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There are certain American directors that are more appreciated overseas than at home. In countries like France or Italy some filmmakers like Jerry Lewis or John Landis, have a cult status that they never quite attained at home.

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The Venice festival seems small when it comes to screenings and press conferences. They all take place within one kilometer on the Lido di Venezia.

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The festival enters the final stretch in Venice and it's time for showcasing several more unconventional films and works that defy easy definition. Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog certainly fits that bill.

The past week has drawn some of the biggest names in the entertainment field. Charlotte Riley – wearing Haney – and husband, Tom Hardy, attended the London premiere of Legend, in which he portrays both infamous Krays, gangsters twins and the terror of London in the nineteen sixties.

The Venice Film festival took a decidedly offbeat turn with the premiere of Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa. With his latest work, the thrice Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter and director (Being John Malkovich, 2000; Adaptation, 2003; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2005) moves into the unexplored idiom of stop motion animation, even as his narrative treads familiar territory.

In terms of numbers, it was a lousy Labor Day weekend, actually one of the worst in the past few years. It was supposed to belong to The Transporter Refueled, but the replacement of Jason Statham with Ed Skrein did not bring much luck and the new installment of the franchise ended its first week of release just above $7 million, surprisingly beaten even by A Walk in the Woods, starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson which took $8 million and third place.

Luca Guadagnino is one of the more interesting new authors in Italian Cinema. His visual style has been compared to the likes of Visconti and Antonioni and three years ago he made, well, a big splash, with I Am Love, garnering a well deserved Golden Globe nomination.

There are ways to break up an exhausting junket day. “How civilized!” is how Eddie Redmayne put it happily as he walked to his lunch with the HFPA at the Sala Stucchi in the Excelsior Hotel.