A star-heavy cast moves the story along as it takes scattershot aim at a range of targets, particularly the war in Iraq, Big Brother-style spying on US citizens, the US dependence on energy and the fusion between celebrity and politics.

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson plays a big-name actor tied to a political family who tries to unravel a plot involving him travelling into the future and back and trying to stop Armageddon. And any resemblance to a certain California governor who starred in 'The Terminator' is coincidental.



Red-carpet time in Cannes



Also spotted is 'Buffy' star Sarah Michelle Gellar, putting in a delightful turn as a marketing-savvy porn star, and pop singer Justin Timberlake who treats the sometimes befuddled audience to a music clip underlining the damage the US military has taken in Iraq.

"The film is meant to be a tapestry of ideas all related to the biggest issues we're facing right now," Kelly told a media conference.

Although it depicts "the very sad situation that we find ourselves as a country," he stressed. "I love our country and I'm a very patriotic person and the movie is meant to be a patriotic piece to say 'Let's solve these problems'."

'Southland Tales' covered some of the same ground as another, edgier US film, 'Shortbus', which is filled provocatively with scenes of real sex in what director John Cameron Mitchell said was "a call to arms" against the Bush administration.

Both films had scenes where renditions of the US national anthem were played as a way for the left-wing directors to reclaim the flag from America's ruling right.

Only 'Shortbus' did it in a memorable way that surely has to be a first on celluloid: bellowed into the anus of a man during a three-way gay sex romp.

Mitchell said his offensive against the fears surrounding sex had much to do with living in "the era of Bush, which is about clamping down, being scared".

He added by way of justification of his movie: "If you can't do elections you might as well do erections."

More stitched up than either of those two movies was a documentary also seen in Cannes' official line-up featuring former US vice president Al Gore Saturday and his personal crusade against global warming.

'An Inconvienent Truth', fronted by Gore, explains the dangerous path which the planet is pursuing, and presents statistics confirming the place of the United States as the principal energy-guzzler and principal polluter.

In it, the man who almost was president, admits that his defeat by Bush was "a hard blow" - made all the harder because it made it tougher for him to get his environmental campaign on to the political agenda.

"The key to solving this crisis depends upon the people demanding action and not just of a president, but of the Congress as well," Gore told journalists Saturday.

'Fast Food Nation', a pointed jab at the creeping consumerism of US society and the power of corporations to dehumanise workers, also earned applause for its director, Richard Linklater, especially during a scene where characters proclaimed it their patriotic duty to violate the US Patriot Act.

Other films being screened out of the official selection are taking further pot shots at the US leader, who has been a favourite punching bag with the mainly independent filmmaking crowd at Cannes since he first came to power in 2001.

But for all the fairly predictable shows of support the films are getting during their screenings, there is also a feeling that the blows are landing wide - ineffective against a president who has already survived the onslaught behind the Cannes 2003 winner, 'Fahrenheit 9/11'.

The drills come at a time of deadlock in the international dispute over the nuclear programme of Iran, Turkey's eastern neighbour, which the US claims hides the secret development of atomic weapons.

The Turkish foreign ministry, however, underlined in a statement that the games, which were decided on last year, did not target any country.

The first phase of the event, codenamed Anatolian Sun 2006, will consist of a computer-simulated exercise and a naval exercise in the Mediterranean Sea off Turkey's southern coast, the Turkish general staff said in a statement.

The scenario for the second phase involves measures to stop a commercial vessel suspected of carrying goods that could be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it said.

At present Poland has deployed about 100 soldiers in Afghanistan since its presence began in the post-Taliban nation in 2002.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has decided to increase International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from about 10,000 at present to 15,000 by this summer, making Afghanistan the biggest NATO operation in history.

"I wish that we will have a new chance, a second chance, for the constitutional project," following its rejection in a referendum in May last year, said Giscard, 80.

"There are 16 out of 25 countries that have ratified the European constitution. That's to say there's a qualified majority. There is an agreed text," he told the British daily.

"The concern now is the modalities of adopting it," said Giscard, leaving open the possibility of another referendum or a vote in parliament.

Giscard said voters rejected the constitution - which Brussels argues is needed to prevent decision-making gridlock in the expanding bloc - because of the French government's unpopularity and a poor campaign to sell it to voters.

"If we had chosen to have a parliamentary vote last year the constitution would have been easily adopted. It is the method that has provoked the rejection," he said.

"Legally, we could vote again," he said.

Nor would it be "anti-democratic" to hold another referendum, he added. "People have the right to change their opinion. The people might consider they made a mistake."

Giscard said he believed that British voters would never approve the constitutional treaty and proposed instead "a special arrangement resembling that which applied to the euro."

To come into force, the constitutional treaty, hammered out by EU governments ahead of the bloc's 2004 expansion, must be ratified by all 25 member states.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso has said any decision on the future of the constitution should be delayed until 2008, calling for the best to be made of existing treaties in the meantime.

Those countries which have not started the process of ratification should take actions to push the process forward, although France and The Netherlands vetoed the constitution, said Asselborn, noting Finland is very likely to adopt the constitution in its upcoming referendum.

Paet also expressed his support for the process.

The EU constitution was designed to streamline EU institutions and improve the efficiency of the bloc's decision-making after the group expanded from its original 15 members to 25.

Fifteen EU members have approved the charter, while France and The Netherlands rejected the charter in 2005. Following the two rejections, Britain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Poland said the ratification process should be postponed.

On June 16, 2005, the EU leaders decided during a summit to extend the ratification deadline beyond the scheduled November 2006.

Canadian-based McCain Foods - the world's largest producer of frozen french fries - said employees at its plant in Scarborough, 250 miles north of London, discovered a suspected hand grenade on Saturday, a day after a shell tip was found among a batch of potatoes.

On both occasions, police and bomb squad officials set up an exclusion zone and the devices were detonated in a controlled explosion, a statement from the company said.

"There was no danger to the general public on either days," it added.