PARIS (AFP) - – "Rocky, Rocky," yelled the crowd, as Sylvester Stallone mimed uppercuts on the red carpet. This was not Hollywood, however, but a Paris suburb more used to riot police than to movie stars.
The same day, another visit took place in the eastern city of Grenoble, where Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux inaugurated a special police unit to secure its run-down housing estates after recent gunfights and riots.
For some, the contrast reveals a failure in the government's approach to minorities in the troubled outskirts of its cities, the "banlieue".
Stallone handed out autographs, while Hortefeux -- the top general in President Nicolas Sarkozy's newly-declared "war on crime" -- delivered non-lethal riot guns and bullet-proof shields to local police.
"It's empowering for people to see Hollywood stars visit these areas that are lashed by the politicians," said Rokhaya Diallo, 32, the leader of an anti-racism association, Les Indivisibles, after Stallone's visit.
"I find it a shame that on the one hand there are people who want to bring a power hose to clean the banlieue, who say the people there are 'scum', and on the other there are people who bring Hollywood stars," Diallo told AFP, quoting incendiary statements Sarkozy made in 2005.
Stallone, the star of "Rocky" and "Rambo", appearing in Rosny-Sous-Bois on the outskirts Paris, was the third all-American action hero to venture into the banlieue this year.
John Travolta attended a Rosny premiere in February, and Samuel L. Jackson, his co-star in "Pulp Fiction", met youngsters in nearby Bondy in April.
Jackson's visit, with an inspirational speech about his upbringing as a black American child in the days of racial segregation, stood out.
He was accompanied by the man who invited him: former Hollywood executive Charles Rivkin, who is now the United States' ambassador to France.
Diallo said she has met Rivkin several times in neighbourhoods such as La Courneuve -- a trouble spot where Sarkozy, interior minister at the time, made headlines in 2005 by vowing to "clean it out with a power hose."
Jackson's visit -- unlike Stallone's or Travolta's -- was an official part of a wide American political networking drive, encompassing art projects, debates and a long-running exchange programme.
Diallo was among 30 local figures taken to tour the United States this year on a US-funded project for budding French leaders in their 30s, a programme whose past participants include Sarkozy himself.
The US activities in France have intensified in recent years as part of efforts to reach out to Muslims since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and in particular since Rivkin's appointment by Obama last year.
Tensions have long run high between French police and locals living in deprived districts where young people and immigrants struggle to find work, notably during an explosion of riots in late 2005.
On that sensitive issue, supporters of the US programmes draw inspiration from America's own racial history.
"The United States have substantial experience in all matters of social integration," said a spokeswoman for the French urban policy ministry.
US diplomats "have understood that in these neighbourhoods we have talented young people -- the young people who are making the France of tomorrow," said the spokeswoman, who asked not to be named.
With critics questioning national leaders' own commitment to the banlieues, she insisted that the embassy's project complemented similar efforts by the French government, including housing, jobs and art projects.
US officials are at pains meanwhile to avoid the sense that they are preaching to France.
"We seek to engage with as wide a spectrum of French society as possible," said Paul Patin, a spokesman for the Paris embassy.
"Other countries can learn from the American experience, just as we in the USA can learn things from the French."
Nordine Nabili, head of a journalism school in Bondy in regular contact with the US embassy, said US initiatives had ruffled the feathers of some French officials, though none have complained publicly.
"For once we're going out of the set framework: the elite schools that reproduce French society," he said. "The French have the feeling the Americans are coming to play in their back yard. It's a bit of a thorn in their side."
The ministry spokeswoman acknowledged that "at first there were questions about what the embassy's aims were, what it wanted to do. But I think now it is considered something that works well."
Five years after the 2005 riots, the tension has not slackened in some areas. The unrest in Grenoble last month drove security still higher up the political agenda.
"We are suffering the consequences of 50 years of insufficiently regulated immigration which has led to a failure of integration," Sarkozy said last month.
