Dear Gossips,

Are you seeing Moonrise Kingdom this weekend? As I wrote last week I LOVED it. And I hope you do too. But even if you don’t, I also don’t think you’ll regret it. Let me know.  

I wish that I’d been able to stay for The Paperboy in Cannes. You’ve probably heard that the film is being trashed by critics, with Vulture’s hilariously scathing review leading the way. Not that anyone will admit to this but bad reviews are often more fun to write and therefore more fun to read. Also the people who hope for bad reviews look harder and then are often myopic about it. Or perhaps it’s more fair to say that those who hope for only positive or negative but never both are often myopic about what they find. So that those who hate Nicole Kidman will cheer that The Paperboy is getting sh-t on and those who hate Kristen Stewart will write to me and call me crazy and biased because I seemed like the only one to have praised her performance in On The Road. All it takes is a one second Google search to prove otherwise. Click here dumbasses.

The Paperboy is certainly polarising. Click here for a good collection of opposites. Many did indeed hate it. But many others did not. And just as many have praised Kidman’s performance as her best since To Die For. To be fair though, it’s not only fans who increasingly lack objectivity. We expect the fangirl to be incapable of unbiased opinion. But what about the entertainment journalist? More and more I’m hearing from film critics and festival reporters who’ve modified professional opinion under pressure from editors who in turn are pressured by sales teams and executives to do and write whatever it takes to keep fans happy so that they continue to traffic their sites and download their apps. While queuing for On The Road on Wednesday morning I spoke with an experienced film journalist who’d been coming to Cannes for 12 years. He said to me, “I really, really hope Kristen Stewart is good in this movie because if I have to write something bad about her performance I might get fired when they attack me online.” Not even 10 years ago, the genesis of the gossip blog was that it was the antithesis of the asskissing style of PEOPLE Magazine. But even snarky first-wave bloggers now have to apologise for what was once trademark editorial tone in the face of fan backlash protecting their favourite actors. Otherwise, the fans they threaten boycotts. And suddenly they lose advertisers. And then they pull their access, disinvite them from the junket. Did the internet go from subversive to conformist?

Heads up Vancouver - our first SMUT in VanCity is already almost sold out! Click here and come gossip with Dan Levy and me. Dan just left for New York on Tuesday to start work on Admission with TINA FEY. And I’ve been hoarding up my own stock from Cannes. We are sharing. So will you be there?

Sasha and I are heading to Victoria (after interviewing Cory Monteith and Richard Branson today) to spend time with a few Canadian Olympic athletes. Send us your recommendations!

Have a great weekend!

Yours in gossip,

Lainey