Names and faces

LITTLE ROCK — Britney Spears

has been on the job just a few days, butshe’s already proving to be a popular judge on The X Factor. The pop star is also growing into her role as critic on the Foxsinging-contest show. The X Factor staged its first auditions for the coming season Thursday and Friday in Austin, Texas, and the Grammywinning singer was greeted by boisterous cheers and “I love you Britney!” calls from the crowd. She also showed she’s not afraid to vote against contestants or disagree occasionally with show creator Simon Cowell and fellow judges Demi Lovato and L.A. Reid. Spears, 30, was added to help boost ratings for The X Factor after its debut season fell short of Cowell’s predictions. The former child performer became an international star with her 1999 debut album, Baby One More Time. She’s had multiple hits, including “Oops!... I Did It Again” and“Toxic,” but her personal life has been difficult, with rehabilitation spells and time in a psychiatric ward.

To have one film competing at the Cannes FilmFestival is a privilege. To have two,

Matthew McConaughey

said, is wonderful good fortune - andthe reward for a spell of hard labor in the trenches of independent cinema. In Lee Daniels’ steamy Southern noir The Paperboy, Mc-Conaughey plays a journalist who returns to his Florida hometown to investigate a murder. In Arkansas-born director Jeff Nichols’ Mud, which screened Saturday as the festival’s final competition entry, he plays a storyspinning fugitive holed up on an island in Mississippi who is befriended by two local boys. McConaughey laughed when asked if having two movies competing for the festival’s Palme d’Or prize gives him divided loyalties. “That would be a high-class problem,” he said. “I’m very honored. I’ve got two films that I’m proud of, two experiences that I really loved, and I’ve got two characters that I really care about.” Mc-Conaughey said the roleswere the result of a decision to “shake things up” in a career that has seen him take leads in a mixed bag of romantic comedies and, as he noted at Cannes, play lots of lawyers, in films from A Time to Kill to The Lincoln Lawyer. “I was looking for some characters that didn’t necessarily pander to convention, or even didn’t pander to plot,” he said. “They’re all kind of characters that live on the fringe, on the outskirts of society. But they’re really human characters.