Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Venice Film Festival Kicks Off Today

The Venice Film Festival kicked off today. Last year at the Venice Film Festival Brokeback mountain was screened and won the prestigious Golden Lion before it received it's academy award nominations including best picture.

(Also, other films like The Constant Gardener and Good Night, and Good Luck also screened. David Strathairn took home the festivals award for Best Actor for Good Night, and Good Luck)

This year, some possible critical favorites and award contenders will be shown at this festival which goes from August 30th-September 9th.

This year 21 films are in competition for the Golden Lion are...

Black Dahlia, The (2006) - Brian De Palma
Bobby (2006) - Emilio Estevez
Children of Men (2006) - Alfonso Cuarón
Coeurs (2006) - Alain Resnais
Daratt (2007) - Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Ejforija Russia (2006) - Ivan Vyrypayev
Fallen (2006) - Barbara Albert
Fong juk (2006) - Johnny To
Fountain, The (2006) - Darren Aronofsky
Golden Door, The (2006) - Emanuele Crialese
Hei yanquan (2006) - Ming-liang Tsai
Hollywoodland (2006) - Allen Coulter (I)
Intouchable, L' (2006) - Benoît Jacquot
Mushi-Shi (2006) - Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Nue propriété (2006) - Joachim Lafosse
Paprika (2006) - Satoshi Kon
Queen, The (2006) - Stephen Frears
Quei loro incontri (2006) - Jean-Marie Straub; Danièle Huillet
Sang sattawat (2006) - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Stella che non c'è, La (2006) - Gianni Amelio
Zwartboek (2006) - Paul Verhoeven (I)

I am particularly interested to see how films like The Queen, Hollywoodland, The Fountain, Bobby, and The Black Dahlia are perceived and how these films might play into this award season.

Previous post mentioning films that are screening:
Bobby: The Other Bobby Movie
The Queen: The Days Following the Death of Princess Diana

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8 comments:

Sadie Lou said...

Emilio Estevez? Wow. Maybe he's come a long way?

Anonymous said...

This is a good indication of what we should keep our eyes on for Oscar. I'm having a hard time picking a favourite from the list (considering I have yet to see any of them) but usually there's a bit of buzz around one movie that sort of catches your eye. I haven't really heard much buzz about any of them though the one that catches my attention the most is Aronofsky's "The Fountain".

RC said...

I think it'll be interesting to see if the Fountain ends up being successful, critically or otherwise.

Sadie...all indications show that Bobby is a worthwhile film, you should click on the link to my bobby post, i think you'd find it rather interesting to read more about the film.

K. said...

I love Aronofsky flics!! and I love Bobby Kennedy!! yay! good movies forthcoming. (the summer has been subpar)

is that so wrong? said...

What about David Lynch's forthcoming Inland Empire? Isn't that supposed to be premiering at the Venice Film Festival too? No Golden Lion campaign I guess? Regardless, I can't wait for it.

Anonymous said...

An interesting lineup, as much for what is there as for what is not.

I guess from all of those I'd pull for The Fountain, even though I really don't know what it's going to be like (other than wildly creative).

And to go for a more likely choice, Tsai Ming-Liang's new film (which I honestly didn't know was coming out so soon).

Sher said...

Ever heard of Jesus Camp? I read about it on someone's blog today.

http://www.lokifilms.com/site/JCpress/press_3.html

RC said...

Sheri, I've mentioned Jesus Camp a couple times on this blog...

most notably in this post in April:

Strange Culture: And You Thought "Salute Your Shorts" Was Interesting?