Venice Film Festival

The 65th Venice International Film Festival released it's full line up yesterday evening. You can visit their website for the full line-up here. Or gaze at the generic picture of the city to our right.

The Venice film festival is becoming quite important for Oscar watchers, at least in the acting categories. Each year for the past 6 either the best actor or actress from Venice has scored an Oscar nomination, although only Helen Mirren as the Queen hs managed to hold that buzz through to the main prize.

This year isn't quite as star filled as most years, and there are no British films in competition (boo!), but there are still some performances that may be worth looking out for.

The Wrestler

The new Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) film was due in 2009 but I guess he's already finished it. It stars Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei both of whom got some recent buzz that didn't quite result in an oscar nod (Sin City and Before the Devil knows you're Dead respectively). Maybe some love for this will help them. Personally I'm not sure about this one - after all how exciting can wrestling be?


The Burning Plain

Director Guillermo Arriega is probably better known for his writing (Amores Perros, Babel) but he's rustled up a fine mother daughter relationship drama with Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron.

The Hurt Locker

Another Iraq film - with Ralph Fienes playing "Mercenary Team leader". IMDB is so informative.

Rachel Getting Married

Jonathan Demme is hoping for a return to form with this black comedy. Remember he used to be good at these, see Married to the Mob and Melvin and Howard if you don't believe me. He's brought the stunning Anne Hathaway along for the ride.

Inju, La Bete dans l'Ombre

Or Inju, The Beast of the Shadows. This does not appear to be a horror movie. A title like that for a non-horror shows so much chutzpah how can we not want to see it.

Burn after Reading

Opening the festival, but out of competition this Coen production. I may have mentioned that I'm looking forward to it before. In fact now the Dark Knight's out of the way it's the film I'm most looking forward to in the remainder of 2008.

Here's Brad looking a bit confused:



So, what do you think? Will Venice hit on another good performance or has it's run ended? Will one of the above get a mention - or maybe something I haven't noticed? Is Brad more attractive when doing a hurt puppy impression? Feel free to comment.