<img title="Image: http://www.myvivvo.com/thumbnail.php?file=art.panda_666282418.jpg&amp;size=article_medium" src="http://www.myvivvo.com/thumbnail.php?file=art.panda_666282418.jpg&amp;size=article_medium" alt="Fur flies at Kung Fu Panda premiere">
										
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								<span>Fur might be a politically incorrect fashion statement on the
 red carpet at the world's most-prestigious film festival. Not when 
you're the star of a movie called "Kung Fu Panda," though.<br><br>DreamWorks
 Animation, whose past Cannes entries include the first two "Shrek" 
flicks and "Over the Hedge," put its adorable martial-arts hero 
alongside the festival's highbrow cinema entries Thursday with the 
premiere of the action comedy whose voice cast includes Jack Black, 
Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman.<br><br>"Being an official selection 
of the Cannes Film Festival is the Good Housekeeping seal of approval," 
said Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks' animation mastermind. "And it's 
particularly unique when it's a broad commercial movie as opposed to an 
art film. There's tremendous, tremendous value to that."<br><br>DreamWorks
 uses Cannes as a launch-point for its movies, through screenings and 
clever stunts to catch the fancy of hordes of reporters, photographers 
and camera crews.<br><br>Black, who joined "Shark Tale" co-stars Jolie 
and Will Smith for a ride in the Mediterranean aboard an inflatable 
shark at the 2004 festival, this time paraded on a pier among 40 people 
in giant panda suits the day before the movie's Cannes premiere.<br><br>While
 Black hammed it up with some kung fu poses, he wisecracked that the 
incessant camera flashes could go a long way to solving the energy 
crunch.<br><br>"If you harnessed all that electricity, it would probably
 be enough to take a small unmanned ship to the moon and back," Black 
said. "It's got to be 1.21 gigawatts of light flashes. It's just going 
to be sick. Do we really need that many pictures? Where are all those 
photos going?"<br><br>Black provides the voice of Po, a panda in ancient
 China who idolizes his country's martial-arts heroes but is too slow 
and clumsy to emulate their moves, stuck instead toiling in his family's
 noodle shop. A twist of fate lands Po under the tutelage of a revered 
kung fu master (Hoffman), who must train the klutzy panda to battle an 
evil snow leopard (Ian McShane) intent on marauding and vengeance.<br><br>Po's
 allies include a tiger (Jolie), a viper (Lucy Liu) and a monkey (Jackie
 Chan), whose graceful martial-arts skills put the lumbering panda to 
shame.<br><br>"There's a concept which everybody responds to, the idea 
of this sort of soft, cuddly thing having to do this extremely active, 
athletic thing," said John Stevenson, who co-directed "Kung Fu Panda" 
with Mark Osborne.<br><br>"We saw the potential of this being the 
archetypal hero's journey that has been done millions of times, but we 
could actually do the most extreme hero's journey," Osborne said. "Take 
the most unlikely guy and bring him all the way to being a hero."<br><br>As
 cartoon heroes go, Katzenberg thinks Po can go toe-to-toe with the 
animation world's box-office heavyweight, the irritable ogre Shrek.<br><br>"I
 do think that Po the panda is going to give Shrek a run for his money, 
because I think that Po in a very different way is without question the 
most lovable character we've ever created," Katzenberg said. "Shrek's an
 anti-hero hero. Po is an unlikely hero. He is more in tune with what we
 are ourselves. He actually has to find the hero within, and I think we 
all have a hero within us.<br><br>"So it's just very relatable to find 
this kind of average guy who's working in his dad's noodle restaurant 
suddenly have an ambitious fantasy to be something great, only to learn 
that being the best version of yourself is greatness."<br><br>"Kung Fu Panda" debuts in U.S. theaters June 6.</span>
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