Product Central
Dispatches from the Reviews Editor's desk
Friday 25 May 2007, 11:09 AM
HP, the supermodel, the red carpet and the film noir
To Cannes with HP for the 60th Film Festival, where the tech giant is a major sponsor, scattering vast Scitex-printed posters around key sites along the Croisette and taking up residence in the swanky Majestic Barrière hotel, just opposite the Palais des Festivals.
HP's centre of operations at the Cannes Film Festival.
As you'd expect, the place is crawling with celebs, wannabe celebs, willneverbe celebs, stony faced security goons — and a smattering of tech journalists prepared to submit themselves to HP's slick publicity machine in return for a little vicarious fairy dust.
Has the Segway found its niche, as a mobile marketing platform?
Wednesday starts well, with an agreeable beachside luncheon bang in the middle of the action: the extraordinary Proteus catamaran is moored nearby, while HP's inviting 'floating lounge' is just a short motorboat ride away. The sun beats down, and the waiters proffer not only fine wines, but also much-needed Factor 40 to the pasty, blinking, hacks from Blighty — among whom we discover an impostor: Dean Piper, from Closer magazine, a bona fide celeb-chaser who regales us with suitably scurrilous gossip and professes total bemusement with all things techie.
ZDNet goes the extra mile to get the tech news: note HP's champagne-fuelled 'floating lounge' just off the beach.
Then it's on to the conscience-salving bit: the press conference where various HP bigwigs trumpet the company's recent successful rebranding exercise ('The Computer Is Personal Again') and ZDNet chats to HP's Alberto Bozzo, VP and General Manager of Commercial Products, Personal Systems Group.
Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova and Satjiv Chahil, HP's Senior VP Worldwide Marketing, Personal Systems Group discuss the future of the IT industry.
Check out our upcoming Cannes photo gallery for more on HP's latest kit and Alberto's comments: for now, let's fast forward to the interesting part, where Czech supermodel and do-gooder Petra Nemcova is paraded on-stage to ally herself with HP's vision and plug her Happy Hearts Fund. The HHF aims to benefit children affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami, in which Petra was caught up; one strand of the HHF's activities includes introducing children to new technology — hence HP's involvement.
The HP Compaq 2710 convertible tablet, a Centrino Pro system. And Eric Cador, HP's Senior VP Personal Systems Group EMEA. Oh, and Petra Nemcova again.
After the on-stage antics, there's a photo shoot, where Petra and HP's Eric Cador show off HP's latest Tablet PC — and some tech journos actually snap close-ups of the Centrino Pro tablet, ignoring the attached supermodel.
Jazz Age elegance at the Belles Rives, Juan Les Pins.
Later there's more high-quality dining at the Belles Rives hotel in nearby Juan Les Pins, an idyllic art deco establishment where F Scott Fitzgerald once hung out. As it happens, HP's assembled throng are fully kitted out in black-tie attire, in preparation for the red carpet screening later in the evening (of which more anon), so the scene could be straight out of Tender Is The Night.
One of HP's vast industrial inkjet-printed posters adorns the entrance to the Palais des Festivals.
And so to the gala screening, which as fate would have it is The Man From London, directed by Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr and featuring the UK's own Tilda Swinton. A spot of mobile Googling had previously informed the hack pack that Mr Tarr's ouvre was somewhat bleak and austere, much given to leisurely musings on Man's Place In The Scheme Of Things. However, the fact that the movie is based on a detective story by Georges Simenon perks up the more optimistic among us and we head through the crowds and paparazzi lining the approaches to the Palais des Festivals and up the legendary red carpet with hope in our hearts.
We are, to put it mildly, disappointed. Now there are many cinéasts for whom two hours-plus of film-noir-meets-Eastern-European existential-angst is pure heaven. But for the UK tech hack pack, who are clearly somewhat lower of brow, this was too much. In a nutshell, almost nothing happens in the movie — and anything that does happen, does so in Hungarian, with French and English subtitles, at extreme length.
The director and cast receive the audience's acclaim. This was before the screening — we weren't there by the end.
The first furtive exits bar-wards occur about an hour in. Your correspondent, made of sterner stuff (or perhaps simply more catatonic), makes it to the two-hour mark. Then the interminable opening shot (which will inevitably be described elsewhere as a 'masterpiece') is reprised and I can take no more. In the foyer I discover the director himself, pacing nervously. He fails to arrest my progress, and I flee to the bar of the Majestic Barrière to catch up with my fellow fugitives. We are still swapping cinematic horror stories when the entire cast, director and production team of The Man From London walk in (very slowly). Seemingly, there is no escape.
