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Catherine Shoard reviews Behind the Candelabra by Steven Soderbergh at the 2013 Canes film festivalCatherine ShoardElliot SmithHenry Barnes

Co-owner of Peppa Pig and distributor of Twilight franchise also announced 25% increase in revenues to £629.1mPeppa Pig co-owner Entertainment One enjoyed a huge 25% surge in underlying profit growth in 2012 to £53.8m, thanks in part to the success of the Twilight vampire franchise it distributes – but suffered almost £27m in charges relating to factors including potential payouts for top executives, and HMV and Blockbuster going into administration.Entertainment One results for the year to 31 March were buoyed by the acquisition of Alliance Films last September, which has rights to films including The King's Speech, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Lord of the Rings trilogies. Entertainment One, which said it grew profits by about 6%, similarly reported revenues soaring by 25% year on year to £629.1m.Unadjusted pre-tax profits slumped by 76% from £23.1m to £5.5m year on year.The company, which said on Tuesday that it is to seek a premium listing that will admit it to the FTSE250 market, said the slump is due to a previously announced one-off charge of £26.8m.The bulk of the charge, £19.7m, relates to acquisition and restructuring costs of Alliance Films. These include £5.5m in staff redundancies.The remainder of the charge includes £5.2m set aside for the potential payment to top executives for the "outperformance of the incentive plan". The company said the Alliance acquisition and expected share price boost from moving to the FTSE250 would "more likely than not" lead to a performance-based payout of £5m to executive directors.Entertainment One also took a £1.7m charge relating to the business woes of HMV and Blockbuster."The businesses have been restructured with a significant number of store closures," the company said. "Due to this reduction in shelf-space, the group has reduced its projected ultimate DVD and Blu-ray revenue across a number of titles".Revenues at the film division surged 25% to £518m, with the biggest release of the year the fifth Twilight Saga film, as underlying profits rose by the same factor to £49.3m.Entertainment One's TV division grew revenues by 15% to £133.4m, underlying profits rose 3% to £18m.The family operation, which includes Peppa Pig's rapid international expansion, did not split out figures but saw revenue rise 7% year on year.• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@guardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.Media businessTelevision industryFilm industryTwilightMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Paul Wright tells Henry Barnes about his first feature, For Those In Peril, which is competing in the Directors' Fortnight of this year's Cannes film festivalHenry BarnesElliot Smith

Back at the Hotel du Cap for an audience with Liberace, then home to Cannes for Eurotrash excess from Paulo Sorrentino … and Euro-tensions courtesy of the cabbieThe route from the Hotel du Cap back to Cannes leads from the clifftops past stone-walled mansions and then, via a series of bumpy twists and turns, down into the throng. En-route we drive along quiet, faded promenades, still idling in the 1950s, and past dazzling swatches of sea; the wave-caps all illuminated.There are four people in the car into Cannes: the driver, an American journalist, an HBO producer and me. We are returning from an audience with the makers of Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh's terrific, bracing biopic of Liberace. But we are in danger of ignoring the splendours at the window."Will you look at us?" the American journalist exclaims. "We've got this view but what are we doing? You're writing notes, she's on the phone and I'm checking my email. We ought to be shot."The driver chuckles. Along the way, we have all grown very fond of the driver. The driver has lived here his entire life and sees no reason to live anywhere else. The driver has his head screwed on. He is a child of paradise and recognises his good fortune. "I live here and I die here," the driver informs us.Another twist, another turn and we are back in Cannes. The traffic slows and the crowds are everywhere. Up ahead, a stern, black-bearded old gentleman is posing with a pair of leggy blondes who may conceivably be his granddaughters. Photographers are taking pictures."Look at this," the driver says, gesturing.We do. We are. It is quite the gaudy circus."The government does nothing," the driver grumbles. "And I will tell you this. In 20 years France will be a Muslim country."A hush descends upon the cab into Cannes. Awkward liberal squirming plays out on the back-seat. There we were, condescendingly casting the cabbie as Mediterranean nature boy, a vessel of sweet, soulful wisdom, when what he really wants is to close all the borders and raise up the far-right. At the Croisette hotel, we break from the car and scatter for the circus. All at once it seems both safer and more beautiful than the tranquil seafronts just outside of town.Did I say that Inside Llewyn Davis was my favourite film in Cannes competition? It now now has a serious rival in La Grande Bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino's inky-black satire on la dolce vita and the withering flesh. Toni Sevillo headlines as Jep Gambardella, the self-styled "king of the high life" whose endless revels are watched over by a huge neon Martini sign - a kind of Roman twist on the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg. Sorrentino's woozy, drunken conga-lines find room for a child splatter-painter ("she makes millions"), a mystical giraffe and a mummified old saint who can name all the birds. The saint sleeps in a cupboard and eats nothing but plant root. On her next birthday she turns 104.La Grande Bellazza is opulent, intoxicating; a film that is not so much projected as draped like velvet - or possibly hung like a mirror. The delegates come in from the circus and stare at a vast reflected image of brittle starlets, jaded journalists and fading high-rollers. They stare into the screen, purely transfixed. Many, I'm