THE Cannes Film Festival, otherwise known as Europe's biggest film industry junket, with its myriad of stars, finally wrapped for another year last Sunday night amid a flurry of champagne corks and the familiar and tiresome ''thank you'' speeches.

Running alongside the festival is the ''marche'' (market), where all the film industry players spend their time flogging films, raising finance for new projects, raising cash to pay debts on old ones, or trying to raise enough to buy a round of drinks on expenses. And all the while they just want to be seen with a handful of recognised power players. One of the most

cut-throat businesses, there's more posturing than at a convention of car salesmen.

Everyone is out to prove something to someone. There is an army of Hollywood executives all whispering about the casting for Sylvester Stallone's sidekick in the next Rambo flick and just how much Leonardo DiCaprio will be paid to be the star in an adaption of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. Will it be $20m - a club that a handful of stars are now full-time members of or will he take a cut ''because the role will be so demanding''?

But from this Cannes whispering gallery sometimes the executives stumble on something to shout about. And maybe, just maybe, things that movie-goers will be interested in. One of those snippets may have been about the remake of one of Alfred Hitchcock's classics. Director Gus Van Sant, who was behind the camera for films including Good Will Hunting, Drugstore Cowboy, and To Die For is planning to remake Psycho. Shot-by-shot. So the big question was, who will get the part as the man who made Norman a bad name? The makers have chosen Vince Vaughn to star as the knife-swinging motel owner. Vaughn previously starred in Doug Liman's Swingers. And his showering guest, Janet Leigh? That part will be played by Anne Heche, the lady who is probably more famous for being the real-life lesbian lover of Ellen Degeneres who stars in TV's Ellen, than her various parts in movies which include Wag The Dog.

And you can never be too young to become a casting couch tale. A new family movie is gearing up to shoot with the little boy who made a big impression in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire. Jonathan Lipnicki will star in a feature adaption of The Little Vampire based on the classic series of German children's books by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg. Uli Edel will direct the movie which details the story of an American boy who moves with his family to Scotland where he makes friends with a vampire.

One of the casts that caused a gasp includes Oscar nominee Judi Dench and Lily Tomlin who have joined Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, and Cher in the cast of Franco Zeffirelli's Tea With Mussolini.

But finally, in this week of outcry over Japan, state visits, and the treatment of the allies during the war, there is one movie which got made despite everything. And it's not Godzilla.

The Japanese movie depicts the country's wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, as a patriot, family man, and the victim of Allied scapegoating during the postwar Tokyo Trial - the Japanese equivalent of Nuremberg. Made at a cost of Y1.5bn ($11.1m), Price - the Fateful Moment is stirring up controversy both at home and abroad. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed shock and indignation that ''some people in Japan produced such a movie to whitewash aggression''.

No word yet on the sequel, but the fact that Tojo was hanged for crimes against humanity may narrow the scope.