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It's true enough that there's plenty wrong with Gatsby Le Magnifique, as the French are calling the latest from director Baz Luhrmann. But what better film could there have been to open the sensory onslaught that is the Cannes Film Festival than one orchestrated by that patron saint of overstimulation?

It's not just that you might see four films a day at Cannes, from directors as different as plainspoken American satirist Alexander Payne (here with heartland father-son drama Nebraska) and hyperliterate French maximalist Arnaud Desplechin (who has enlisted Benicio Del Toro for the wonderfully titled Jimmy P. — Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian).

It's the chaos outside the theater on the French Riviera, with women on roller skates swooping at you to hawk trade magazines, and red-carpet photo calls set to Daft Punk. Crowds scrambling for a glimpse of stars, even if it's only through the smartphone camera screens held up by everyone up front.

With the right party invitations, Cannes is not unlike Gatsby's unhinged introduction scene for Leo DiCaprio, where the star smiles wide as the Gershwin swells behind booming fireworks: Even if it's all a little tacky, you're still stunned by the ridiculous grandeur and glamour of it all.

Without the right invitations (read: if you're me), on the other hand, the Gatsby resonance comes from the time spent staring at lights on distant piers, scenes of parties much classier than whatever you've hustled your way into — though you'll find enough cheap booze for a bootlegger either way.

The overheated atmosphere has a way of inducing delusions of grandeur in everyone here, including film critics. Indeed, the history of media coverage at Cannes is full of examples of exaggerated, oversimplified pans and ill-considered snap judgments — especially post-Twitter. (My favorite historical example, just to prove that antisocial media were hardly paragons, might be the now-shuttered British Daily Herald, reporting on the prize awarded to Federico Fellini's classic La Dolce Vita: "ORGY FILM WINS TOP AWARD."*)

It's enough to make it clear why Ingmar Bergman, upon learning that The Virgin Spring was playing at Cannes, wrote that he "hate[s] that place of meat market[s] and mental humiliation. At a festival you can really despair of the motion picture as an art." (That he ended up winning a prize that year did not change his view.)

In any case, a good critic does what she can to keep an even keel. But it's hard for a certain kind of film fan to not get giddy when the lineup features new work from the Coen brothers, Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch, Roman Polanski, Nicolas Winding Refn (director of Drive) and Asghar Farhadi (director of the phenomenal Oscar-winner A Separation).

Festival head Thierry Fremaux has also taken steps this year to address one common complaint that has dogged the festival — the underrepresentation of female directors, though he's done it in a way that raises issues of its own. There are eight female directors in the official competition categories (compared with three last year), but seven of them, including art-cinema heavyweights like Sofia Coppola and Claire Denis, have been relegated to the secondary Un Certain Regard category.

Fremaux has shrugged off criticism about this strange disparity by saying that Un Certain Regard is just as important as the flagship competition, but few people here really believe that. (Just look at the name! It's like a half-step above the "I Guess It's OK" awards.)

And for anyone who'd suggest that it's a matter of those films being less accomplished, Coppola's The Bling Ring is at least one terrific counterexample, having already outclassed some of the competition films in the first two days here. The film is based on the titular gang of real-life teens who used gossip rags and Twitter feeds to find out when celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan would be out of town, then ransacked their homes. It helped that those gleaming glass edifices on L.A. mountainsides were usually unlocked — when celebrity culture has made the rest of these lives transparent, is it a big surprise that their homes weren't any different?

Barriers of any kind are a foreign concept for gang ringleaders Nicki, Rebecca, and Marc (Emma Watson, Katie Chang and Israel Broussard), whom Coppola portrays here in an ultra-specific satirical snapshot. Designer brand names and Kanye West lyrics are their native tongue, and "The Secret" — that method of attaining all your desires through the power of positive thinking — is the equivalent of their morning prayers; they prefer entitlement to enlightenment. (Watson in particular has a blast putting on a Valley-girl accent and yammering about "expanding as a spiritual human being," though Coppola has actually toned down the ridiculousness of her real-life inspiration).

Bored with even the excess of nightclub visits and house parties, these kids decide to try on the lifestyles of their heroes as if they were so many Prada heels. At first, it's by taking their things and partying in their homes, but soon they follow the imitation to its logical conclusion — carefully chosen court-date outfits and lawyer-scripted apologies in the manner of their DUI-charged idols.

