Australian filmmaker and Palme d’Or winner Jane Campion has been named president of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival competition jury. Campion will lead a group that has the task of handing out the Palme and other top prizes to the approximately 20 competition films. Campion has a deep history with Cannes. She is the only female director to have won the Palme, taking the honor for The Piano in 1993. She appeared at the festival with her perioddrama Bright Star in 2009 and mentored on the Australian coming-of-age drama Sleeping Beauty three years ago. Festival director Thierry Fremaux said in a statement that Campion “is one of those directors who perfectly embody the idea that you can make films as an artist and yet still appeal to a worldwide public.” Her most recent work was Top of the Lake, a mystery-drama TV miniseries that played the Sundance Film Festival and other movie confabs last year and became a critical darling. The Cannes festival, considered the most prestigious in the world, is ground zero for the world’s most influential cinema. The Palme winners in 2011 and 2012, The Tree of Life and Amour, went on to become art-house hits and forces on the awards circuit. The Cannes International Film Festival is to be held May 14-24.

Jerry Seinfeld apparently has teamed up with his Seinfeld co-creator Larry David for a new project. But any more information than that will have to wait. Seinfeld participated in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” Q-and-A session on Monday to promote his new Web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. During the online discussion, he was asked about his friendship with Curb Your Enthusiasm star David. In response to a question about the most mundane thing David and Seinfeld ever obsessed over, he wrote, “We never obsess over anything that isn’t mundane. Most recent was intentional mumbling. We wrote this script for this thing that you will eventually see but I can’t reveal what it is at this time. All I can do is tell you is that it’s big, huge, gigantic. Even bigger than that Amazon package.” The last time Seinfeld and David collaborated on a script was for the hour-long Season 7 Seinfeld episode “The Cadillac,” which aired in 1996. Seinfeld and David first met as stand-up comedians in New York City in the late 1970s. Their collaboration, Seinfeld, was a top-rated hit and lasted on NBC for nine seasons. Seinfeld also made a cameo on Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO, and David has appeared as a guest on Seinfeld’s Web series.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/08/2014