May 30, 1980: Charles Champlin takes an overview of the downbeat films at the Cannes Festival, which included “All That Jazz” and “Kagemusha.” “This year, there was hardly a title among the 22 in competition that could accurately have been called escapist or ‘sheer entertainment.’ Then again, the kind of individually shaped and excellent film that Cannes and its chief selector, the former critic Gilles Jacob, now seek is in this day simply more likely to be a bitter pill than a chocolate eclair," Champlin says.

On the jump, Richard West writes about an alleged Scientology plot to smear a deputy attorney general. The plot was fairly elaborate, but unfortunately, The Times never followed up on the story as far as I can tell.  A Scientology spokesman “said the plot constituted nothing more than ‘unauthorized pranks of which we have no evidence were ever carried out.’ ”