The notoriously extravagant festival toned down the glitz for this year’s crisis-era bash and was lighter than usual in star power, but it still saw celebs like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sashay up the fabled red carpet.

Billed as a battle of auteur titans, it mostly lived up to expectations, with Britain’s Independent on Sunday calling it “a superior vintage” and France’s Journal du Dimanche declaring “the return of great cinema”.

And scandal came in the form of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist”, which provoked fainting, gasps and walk-outs and received an “anti-prize” that the festival director angrily denounced as an attempt at censorship.

Four previous Palme d’Or winners — Tarantino, Campion, Von Trier and Ken Loach — squared up against the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Michael Haneke, Johnnie To and Park Chan-wook for Sunday’s award.

Penelope Cruz — a hot tip for best actress award for her role in Almodovar’s flick — was among the A-list celebrities at the 12-day annual French Riviera bash, who also included Martin Scorsese and Jim Carrey.

As the jury headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert deliberated on which of the 20 films will scoop the Palme at the gala awards ceremony later Sunday, a French prison drama was among critics’ favourites.

Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” about a prison stint for an illiterate French-Arab youth which turns into an education in crime, “instantly takes its place alongside the greats of the crime movie genre,” said The Times.

A win for Audiard would be a triumph for French cinema, a year after high-school drama “The Class” became the first homegrown movie in more than two decades to pick up the Palme.

Critics cited as another possible winner the Austrian director Haneke’s “The White Ribbon”, a chilling black-and-white study of malice in a German village on the eve of World War I.

New Zealander Campion’s “Bright Star” ode to the doomed poet John Keats was also being touted, as was “Broken Embraces” by Almodovar, which recounts a tragic love affair between a young actress and an ageing director.

Loach’s comedy “Looking for Eric” — starring soccer legend Eric Cantona — also impressed critics, while reviewers had high hopes for veteran director Alain Resnais for “Wild Grass” and Italy’s Marco Bellochio’s “Vincere”, a tale on Mussolini’s bastard son.

Tarantino’s march up the red carpet — flanked by Pitt and his wife Jolie — for the world premiere of his long-awaited “Inglourious Basterds” on Wednesday provided the biggest celebrity buzz of the 12-day festival.

But the director of “Pulp Fiction” divided critics with his war story of Jewish-American soldiers on a mission to murder Nazis.

The festival opened on May 13 with Disney-Pixar’s 3D cartoon caper “Up” — screening out of competition — but it quickly delivered movies not at all suitable for kids.

Blood and guts were aplenty in Tarantino’s work, while Von Trier’s gothic thriller also dished up the gore and blood flowed freely in a tale of a Korean vampire priest in Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst”.

French director Gaspar Noe’s “Enter The Void” also sparked a few walk-outs with its explicit sex and a close-up of an aborted foetus.

Palestinian director Elia Suleiman unveiled “The Time that Remains”, a bittersweet farce on his family history and the daily life of Israeli Arabs.

And Ang Lee brought sex and drugs and rock n’ roll to the festival with “Taking Woodstock”. The film on the iconic 1969 music festival was well received but judged a “low-wattage” offer from the Oscar-winning director.

The late Heath Ledger’s unfinished stint in Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” was screened out of competition, while “Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi returned to horror with his new flick “Drag Me To Hell”.

Suspense grips Cannes as movie mega-battle ends

But what gives “Up” such a joyously buoyant lift is the refreshingly nongimmicky way in which the process has been incorporated into the big picture — and what a wonderful big picture it is.

Winsome, touching and arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever, the gorgeously rendered, high-flying adventure is a tidy 90-minute distillation of all the signature touches that came before it.

It’s also the ideal choice to serve as the first animated feature to open the Cannes Film Festival, considering the way it also pays fond homage to cinema’s past, touching upon the works of Chaplin and Hitchcock, not to mention aspects of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Wizard of Oz” and, more recently, “About Schmidt.”

Box-office-wise, the sky’s the limit for “Up,” which Walt Disney Studios releases stateside May 29.

Even with its PG rating (the first non-G-rated Pixar picture since “The Incredibles”), there really is no demographic that won’t respond to its many charms.

The Chaplin-esque influence is certainly felt in the stirring prelude, tracing the formative years of the film’s 78-year-old protagonist, recent widower Carl Fredricksen (terrifically voiced by Ed Asner).

Borrowing “WALL-E’s” poetic economy of dialogue and backed by composer Michael Giacchino’s plaintive score, the nostalgic waltz between Carl and the love of his life, Ellie, effectively lays all the groundwork for the fun stuff to follow.

Deciding it’s better late than never, the retired balloon salesman depletes his inventory and takes to the skies (house included), determined to finally follow the path taken by his childhood hero, discredited world adventurer Charles F. Muntz (Christopher Plummer).

But he soon discovers there’s a stowaway hiding in his South America-bound home in the form of Russell, a persistent 8-year-old scout (scene-stealing young newcomer Jordan Nagai), and the pair prove to be one irresistible odd couple.

Despite the innate sentimentality, director Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.”) and co-director and writer Bob Peterson keep the laughs coming at an agreeably ticklish pace.

Between that Carl/Russell dynamic and Muntz’s pack of hunting dogs equipped with multilingual thought translation collars, “Up” ups the Pixar comedy ante considerably.

Meanwhile, those attending theaters equipped with the Disney Digital 3-D technology will have the added bonus of experiencing a three-dimensional process that is less concerned with the usual “comin’ at ya” razzle-dazzle than it is with creating exquisitely detailed textures and appropriately expansive depths of field.

Pixar raises the animation bar with buoyant Up

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Up is an upcoming computer-animated 3-D film being produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It will be distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and is scheduled for release on May 29, 2009 in North America and October 16, 2009 in the United Kingdom. The film is directed by Monsters, Inc. director Pete Docter and features the voices of Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai and John Ratzenberger. It is the first Pixar film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.

Plot

Carl Fredricksen (Edward Asner) is 78 years old. When Carl was a child, he met and eventually married a girl named Ellie who grew up in a small midwestern town. Ellie always dreamed of exploring the mountains, but she died before she got a chance. Now, when developers threaten to move him into an assisted living home, Carl decides to fulfill his promise to Ellie. To accomplish this, he befriends a chubby eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell. The two opposites match up for thrilling adventures as they encounter wild terrain, unexpected villains, and all the terrifying creatures that wait in the jungle.

Other Information

• Genre : Animation, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family
• Release date(s) :  May 29, 2009 (North America), October 16, 2009 (United Kingdom)
• Country : United States
• Language : English
• Aspect Ratio : 1.85 : 1
• Company : Pixar Animation Studios

Cast and Credits

• Directed by : Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
• Produced by : Jonas Rivera
• Written by : Bob Peterson, Ronnie del Carmen
• Starring : Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, John Ratzenberger, Jordan Nagai
• Music by : Michael Giacchino
• Distributed by : Walt Disney Pictures

Trivia

• The first Pixar film to be made for the Disney Digital 3-D format.

Links

• Official site
• Up at the Internet Movie Database
• Up at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Up at Allmovie
• Up at Box Office Mojo