“I got fired.” 

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Those words came from Community creator Dan Harmon, who took to his Tumblr page to outline the facts of his employment status Friday. The explanation follows a round of news reports earlier that evening that confirmed Harmon was being replaced as showrunner of his Sony-produced show by David Guarascio and Moses Port. As part of the move, Harmon was said to be demoted to a consulting producer on the low-rated critical darling.

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But the famously outspoken creator balks at the new title, noting that providing the latter is a “standard protective clause” for someone in his position. “Guys like me can’t actually just be shot and left in a ditch by Skynet, we’re still allowed to have a title on the things we create and ‘help out,’ like, I guess sharpening pencils and stuff,” wrote Harmon, whose voice is so much a part of the quirky show, which recently was renewed for a fourth season.

Days earlier, NBC entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt suggested that Harmon’s status on the series was, indeed, in flux. “I expect Dan’s voice to be a part of this show somehow; I’m just not sure if that means him running it day-to-day or consulting on it,” Greenblatt said during a conference call with reporters May 13. He declined to elaborate, though rumors of Harmon’s erratic behavior are long-running and well known.

VIDEOS: PaleyFest 2012: ‘Community’ Red Carpet Interviews

In his entry, entitled Hey, Did I Miss Anything?, Harmon insisted the network executive’s statement was a misquote. “I think he meant to say he’s sure cookies are yummy, because he’s never called me once in the entire duration of his employment at NBC. He didn’t call me to say he was starting to work there, he didn’t call me to say I was no longer working there, and he definitely didn’t call to ask if I was going to be involved,” he wrote. “I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to have bigger fish to fry, I’m just saying, NBC is not a credible source of All News Dan Harmon.”

STORY: ‘Community’ Taps David Guarascio and Moses Port as New Showrunners

To hear him tell it, the executives at Sony did not inform him of the shakeup either. “They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business,” added Harmon, who garnered a great deal of media attention earlier this year when he leaked an unflattering voicemail from series star Chevy Chase. “Community is their property, I only own 10 percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.” The studio declined comment; the network did not immediately return request for comment.

Email: Lacey.Rose@THR.com; Twitter: @LaceyVRose

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About 200 Christian young people marched in Manila for a second straight day, holding placards urging the singer to “respect our faith, stop the blasphemy.”

The Biblemode Youth Philippines members plan to hold a vigil starting Sunday near the concert venue. They said they are offended by Lady Gaga’s music, particularly her song “Judas,” which they said mocks Jesus Christ.

But throngs of shrieking, camera-toting fans mobbed her, seeking her autograph as she walked into her hotel surrounded by bodyguards. She arrived in Manila late Saturday on a private jet.

Authorities in the conservative, majority Roman Catholic country approved the concerts, set for Monday and Tuesday, but said they won’t allow nudity or lewd acts.

Sold-out crowds and angry protests have followed Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” Asian tour.

Fans younger than 18 were banned from concerts in South Korea over complaints her lyrics and costumes were too provocative, and she was denied a concert permit in Indonesia by police under pressure from Islamic hard-liners.

Riot police stopped Saturday’s marchers about a kilometer (half a mile) away from the concert venue. Phalanxes of security guards stood on alert in front of the arena.

“She declared a distorted view toward Jesus Christ and for us Biblical Christians it is offensive,” said Ruben Abante, a protest leader. “Her music and everything about her is different from what our values are.”

Organizers from Ovation Productions said they respect the beliefs of critics but promised that the performances “will not pose a threat to their sense of morality and conduct.”

Under Philippine law, people who offend race or religion can be sentenced to up to six years in prison, although no one has been convicted recently.

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Lo and behold, the rarest of all things: movies about women that didn’t have anything to do with the men they were sleeping with or marrying. All but one of the films I’ve seen so far in competition have had strong female storylines, and the one that hasn’t still had many well-drawn female supporting players.

Also read: Cannes 2012′s Female Troubles: Directors, Jurors Weigh In

Watching these films so far, one gets a much more refreshing look at women’s place in the world. Wow — there are writers and directors who do consider women to be actual thinking people with motivations beyond getting married.

