Cannes Film Fest 2008: Wenders on Palermo Shooting– I've never shot a film in my hometown, except for shooting some Super 8 as a kid. Partly it was my choice of lead actor. Campio is from Dusseldorf and he is a true Dusseldorfer and a local hero because his band, Die Toten Hosen, are the biggest rock band in Germany and they are from Dusseldorf. I wrote the story for Campino. Having in mind that he is not a professional actor at least not before the film, although now he is. All we'd ever done together was shoot a music video — a three-day shoot. But I knew he had a very enigmatic presence. Nobody knows him as an actor but he is exactly the kind of character I had in mind to play this photographer. I wanted the actor to be from Dusseldorf because Dusseldorf is the home of all the great contemporary photographers in Germany. The Dusseldorf school is the great German post-war photography school. My hero, being a photographer, had to be from Dusseldorf.

Eastwood held that the story’s unbelievable events would make a captivating film as long as Angelina Jolie took the role of the working-class single mother who made it her life’s mission to find her boy: “Angelina is unique. She reminds me a lot of the actresses from the Golden Age of movies in the 1940s: Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Susan Hayward. They were all very distinctive, and they all had a lot of presence. She’s a tremendous actress.”

Cannes Film Fest 2008–The father in Kung Fu Panda is a noodle chef and he loves noodles. But Po finds that all a little bland–he wants more excitement in his world–so he fantasizes about being a kung fu master. He idolizes those great kung fu artists like they were rock stars–they are legendary in his mind. He's ashamed to tell his father about his aspirations, because he knows how much it means to him that his son follow in his footsteps. So, he keeps it as a little secret. Also, Po?¢¬Ä¬ôs a bit embarrassed, because he doesn?¢¬Ä¬ôt think he really has what it takes to be a real kung fu master. So, he doesn?¢¬Ä¬ôt want people to know about this secret wish, because he thinks they?¢¬Ä¬ôll make fun of him?¢¬Ä–Jack Black on his Character

Cannes Film Fest 2008–World Premiere of Kung Fu Panda

It was an embarrassment of riches–amazing fight sequences, a lot of wonderful comedy. We were brought in to cut back the forest, to find the heart of the movie they were always aiming to make. But with such a beautiful world and fun characters, stuff had naturally grown out of that, the central story had gotten covered up. So we were there to help focus and tell the story everyone wanted told–Glenn Berger, co-writer

?¢¬Ä¬úWe?¢¬Ä¬ôre all parents. I have two daughters and Mark and Melissa have kids. We wanted the film to have something our kids could take away. ?¢¬Ä¬òBe your own hero,?¢¬Ä¬ô which means don?¢¬Ä¬ôt look outside of yourself for the answer. Don?¢¬Ä¬ôt expect someone else to make things right. You are empowered to achieve anything you want, if you set your mind to it. Be the best that you can be?¢¬Ä–Co-director John Stevenson