Tom Ford

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Tom Ford’s critically acclaimed debut, A Single Man, garnered three Golden Globe nominations (Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Abel Korzeniowski’s score). Seven years later the man better known as successful global fashion designer of Gucci and Yves Saint-Laurent (and Tom Ford) fame, returns to the screen with Nocturnal Animals – a taut, moody thriller that spans glitzy urban locales and scours the dark American hinterlands as a sort of topography of guilty consciences.

Venice is over but the jury’s decisions could well have positive reverberations for Hollywood and its award season. Although it remains to be seen if the Golden Lion winner The Woman Who Left (from the Philippines) will get a box office boost – the almost four hours in length kept even lots of journalists away – but the other prizes bode well for their recipients.

The weekend arrives noisy and busy on the Lido. It's the ideal frame for parties, celebrations and assorted special events.

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.