67th Venice Film Festival: No Malick, No WKW, but Tons More Possible

Now that all bets are off on Terrence Malick showing up on the Lido, and Wong Kar-wai’s The Grand Master appears to be on the same no-show list (the fest have announced that Andrew Lau’s The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen has their second opening night flick celebrating the anniversary of Bruce Lee’s 70th birthday). Among the other films with odds against, I’m not seeing the Coens (True Grit), Eastwood (Hereafter), Boyle (127 Hours) and Oscar contender The Fighter was according to it’s star, no going to tour the fest circuit. Just announced today, Head Jury member Quentin Tarantino’s buddy Robert Rodriguez’s Machete will be the third opening film – it’ll screen at midnight, and I think it’ll be in good company genre-wise with some of the genre titles below. Here are some titles (ranging from almost guaranteed to only minimal chance that could be named tomorrow in the Main Comp, Out of Comp and filler for the other sections.

Black Swan – Darren Aronofsky Opening night Film
The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen – Andrew Lau (2nd Opening Film)
Machete – Robert Rodriguez (3rd Opening Film)

A Sad Trumpet Ballad – Alex de la Iglesia
A Woman – Giada Colagrande
All Good Things – Andrew Jarecki
Alois Nebel – Tomas Lunak
The American – Anton Corbijn
Amigo – John Sayles
Barney’s Version Richard J. Lewis
Black Venus – Abdellatif Kechiche
The Child’s Eye – Pang bros.
Detective Dee – Tsui Hark
The Debt – John Madden
The Ditch – Wang Bing
El Sicario – Gianfranco Rosi
Even the Rain – Iciar Bollain
The First Grader – Justin Chadwick
Flower of Evil – Michele Placido
Genpin – Naomi Kawase
Happy Few – Antony Cordier (See Pic Above)
Henry – Alessandro Piva
Home for Christmas – Bent Hamer
I Saw the Devil – Kim Jee-woon
In A Better World – Susanne Bier
The King’s Speech – Tom Hooper
La Passione – Carlo Mazzacurati
Let the Bullets Fly – Jiang Wen
London Boulevard – William Monahan
Magic Valley – Jaffe Zinn
Medianeras – Gustavo Taretto
Meek’s Cutoff – Kelly Reichardt
Memories of My Melancholy Whores – Ricardo Del Rio
Meteora – Spiros Stathoulopoulos
Miral – Julian Schnabel
Neds – Peter Mullan
Noi Credevamo – We Believed
Norwegian Wood – Tran Anh Hung
Perfect Sense – David Mackenzie
Post Mortem – Pablo Larrain
Potiche – François Ozon
Road to Nowhere – Monte Hellman
Rum Diary – Bruce Robinson
Scooping Up the Moonlight – Im Kwon-taek
The Solitude of Prime Numbers – Saverio Costanzo
Somewhere – Sofia Coppola
Ten Thousand Waves – Isaac Julien
Thirteen Assassins – Takashi Miike
Three – Tom Tykwer
The Town – Ben Affleck
The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell – Sergio Machado
The Ward – John Carpenter
The Way Back – Peter Weir
What’s Wrong With Virginia? – Dustin Lance Black
Wilde Salome – Al Pacino
Zhao’s Orphan – Chen Kaige

The Tempest – Julie Taymor (Closing Night Film)