[Social entity Peaches Geldof at Cannes; image via Splash]

Italian actress Monica Bellucci, right, and French actress Sophie Marceau, left, walk the red carpet at the screening of a film 'Ne te retourne pas' (Don't Look Back), during the Cannes Film Festival.

Recently two films have shocked the world with graphic depictions of violence followed by acts of sex: Bob Dylan's Beyond Here Lies Nothing and Lars Von Trier's Antichrist. Coincidence or zeitgeist? You decide.

News from Cannes and from Mickey Rourke. A strange movie gets strange casting, terrible TV shows are picked up, and New York will collapse on October 16th.

[Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Pixar's Up!; image via Getty]

Today Cannes gets a bit clearer, a comedy haus has opened, Cameron Diaz continues to invade your multiplex, another Twilight movie staggers along, and Straw Dogs gets remade.

A SAG-sack returns, two beauties team up for impossibly beautiful lovemaking, Up graces Cannes, Kevin Costner is back, and so is Behind the Music.

We must be dead, stupid & hate movies:Here's Cannes! [CHUD]

The worst of the recession has finally hit us where we live. Forget about housing and energy and our greenbacks suddenly being equal to Canadian play-money-the worldwide reversal of fortune is depriving us of breasts! The beaches of France, long renowned for their topless bathing beauties, are being plagued by tops this summer. According to people who study such things, when women are not feeling happy about their economic and social status, they feel less inclined to expose their flesh to the viewing public.

Let's say up front that the super-prestigious Cannes advertising awards are, like most awards, a bit of a scam. They're a for-profit operation that charges ad agencies a lot of money to enter, and in return bestows something that the agencies can use in their own marketing materials. Plus they gave an award to those crazy sexist beer ads this year, so their judgment is obviously fallible. Still, the ad industry considers them a big deal, and they're a good guide to what's considered important in the field. So it was extremely groundbreaking when an online campaign (rather than a TV campaign) won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes this year. On the other hand, maybe it was just because people love Japanese dancers?

Two former members of the infamous Bimbo Summit were not late for very important dates this week. But one alum probably should’ve been. Worker bee Britney Spears was spotted having a one-on-one dinner last night at Havana Room, while pansexual couple of the moment Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson pretended to eat dinner with an unexpected new BFF at Il Sole on Monday. And while Britney’s knight in Hebrew-hating armor has proven himself to be quite the positive influence of late, we’re not so confident that Sam and Lindsay’s third wheel will strengthen Lohan’s so-far-successful ascent towards paycheck-earning, substance-free livelihood. The angel on Britney’s shoulder and devil on Lindsay’s revealed after the jump.

And here we thought Che had it rough with critics at Cannes. Enter Wim Wenders, the New German Cinema pioneer whose Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire were among the fest's most beloved films of the '80s, but yet who's fallen on hard times of late with a string of dodgy bombs including Don't Come Knocking and Land of Plenty. His return to the Croisette with Palermo Shooting, about a fashion photographer who comes face-to-face with death, isn't likely to help matters much — particularly not with the Absolute Worst Review of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival now making the rounds.

Amid all of Tuesday's post-holiday hustle and bustle, we regrettably overlooked perhaps the most profound news item of the day: Harvey Weinstein indirectly hopped in the Valkyrie fray at Cannes by picking up US theatrical/DVD rights to Operation Valkyrie, a 2004 German retelling of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It's the same film Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer made (or are making, with worse accents) only to see it bumped twice to a Feb. 2009 release-date Siberia by Cruise/UA's partners at MGM — oddly the same folks with whom The Weinstein Company shares its own distribution deal. Small world, eh? It gets even weirder — kind of.

The Cannes Film Festival wound down Sunday pretty much where we left it Friday: Lindsay Lohan still digs girls, distributors mostly kept their checkbooks closed with one or two exceptions, and Sean Penn and his competition jury putatively fulfilled their social mandate by awarding the French schoolroom drama Entre les Murs (The Class) this year's Palme d'Or. The remaining winners reflect both a who's who of perennial Cannes rock stars (screenplay winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, directing winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and sure-fire up-and-comers (Best First Film winner Steve McQueen).

In case you hadn't heard, the most titillating story to come out of Cannes this year had nothing to do with film and everything to do with DJ/DUI heroine Sam Ronson allegedly playing tongue twister with her roomie and long-term girlfriend Lindsay Lohan. But after seeing the so-called scandalous pictures in question, we have yet to see this "liplock". We've given many a girlfriend a tipsy hug in our time and, well, that just does not a lesbian make. Not that our opinion matters — Michael Lohan's does! The wig-fetishizing Born Again has turned up to set the record straight once and for all: "[Their] relationship ‘is evident to anyone with half a brain...[Lindsay] is a big girl, and she can make her own life choices. Then it is between her and God.'" Sure, Michael isn't the most reliable source to confirm that these two are in fact dating, but on the eve of the infamous photos of Lindsay passed out in the front seat of Sam's car, we attempt to analyze their often romantic, often turbulent relationship over the years.

The ongoing, skull-melting hallucination yielding visions of Werner Herzog micromanaging Nicolas Cage's masturbation technique abated slightly today when, at a Cannes press conference for his new film Chelsea on the Rocks, director Abel Ferrara raised his first public objection to duo's planned remake of his 1992 effort Bad Lieutenant:

As we established previously, little is happening movie- or industry-wise at the Cannes Film Festival; even Croisette-weary NY Times critic A.O. Scott is officially on the record now with his ambivalence about this year's crop. As such, we lead today's fest news round-up not with the general befuddlement over Synecdoche, New York or continued rapture around Che, but with the only story worth our consideration as the event slumps, thuds and dies until a phoenix-like restoration in 2009: OMG Is Lindsay, like, totally kissing Samantha Ronson? More press conference photos shameless paparazzi indulgence after the jump.

[Fashion designer Roberto Cavalli on a Segway personal moving device in Cannes yesterday; image via Splash]

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

[Actress Gwyneth Paltrow at Cannes today; image via Splash]