Venice turns into `premiere' film fest
By Stephen Schaefer
Sunday, August 28, 2005
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/artsNews/view.bg?articleid=99914&format=text
Hollywood has embraced the 62nd Venice Film Festival
with no fewer than 11 world premieres set to screen on
the Lido, the city's island beach resort across the
water from St. Mark's Square.
With several of the films not set to open
stateside until year's end, this represents a major
coup and a bit of daring on the part of the
filmmakers. A bad reception at Venice could sour any
Oscar campaign.
Chief among the premieres is ``Casanova,'' filmed
in this fabled city, with Heath Ledger and Sienna
Miller. George Clooney's sophomore directorial effort
is the red scare drama ``Good Night, and Good Luck,''
which dramatizes TV journalist Edward R. Murrow's
decision to take on the infamous red-baiting Sen. Joe
McCarthy.
Ang Lee's gay cowboy romance ``Brokeback
Mountain'' teams Ledger with Jake Gyllenhaal as
closeted lovers in a repressed '60s America. Cameron
Crowe's eagerly anticipated ``Elizabethtown,'' with
Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, unspools, as does
``Everything Is Illuminated,'' adapted from the
bestseller with Elijah Wood.
Roman Polanski's new ``Oliver Twist'' is here, as
is Tim Burton's ``Corpse Bride'' and the Gwyneth
Paltrow-Anthony Hopkins film version of the Pulitzer
Prize-winning stage hit ``Proof.''
Susan Sarandon makes a Venice appearance with the
offbeat musical ``Romance and Cigarettes,'' which
co-stars Kate Winslet. Tim Robbins is expected to show
with his offbeat, Spanish-filmed, English-language
``The Secret Life of Words.''
More offbeat is the horror entry ``The Exorcism
of Emily Rose'' with Laura Linney; Steven Soderbergh's
``Bubble,'' a digitally shot murder mystery; David
Mamet's dark play ``Edmond,'' now filmed for the
screen by Stuart Gordon and starring William H. Macy;
and that ageless provacateur Abel Ferrara's Mary
Magdalene movie - that has nothing to do with ``The Da
Vinci Code'' - called ``Mary'' and starring Juliette
Binoche and Heather Graham.

The celebrated American visual artist Matthew
Barney will premiere ``Drawing Restraint 9,'' which
stars his lover, Bjork.

Venice, the world's oldest and still among the
most prestigious film festivals, makes history as the
first major European festival to both open and close
with movies set in mainland China.

Venice opens Wednesday with ``Seven Swords,'' the
first in a projected ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon''-style martial arts trilogy from Hong Kong
filmmaker Tsui Hark. The closer on Sept. 10 is
Thai-born Peter Chan's ``Perhaps Love,'' a romantic
triangle set during the making of a Chinese musical.

The Asian focus here is due to festival director
Marco Muller, who, though Italian, speaks fluent
Mandarin. This year, Venice honors Japan's
Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki with a lifetime
Golden Lion.

Among the American entries that already have
opened Stateside are ``The Brothers Grimm'' with
Ledger (in his third festival film) and Matt Damon,
``Four Brothers'' with Mark Wahlberg, ``The Constant
Gardener'' with Ralph Fiennes, and ``Cinderella Man,''
which promises to be an event simply because the
notorious phone-throwing Russell Crowe is expected.

There are also entries from France, including
Isabelle Huppert's costume epic ``Gabrielle,'' as well
as from Italy, Portugal, Poland and Russia.
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