For only the second time in the 61-year history of the Cannes Film Festival, a Canadian film has been selected as the opening-night film. Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God) will kick off the 12-day festival on May 14. The film features an international cast, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover of the U.S.; Gael Garcia Bernal of Mexico; Sandra Oh of Canada; and Yusuke Iseya of Japan. It concerns an international epidemic that causes blindness in its victims. (Many of the actors wore contact lenses that blocked their vision.) The Toronto Star reported today (Tuesday) that the film will also compete for the festival's Palme d'Or prize, unusual for an opening-night movie. (It was not among those on the list of competition films released by the festival last week.) Blindness is the first Canadian film to open the prestigious festival since Fantastica, from Quebec director Gilles Carle, did so in 1980.

For the second week in a row, the box office was up a bit over the comparable week a year ago, but it did not perform quite so well as studio estimates had originally presumed. The top film, Baby Mama, from Universal, wound up with $17.4 million versus the $18.2 million that had been forecast. On the other hand, the No. 2 film, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantánamo, drew a bit more than was expected, posting $14.9 million compared with the $14.6 million that had been expected.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. Baby Mama, Universal, $17,407,110, (New); 2. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay, Warner Bros., $14,908,404, (New); 3. The Forbidden Kingdom, Lionsgate, $11,212,364, 2 Wks. ($38,237,498); 4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Universal, $11,028,060, 2 Wks. ($35,090,955); 5. Nim's Island, 20th Century Fox, $4,548,792, 4 Wks. ($38,977,518); 6. Prom Night, Sony, $4,508,122, 3 Wks. ($38,222,732); 7. 21, Sony, $4,018,064, 4 Wks. ($75,792,625); 8. 88 Minutes, Sony, $3,593,890, 2 Wks. ($12,625,951); 9. Horton Hears A Who!, 20th Century Fox, $2,486,903, 6 Wks. ($147,959,806); 10. Deception, 20th Century Fox, $2,312,146, (New).

The Hollywood Reporter has unveiled a new look for both its print publication and its website. The No. 2 entertainment trade publication, behind Variety, said that the change will go beyond the cosmetic and feature "a revised editorial approach, expanded range of coverage and analysis and new industry data exclusive to THR parent, The Nielsen Company." Initial online reaction to the remake was by and large negative. L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke on her Dateline Hollywood Daily blog quoted a Hollywood Reporter insider as saying, "I think the money could have been far better spent keeping bodies in the building that are now sorely, desperately needed." Over the past year, the trade publication has seen the defection of several prominent staff members, including editor Cynthia Littleton, who moved to Variety. Finke reported that nine newsroom employees were laid off just two weeks ago.

The head of the Motion Picture Association of America, an organization that some Internet users have accused of using legal strongarm tactics to prevent them from downloading recent movies from the Web, has acknowledged that the downloaders go to movie theaters in far greater numbers than others. Speaking to the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, Glickman suggested that his organization is attempting to come up with a business model that will accommodate Internet users. "There's no question in my mind that the studios hear their customers loud and clear on this point," he said. "There are technology and policy issues to work through. But we'll get there, advancing both the theatrical experience and the anytime, anywhere enjoyment of movies that consumers clearly want today and that technology is making possible. I think we'll soon see some progress that will really open up how exciting this future could be for all of us."

Following a five-week run at New York City's Film Forum, a 90th-anniversary "tribute" to United Artists will go on the road beginning Friday, when the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA screens 20 restored UA films that Film Forum described as "some of the most entertaining, adventurous, and Oscar-laden American (and foreign) movies of the last nine decades." While UA was founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, the films being screened were mostly produced during the last half of the 20th century. They include Dr. No (1962), the first James Bond movie, starring Sean Connery; the original Pink Panther film, starring Peter Sellers; Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe; the fight films Raging Bull (1980) and Rocky (1976); and the political dramas The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). The restored prints are scheduled to make a cross-country road-show tour over the next year.

Famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has responded to complaints about the photos that she took of teen star Miley Cyrus that appear in the current issue of Vanity Fair. Although news reports said that one of the photos depicted Cyrus "topless," it acutally shows her wrapped in what appears to be a bedsheet with only part of her back exposed. "Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it," Leibovitz said in a statement. "The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful." In a statement on Monday, Cyrus said that the Vanity Fair photos and story embarrassed her. In a separate statement, Disney accused the magazine of exploiting the teen star of Hannah Montana. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, TV critic Mary McNamara commented, "Disney is blaming Vanity Fair and Leibovitz for manipulating a 15-year-old into agreeing to poses that were not appropriate. As if no one in the Disney infrastructure or the Cyrus family had ever picked up Vanity Fair before. They should just be thanking their lucky stars Cyrus wasn't wearing fish nets or splayed on top of a car." On the Huffington Post blog, rabbi-to-the-stars Shmuley Boteach wrote that the photos should serve as "a major wake-up call to American parents. ... A strong message must be sent both to Vanity Fair and Disney that the sexual exploitation of a young girl for commercial profit is unacceptable."

Because of the writers' strike, CBS's audience dropped during the first quarter, and so did its ad revenue, but its profits rose 14 percent to $244.3 million from $213.5 million during the same period a year ago -- way ahead of analysts' estimates. John Blackledge, an analyst with JPMorgan Chase, credited the strike itself, telling Bloomberg News that it helped "on the profit side with lower program costs." Outwardly, the network had seemed to take a big hit as Fox took over the audience lead during the quarter with the help of enormous audiences for the Super Bowl and the twice-weekly American Idol. But the ratings loss was more than offset by lower content costs. At midday on the NYSE, CBS shares were up more than 3 percent to $23.24.

Believing that it can attract a significant audience of young people on the Internet, Warner Bros. announced Monday that it plans to revive its defunct The WB "fifth network" online in August. (Beta testing is set to begin next month.) Although it said that initially it plans to offer reruns of such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Roswell, Gilmore Girls and Dawson's Creek on its own site and partner sites, it will eventually offer original programming created specifically for the Internet and has already recruited producers to develop content.

Dancing With the Stars danced away with another ratings victory for ABC Monday night as a 90-minute edition averaged 17.92 million viewers, peaking in the final half-hour beginning at 9:00 p.m. with 18.97 million. That put it ahead in the overall ratings over Fox's House, which averaged 14.51 million viewers for the entire hour. Nevertheless, when it came to the all-important 18-49-year-old demographic group, House came out ahead. CBS took the lead at 10:00 p.m. with CSI: Miami, which drew 17.03 million viewers.

Following an exposé in the New York Times that revealed that the Pentagon had successfully planted military analysts on all of the major broadcast networks and cable news networks to support its Iraq war policies, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday that the program would be undergoing an internal review and would be temporarily suspended. Meanwhile, several political blogs have pointed out that the propaganda program, which was prominently featured on the front page of the Sunday Times on April 20, was virtually ignored by the broadcast networks (who were criticized for failing to mention the ties to the Pentagon of their military experts) and that the Times itself, which acknowledged that it ran Op-Ed articles by the retired military figures who had received "talking points" from Pentagon public affairs officers, did little follow-up. Wrote Jason Linkins in the Huffington Post: "The aftermath of the story, for the Times, has been one of scant follow-up, lost scoops, and poor comparison when set alongside similar journalistic efforts."