Cinemoi Festival de Cannes

Cinemoi Festival de Cannes on Roku THIS CHANNEL IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE IN THE ROKU CHANNEL STORE.

RokuGuide Review: Halfway into the 64th Cannes Film Festival, Mediafly has launched the Cinemoi Festival de Cannes channel on Roku. Cinemoi, a U.K. broadcaster of French films, promises daily video updates on their website, but the Roku offerings are pretty sparse. With another week to go (the festival is behing held May 11 through May 22, 2011), more videos may be added, but as of launch day, May 17, far less than an hour's worth of videos are available. Here is what Cannes watchers will find:

There are currently 15 videos, most between 1 and 3 minutes in length. An introductory video for this year's Festival de Cannes promises exclusive and comprehensive coverage of the two-week festival with "exclusive interviews with the biggest actors and directors", "the latest news and gossip", and "the most happening parties". Instead, we get a few looks at the red carpet festivities and a handful of interviews.

The Best of Cannes 2010 is a five-minute look at the 2010 festival, with sound bites from actors, producers, and other movie types interspersed with video clips of stars walking down the red carpet and fans ogling them. There are very similar videos from this year's opening ceremony red carpet, and the red carpet on days 2 and 5.

Only four short interviews are shown:

Ash Rai, an Indian actress who is at Cannes this year to announce her new film project "Heroine", a movie about a fictional Bollywood star.
Woody Allen, whose film "Midnight in Paris" opened this year's festival, and one of the film's stars, Owen Wilson.
Michael Sheen, another star in "Midnight in Paris"
Lea Seydoux, still another star in the above-mentioned Woody Allen film.

There is also a nonsensical video featuring a woman trying to get a view of Johnny Depp, which culminated in Depp in front of the microphone comparing his Jack Sparrow character in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew.

To round it all out, you can watch a promotional video for "Declaration of War", in which trailer clips alternate with the actors explaining the plot and film production, and an interview with Chopard Trophy winner Niels Schneider.

With the exception of the last two videos, the video quality is low. Even though the quality monitor shows HD streaming and you get HD aspect ratio, there is a lot of pixelation, indicating that these videos are probably taken from the feed for Cinemoi's smartphone app.

With all Cinemoi promises in the way of Cannes coverage, the small number of videos coupled with poor video quality will leave film aficionados disappointed and looking for other ways to stay in touch with what is happening at the 64th Festival de Cannes. But with the festival halfway over, they have probably already found other media outlets for Cannes coverage.

--Reviewed on May 17, 2011

Developer's Channel Description: Cinemoi's extensive Cannes Film Festival covereage with exclusive interviews, gossip, red carpet, new and fashion.

DEVELOPER: MEDIAFLY, INC.

FEES: None