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Spin-heavy apologia for ‘90s NYC club king only scratches the sequined surface

Critically panned in Cannes. Shut out from North American premieres in Toronto and Telluride, it appeared as if Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place wouldn't find a festival tent let alone a distrib home in the U.S. but an unlikely candidate in the Weinstein Co. have grabbed the rights.

Today's announcement for the 2011 Venice Film Festival lineup basically crosses off plenty of sure bets we had been anticipating and makes us circle a bunch of titles we thought had a chance for a 2011 showing but now become hot items for the 2012 campaign. Films such as Juan Diego Solanas' Upside Down, Rodrigo Cortés' Red Lights, Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Headshot, Brillante Mendoza's Prey look more and more like Cannes 2012 items, while acquisition titles such as Antonio Campos' Simon Killer and Nick Cassavetes' Yellow wouldn't be out of place for a Sundance showing.

TIFF's co-directors Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling have got us salivating with the smorgasbord list of world premiere offerings for next September. Opening film comes as a surprise, as we've haven't heard much about it, but seeing that doc filmmaker Davis Guggenheim has a great relationship with the festival, From The Sky Down a doc about U2 (20 or so years after Phil Joanou's U2: Rattle & Hum) will take centre stage. Doc-programmer guru Thom Powers makes sure that the fest will be a rocking good edition by also adding Pearl Jam Twenty from fanboy Cameron Crowe.

Running between August 31st and September 10th, the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival would be a dandy last edition for festival impresario Marco Muller even if he doesn't nab the likes of Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster, Walter Salles' On the Road, Fernando Meirelles' 360 and/or Zhang Yimou's Heroes of Naking. In his final year of contract, with approximately twenty-two competition slots (minus the already confirmed opening film from Italian res George Clooney and his TIFF-bound The Ides of March), this thursday's announcement should be heavy on items from the the U.K along with a robust presence from European filmmakers headed by Roman Polanski's Carnage.