Cannes 2011: Indie's coverage starts here

Or here, to be more precise – our custom-built Cannes Film Festival mini-site, which even has a picture of the seafront as a background (er, depending on the dimensions of your monitor), making you feel as if you're really there. And if you want to crank up the verisimilitude a further couple of notches, then why not drink a £12 pint of lager while you peruse?

Paul: Sea, sand and cinema – two of those things are not really worth bothering with at Cannes (the beaches are narrow and crowded, while any venture into the waters is at the risk of being rolled over by a Russian oligarch's super-yacht or smacked into by a tanned tearaway riding his jet ski like he's playing the English Channel level of Outrun Europa). The movies are, however, worth a look, and once again, Indie Movies Online is sending me and intrepid editor Emma to the Cote d'Azur, in order that we can cast our judgement upon this year's crop.

Accordingly, our Cannes site has been dusted off, given a lick of paint, and is now up and running. And even though the festival proper doesn't begin until Wednesday, there's already some 2011 materials there for you to run the rule over. As well as a film list, there are a selection of trailers, ranging from such official selection big beasts as Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Lars von Trier's Melancholia, to the slightly lesser-heralded likes of Sarkozy biopic/lampoon The Conquest and Takashi Miike's Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, one of the films I'm most looking forward to.

There's also some reading material on there too. For example, if you have a surplus of time on your hands (maybe you were a Lib Dem councillor till some time last night), then check out my five-part Cannes 2011 preview, featuring something on nearly every feature film in each of the main competition, Un Certain Regard, Critics' Week, and Directors' Fortnight, in addition to those playing out of competition (85 movies in total). And, thanks to a popular online demand of inverse proportion to the one clamouring for a photo of Osama Bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse, my Cannes blog has returned, a first 2011 entry for which has already been penned and published.

Of course, this is all mere apéritif ahead of the flurry of reviews (definitely), news (definitely) and interviews (we hope!) that will be flooding the site next week in the manner of Manchester United forwards swarming round a hapless Schalke backline. And to get you in the mood ahead of then, the Cannes official website has just released a clip from one of the surprise entries of this year's official selection, Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, and Emma is on-hand to introduce this snippet from what looks set to be the best gas-brake-honk film of the year not to star Vin Diesel. 

Emma: The filmmakers deliver a masterclass in film promotion with the release of the spare, atmospheric clip from the upcoming film. One of the things we've noted about trailers of late is that, in their effort to promote their movies, distributors seem simultaneously to lose faith in them, giving far too much away. While we know that more clips and trailers for Drive will emerge ahead of its cinematic release, none will be as enigmatically enticing as this. Clickety-click to watch it here.

In Drive, Gosling plays a stunt driver for the movies who moonlights as a wheelman (getaway driver). After a heist goes wrong, his character finds that someone has ordered a hit on him. Presumably, what we're seeing in the clip is the moment in which he fails to carry his car full of thieves to safety. But the cool camerawork, Gosling's steely profile and the heartbeat-like bass line might remind you of Peter Yates' classic 1968 thriller Bullitt; certainly more than it'll bring to mind today's car-centric flicks, which tend to be exemplified by quick cuts, smirky one-liners and the favouring of speed over sense.

Drive is directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, the man behind Bronson and Valhalla. His next project (currently in pre-production) is a remake of Logan's Run which will see him teaming up again with Ryan Gosling who is to play Logan, the man who decides that he's just too young to die in an ornamental fireball. Alex Garland has penned the script, based on the novel by William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson.

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