Rita Ora goes to Cannes; opens bottles

Rita Ora has gone to Cannes, and wants to enjoy it:

Rita Ora has been to Cannes before, but she can't tell you much about it because it felt like a blur.

"I've never been to Cannes properly. I've been one time to perform, and then I left, so I never really experienced it," she said.

So how will she stop it feeling like a blur this time?

The 23-year-old British singer was back to perform Friday night for an intimate party thrown by Belvedere Vodka.

Oh, yes. Nothing like a gig where there's free vodka on offer to ensure that things won't pass in a blur.

And how did the IBN choose to headline this vodka-floated trip to Cannes?

British singer Rita Ora plans to 'soak up' Cannes this time

I guess it depends how much voddy there is to be soaked up first, though.

Gordon in the morning: Liam Gallagher with the begging bowl

Gordon is excited that Liam Gallagher has shuffled down to Cannes to try and raise cash for yetanotherbloodyBeatlesfilm:

Liam also promoted his clothes range on the trip. He was top to toe in Pretty Green clobber.

Personally, if I'd been asking rich people to underwrite my pet project, I'd have tried to dress a bit smartly. But each to their own.

Bob Geldof invites advertisers of unneccessary shit to salve consciences with tiny logo

Bob Geldof and - tonight playing the role of someone who you'd hope would know better - Kofi Annan have flown to Cannes in a bid to try and stop stop climate change by, erm, putting a small logo on their adverts:

In fact, Annan and Geldof want this to be more than a campaign. They want a climate justice movement to be born amid the acres of polished marble and €15 vodka and tonics of the French Riviera and launched an appeal to ad agencies and their clients to place Tck Tck Tck logos on their advertisements. Consumers can then upload their own individual "Tcks" to the campaign website, representing the seconds counting down to Copenhagen and the immediacy of the issue at hand.

I suppose if this was tuts rather than tcks, it might be appropriate - a vague, disapproving but detached noise.

Any similarity between this and Bob's colleague-cum-competitor-for-sainthood Bono's Red campaign, which also somehow tried to make the purchasing of luxury goods seem like a positive act, is entire.

Kofi tries to explain why this is actually going to make a difference and isn't just some tatty greenwash:

"I can't imagine a company that would put a Tck Tck Tck on its ad campaign or website, and continue to operate without [being greener]. Its own staff, its own workers will be reminded what are we doing here."

That's funny. You'd have thought that a half-decade of running an organisation where the least contentious ideas turn into the focus of pointless posturing and sabre-truth tiger-rattling rows would have made Kofi a bit more cynical, or perhaps realistic. But given how oil companies are quite happy to pump cash both into persuading Congress to let them drill in areas of beauty and running ads stressing how green they are, I don't think I can share Annan's hopes.

Madonnadoption "like childbirth"

Madonna has taken to the stage at Cannes to remind us who's important in the adoption of David Banda: Her, and her feelings. Oh, it was a struggle for her:

"It was painful, and it was a big struggle, and I didn't understand it.

But in the end, I rationalized that when a woman has a child and goes through natural childbirth, she suffers an enormous amount," she said. "So I sort of went through my own kind of birthing pains with dealing with the press on my front doorstep accusing me of kidnapping or whatever you want to call it."

Did anyone accuse her of kidnapping? Perhaps in the wilder edge of the blogheap, but most criticism was surely fair: That the kid turned out not to be an orphan but a child with a family; that the usual residence rules were ignored; that Madonna turned out to have been underwriting course costs for a figure involved in the adoption process; that it appears that promises made to David's father about contact weren't honoured - and, apparently, that he was told Madonna was offering a good Christian upbringing rather than her being a major figure in a culty movement; that the rules on overseas adoption established by the Organisation of African Unity - and to which Malawi was a signatory - seemed to have been ignored; and the wider question of whether being taken into an environment where the press camped on the doorstep really is the best for a child. All important questions and ones which had implications much wider than the single case. Does Madonna really think these concerns should have been ignored? Why should she have been given special treatment?

Given the easy ride she actually got, if this was like the pain of childbirth, she'd had the epidural.

The trouble is, she doesn't seem to understand the reasons why adoption has to be a strict process:

Madonna said she was "happy to be the guinea pig" for Malawian adoptions.

"Hopefully, after we get through this adoption, it will be easier for people to adopt children," she said.

No, Madonna, let's hope not. Let's hope that after this, any celebrities looking for special treatment are given the same difficult, considered process as everyone else.

Music industry to applaud its planet-saving powers

This year's Midem corporate fest is planning to issue awards to live events organisers to reflect their green credentials. We're not sure if we can spot an irony in a massive event which drags people from the UK and the US to Cannes for a few days of looking at exhibition stands setting itself up as an environmental arbiter, but we'll certainly try.

And here's an example of how the record labels invest their money

One and a half million pounds chucked into the bucket to sign up Victoria Hart, then, most of which has presumably already been pissed away on the marketing stunt of getting her to sing at some Cannes party or other. By a really strange coincidence, though, Hart doesn't sign her contract until today and yet, erm, there's a single ready to release. At least the PR company haven't totally insulted our intelligence by pretending that George Clooney found her humming in a kitchen and asked her to sing at the party, but it's hoping that nobody thinks to closely about how an "unsigned" singer turns up in a eight hundred quid dress to sing for the Hollywoodite massive.

Missing Tatu?

Alyson CFBgoespop emails us with a link and a question: what's all that about, then?

"That" is a wikipedia page promoting Finding Tatu, a film based on a book based on the band. The plot sounds a little Brookside:

The story is about two girls, Janie Sawyer (an American girl from New York, living in Moscow) and Lana (a Russian native), who become obsessed with t.A.T.u.. They become best friends, with crushes on each other, and attend a t.A.T.u. concert. While in Moscow, Janie develops a drug problem. The girls at some point end up killing one of their mothers. The two eventually end up in jail, and request to stay together for the rest of their imprisonment. As for the two girls who this story is based on, they are still in prison.

This is all, apparently, "based on a true story" and, even more oddly, promises that Sting will be involved with the film somehow.

Mind you, it also said the film would be premiering at Cannes this year - and we've not been able to find a trace of it. Perhaps it's all another one of the thousands of desperate attempts to try and keep the Tatu name spinning cash that never quite seem to come off.

Still, if it really is in the works, what a night out would the twin Eurovision Lordi and Tatu movies be, eh?

Wood Pops

Had we been casting about for someone to play the role of Iggy Pop, we're not sure we'd have alighted upon Elijah Wood as being the most obvious choice. Ewan McGregor, maybe - at least we all know what to expect when the cock gets unleashed, as it surely must in any Pop biopic.

Apparently, The Passenger has been signed off by Iggy; the production team are the same crew whose Ian Curtis film, Closer is wowing them in Cannes right now.

Curtis, sea: Cannes plans

The Ian Curtis biopic is to get a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this year - precisely the sort of glittering, star-bejewelled occasion Curtis wasn't known for at all.

Gigwise reportsthe premiere will be:

attended by members of U2, Depeche Mode and the band formed from the ashes of Joy Division, New Order

They might want to rethink the use of a metaphorical "from the ashes", since Joy Divsion ended comprehensively with the actual funeral of the lead singer.