This trailer for a Jaime Pressly vehicle we didn't register long enough to forget explains why American action movies are so popular overseas. (Via FilmFatale.)

Richard Linklater's fictional take on Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" is making headlines today out of Cannes - and not just for what's on screen.

"We're already getting reaction from the fast food industry," Linklater told reporters. "They've hired agencies apparently that are going to be there when we come out as a movie in the States. I've never made a movie that's suddenly threatening someone's corporate bottom line supposedly, which I don't think a movie really can do."

If you haven't seen the trailer, Fox Searchlight has already thrown it up on YouTube, where it's getting beau coup hits.

See it with a ten piece McNuggets for maximum effect.

Now, admittedly, he was speaking through a translator when Pedro Almodovar was interviewed by Reuters at the Cannes Film Festival, but knowing him even a little bit, you don't get the sense anything was lost in translation.

Almodovar held forth on why he hasn't yet directed in English, refering to the studios as a "straitjacket" that he wasn't interested in trying on, and also discussed his new film, "Volver" - the English title for which could easily be, "All About My Dead Mother."

Viz,

Featuring an almost exclusively female cast, the film tells the story of Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), a feisty housewife, and her sister Sole (Lola Duenas), a hairdresser, who are being visited by the very lively ghost of their dead mother..."I wanted to show a ghost on a daily basis. A ghost that goes to the bathroom, hides under the bed and even farts in the film," Almodovar said.

Which begs the question: Why didn't Almodovar cast Haley Joel Osment? He'd have been perfect: Quavering, whispering desperately:

"I smell dead people."

BREAKING NEWS from Cannes today: Alan Ball will make his feature directorial debut on an untitled indie film about a Lebanese girl coming of age during the first Gulf War.

Ted Hope's New York-based production group This is That will produce along with executive producer Scott Rudin. The picture, which is raising money via foreign sales at Cannes, is scheduled to start shooting August 2nd.

Per Indiewire,

"The film follows the adventures of young Jasira, daughter of a Lebanese-American father and an American mother, who comes of age during the first Gulf War, according to a Celluloid release. When Jasira unwittingly enters into a dangerous flirtation with her mother's boyfriend, her mother insists that Jasira move to her father's house. Despite the change of venue, Jasira's move is a catalyst for crisis with funny, heart-rending and ultimately redeeming consequences."

Jasira? Al Jazeera?

Heavy-handed media criticism off the starboard bow...three o'clock, captain!

The downside to being a hyperpower with no exports other than pop culture? Not everyone likes being force-fed Nicole Ritchie and Lindsay Lohan.

(Come to think of it, neither do Lindsay or Nicole, by the looks of them.)

Anyway, next week's New York Times Magazine offers an interesting criticism of America's growing "soft power" from Josef Joffe, the publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit.

"Now shift forward to the Cannes Film Festival of 2004, where hundreds of protesters denounced America's intervention in Iraq until the police dispersed them. The makers of the movie "Shrek 2" had placed large bags of green Shrek ears along the Croisette, the main drag along the beach. As the demonstrators scattered, many of them put on free Shrek ears. "They were attracted," noted an observer in this magazine, "by the ears' goofiness and sheer recognizability." And so the enormous pull of American imagery went hand in hand with the country's, or at least its government's, condemnation."

"Over the Hedge" racoon masks? "Wolverine" claws? Silas the Albino Monk cowls?

The mind boggles.

As Americans, we're cheap.

As Jimmy Carter pointed out not so long ago on Charlie Rose, America gives proportionately less foreign aid to developing countries than any other Western nation.

But with a muy expensivo war on, what to do?

The answer came today, in a flash of brilliance from the U.N.: Deploy pregnant celebs to developing states!

As Reuters noted today,

"If Angelina Jolie gives birth in Namibia, she would have done for our tourism sector what our tourism board budget cannot do in a year," Namibian Ambassador to the United States Hopelong Iipinge said in a letter released to the media late Thursday."

Britney and K-Fed, you take Burkina Faso. Matt Damon and Luciana? You've got Mozambique. Okay. Niger, Niger... Rachel Weisz? You and Darren Aronofsky are bound for beautiful Niamey.

Don't tell us you don't like Africa - we saw "The Constant Gardner!"

Finally, a nation that has its priorities straight: The government of Namibia has agreed to help Brangelina ditch the tabloids.

Thank God Namibia lacks any other pressing problems.

Generally, we like reading Q&A's about as much as getting a rabies vaccine.

Occassionally, though, they result in genuinely fascinating stuff.

For instance, Adam L. Penenberg's interview with Dave Marash, the former Nightline reporter who jumped to head Al Jazeera International here in the States.

An excerpt:

Q: Does it concern you that Al Jazeera International is owned wholly by a benevolent dictator, the Emir of Qatar [Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani]?

MARASH: So far, the Emir seems to me more like one of my first media "bosses," William Paley, than two of my more recent American corporate chiefs. Paley was a classic entrepreneur who identified himself with the product, who daily held every employee to a "CBS standard," that made it "the Tiffany network."

I have also worked for Michael Eisner whose attention to product was dawrfed by his attention to both shareholder and Eisner benefit. It was Eisner who felt comfortable de-capitalizing his own company of half a billion dollars in stock options for himself, and showering his hire and former pal, the completely incompetent Disney employee Michael Ovitz, with an exit payoff of more than $100 million.

Then there was that lovely fellow at NBC, Jack Welch, who misspent corporate cash for his own retirement expenses, covered it up from his shareholders, poisoned the Hudson River with PCBs, and then stalled clean-up for years with his endless litigation and attempted evasion of responsibility.

The Emir, as I say, looks good by comparison.

Needless to say, a lively and wide-ranging interview. Given the recent headlines about bias in journalism, worth a read. Full transcript available on mediabistro.com sometime soon...