstrous creatures were devised from his studio, but no more frightening than the grownups in his stories or the cloud of the Holocaust that darkened his every page.

Rarely was a man so uninterested in being loved so adored. His books sold millions of copies and his most curmudgeonly persona became as much a part of his legend as "Where the Wild Things Are," his signature book, and a hit movie in 2009 directed by Spike Jonze. Communities attempted to ban his work, but he also had friends in the most powerful places. President Bill Clinton awarded Sendak a National Medal of the Arts in 1996 and in 2009 President Obama read "Where the Wild Things Are" for the Easter Egg Roll.

Whether decked out in a specific colour or outfitted with amazing accessories, every one of those otherworldly characters makes a distinct style statement that oozes confidence and individuality. Showing up in sloppy sweats just doesn’t send the same ‘don’t mess with me’ message, you know? But super powers aren’t required to unleash your own signature style, just take a cue from a few favourite figures and prepare to be amazed.

Discover how to find your super style after the cut!

It’s an action-lover’s dream cast featuring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and the man who has counted to infinity twice, Chuck Norris.  These pros take a young Liam Hemsworth under their bullet-riddled wings and teach him a thing or two about driving a motorcycle into a helicopter and how to rip the door off a car...y’know, the type of things any well-rounded young man should know.

Find out all you need to know about The Expendables 2 in the trailer after the jump!

It takes a certain twisted, melancholy, big-hearted man to come up with stories about a boy who is cursed with scissors for hands, a skeezy demon who moonlights as a bio-exorcist and a man-child fixated on finding his stolen bike and Tim Burton, with his penchant for telling compelling outsider tales with a macabre twist, is a Hollywood original who has also become a force at the box office.

Your friendly neighbourhood goth follows up on 2010's Alice in Wonderland, the 10th highest-grossing film of all time, with Dark Shadows where he reunites with his near-constant muses Johnny Depp and lady love Helena Bonham Carter for an adaptation of the popular early-'70s soap opera. And Burton is right in his element, perfectly attuned to the story of Barnabas Collins, an ancient vampire who awakens to find that his mansion is in ruins and being run by members of his dysfunctional family, a favourite topic for Burton.

On the occasion of the writer-director's latest theatrical release, we're sharing our picks for the Top 5 Tim Burton Movies and looking at what makes him the goth with the most.

The Marvel Comics mash-up The Avengers launched the summer movie season with a $200.3 million opening weekend domestically, by far the biggest debut ever.

If distributor Disney's revenue estimate Sunday holds when the final weekend count is released Monday, The Avengers would be the first movie ever to haul in $200 million in a single weekend.

The film featuring a team of Marvel Comics heroes pulled in $80.5 million in its domestic debut Friday, the second-best haul ever on opening day.

The Avengers trails only last year's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which took in $91.1 million in its first day on the way to a record weekend of $169.2 million.

The huge opening for The Avengers launches what's expected to be a colossal summer for Hollywood, whose domestic revenues already were running 14 percent ahead of last year's going into the weekend.