Festivals & Events

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Enjoy photos from Venice.

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September came in like a lion in Venice with a late Summer (or was it early Fall?) storm lashing the Lido and sending hapless patrons in tuxes and evening gowns scrambling for cover outside the Palazzo del Cinema. Some of the soaked festivalgoers had come from the screening of Boxtrolls which Focus Features is due to release on September 26 and which is the sole animated entry at this year’s festival.

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Another Hollywood heavyweight elicited another warm welcome from festival-goers here and the weekend belonged to Al Pacino, pulling double-duty on the Lido with back-to-back showings, of The Humbling which we told you about yesterday, and David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn. Green was here last year with the Southern Drama Joe whose protagonist (Nicolas Cage) was a misfit in search of redemption.

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One of the – ehm – more unusual rituals here in Venice is the chaos that ensues at the end of every press conference, when dozens of frenzied members of the Four Estate abandon all pretense, bum-rush the stage waving notebooks, pictures and scraps of paper for the stars to autograph. We have seen more dignified displays from the media but, frankly, plenty of worse ones.