The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival is due to open on Wednesday with a screening of Disney/Pixar's Up. And while the usual last-minute preparations were underway at the Festival Palace, with workers laying new carpets, including the red one at the entrance, hundreds of reporters and critics picking up credentials, and hundreds of fans and photographers staking out positions on the sidewalk outside -- many with ladders -- to get a good look at the celebrities when they arrive, many long-time festival goers were bewailing the effect of the worldwide recession on the glamorous event. Many news reports have mentioned that the legendary Vanity Fair party won't be held this year, that many of the yachts docked in the harbor alongside the Palace, which once provided a secure haven for the glitterati during their stay at the festival, are empty, and that studio executives looking at films being screened in and out of competition are keeping a tight grip on their wallets. "You'll find companies being careful," Sony Pictures Classics Co-President Michael Barker told Reuters. "That is not to say deals won't be made, because deals will be made."