Can someone buy us a ticket to Rome? Please? Pleeeeeeaaase? The Venice Film Festival has announced it’s final line-up and shit, who knew Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” was going to be ready so soon?
The film, which evidently isn’t a comedy according to SlashFilm’s script review, sounds much like a Rocky Balboa-esque story (06’s “Rocky Balboa” maybe?) about an aging wrestler (Mickey Rourke) who’s in ill-health, but returns to the world of professional wrestling one last time. The Aronofsky flick is so new the Venice festival director is calling it a “wet print premiere,” as the filmmaker apparently has been racing against the clock to have the film locked in time. Marisa Tomei is also featured in the film as a stripper (those who saw “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” we say: down boy! down!)
There’s not even a release date out there that we know of, but it’s set for the 65 edition of Venice’s movie fete. Another film premiering at the Italian Lido is the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading.”
Apart from some of the previously announced films, Guillermo Arriaga’s”The Burning Plain,” and two other American editions, Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” featuring Anne Hathaway and Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War thriller “The Hurt Locker” starring Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce, Venice is very short on American films this year due to the writer’s strike says Variety (both Demme and Bigelow’s film are at the Toronto International Film Festival just short weeks later).
British films are totally shut-out and the seemingly contrarian festival even eschewed “Gomorrah” and “Il Divo,” two homegrown Italian films that shone earlier this year at Cannes.
Other distinguished in-competition films include films by French auteurs “Inju, the Beast in the Shadows,” by Frenchman Barbet Schroeder and “35 Rhums” by Claire Denis; the Japanese, “Achilles and the Tortoise,” by the inimitable multi-hyphenate Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki’s “Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea”; and four Italian films (““Birdwatchers,” “Perfect Day” “Il seme della discordia,” and “Il Papa di Giovanna” starring Alba Rohrwacher).
Notable out of competition films include Agnes Varda’s autobiographical documentary, “Les Plages d’Agnes” (the french filmmaker is now 80 years old) and a screening of Pier Paolo Pasolini 1963 doc, “La Rabbia.” Venice runs August 27-September 6. The head of the jury is Wim Wenders and jury members include John Landis, Hong-Kong director Johnnie To and more.
We’ve never really said it, but it should be understood. If you happen to be at one of any of these estimable film festivals and see a premiere or a film we and or the rest of the world haven’t seen, feel free to shoot us a review or your thoughts, we’ll totally post it.