certain, are hunting their own face amid the great surge of bodies.Cannes 2013Cannes film festivalXan Brooksguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Steven Soderbergh's biopic of the pianist is a bizarre anti-Pinocchio parable in which toxic love transforms a handsome young man a deeply unhappy latex dollAfter Side Effects, supposedly his final work for the cinema, Steven Soderbergh has now apparently performed his post-swansong. Behind the Candelabra was commissioned for HBO television but is shown here in the Cannes festival competition as a standalone feature-length drama: a bizarre anti-Pinocchio parable in which the power of loneliness and toxic love transform a handsome young man into a deeply unhappy, plump-nosed, cleft-chinned latex doll. It's the true-life story of the flamboyant pianist Liberace and his young companion and chauffeur Scott Thorson, taking us from the couple's ecstatic first meeting backstage in Las Vegas in 1976 to Liberace's death from an Aids-related illness in 1987.The film is mesmeric, riskily incorrect, outrageously watchable and simply outrageous. Unlike ITV's Vicious, which stars two famously gay actors, Behind the Candelabra does not offer any extra-textual liberal assurances in its casting. Michael Douglas is very funny as the great man himself, a primped and toupéed peacock of the ivories whose undoubted technical genius at the keyboard means he does not need to rehearse, and whose excess energy and artistry is channelled into chasing after young men. Matt Damon is Scott, the pert animal trainer and would-be veterinarian who wins Liberace's heart by artlessly offering to treat his blind poodle, Babyboy. Dan Aykroyd plays Liberace's glowering manager, Heller, and the recipient of his antisemitic wisecracks. ("No you can't come for dinner, we're having pork!") And Debbie Reynolds plays the only woman in Liberace's life, his elderly mother, Frances.Scott is first taken by a boyfriend to see Liberace at his Las Vegas show, and Soderbergh shows how he is transported by the showmanship and weirdly infected by the congregation-worship of well-to-do and largely female retirees. "They have no idea he's gay!" whispers Scott's friend. Scott had been listening to Donna Summer in the previous scene at a disco, and there is evidently no unbridgeable gap between Summer's music and that of Liberace. Introduced in his dressing room, Scott's instant rapport with Liberace is greeted with icy disdain by the young male courtiers whose star is now on the wane: those pursed-lipped, eye-rolling proteges and houseboys who now see that they are about to be discarded. Michael Douglas's Liberace has a kind of monstrous, grotesque charm and radioactive star-quality which helps him to remain in a state of denial about the bad feeling his caprices cause; he needs an army of enablers to help him forget about the hearts he is breaking.Soon he and Scott are inseparable, and instantly embark on a horrendous career of emotional codependency, indulging a joint addictive passion for alcohol, drugs, fan love, mutual smothering reassurance – and plastic surgery. After being horrified by his ageing appearance on Johnny Carson ("I look like my father in drag") and disapproving of Scott's weight gain (like "Judy during the Sid Luft 'obese' period") Liberace contacts sinister cosmetic surgeon Dr Jack Startz (Rob Lowe) to transform his own looks and make Scott look like a younger Liberace: a macabre operation intended to turn his lover into the son he never had but which transforms him into a mannikin-figure who has to wear a ridiculous chauffeur's outfit on and off stage.They make occasional forays to see Liberace's elderly querulous mum (Reynolds), a slots enthusiast in whose front parlour Liberace has installed a one-armed bandit. This, however, fails to pay out any actual coins when she hits the notional jackpot during their visit: an embarrassed Liberace has to ask the maid if she has any cash on her – a brutal metaphor for Vegas values.It can't end well. And it doesn't. But there are a number of fascinatingly opaque tonal shifts along the way. Behind the Candelabra starts off super-camp and hyper-kitsch and long after the storm of parting it ends up gently sentimental and celebratory. In between, the movie is eerily and fascinatingly affectless and airless; the couple rarely go outside and socialise with other celebs. We are locked in their bizarre private world, a preposterously furnished palace-cum-prison which is like an anti-gravity capsule in which they float around in their own neuroses and dependencies. Rings — the fat gold bands around almost every finger — form an interesting currency in Liberace's dysfunctional world: he challenges the audience to admit he can play brilliantly despite this chunky jewellery; he loves giving rings to his conquests; they hang on to them as a form of capital — and one disgraced ex-lover is forced to hand his back.The title is interesting too. "Behind" the candelabra? The candelabra conceals nothing, in the literal sense – unlike Liberace's wig. And in the metaphorical sense? Liberace doesn't have secrets from us, the audience. The comic grammar of the movie resides in the sheer obviousness of everything they're getting away with in private. But were the American public, as Scott's friend claimed, really unaware of Liberace's true nature? Or were they more worldly and unworried than we think? Liberace denies being gay to the press, and prides himself on a libel victory against a Fleet Street paper, but we know the operatic truth. Scott challenges him on the issue of being discreet, not hypocritical. But who are the hypocrites anyway? The heterosexuals of showbusiness loved excess and kitsch and bad taste too; they also loved abusive relationships, vanity and cosmetic surgery, and rich older guys loved to be "sugar daddies".As a black comedy, and as a portrait of celebrity loneliness, Behind the Candelabra is very stylish and effective, and Damon and Douglas give supremely entertaining performances.Rating: 4/5Cannes 2013Cannes film festivalFestivalsSteven SoderberghMatt DamonMichael DouglasDramaPeriod and historicalLiberacePeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds