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Guillermo del Toro’s lifelong fascination with monsters and dark fable takes a liquid form in The Shape of Water, an otherworldly love story which is at its core a lyrical, poetic and poignant celebration of artists, idealists, and dreamers. And ultimately, as the director told an HFPA journalist just after receiving a minutes-long standing ovation at the Palazzo del Cinema, about love conquering fear.

In Venice, Ai Weiwei is more likely be expected to be at home across the lagoon, at the Biennale of contemporary art concurrently showing at the Arsenale, but this year the Chinese artist is walking the carpet at the film festival.  Human Flow, Ai’s first foray in the feature-length documentary form, is a powerful indictment of the global refugee crisis engulfing the world.

After a five-minute applause for the opening night film, filmmakers Alexander Payne, his producers and actors Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig and Hong Chau made a pit stop at the official festival party in a plastic tent on the beach in front of the Excelsior Hotel, before boarding boats to head over to the Grand Canal for their own dinner in the magnificent Ca’ Rezzonico Museum of 18th Century Art. The setting was anything but ‘downsized’: Murano glass chandeliers cast a magical light on the guests, the paintings and reliefs made many gaze up to the ceilings and not even the late hour – the main course of lobster was served at 1 am – could distract from the splendid venue.

“After Sideways I had hoped this would be my next movie” says multi Golden Globe nominated and winner Alexander Payne – visibly elated to be in Venice and exhibiting his flawless accents in the Italian and Spanish words he interspersed liberally in the talk he had with HFPA journalists in the Excelsior hotel’s beautiful Sala Stucchi. As Hollywood would have it that was not to be, as development purgatory (and the shooting of The Descendants and Nebraska) pushed back the completion of Downsizing for more than ten years.

Paul Schrader’s singular path to becoming one of American cinema’s enduring original voices was unusual to say the least. The writer or co-writer of films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull (both screenplays were nominated for Golden Globes) and the Last Temptation of Christ and director of American Gigolo, Cat People and Auto Focus, he had never seen a film before the age of seventeen, being more occupied by a strict Calvinist upbringing and college studies with a minor in theology.

Despite the several books she wrote, Diane Keaton doesn’t kiss-and-tell. Born Diane Hall in California in 1946, she became the ultimate New Yorker thanks to movies like The Godfather, Annie Hall or Manhattan.

Clooney. Damon.

With summer officially over, Hollywood closed its last weekend box office with the lowest single weekend earnings in more than three years. Total receipts in the US and Canada were just $67 million, the lowest they’ve been since September 5, 2014.

Drummer, DJ, producer, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, and member of The Roots, Questlove is the unmistakable heartbeat of Philadelphia’s most influential hip-hop group. He is the Musical Director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where his beloved Roots crew serves as the house band and joined Fallon on the Golden Globes stage last year lending his inimitable beat stylings to the proceedings before leading The Roots in a performance at the Amazon after party which has since become a legend.

After another sluggish peak summer weekend Lionsgate and Millennium Films’ The Hitman’s Bodyguard shot to the top of the domestic chart with a $21 million opening. This highly explosive comedy stars Samuel L.