Ridley Scott's Robin Hood to open Cannes

Ridley Scott's Robin Hood to open Cannes 2010.
British director Ridley Scott's new film Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe, has been selected to open the annual Cannes Film Festival in May.
Robin Hood is Crowe's fifth film with Sir Ridley Scott.
The film, about the birth of the Robin Hood legend, also stars Cate Blanchett as Maid Marian, and William Hurt.
It will be screened out of competition on the opening night of the 12-day festival on 12 May.
Nationwide release in France will begin on the same day, with screenings across the world from 14 May.

The Book of Negroes

"Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves. Eventually, she arrives in South Carolina where she begins a new life as a slave. Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia, only to discover that this new place becomes one that is also oppressive and unyielding. Aminata eventually returns to Sierra Leone — passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America."

Copying Beethoven

"Copying Beethoven is a fictionalised exploration of the composer's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven, played by Ed Harris, is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer finish in time for the scheduled first performance - otherwise the orchestra will have no music to play. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger). The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her."

Honest Abe The Vampire Killer!

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, published by Grand Central and available everywhere Tuesday, March 2, is not just the Lincoln biography we’ve all been waiting for. It’s also the funniest, most action-packed and weirdly well-researched account of the Civil War you’ll probably read in a long time. Every chapter is filled with familiar and semi-familiar names from that dark period in the nation’s history—like William Seward, George B. McClellan and Jefferson Douglas—and some surprising guest stars like Edgar Allan Poe, who visits Lincoln while researching a lesbian vampire story, the greatest work of fiction Poe never actually got around to writing. Political history can sometimes be a little dry, but not with lines like “Senator Charles Sumner lay unconscious on the Senate floor, face-down in a pool of his own blood.” Grahame-Smith could be poised to become the Howard Zinn of vampire-related alterna-history. Either that or he’ll just have another runaway bestseller on his hands, rivaling his Jane Austen mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."