And why wouldn't they, when the consequences of their actions seem to be nonexistent? Or they are for the kids with the right lawyers, at least. Like the similarly themed Spring Breakers, this is partially a story about class and social-climbing, in which the inevitable hammer comes down hardest on the least fortunate. For the others, life is but a shopping spree.

Summer is almost here, and with it comes the army of interns marching into countless American workplaces. Yet what was once an opportunity for the inexperienced is becoming a front-line labor issue.

More and more, unpaid and low-paid interns are feeling their labor is being exploited. Some are even willing to push back — with lawsuits.

One of the most high profile intern-versus-employer lawsuits suffered a setback last week that could have implications for other cases. A judge in New York ruled that a group of 3,000 unpaid interns could not sue the Hearst Corp. as a class, but would have to file individual cases against the company.

"It is important, and it is a setback in the sense that it becomes harder for groups of interns to get together, and it makes it less likely that lawyers will take those cases," Ross Perlin says.

Perlin knows the plight of the unpaid intern well. A former intern himself, Perlin was inspired by his experiences to write his first book, Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy.

"The internship has become virtually a requirement for getting into the white-collar workforce, certainly. It's something that the majority of students at four-year colleges do at least once before they graduate. Many do it two, three, four more times," Perlin says.

"An estimated quarter or third of all internships are unpaid, many more are low-paid as well," he adds. "So those are the ones we're really focusing on because there are thousands of internships each year in the U.S. that are illegal according to the law."

Perlin offers a few red flags to look out for when deciding on an internship program. "If they're asking for somebody who has deep experience with Photoshop, can design websites, and has lots of other experience, and then they're saying, 'Oh, sorry, we're actually not going to be able to pay.' "

If a company's offering school credit, Perlin says, that should also raise a red flag because school credit is given out by schools. "That really shouldn't come into play unless there is a real relationship between an employer and a given college," he says.

Of course, good internships aren't illegal or exploitative. If the company has an established intern-training program, has a designated intern coordinator and details the skills interns will learn, Perlin says, chances are that intern will have a good experience.

Across the country, cash-strapped state and local governments are not just cutting services — they're also cutting access to courts. The tip of the iceberg may be small claims courts.

These courts, dealing with disputes involving small sums of money, are the workhorses of the judicial system. There are thousands of such courts across the country, but perhaps nowhere are they being cut more dramatically than in California.

Small claims courts were created in the mid-20th century to allow people to resolve monetary disputes that are small in the greater scheme of things but huge to people of limited means.

And they're unique in how efficient they are. Defendants and plaintiffs don't need a lawyer and judges usually make their rulings on the spot, often in 30 minutes or less. They're meant for people like Mark Delnero, the owner of a charter fishing boat company.

In December, Delnero drove to the San Joaquin County Courthouse, plunked down a $30 fee and asked the small claims court to give him justice. He claimed a customer stiffed him with a bad check for $740. Then, he says, the court let him down, too. "Nothing like being shafted twice," Delnero says. "Once by the bad-check bouncer and then by the Stockton court."

'Your Case Sits And Goes Nowhere'

The court told him he would receive notice of a hearing in 90 days, Delnero says, but he never heard anything. So he called the small claims courts after 90 days and then again after 120 days.

Both times, he says, the court told him his case still wasn't scheduled. "I don't have faith in how the courts work," Delnero says. "I'm just in awe. I don't know what to think."

“ In our county, if you file a small claims case it simply sits in the proverbial box waiting to get a trial date. Your case sits and goes nowhere."

The man Art Review magazine named the most powerful artist in the world is trying his hand at rock-stardom. In 2011, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei spent 81 days in detention. He was later let go and charged with tax evasion. Now, he has released his first heavy metal song, based on his time in police detention.

The video for the song, "Dumbass," opens with a scene showing Ai Weiwei sitting in a chair, a black hood over his head. Written on the hood are the words "suspected criminal." As he paces the cell, two guards pace with him. As he sleeps, one stands over his bed. Even seated on the toilet, they are just feet away, always present.

These scenes dissolve into the fantasies of one of the prison guards, including plastic blow-up dolls taking Ai's place in his bed, and the whole video ending with Ai, head shaved, dancing in drag. Ai says this dystopian nightmare — shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle — reflects his detention experience,

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