M vs Moneypenny

Next year's race for the actress Oscars is already taking tasty shape after Cannes. It should be a battle of the Princesses as we see Cannes juror Nicole Kidman in Grace of Monaco go toe-to-toe with Naomi Watts in a film now, finally and officially, named Diana. But there could be another twist as two Bond girls enter the fray. Dame Judi Dench, who was M in the Bond movies, must be a cert for Philomena, the British road movie written by and co-starring Steve Coogan, for which Harvey Weinstein parted with $6m after seeing just a seven-minute showreel at Cannes, clearly scenting a movie that will swell his Oscar cabinet. But Weinstein has also swooped on Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and is, I hear, preparing the magnificent Naomie Harris for a long Oscar campaign. Harris's excellent Moneypenny came to the fore in Bond hit Skyfall recently but her performance as Winnie Mandela opposite Idris Elba's Nelson in Justin Chadwick's film looks set to catapult her to the front rank of actresses. "I'm getting ready for a lot of work around the film," Harris told me at the Weinstein party on Baoli beach. "Harvey's warned me, I've got a long walk ahead, wearing dresses and smiling a lot. I'm totally up for it."

Broccoli spears Silent Storm

The biggest Bond girl of all, Barbara Broccoli, was also in Cannes. Flush with the success of Skyfall, Barbara is set to produce her first film outside of the Bond franchise, having taken a keen interest in British first-time feature The Silent Storm. Broccoli has produced plenty of theatre, such as last summer's hit Chariots of Fire and current musical Once, but never really ventured away from Bond on the big screen. But she told me the script and forceful personality of writer-director Corinna Villari-McFarlane convinced her. "I was so excited that I read it twice. When I also found behind it a young, gutsy British female film-maker… Well, I'm a big believer there should definitely be more of those." Broccoli, who also hinted at a slew of other varied film projects to follow, is exec-producing The Silent Storm with Marc Samuelson, while Nicky Bentham (who worked on Duncan Jones's Moon) will produce. Damian Lewis has chosen to fill a gap in his Homeland schedule by starring in the 1950s-set film, as an austere Presbyterian minister and community leader on a remote island, opposite a more free-spirited wife, played by Andrea Riseborough. Lewis told me: "I can't wait to work with Andrea at last and get our teeth into these very meaty roles. There's nothing so rewarding for a film actor as the intensity of an intimate shoot like this will be, isolated away in a beautiful part of the world." Filming begins in late June on the Isle of Mull, shot by cinematographer Ed Rutherford, who also lensed Joanna Hogg's atmospheric island drama Archipelago.

Bring me the head of Michael Fassbender

Many ears pricked up when BFI Film Fund boss Ben Roberts held up his prop and claimed: "Michael Fassbender's head has been in here." Supply your own gags. The artefact was, in fact, a mask head fresh from the set of new comedy Frank, directed by Ireland's Lenny Abrahamson, written with Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan, and starring Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Domhnall Gleeson. The film, about a musician's comic experiences as part of an experimental pop band, is loosely based on the life of cult British pop figure Frank Sidebottom. The Frank head had arrived in Cannes in a large plastic box marked: " 1x Fassbender Head" and joined us at the BFI lunch where Roberts signalled his fund's intention to back "certain innovative, brave and distinctive voices in film-making". Lenny Abrahamson is certainly that, and I then had the privilege of breathing in the scent of Fassbender when modelling the mask.

I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours

The IMDb dinner thrown by founder Col Needham was a lively affair. I had been kindly promoted to top table, where I joined Nicolas Winding Refn, Adrien Brody, Stephen Woolley and Liz Karlsen, John Cooper of Sundance and Chaz Ebert in playing Needham's movie games. You might want to play these at home. Moving round the table, in orderly fashion, we recalled the first movie we ever saw in Cannes. Winding Refn said his was Drive, for which he won a surprise best director here in 2011. We had to recall the most memorable viewing experience we'd ever had, and Brody kind of won that round, remembering the 25-minute ovation given to Polanski's The Pianist (for which Brody won an Oscar) when it premiered in 2002. We had to name our favourite film based on a book (Col's was Vertigo, mine The Leopard, NWR's A Clockwork Orange). We had to name the movies that make us cry (easy for me, The Son's Room, someone had Sophie's Choice, Stephen Woolley had Mizoguchi's The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum and I think NWR went for Pelle the Conqueror). Then, the movie classic we're most ashamed to admit we've never seen. Needham, who incidentally knows he's seen more than 8,000 movies, made us promise never to reveal one another's confessions. But I'm happy to reveal that mine was Blade Runner (though it's far from the only one). Having coughed up, at last, we could eat.

Overheard

A high-ranking woman in the British film industry was barred from a black-tie evening screening because her flat shoes weren't, officially, "sexy"… Bryan Ferry played a jazz version of Love is the Drug at the opening night Great Gatsby party, but as I wasn't invited, I don't really know… Pinewood are opening a studio in Atlanta… Alanis Morissette is playing singer Marisa Damia, the lesbian lover of designer Eileen Gray (played by Shannyn Sossamon) in The Price of Desire, about a love triangle with architect Le Corbusier (Vincent Perez) - it will be the first film to shoot in Gray's restored E-1027 Modernist house on the Cote d'Azur… They're still toying with an alternative English title for François Ozon's movie Jeune et Jolie – currently Young and Beautiful, it may change to Just Seventeen, which I think is very good.

Trash Cannes d'Or: my gongs go to…

Best film La Grande Bellezza

Best actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, Blue Is the Warmest Colour

Best actor Toni Servillo, La Grande Bellezza

Best screenplay Asghar Farhadi, The Past

Best director Abdellatif Kechiche, Blue Is the Warmest Colour

Best music Bach's Goldberg variations in Hirokazu Koreeda's Like Father, Like Son

Best ending Omar, by Hany Abu-Assad

Best soundtrack The Bling Ring

Best technical achievement The wallpaper in Only God Forgives

Loveliest on-screen moment The compressor-stealing scene, Nebraska

Loveliest off-screen moment Standing ovation for Clio Barnard and her overwhelmed young actors, Shaun Thomas and Conner Chapman, after The Selfish Giant

Best promotional gift Inside Llewyn Davis vinyl album

Best canapés Spicy crab and guacamole cocktail at Weinstein party

Best lunch Spaghetti vongole on Isle of Man yacht

Best dressed Emma Watson, Baz Luhrmann, Ludivine Sagnier

Best drinks Lashings of 18-year-old Chivas whisky at the Premier party on Chivas beach