CANNES: Trumpet the cause, don't dwarf it + models dissed at the Du Cap, a Rolls ride and Clooney in zoom

By Liza Foreman

Why queue for hours to watch a film you can see at your local cinema in four months, and why go inside a party when you can have just as much fun outside?

Those were some of the questions I began asking myself Friday as cineastes here debated less critical issues, a la who should win the Palme d�Or.

While the 60th edition of the festival (15-27 May) was considered a strong year in critics circles - think "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; "No Country for Old Men"; and Romanian abortion pic, "4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days" - there�s just no beating the live entertainment outside of the theater, or the soirees.

Highlights not to un-spool on the big screen included Jerry Seinfeld jumping from an eight-storey building; Roman Polanski storming out of a press conference; and a black truck advertising Burn energy-drink booming music up and down the Croisette.

Forget covering the Carlton in pricey ads. Burn wins the prize hands down for most effective marketing gimmick in town.

Most creative Cannes tie-in, meanwhile, goes to Motorola, which designed 25-limited edition cell phones, each bearing a cinema-themed word such as camera, cut or director, in diamante letters. Trust me, George Clooney took a good look as I shoved mine in his face Thursday to snap a photo. It�s just too bad I left the zoom function on.

Thanks to not getting into the Vanity Fair party, I had plenty of fun on the Hotel du Cap steps watching top models denied entrance; girls in posh frocks sussing out secret stairways, and stars a la Bono and DiCaprio come and go.

The booby prize was a ride home in a Rolls Royce and drinks with Roberto Cavalli on his yacht. (It�s a long story involving the New Line 40th Anniversary/"The Golden Compass" bash at the fabulous Rothschild Mansion; an Arab called Abdullah; and a German from Rome.)

When I did make it into the cinema to see �A Mighty Heart,� �We Own the Night,� and �Ocean�s 13� frankly I asked myself why I�d bothered. The first featured Angelina in one of, I thought, the kitchy-est performances of her career. Following on from the work of Jennifer Lopez in �Bordertown,� which was laughed out of the cinema at the press screening in Berlin, it makes you wonder whether it�s not better for actors of a certain stature to trumpet these causes rather than dwarf such important political films.

�We Own the Night� turned out to be nothing more than gratuitous sex and violence that went absolutely nowhere; and �Ocean�s 13� really should have stopped at 12.

Still, with critical opinion running high, it seems this is one year one should have one�s cake and eat it.

Come Sunday, when everyone else is sleeping off the madness, there�s one person you can count on for the marathon competition repeats.