`Ratatouille' had best picture pedigree
16571
Among the tales of depravity and violence that dominate this year's Academy Awards race sits the bright and shining "Ratatouille." A rat never seemed so sanitized.
183519
French Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie En Rose, wins the most Baftas including best actress for Marion  Cotillard while Atonement gets just two gongs
673981
The films of Pixar are radical in their advanced animation techniques and digital rendering. The studio has topped even itself in the shadowy Paris quays, the bright, bustling kitchens and the humanistic expressions of its furry star in its new "Ratatouille."
532181
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days...and one winner.After 12 days of black-tie screenings, Brangelina and Michael Moore, the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival wrapped by bestowing the coveted Palm d&#39;Or on Romanian director Cristian Mungui&#39;s abortion film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.The naturalistic drama following two students who must contend with an unwanted pregnancy in the waning days of the Ceausescu regime, beat out 21 other films in competition, including Wong Kar-Wai&#39;s Cannes opener My Blueberry Nights, Emir Kustirica&#39;s Promise Me This, Quentin Tarantino&#39;s Death Proof, the Coen brothers No Country for Old Men and Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov&#39;s Alexandra.Mungui, who received the fest&#39;s top prize from Jane Fonda (in town to accept a lifetime achievement award), said he was humbled that his entry, made on a fairly low budget, was singled out amid works from some of the world&#39;s top filmmakers.&#34;It looks a little bit to me like [a] fairytale,&#34; he said during Sunday&#39;s awards ceremony, adding that &#34;you don&#39;t need big budgets and big stars to make stories.&#34;Earning Cannes&#39; runner-up trophy, the Grand Prize, was Japanese director Naomi Kawase&#39;s The Mourning Forest, about the journey of a caregiver and her elderly patient who wind up stranded in the woods after setting out on a drive in the country.Best Director went to Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the harrowing story of a 43-year-old French journalist whose entire body was paralyzed by a massive stroke except his left eye, which he subsequently used to blink out a memoir composed entirely in his head.Cannes&#39; third-place award, the Jury Prize, was a tie between Persepolis, an animated feature by first-time French-Iranian director Marjane Satrapi, and Silent Night by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas. The former is the filmmaker&#39;s autobiographical account of growing up under fundamentalist rule in Iran and features voice work by French acting goddess Catherine Deneuve. The latter explores a father&#39;s faith after he falls for another woman.Russia&#39;s Konstantin Lavronenko as named Best Actor for his role in The Banishment, while South Korean Jeon Do-yeon was named Best Actress for he comedy romance Secret Sunshine.Gus Van Sant, a Palm d&#39;Or winner in 2003 for his high school drama Elephant, was given a special 60th Anniversary Prize for Paranoid Park, about a Portland skateboarder whose life is turned upside down after he accidentally kills a security guard.Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin, who won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival with the hard-hitting love story Head On, scored Best Screenplay Award for his latest, The Edge of Heaven.Walking away with the Camera d&#39;Or, which honors a first-time filmmaker, was the Israeli husband and wife team of Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen for Meduzot. The short film prize went to Watching It Rain by Elisa Miller of Mexico.As for Fonda, Cannes festival head Gilles Jacob paid tribute to her status as a film icon and her anti-war activism by bestowing her with a surprise Palm d&#39;Or for lifetime achievement. Fonda is just the fourth recipient of the honor, following French filmmakers Alain Resnais and G&eacute;rard Oury and French actress Jeanne Moreau.&#34;I never imagined that the Cannes film festival would honor a person who was spied on and tracked by the FBI, a person who has a 20,000-page file,&#34; Jacob said, noting the Georgia Rule star&#39;s stance against the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.&#160; &#34;You are a woman who fights and wins.&#34;In a nod to her famous father, the award was handed out following a screening of Sidney Lumet&#39;s classic courtroom melodrama 12 Angry Men, starring her Oscar-winning dad, Henry Fonda.The 69-year-old Jane Fonda was accompanied by daughter Vanessa, whom she had with French helmer Roger Vadim.