Entertainment Desk News :: The Venice Film Festival celebrates its 80th edition next week, but a Hollywood strike means many stars may be missing, leaving the spotlight to controversial directors like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.<\/p>\n
The festival, which kicks off on Wednesday, has become a key launchpad for Oscar campaigns, helped by glamorous shots of stars arriving by gondola.<\/p>\n
But an ongoing strike by Hollywood actors and writers, the biggest industry walk-out in more than 60 years, means most are banned from publicity work.<\/p>\n
Missing from their Venice premieres will be Emma Stone, who plays a Frankenstein-like creature in \u2018Poor Things\u2019, and Bradley Cooper, who directs and stars in \u2018Maestro\u2019 about the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein.<\/p>\n
Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, who play the leads in the biopic \u2018Ferrari\u2019 from director Michael Mann (\u2018Heat\u2019), have an exemption from the Screen Actor\u2019s Guild (SAG-AFTRA) because the film was made outside the studio system, but may still stay home in solidarity.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the films are still showing and many top-name directors are due to attend as they compete for the top prize, the Golden Lion, to be announced on September 9.<\/p>\n
Sofia Coppola presents another biopic, \u2018Priscilla\u2019, about Elvis Presley\u2019s wife, while David Fincher returns to the Lido with \u2018The Killer\u2019, more than 20 years after \u2018Fight Club\u2019 was loudly booed at the festival only to become a cult hit in the following years.<\/p>\n
The only major casualty of the strikes has been \u2018Challengers\u2019, a tennis romance starring Zendaya that was set as the opening night film but has been delayed to next year.<\/p>\n
With star gossip at a minimum, a lot of attention risks being absorbed by the inclusion of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski in the out-of-competition section.<\/p>\n
Allen, 87, was investigated for an alleged assault on his adopted daughter and cleared by police in the 1990s, but that has not been enough for many in the MeToo era, and he has been effectively blackballed by Hollywood.<\/p>\n
Polanski, 90, remains a fugitive from the US over a conviction for raping a minor in the 1970s. The victim has long since forgiven him, but he faces other assault allegations. The festival says he is not attending.<\/p>\n
French director Luc Besson (\u2018The Fifth Element\u2019), who was recently cleared of rape allegations, is in the main competition with \u2018Dogman\u2019.<\/p>\n
Festival director Alberto Barbera defended their inclusion, telling Variety that Besson and Allen had been cleared by investigators: \u2018With them, I don\u2019t see where the issue is.\u2019<\/p>\n
He acknowledged it was more complex with Polanski, but said: \u2018I am on the side of those who say you have to distinguish between the responsibilities of the individual and that of the artist.\u2019<\/p>\n
He says Polanski\u2019s \u2018The Palace\u2019 is full of \u2018grotesque and surreal characters and aims to satirise humanity\u2019, and compared Allen\u2019s \u2018Coup de Chance\u2019, his 50th film and first in French, to his earlier \u2018Match Point\u2019.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, there are also out-of-competition premiers for a 40-minute Wes Anderson film, \u2018The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar\u2019, based on a Roald Dahl tale, and a new feature from indie favourite Richard Linklater, \u2018Hit Man\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial\u2019, the final film from William Friedkin (\u2018The Exorcist\u2019), who died this month at 87, is also playing out of competition.<\/p>\n
Hollywood actors went on strike in July after talks to reach a new deal with studios failed, joining writers who have been striking since May.<\/p>\n
Their demands focus on dwindling pay in the streaming era and the threat posed by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Entertainment Desk News :: The Venice Film Festival celebrates its 80th edition next week, but a Hollywood strike means many stars may be missing, leaving the spotlight to controversial directors like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. The festival, which kicks off on Wednesday, has become a key launchpad for Oscar campaigns, helped by glamorous shots of stars arriving by gondola. But an ongoing strike by Hollywood actors and writers, the biggest industry walk-out in more than 60 years, means most are banned from publicity work. Missing from their Venice premieres<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2461,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions\/2461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysylhetersomoy.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}