It seems further, as we’re still shaking off the fatigue of the 2012 awards season, but the Cannes Film Festival is less than two months away. Slowly, this year’s edition of the world’s most prestigious film fest is starting to take shape: we have Steven Spielberg installed as the Competition jury president, and we know that Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” will kick off proceedings on the Croisette — though not before it opens Stateside.

The full festival lineup usual only drops around mid-April: look out for my Top 10 gallery on Monday of the film’s we’re most eagerly hoping will be there. In the meantime, however, the festival unveiled this year’s official festival poster — and it’s the most gorgeous one in many a year.

The 2010 poster, featuring Juliette Binoche, raised some grumbles when Binoche went on to win Best Actress at the very same fest — not that the actress’s superb performance in “Certfied Copy” needed any such circumstantial assistance to win over Tim Burton’s jury. Coincidentally or otherwise, however, Cannes has chosen vintage stars as their poster mascots ever since. A young Faye Dunaway graced the 2011 design, while last year, Marilyn Monroe was shown blowing out the candles on the festival’s 65th birthday cake.

They’re continuing that tradition with this year’s poster, which is based on a 50 year-old shot of the late, great Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward in an intimate pose. The original still, from Melville Shavelson’s largely forgotten 1963 romance “A New Kind of Love,” has been remastered and incorporated into a sleek 21st-century design. I want one.

Woodward and Newman, who won Oscars in 1958 and 1987 respectively, both have a history with Cannes. Newman, who passed away five years ago, won Best Actor at the festival in 1958 for “The Long Hot Summer,” and two of his directorial efforts competed for the Palme d’Or: “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” (love that title) in 1972, and “The Glass Menagerie” in 1987. Meanwhile, Woodward, who recently celebrated her 83rd birthday, won Best Actress for the former film.  

Check out the poster below, with an accompanying animated video underneath. What do you think?