Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Great Gatsby."

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

CANNES - The first press screening of the Cannes Film Festival is traditionally, in not-particularly-French parlance, a bit of a bunfight: always in the Salle Debussy, the smaller of the festival's two showcase screens, it tends to fill up fast with fevered, not-yet-red-eyed journalists scrambling for the last available seats with a workable sightline, while outside, the snaking queue of lowly yellow and blue badgeholders nervously hopes there'll be any seat at all for them. (Lest you think I'm sneering, I'm one of them: for me, at Cannes, blue clearly is the warmest color.) 

Michael Douglas in "Behind the Candelabra."

Credit: HBO

(Welcome to Cannes Check, your annual guide through the 20 films in Competition at this month's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off today. Taking on a different selection every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Steven Spielberg's jury. We're going through the list by director and in alphabetical order -- next up, Steven Soderbergh with "Behind the Candelabra.")

The annual migration to the South of France has begun. As you read this a global film audience is converging for the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and this year's red carpet extravaganza features a number of highly anticipated titles for film lovers on both sides of the Atlantic. All eyes will be on new flicks from Joel and Ethan Coen, Roman Polanski, Sofia Coppola, James Gray, Steven Soderbergh, Alexander Payne, James Franco (that boy just can't take a vacation) and Nicholas Winding Refen among others.

Both Guy Lodge and Gregory Ellwood will be covering the event HiFix and In Contention from opening night film "The Great Gatsby" (a good $50 million of few of you might have caught it last weekend) to Jérôme Salle's closer "Zulu" (a film that far less of you will likely see).  As a kick off to our coverage, check out Lodge and Ellwood's most anticipated films in the story gallery embedded in this post. Then, vote on which movie you're most interested in hearing about in the poll below.

To get the latest word from Cannes follow Guy Lodge and Gregory Ellwood on twitter at @GuyLodge and @HitFixGregory.
 

Workers put the finishing touches on a banner in front of the Cannes Festival Palace on Monday, May 14.

Credit: AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau

Don't hate me cause I'm going to Cannes. This is work people. Seriously, hard, hard work.

In the south of France.

Mathieu Amalric in "Venus in Fur."

Credit: R.P. Productions

(Welcome to Cannes Check, your annual guide through the 20 films in Competition at this month's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 15. Taking on a different selection every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Steven Spielberg's jury. We're going through the list by director and in alphabetical order -- next up, Roman Polanski with "Venus in Fur.")

Will Smith

Credit: AP Photo

Will Smith recently revealed that he turned down Quentin Tarantino's Oscar-winning western "Django Unchained" because his character "wasn't the lead" and didn't get to "kill the bad guy." It was, in a word, movie star logic.

And that's fair enough. Even if there are those of us who think a movie like that is just what a guy like Will Smith could use at this point in his career, his career is his own. But I guess he still had a hankering for the wild west (if "Wild Wild West" didn't beat it out of him, that is), as he is reportedly eying a remake of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." But, well, it's not that simple…

J.J. Abrams on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"

Credit: Comedy Central

Soon enough you'll get to decide for yourself on "Star Trek Into Darkness." Will you be delighted as a general moviegoer or up in arms with a large sect of Trekkies who have gotten bent out of shape? I'll be interested to find out (and we'll inquire on Friday), but for now, some fun with J.J. Abrams.

One guy taking the reins on both the "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" franchises remains fascinating/crazy to me. I have no real deep love for either but it's still just…weird. Anyway, Abrams stopped by "The Daily Show" yesterday to discuss the two entities and the differences between them. Stewart is a "Trek" fan and that made for some fun conversation, but they also get into Stewart's upcoming directorial effort.

If you weren't aware, Stewart will be taking the summer off from "The Daily Show" to direct "Rosewater," based on Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy's 2011 book "And Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival." It's the true story of a Canadian-Iranian journalist Bahari, who was accused of planning to overthrow the Iranian government and arrested for four months in 2009. Months before his capture, Bahari appeared in a "Daily Show" sketch, in which correspondent Jason Jones pretended to be a spy. Bahari's captors even used some of the footage against him.

Al Pacino

Credit: AP Photo

When that fake list of Cannes titles went up a few weeks back, just a day or two before the official line-up was unveiled, I was hoping one particular title was true: David Gordon Green's "Joe." Alas, it wasn't. The film stars Nicolas Cage and Tye Sheridan (hot of an amazing performance in "Mud," directed by Green's former North Carolina school mate Jeff Nichols) and it's part of what I feel is a new period for Green as an artist, taking what he's learned (and the relationships he's built up) to date and finding more fertile creative territory. His next film sure seems to be an extension of that.

Angelina Jolie at the Women in World Summit last month.

Credit: AP Photo

Via New York Times op-ed, actress Angelina Jolie had this to offer tonight:

"My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman…

"Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex."

Read the rest here.

Did Stanley Kubrick give an assist on this one?

Credit: Chris Hadfield

I struggled with posting this because it's not movie-related (or even entertainment-related) and it seems like a weird way to use HitFix resources, but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn't really resist. After all, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is set to hit theaters on Friday and capture the imaginations of space freaks the world over, while at the same time, we have the homecoming of Commander Chris Hadfield and company from a few months' stint on the International Space Station -- real-life heroes of the cosmos. And Hadfield in particular has been doing what I think is some Pulitzer Prize-worthy work up there. Let me explain...