One has little choice but tip one’s hat to this fest in that regard — women are represented here more than at any film festival I’ve ever attended. Yes, it would be nice if one of the films had been directed by a woman, but if it had, would anyone have taken it as seriously? The Oscar contenders last year were about the male ego, once again repairing itself from a damaged state so that the man can go back to saving the world.

The two films I saw at Cannes on Friday are about female characters. Remarkably, neither film depends on a man to complete things. Male characters are in the film, but their roles are less important to the overall story than the females. 

The first, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” is a revelation. Not since Tatum O’Neil followed around after father Ryan in “Paper Moon” has a girl actor exploded off the screen like Quvenzhané Wallis (photo above), the bold and formidable heroine of this inexplicably brilliant film. I am not sure how its co-writer and director Benh Zeitlin delivered this piece of work, but to me, it is right up there with the best feature debuts by the best filmmakers — we’re talking Orson Welles, Steven Soderbergh, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee. 

Here is a brand new voice, a visionary who is not afraid of the obscure, who dares to carve a wholly new way of telling a story. He uses symbolism and poetry but it’s brazen and unclean, not politically correct but the raw and whole truth.

Also read: ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ Rips Through Sundance

I’ll make the assumption now that you won’t see a better female performance all year than the one Wallis brings. (Yeah, Oscar is a long shot.) Tatum O’Neil was wrapped up in the star system already and “Paper Moon” was a fairly conventional film. “Beasts,” which is competing in Un Certain Regard, is anything but conventional.

Mostly I liked the idea that the story turned on the inner life of its heroine — a girl, imagine that. After the movie ended, I couldn’t really catch my breath. I had to wait through the credits in hopes that I eventually could. When the credits finished rolling, the crowd applauded once again, loudly, enthusiastically, with shouts throughout the theater. It didn’t get a standing ovation, but it came mighty close.

The second film again turned on its female characters’ storylines. “Beyond the Hills” (“Dupa Dealuri”) is the second feature by Cristian Mungiu, who rose to prominence with the much lauded “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” Like that film, “Beyond the Hills” feels destined for controversy. 

For the last two years in Cannes, there have been several pro-religion, pro-god movies that are, frankly, a chore to sit through if you aren’t a believer. But Mungiu’s film is anything but.

The story centers on a passionate friendship between two teenage girls, Alina (Cristina Flutur) and Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), which becomes strained when Voichita turns to the church. She becomes a nun and takes God into her heart as her one and only love. Alina has a problem with this, and wants things to be the way they once were. (Sex between them is alluded to but never directly confirmed.) Once Alina figures out that Voichita is never going to leave the church, her behavior becomes more and more violent. Finally, the father of the church decides to perform an exorcism on her to get rid of Satan’s grasp.

Unfortunately, by the time we finally get to the exorcism, the film has gone on at least an hour too long. Had they shaved off some of the beginning, we might be more inclined to get wrapped up in this story. If you are a non-believer, however, you will find it satisfying that the film has decided to take on faith versus science.

“Beyond the Hills” was the first film I saw at Cannes to receive boos – and yes, perhaps the audience was expecting something better. But the selection committee did right by choosing this complicated story for the Cannes competition.

These two extraordinary films had more to say from the mouths of their female characters than all of the films I saw last year. The people making the important decisions here really do consider more important elements than marketability. When you are here, the possibilities are endless; Cannes is the best place for dreams to thrive. Even women’s dreams.

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That’s well below the anticipated $35 million to $40 million that Universal and director Peter Berg were hoping for. Battleship, which earned a solid B CinemaScore, could come in higher if kids and parents start showing up on Saturday. The tentpole cost at least $209 million to produce, excluding a pricey marketing spend.

Battleship’s international gross of roughly $220 million provides some cushion, but the tentpole starring Taylor Kitsch, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson needed a strong domestic performance to end up in the black. A $26 million opening means it might not clear $70 million over the long haul domestically, resulting in what could be a notable loss for Universal.

