Films at Venice film festival underwhelm
VENICE - The 2008 Venice film festival has been described as one of the weakest in recent years and as it reaches the midway stage on Monday, needs more hits to light up the main competition.
The annual film festival held at the Venice Lido since 1932 attracts the world's biggest movie stars and most accomplished film makers, and has earned a reputation for kicking off the awards season that culminates in the Oscars.
"What the festival has shown is that 2008 is simply a bad year for film," Jay Weissberg of trade publication Variety said. "The overall impression here is one of disappointment and everybody is desperate for a really good film in competition."
There has been little buzz about lead performances and more importantly, critics have said that the movies on show have been generally poor.
Of the 21 films in the main competition that vie for the coveted Golden Lion at a prize ceremony on Saturday, two Japanese entries are in the running for the top award that has gone to an Asian director for the last three years.
Festival director Marco Mueller has been under scrutiny this year for what some journalists call a Hollywood-light lineup. Despite the red carpet appearance of Hollywood megastars George Clooney and Brad Pitt at the opening film, the star power has waned since then.
Some critics said that to focus on stars was to miss the point of the world's oldest film festival. The aim of the festival is "to encourage the awareness and the promotion of all of the various aspects of international cinema as art, entertainment and industry, in a spirit of freedom and tolerance".
"Film festivals are about cultural diversity and curiosity, about seeing new things and discovering new trends, so I think the criticism of the selection is a bit unfair," said Manuela Grassi, who covers the festival for weekly magazine Panorama.
This year's festival runs from August 27 to September 6.
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