Terry Gilliam needs a muse. The 69-year-old director of Twelve Monkeys and Brazil came close to finding one back in 1988, when he cast a then-unknown Uma Thurman in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But she left him for another rebel named Quentin and, according to Gilliam, “she never came back.” Two decades later, Gilliam’s latest film,The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, features another otherworldly acting novice with blue saucers for eyes: supermodel Lily Cole. The 21-year-old Brit plays the title character’s doomed daughter, who aches for a suit-and-tie husband and white picket fence, in a welcome return to surreal form for the director.

To the dismay of everyone within earshot of my desk, my excitement will not be quelled about how totally major this year's Cannes Film Festival is going to be. In addition to new awards-contenders from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Michel Gondry (who didn't make the list, only because I couldn't find much on his latest film, L'epine Dans le Coeur), the sun-soaked Riviera festival will premiere Sam Raimi’s return to death and evil, as well as Jane Campion’s first major release since the Kiwi director tried, disastrously, to make Meg Ryan edgy in 2003’s In the Cut. Penelope Cruz hugs a lot of people in Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, Ang Lee takes Woodstock and Brad Pitt screams, “Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps ... and I want my scalps!” Oh, and the late Heath Ledger might just get another Oscar. After the jump, the festival’s, if not the year’s, most anticipated films (with trailers).