PHOTOS: 28 of Summer’s Most Anticipated Movies: ‘Avengers,’ ‘Dark Knight,’ ‘Prometheus’

There’s already speculation that Battleship will follow the same course as Disney’s John Carter, which debuted to $30.2 million in March and topped out at $71.8 million domestically. Overseas, John Carter, also starring Kitsch, earned $200.6 million. The pic resulted in a $200 million los for Disney.

The continuing strength of Disney and Marvel Studios’ The Avengers is no doubt making life difficult for Battleship and other new product (Warner Bros.’ Dark Shadows is another underperformer) but box-office observers say Battleship faces its own obstacles as well.

The alien-invasion actioner — based the classic board game not well known by younger generations — played notably older Friday, with 66 percent of the audience over the age of 25. Males made up 57 percent of those buying tickets, according to CinemaScore exit-polling data.

Avengers continues to be a box-office monster globally, growing its global gross to $1.1 billion through Friday — the No. 6 movie of all time. It will easily stay at No. 1 this weekend, with an expected domestic gross of $52 million or more after earning $15.3 million on Friday.

PHOTOS: ‘Battleship’ Premiere Red Carpet Arrivals

The weekend’s other new offerings at the domestic box office are Sacha Baron Cohen’s R-rated comedy The Dictator and Lionsgate’s ensemble comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

While softer than Baron Cohen’s Borat and Bruno, Dictator — which opened Wednesday — pulled ahead of What to Expect on Friday, grossing an estimated $5.7 million for a three-day gross of $16 million and five-day debut of $23.5 million.

Dictator received a C CinemaScore and skewed heavily male (65 percent). The pic, which Paramount says cost $65 million to produce, did play notably younger, with 56 percent under the age of 25.

VIDEO: ‘Battleship’s’ Jesse Plemons Talks Action Films and Board Games

Dictator is doing better business overseas and should earn $30 million by Sunday from its 29 markets.

What to Expect, based on the best-selling self-help book, looked to earn $4 million on Friday for a weak $11.5 million weekend.

As with Battleship, What to Expect — which earned a B- CinemaScore — also played older, with 77 percent over the age of 25. Females made up 67 percent of the audience.

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The Mexican actor stars in “No,” directed by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, which shows how television helped Chile overthrow Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1988.

Bernal plays an advertising guy, drawn into the rival referendum TV campaigns — trying to persuade people to vote “No” to eight more years of Pinochet.

His character uses adverts to sell Chileans the idea of happiness and positive change.

Bernal is also in a good mood.

The Mexican actor and the movie received rapturous applause when it was shown at the film festival’s Directors’ Fortnight Friday.

Bernal says: “I’m really happy. It’s strange, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as confident as I feel now, because I saw the film before coming here and I absolutely loved it.”

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“God’s Horses” by the French director of Moroccan origin Nabil Ayouch follows the destiny of two brothers, Yachine and Hamid, from their childhood up to the day they each pack a bomb on their backs and choose to die for Allah.

“I’ve had enough of hearing that poverty and oppression equals suicide bomber,” Ayouch told AFP on Saturday, after a screening at the festival’s Un Certain Regard new talent section that earned him a standing ovation.

“That’s a short cut you hear a lot, both in the West and the Arab world. But you can’t just take a kid and brainwash him to kill. If that were true, there would be millions of suicide bombers.

“I wanted to understand exactly how some kids — who remain kids until the end — can be made into suicide bombers,” said the 43-year-old.

From the rough-and-tumble of the childhood football pitch, to the thuggery and injustice the brothers face as they try to make a living as young adults, his film depicts two lives at the bottom of the pecking order.

Because of his lowly status, the shy Yachine pines after a local girl who will remain agonisingly out of reach, guarded by her family for a better marriage prospect.

When Hamid — his elder, tougher brother — is jailed for defying a local bigwig, he returns transformed by an encounter with Islamist “brothers”, drawing his sibling and their childhood friends in his wake.

Ninety percent of Ayouch’s cast including its two lead actors are non-professionals, recruited from the vast Casablanca slum of Sidi Moumen where the real-life bombers were enrolled by Islamic extremists.

The film was almost entirely shot in a shantytown a few kilometres from Sidi Moumen, reflecting the deeply limited horizons of its characters, one of whom travels into the city for the first time the day of the attacks.

