First up, we’re heading to Nice and taking in the Cannes Film Fest — and can’t wait to hang with director Alexander Payne (see press release below). Dinner, celebs, movies and drinks…

After that, we’re heading to Cognac for an exclusive visit to Louis XIII’s Maison… After that, on to Paris for amazing museums, shops, drinks and dinner — and staying at Hotel Jules…

As mentioned, follow us on Twitter for the latest updates from France…

LOUIS XIII® Cognac, the world’s most esteemed spirit from the House of Rémy Martin®, official supplier of the Cannes Film Festival, created an exciting partnership last year with The Film Foundation, the leading non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation founded by Martin Scorsese.
“Much like the time, finesse and care it takes to create a rare, luxurious spirit such as LOUIS XIII, so does film preservation. Film is at the heart of the American and French Cultures and both film and cognac require a high degree of talent and craftsmanship to create excellence.” said Augustin Depardon, LOUIS XIII Global Brand Director.
Filmmakers and LOUIS XIII are known for their shared purpose of creating works of great artistry and lasting heritage. If they both strive for excellence, aware that excellence alone will stand the test of time, they also share a visionary spirit. To The Film Foundation and LOUIS XIII, preserving the past is acting for the future. The partnership between The Film Foundation and LOUIS XIII helps reaffirm the role of cinema as a bridge between different generations and different cultures. No matter what nationality a filmmaker or how personal their story, a great film will be universally understood.
On May 23rd during the 65th Cannes Film Festival, a unique one-hour conversation titled “East Meets West”, will take place at the Majestic Beach with American director and Academy Award® winner Alexander Payne, member of the Board of The Film Foundation, and one of the most acclaimed and honored Hong Kong directors, Stanley Kwan.
Coming from different horizons, these two world-renowned filmmakers will share their thoughts on cinema, discuss their journey and answer questions.
To highlight the quality in LOUIS XIII, that inspires creativity, Stanley Kwan will bring his own “touch” to the “East Meets West” conversation by revealing in avant-premiere his new directorial webisode, featuring Zhuang Yong, a Chinese freestyle gold-medal winner at the Barcelona Olympic Games.

French luxury giant LVMH is struggling to retain its image as exclusive and high-end creators of $10,000 alligator handbags and goat-lined fur coats, while opening enough stores and reaching enough customers to keep profits high. Thus far LVMH has managed the balance well, but it is taking no chances, offering customers increasingly expensive and bespoke services in an effort to retain a high-end mystique around brands in danger of becoming ubiquitous. LVMH is taking particular care to protect the image of Louis Vuitton, the group’s signature brand, which accounts for 45 percent of operating profit, and has boasted double digit percentage growth through the financial crisis. – read more via Reuters

The hotel is aiming for a constellation of Michelin star restaurants. The French restaurant Crown opens as a collaboration with Patrick Henriroux, who runs two-star La Pyramide in France. The Japanese restaurant Wadakura will include a sushi outpost by Michelin-starred Shinji Kanesaka and Chinese restaurant Amber Palace will be operated by Chugoku Hanten Group, which operates Tokyo’s two-star Fureika.

Features include:
290 rooms and suites
7 restaurants, serving international, Japanese, Chinese and French cuisine
2 bars and a lobby lounge
Cake and pastry shop
1 boardroom, 2 meeting rooms and 8 multi-purpose function rooms that can be combined for larger events for up to 1,500 people and divided into 15 separate spaces
evian SPA TOKYO – offers a unique combination of hot baths and quality treatments, complemented by a 20m indoor pool, Jacuzzi, fitness room and personal training programmes
Wedding chapel and Shinto Shrine
Photo studio and Beauty salon
Hotel arcade with 17 retail outlets
Florist
Direct underground passage to the Otemachi subway station (one of the largest in Tokyo) due to be completed in Spring 2013

The hotel is aiming for a constellation of Michelin star restaurants. The French restaurant Crown opens as a collaboration with Patrick Henriroux, who runs two-star La Pyramide in France. The Japanese restaurant Wadakura will include a sushi outpost by Michelin-starred Shinji Kanesaka and Chinese restaurant Amber Palace will be operated by Chugoku Hanten Group, which operates Tokyo’s two-star Fureika.

Features include:
290 rooms and suites
7 restaurants, serving international, Japanese, Chinese and French cuisine
2 bars and a lobby lounge
Cake and pastry shop
1 boardroom, 2 meeting rooms and 8 multi-purpose function rooms that can be combined for larger events for up to 1,500 people and divided into 15 separate spaces
evian SPA TOKYO – offers a unique combination of hot baths and quality treatments, complemented by a 20m indoor pool, Jacuzzi, fitness room and personal training programmes
Wedding chapel and Shinto Shrine
Photo studio and Beauty salon
Hotel arcade with 17 retail outlets
Florist
Direct underground passage to the Otemachi subway station (one of the largest in Tokyo) due to be completed in Spring 2013

This article titled “Thousands join girl in urging Seventeen magazine to publish unedited images” was written by Karen McVeigh in New York, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 2nd May 2012 19.33 UTC

A teenage reader of Seventeen magazine is hoping to change the title’s practice of airbrushing images to make young girls appear flawless and thin.

Eighth-grader Julia Bluhm, 14, from Maine, delivered a 15,000-name petition to the Hearst magazine’s editor-in-chief, Ann Shoket, on Wednesday calling for the magazine to publish at least one unaltered photo spread a month.