&#34;I have the feeling my father is with me tonight. The whole Fonda family thanks you,&#34; she said in French, then commented on the influence the elder Fonda had on her. &#34;He loved progressive films and those films taught me the important things: justice, democracy...I feel inspired by and proud of the heritage he left us.&#34;While last year&#39;s Cannes helped to launch Al Gore&#39;s An Inconvenient Truth, 2007 will likely go down as the year of Sicko, Michael Moore&#39;s latest polemic on the current health-care crisis in the U.S.The firebrand filmmaker debuted Sicko out of competition and the expos&eacute; received a standing ovation from the Croisette crowd. Moore has always been a hit, with 2002&#39;s Bowling for Columbine winning the 55th Anniversary Prize and 2004&#39;s Fahrenheit 9/11 becoming the first doc ever to win the Palm d&#39;Or.As always, the&#160; was thick with A-listers, among them George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle, who used their Ocean&#39;s Thirteen screening and a benefit to put the spotlight to raise more than $8 million (with a $1 million donation from Steven Spielberg) to aid victims of the genocide in Darfur.Pitt also coproduced A Mighty Heart, featuring a star turn by wife Angelina Jolie. The  Michael Winterbottom-helmed film dramatized the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Al Qaeda terrorists and the strength of his widow, Mariane, played by Jolie.This year&#39;s jury was headed by Oscar-nominated British director, Stephen Frears (The Queen), and the jury included Aussie actress Toni Colette, Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, French screen star Michel Piccoli and Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.Get more E! Online Cannes coverage from Reel Girl and check out the hottest pics from the Croisette in our Cannes photo gallery.
374613
Martin Scorsese won the Academy Award for best director on Sunday.
228995
There's strong Oscar buzz for his film, Elizabeth.
422349
This summer, Oswalt plays to both the mainstream audience and his geek niche with the release of Brad Bird's latest Pixar opus, Ratatouille (he voices the lead rodent, Remy), and his own second comedy album, Werewolves and Lollipops.
697353
âLa Vie en Rose,â âPersepolis,â âThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly,â âLa Graine et le Muletâ and âUn Secretâ are the nominees for the CÃ©sars, Franceâs version of the Academy Awards, as best picture. âLa Vie,â about the singer Edith Piaf, led with 11 nominations, including one for Marion Cotillard, above, who plays Piaf, for best actress. The CÃ©sars will be awarded in Paris on Feb. 22.
39379
The rodent cartoon "Ratatouille" raced to the top at the North American box office on Sunday but its weekend haul of $47.2 million was the lowest opening for a Pixar-produced release in nine years, according to estimates issued by distributor Walt Disney Co.
206848
"Ratatouille" was easily  the most popular film at the foreign box office for a third  weekend in a row, with weekend sales of $30.2 million from 31  countries, according to final data issued Monday.
140188
Walt Disney Co.&#39;s animated movie  &quot;Ratatouille&quot; opens on Friday against strong competition from  better-known franchise films, drawing early industry skepticism  that it can match its predecessors&#39; success and posing a  challenge for Disney.
488642
"Ratatouille" may be the first Pixar movie that is so advanced, so sophisticated, it doesn't feel like it was made for kids.
120091
LOS ANGELES  - Oscar beckons: The musical "Dreamgirls" is the odds-on favorite to take home best picture honors. Clint Eastwood is again in the driver's seat as a best director nominee for "Flags of Our Fathers." And everyone is talking about how Jackie Earle Haley scored a comeback with his supporting nomination for "All the King's Men."
448115
Director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio receive France's highest cultural honours.
135393
Rotten Tomatoes, the  online movie site that aggregates critics' reviews, tossed out  its ninth annual Golden Tomato Awards on Monday, hailing  "Ratatouille" as its best-reviewed wide-release movie of 2007.
530428
CANNES, France  - A hard-hitting Romanian movie set toward the end of the Communist era won the Cannes Film Festival's top honor on Sunday.
341712
Roman Polanski was honored with a lifetime achievement award in the country of his childhood at the 19th annual European Film Awards.