“Of course poverty is part of the reason. But it’s all the tiny traumas of existence,” Ayouch said. “A mix of social, economic and intellectual poverty, of broken family structures with absent father figures.

“And when a personal destiny comes into contact with a bigger story, with geopolitics, that’s when the extremist recruiters can come into play.”

Soon after the May 2003 suicide attacks, Morocco’s deadliest ever which left 33 dead as well as 12 bombers, Ayouch shot a documentary on the families of the victims and survivors.

“But I later realised I had forgotten some of the victims,” he told AFP. “Twenty-year-old kids who go and blow themselves up are victims as well.”

At first he shows the Salafist militants who move into the slum in the early 2000s offering a road out of the squalor, promising order, honour and discipline to a band of lost kids.

Gradually their message becomes more radical and their demands more insistent, until the brothers and two of their friends find themselves enrolled on a suicide mission.

Tragically, in the case of Yachine, the bombing is clearly a way to assert his battered young manhood, far more than any act of faith or anger.

The film draws its title from a phrase used in the days of the Prophet Mohammed, which has been co-opted by modern-day jihadists, something Ayouch finds “both terrible, and terribly poetic.”

Born to a Jewish French-Tunisian mother and a Muslim Moroccan father, he grew up in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles but spent all his childhood summers in Morocco and drew on personal experiences for the film.

In particular, he included an excruciating scene in which one little boy in the brothers’ gang is raped by an older one — a phenomenon as taboo as it is common according to Ayouch.

“Because they don’t have access to girls of their own age, people’s natural sexual awakening is replaced by rapes among kids — which are extremely widespread,” Ayouch said.

“I saw scenes like that — I was even once caught in a scene like that, and was rescued just in time by a cousin,” he told AFP.

Far from gratuitous, the scene is one of a series that hint at the harmful effect of strict sexual segregation in Islamic societies.

“When you love and you are loved back, it’s a lot harder to go and blow yourself up,” Ayouch said.

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Cristian Mungiu, who stunned the cinema world with his Palme d’Or win for the chilling Communist-era abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, is back in the running with the true story of a deadly “exorcism”.

The hotly awaited picture “Beyond the Hills”, like its much-loved predecessor, looks at two young women bound by an intimate friendship who try to navigate in a hostile world with each other’s support.

But the similarities stop there and Mungiu, 44, begged reviewers from around the world not to compare his new tragedy with “4 Months”, at a press conference after a screening that met with a split chorus of boos and applause.

“It’s best for this film if people will manage to see the film so I hope journalists will manage to appreciate it as an independent film… without comparing it to anything else and especially (not) to my previous film,” he said.

“Beyond the Hills” is based on a horrific 2005 case in which a young woman, Irina Cornici, died after an Orthodox Church session in the remote Tanacu monastery of eastern Romania to rid her of purported demons.

In the film, co-produced by the Belgian two-time Cannes winners the Dardenne brothers, Cornici is renamed Alina and grows up with her best friend Voichita in the notoriously grim orphanages set up by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

The picture charts the diverging paths of the two women as young adults, with Voichita choosing God and becoming a nun while Alina seeks a fresh start in Germany.

But her experience in the West proves traumatic — Mungiu hints at sex trafficking — and Alina returns home to find her friend at the monastery and tries to convince Voichita to leave with her.

Voichita, however, asks her to stay and while at Tanacu, Alina suffers bouts of schizophrenia and violently lashes out at the priest and nuns, who take her to a local hospital for treatment.

The chief doctor quickly releases Alina back into the monastery’s care and a visit to her foster parents turns sour, as she is let down yet again by those meant to help her.

Back at Tanacu, the priest and nuns become convinced that Alina is possessed by the devil and attempt to “save” her by gagging her and binding her to pieces of wood nailed together in the form of a cross.

She is held for several days and forced to fast while the priest orders the reading of prayers used in the Orthodox Church to expel the devil.

Emergency services are called in when she faints after the ceremony and Alina is declared dead a few hours later.

The priest and nuns were jailed in 2007 for manslaughter over Cornici’s death.

