What do Spotlight and Birdman have in common? Apart from being Oscar Best Picture winners starring Michael Keaton that is. They both debuted at the Venice Film Festival, that's what. The 73rd annual Venice Film Festival line-up has been announced, with the potential of another Best Picture winner in its midst. As was previously announced, La La Land is opening the festival, and if you've been watching the trailer on loop like us, it’s hard to get excited about anything else. But let’s take a shot...
Vikander and Weisz star in the weep fest The Light Between Oceans opposite Michael Fassbender - at the helm is proven melodrama master Derek Cianfrance. Natalie Portman is also offering a two-for-one deal, one as Jackie Onassis in what is supposed to be anything but a conventional biopic by Pablo Larrain, and the other in Planetarium by Rebecca Zlotowski, unfortunately one of the few films directed by a woman at the festival.
One, however, is the hotly anticipated follow up to A Girl Walks Home Along At Night by Ana Lily Amirpour, The Bad Batch, curiously starring Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves whose respective face elasticity may be scientifically opposite. She’s not the only one making an English language film debut, Martin Koolhoven is directing a head strong Dakota Fanning in Brimstone, an epic western thriller.
More than a decade since the career catapulting Junebug, Amy Adam’s still continues to be part of some of the most anticipated projects. As Murtada mentioned this morning, she’s double dipping at this year’s festival, starring in both the sci-fi drama Arrival and Tom Ford’s follow up to A Single Man, thriller Nocturnal Animals opposite Jake Gyllenhaal. If Ford can film them as beautifully as he shot Firth and Moore, they may need cool drinks on standby in theaters.
Finally, with the lines of television and films becoming blurrier, and TV no longer considered films poor cousin, it’s not a complete surprise that TV series are beginning to make inroads at prestige festivals. Paolo Sorrentino (Youth, The Great Beauty) has forayed into the small screen with The Young Pope about the first American Pope, played by Jude Law. Who else? Diane Keaton also plays a nun. His films aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but he’s got a knack for giving great roles to actors who’ve been deprived of them for too long.
Full lineup at the Venice website. What are you excited for? Is our next Best Picture winner at Venice again?