“A lot of my friends are happy in their skin, but I know people who aren’t comfortable and wished they looked differently,” said Bluhm, who dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer and activist. “There are pictures all over the media that show photoshopped girls that have no flaws and they are perfect.”

In her petition, titled Give Girls Images of Real Girls, Bluhm, a blogger with Sparksummit, a “girl-fuelled” movement against the sexualisation of young women, wrote: “Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life.”

Bluhm hopes to fight back through her work with Sparksummit, which began after the American Psychological Association task force reported the harm to girls’ self-esteem caused by sexualised images of young women.

By lunchtime on Wednesday, the petition, hosted on the social action platform Change.org, had amassed even more names, with the total passing 25,000 signatures.

It chronicles the daily battles faced by her peers over their body image. It reads: “I’m in a ballet class with a bunch of high-school girls. On a daily basis I hear comments like: ‘It’s a fat day’, and ‘I ate well today, but I still feel fat’. Ballet dancers do get a lot of flack about their bodies, but it’s not just ballet dancers who feel the pressure to be ‘pretty’. It’s everyone. To girls today, the word ‘pretty’ means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It’s because the media tells us that ‘pretty’ girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin.”

Bluhm said the “fake” photographs she and her friends see in magazines and adverts has been shown to lead to low self-esteem.

Her petition states: “Girls want to be accepted, appreciated and liked. And when they don’t fit the criteria, some girls try to ‘fix’ themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression, and low self-esteem.”

Seventeen magazine said it had invited Bluhm to its offices after seeing her petition. It said in a statement: “We’re proud of Julia for being so passionate about an issue – it’s exactly the kind of attitude we encourage in our readers – so we invited her to our office to meet with editor in chief Ann Shoket this morning.

“They had a great discussion, and we believe that Julia left understanding that Seventeen celebrates girls for being their authentic selves, and that’s how we present them. We feature real girls in our pages and there is no other magazine that highlights such a diversity of size, shape, skin tone and ethnicity.”

Bluhm started the petition when she learned that another magazine, Glamour, had decided to limit its use of the airbrush to make people look thinner. After a survey of women found 43% believed magazines should not retouch pictures, Glamour magazine introduced limits for retouching photographs, even if a celebrity or model requested the modifications.

Bluhm said: “A lot of girls read Seventeen magazine. They do a lot to make girls feel good about themselves, stuff like Body Peace. So I thought if they are already doing it, they might like to do more. There have been stories about how much photoshopped images can hurt girls with low self-esteem and eating disorders.”

Body Peace asks women and girls to make peace with the body they have and carries interviews with celebrities talking about the issue.

Bluhm said it would be “awesome” if her petition kick-started a trend. She said: “If Seventeen magazine agree to do print just one unaltered spread a month and other magazines would do the same – it could grow into a trend. Not spreads but on the cover. It would help so many girls feel better about their bodies.”

Bluhm’s mother, Mary Biter, a social worker and mother of two girls, said she is proud of her youngest daughter.

She said: “She has taken on something that is important to her and it is something that both Robert (Julia’s dad) and I have felt important raising two girls. That they are judged by their abilities and abilities and qualities other than their appearance.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

The Barbie/Katniss will, thankfully, not show off Katniss in her reaping dress. Instead, it will be the gritty Katniss that will be on display, complete with her single long braid. She’ll be wearing the outfit she wore during the games, including a miniature mockingjay pin. She’ll also sport a bow and arrow, and boots.

The Hunger Games‘ Katniss Barbie will be available in August. You can for pre-order at BarbieCollector.com.

Converse is celebrating those 30 years with the Michael Jordan x Converse Commemorative Pack.

This limited edition package includes a size 13 pair of Converse Pro Leathers and a size 40 number 23 University of North Carolina jersey. It all comes in a beautiful display case.

Only 30 of these will be made – each individually numbered and signed by Michael himself. They will be auctioned on eBay, with all proceeds going to the James R. Jordan Foundation.

Make your bid now. It’s sure to be a rare collector’s item that will be treasured by any basketball fan.

The card is one of 60 Honus Wagner cards made in 1909 that are known to exist. Most of the existing cards are in poor condition, but this one is ranked as the sixth best quality amongst the surviving cards, making it a rare opportunity for collectors.

Wagner is one of baseball all-time great hitters with a lifetime batting average of .328. He lead the league in hitting eight times during his 21-year career.

The auction goes through April 19, 2012.

Okay, two other men – but no one had done it solo – until now.

Cameron reached the Earth’s deepest point in a specially designed submarine. Cameron’s trip to the depths of the Marianas Trench, makes him the first man to travel alone on the 7-mile journey. He reached a depth of 35,756 feet, staying for three hours, and collecting various samples.

Cameron accomplished the trip in the lime-green submersible Deepsea Challenger, which he helped design. He appeared healthy on his return.

The 57-year old director becomes just the third person to reach the earth’s deepest spot – and the first since Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Captain Don Walsh accomplished it in 1960.

Cameron is a lifelong oceanography enthusiast and has made 72 deep-sea submersible dives.

Photo: National Geographic

The 52-carat diamond collar features three tiers of diamonds in a chandelier design and features a staggering 1,600 diamonds on the collar.

Though, if you’re not rich enough to snag this beautiful dog collar, I Love Dogs Diamonds has a range of other collars valued from $280,000 to $900,000.