Mungiu said that while it was clear that the young woman was a victim, he was most interested in what people did in the name of love and good intentions, and acknowledged that his non-judgemental approach could alienate viewers.

“I don’t want the film to be liked. I hope the film will challenge people to have an opinion and I am very sure that the film is going to be seen very differently here and in Romania,” he said.

Mungiu, the most prominent example of the so-called Romanian new wave in cinema, lamented the state of his country’s film industry, saying his compatriots were being raised on Hollywood schlock and that the love of independent pictures was being “lost”.

“The problems that we’re having are not financial,” he said.

“The problems that we’re having (are) that the cinema which is very much appreciated here for being radical and pure and going for the answers — it’s not popular back home.”

“Beyond the Hills” is competing against 21 other pictures for the top prize at Cannes, to be awarded on May 27.

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“Prohibition still exists today. It still fails epically, with the so-called war on drugs,” Cave, who wrote the script, said after a press screening that saw the work by his fellow Australian get a restrained clap.

“Lawless” features Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf and Guy Pearce with Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain as the love interests in a violent slice of hillbilly moonshine myth-making based on a true story from the 1930s United States when alcohol was banned.

Hillcoat said that he saw many parallels to today “with the economic crisis, the political crisis, the war on drugs”.

He said he made a montage that was due to start the film that showed modern-day Mexican drug cartels, then moved back “through the 80s and the Cubans and cocaine and heroin in New York, and went way back and landed on Prohibition”.

“That was the birth of serious organised crime and it’s been going ever since. So it feeds into all of those things that are going on today,” he said, adding that he later decided not to include the montage.

Cave, a former heroin addict, said later in an interview with AFP that “to me personally, this disastrous war on drugs is an absolutely unbelievable waste of money.

“Seven percent of criminals in jail are on drug-related offences. It just seems to me that prohibition still exists today and it still doesn’t work,” he said.

He said he believed the solution was to “legalise all drugs and let all those people out of prison and I would spend the money in a more judicious way.”

Asked if he meant hard drugs like cocaine and heroin should be made legal, he replied: “The whole lot, yeah.”

“There is a major problem and it’s not being dealt with at all.”

Based on Matt Bondurant’s “The Wettest County in the World”, “Lawless” is one of 22 films in the running for the Palme d’Or top prize at Cannes to be handed out on May 27.

It gets its red carpet Cannes premiere on Saturday evening.

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In response to a mounting row over the all-male selection for the competition at the world’s top cinema showcase, the event’s board said in a statement that it was committed to diversity, but on its own terms.

“The Festival de Cannes — in order to maintain its position and remain true to its beliefs rooted in universal rights — will continue to programme the best films from around the world ‘without distinction as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’,” the board said, quoting from 1948′s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The board members fully endorse the decisions made by Thierry Fremaux, General Delegate for the Festival de Cannes,” it added.

More than a thousand women film-makers and others have signed a US petition in support of French feminists protesting a lack of female directors in the running for the Cannes top prize.

The petition — headlined “Where Are the Women Directors?” — was launched this week by 250 signatories including “Toy Story 3″ producer Darla K. Anderson, director Gillian Armstrong and feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

By Friday, some 1,050 women in the business from as far afield as Australia, Brazil and India had signed the online appeal, which urges Cannes jurors “to commit to transparency and equality in the selection process of these films.”

There are no female film-makers among the 22 competing for the Palme d’Or, the top award at the May 16-27 festival, and just two among the 17 in its new talent section: France’s Catherine Corsini and Sylvie Verheyde.

French feminist group La Barbe (The Beard) wrote a scathing op-ed article in last weekend’s Le Monde newspaper, noting that “all 22 films in the official selection were written, what a happy coincidence, by 22 men.”

Last year’s event featured a record four women in competition, sparking hopes that female directors were making lasting inroads at the event.

British film-maker and Cannes juror Andrea Arnold told reporters on the festival’s opening day Wednesday she would hate to be selected on gender grounds, and stressed that the line-up simply reflected a lack of women directors in general.

And US actress Jessica Chastain, appearing in two films at Cannes this year, told AFP Saturday she found the debate “silly” and said pictures must speak for themselves.

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