He announced a "war on crime" and vowed to strip some foreign-born criminals of French nationality. Critics accused him of a heavy-handed vote-grabbing approach.
"All this talk of security in the banlieues handicaps the French economy," said Nabili. "There is fantastic energy in the banlieues which could help get French society out of a lot of its problems."
Nacim Ben Younes, a student from the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers, said that even Jackson's visit left him with an empty feeling.
"It is easy for us to identify with these personalities," he told AFP. "But neither Samuel Jackson nor Sylvester Stallone can provide the opportunities that young people in the banlieues are so cruelly lacking."
Under Piero Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri, Valentino's ultimate successors, the house has continued to create feminine clothes that look obviously classy and very respectable, though the founder's emphasis on posh has been replaced with an ever so faint perversity.
The statue has been built to act as a shrine for thousands of fans who want to pay tribute to the Beatle in his home city, while officials say it is also designed to be a monument for peace.
How many assemblies when you were at school ended with the entrance of a Hollywood star? How many were anything but a thing to be sat through, crosslegged on an over-waxed floor, punctuated with hymns projected on a magnolia wall? A time, often, to plait the hair of the girl in front or to scratch the scabs off a grazed knee.
The 29-year-old celebrity was stopped by immigration authorities upon her arrival in Japan on Tuesday, one day after her plea, according to an e-mailed statement by Hilton's representative, Dawn Miller.
Luck wasn't on Paris Hilton's side this weekend in Sin City, when Las Vegas police pulled over the car she was in just before midnight and allegedly found a white powder in her purse that, upon testing, proved to be cocaine. The celebutante was then arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine, and booked into the Clark County detention center, according to ABC News. She was soon released on bail.
Julio Iglesias & Miranda Rijnsburger 
Anna Paquin & Stephen Moyer
Hilary Duff & Mike Comrie 
Robbie Williams & Ayda Field 
"Clearly.. Paparazzi shouldn't be allowed to take pictures or video while someone's driving or at a stop light," she Twittered on Thursday. "4every1's sake #trafficpolice."
Roberts will also attend the film fest to promote her latest movie "Eat Pray Love" by US director Ryan Murphy and co-starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem, which is an official entry in the competition.
For those of you hoping to follow at home:
Who ever would have thought that someone as stunning as Megan Fox would be dealing with insecurity on a daily basis? Fox, who seems to make it on to 'Most Sexy' lists every other day, proves that she's more than just a body in the March issue of W magazine.
Fox admits that unlike some red carpet regulars, getting all dolled up isn't her favorite activity. "Being super fashion-forward and always stepping out in the latest whatever is out there, being a constant fashion plate, like a Rihanna or whoeverthat, to me, seems exhausting," says the "Transformers" star.
This time around, the proceeds are going to help Haiti and donations can be made at WeAretheWorldFoundation.org.
Anyway, I put this question both to the box office experts and my readers. You may be surprised to hear that, in part, Butler is taking over tabloid roles previously manned by two other Hollywood hunks...
Police are keeping the details under wraps, due to the ongoing investigation, but the comedian is expected to be arraigned early this afternoon. Dick is in West Virgina for six scheduled performances throughout the weekend at the Funny Bone Comedy Club, and according to a club rep, Saturday night's show will go on.
Johnny - who also owns a private island in the Bahamas - said: "I don't leave the house anymore. If it isn't necessary I don't go anywhere. I stay at home. I'm adamant when it comes to that. I will never get used to it. If you do, you must be insane. I'm thankful for everything, but there's a limit to what a person can endure. I don't know how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can bear that kind of life, because personally it's an issue for me."
He said: "I try and eat right but I don't work out much. I quit smoking so that's something in the right direction. I just don't do anything fun anymore. But that's dying, isn't it? You die in stages. You let things go in pieces. It's more than halfway through, right? Life's experiences, whether they be pleasant, unpleasant, torturous or excruciatingly wonderful and blissful, season you somehow and hopefully you learn from them. Isn't that what it's all about?"