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Better Things (premiering on FX September 8, 2016) gives Pamela Adlon titles few women are able to access individually, never mind altogether. “Yeah, I’m the writer, producer, actor.

Labor Day weekend is typically a slow one at the domestic box office, as Americans traditionally prefer to enjoy the last days of summer Sun to sitting in air conditioned movie theatres. This frame was no exception.

While festivalgoers are taken with the mundane business of premieres, red carpets, press conferences and generally binging on (and arguing about) films, the future of the art form is on view in a room tucked on the Casino mezzanine here. At least that’s what the Virtual Reality boosters would like you to think.

You could tell the first weekend was here by the loud music thumping from various Lido locales on Friday. On Day 3 the Venice Film Festival was definitely firing on all pistons with the competition featuring El Cristo Ciego by Chilean director Cristopher Murray, Frantz from French stalwart François Ozon, a disturbing documentary on big game hunting by Austrian Ulrich Seidl (Safari) and Tom Ford’s literary noir Nocturnal Animals  with Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhall, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

The Venice festival has been at the forefront of recognizing serialized fiction as an emerging and integral part of the film making landscape. Two years ago Golden Globe nominated HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge bowed at the Sala Darsena here, and this year the festival hosted the world premiere of the HBO/Canal+/Sky The Young Pope, directed by Golden Globe winning director Paolo Sorrentino, (La Grande  Bellezza, Best Foreign Film - 2013).

The HFPA met with the lovely and ever charming Amy Adams following the screening of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival in Venice. The actress is somewhat of the Lido Queen this year as she stars in two films, Arrival and Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals – not bad for a festival debut! Arrival was met with sustained applause in the Sala Grande and Amy told us it was an emotional moment for her.

Québécois director Denis Villeneuve is more of a regular at the Cannes Festival than on the Lido (he has shown no less than four films on the Croisette), but this year his Arrival had its world premiere here in Venice. After the emotional family backstories of Incendies, the gut-wrenching thriller Prisoners  and the dark cartel procedural Sicario , the  Canadian director treads new territory with this adaptation of Ted Chiang’s science fiction novella The Story of Your Life which conjures a “first contact” scenario in which sky scraper-sized alien crafts suddenly land in 12 locations around the world.

For the last several years the Venice Film  Festival grounds, anchored by the Casino and the Palazzo del Cinema, also included a not-so-elegant  feature. We are talking about the football-field size hole in the ground that stood as a sad reminder of the thwarted new Cinema Palace.

Following the acclaimed opening night debut of La La Land, the HFPA met director Damien Chazelle and his star  (and twice Golden Globe nominee) Emma Stone (Golden Globe nominee Ryan Gosling having been kept from the Lido by filming duties on Blade Runner). “Venice is the perfect launching pad for a movie like La La Land” said 31 year-old Chazelle, 31 years old, whose second film had the honor of opening the 73rd Venice Film Festival.

Anyone who first encounters Ana de Armas' talent in Hands of Stone.