Festivals

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.

Clooney. Damon.

A new franchise made its debut at Comic-Con and it comes with the Marvel logo attached to it. For the fans of the comic named Inhumans, there's not much to explain but for the ones with less knowledge about that world, former Game of Thrones villain Iwan Rheon and the star of Hell on Wheels, Anson Mount, stopped by the HFPA lounge at Comic-Con to give us some basic tips: 'I play Black Bolt', Mount said.

He has a big smile for every fan that stops him to ask for a picture and never seems tired of the duties of fame. A trained dancer and singer who started his career in Glee playing Sebastian Smythe, Grant Gustin has achieved stardom in the world of super heroes, as Barry Allen, better known as The Flash, first in Arrow and later in his own show.

Stephen Amell must be the most relaxed TV super-hero in the stellar gathering of colleagues at Comic-Con.   He's a veteran of the event and with five seasons of Arrow behind him,  he is very familiar with the reactions of fans from all over the world: “In China, it was a little weird', he told us.

Before stepping inside the Marvel multiverse as, respectively, The Punisher/Frank Castle and Karen Page, Jon Bernthal and Deborah Ann Woll had already seared other illustrious TV characters into our minds: The Walking Dead's Shane and True Blood's Jessica. Now both are front and center in a trio of high-profile Marvel series:  Daredevil, now in its third season, and the new The Punisher and The Defenders.