Brad Pitt and George Clooney hit the red carpet on Wednesday with their latest movie Burn After Reading, a satirical comedy by Oscar winners the Coen brothers, which opens this year’s Venice film festival.
The actors lead the list of A-list star power to the 11-day event which features everything from obscure Asian art house cinema to Hollywood heavyweights.
Although there are five US films in the main competition lineup of 21, they all represent lower-budget, “independent” cinema as opposed to the big studios, which are not in Venice this time around.
Festival director Marco Mueller brushed aside concerns that Venice, which faces stiff competition from the Toronto film festival starting next month and the Rome film festival in October, was struggling to secure top titles and talent.
Mueller, who with his team saw around 3,000 films, which were whittled down to 55 in the official selection, said the lighter Hollywood studio presence was partly down to the 14-week writers’ strike that ended in February, and added: “American cinema is very much at the center of the program.”
The US lineup includes Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, starring Anne Hathaway and Debra Winger. The other US films in the main contest are all by lesser-known or first-time directors, including The Burning Plain with Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron and The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke in the lead role.
Italy and Japan loom large over the rest of the 21-film competition, with four and three movies respectively. Two of the Japanese offerings are animation films, including Ponyo on Cliff by the Sea by cult director Hayao Miyazaki.
Hollywood’s Warner Bros, which owns the rights to the Harry Potter movies, is suing an Indian production company whose new film is called Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors, the studio said on Wednesday.
The studio had started proceedings against the makers of Hari Puttar over similarities to the international film and literary phenomenon, said Warner Bros spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln.
The producers of Hari Puttar said they had registered the title more than two years ago and the film bore no resemblance to the Harry Potter franchise.
“All I can say is that the title is not at all similar to Harry Potter and nor is our story line,” said Munish Purii, chief operating officer of the film’s producers, Mirchi Movies.
Hari Puttar, slated to open in cinemas on Sept. 12, is the story of a young boy fighting two criminals who are trying to steal a secret formula devised by the boy’s scientist father.
In China, Warner is planning to release Connected, a remake of the 2004 New Line Cinema thriller Cellular starring Kim Basinger, on Sept. 25. The film is being made in conjunction with Chinese partners. Cellular is about a kidnapped woman who makes a random mobile phone call for help.
Connected changes the setting to Hong Kong and switches the cast to Chinese-speaking actors — Hong Kong’s Louis Koo (古天樂), China’s Liu Ye (劉燁) and Taiwan’s Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛).
While Hollywood has remade Asian movies for years — Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and the horror films The Ring and The Grudge are based on Asian movies — Connected is billed as the first Chinese remake of a Hollywood movie.
Hong Kong’s Benny Chan (陳木勝), who directed New Police Story (新警察故事) and Rob-B-Hood (寶貝計劃), says Connected improves on Cellular by injecting Hong Kong-style action sequences.
“In my movie, I added many elements that Hong Kong action movies do best — human combat, action, flying cars,’’ Chan said.
Chan added that he had no problems doing a remake.
“What the world lacks most is good stories. If there’s a story that investors think will work in the market and that I like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with remaking it,’’ Chan said.
Twelve movie extras are seeking US$11 million in damages from Tom Cruise and his production company after suffering broken bones, cuts and bruises in the filming of World War II picture Valkyrie in Berlin last year.
The extras were injured on Aug. 19, 2007, when the side panel of a period German army truck burst open as it drove around a corner in central Berlin.
A lawyer for the extras said on Tuesday that witness statements indicated the truck’s side panel had not been properly secured. Cruise was not on the set at the time.
Valkyrie is named after the codename for a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler concocted by senior German military officers during World War II. Cruise plays ringleader Claus von Stauffenberg.
The film’s original release date has been postponed to Dec. 26 from July 4 this year.
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