Time to start speculating about the fall film festival season.
But slightly before that, Giuseppe Tornatore — the filmmaker behind the classic Italian Oscar winning Foreign Film, “Cinema Paradiso” and equally solid works like “Malena” — and his new film, “Baaria,” have been tapped to open the Venice Film Festival according to Variety. Evidently the picture is generation-spanning, lavish and an ambitious Sicilian epic.
You probably don’t care, but “Baaria” is notable because it’s the film that Italian music maestro Ennio Morricone decided to compose instead of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” which he bailed on after initially being asked to write original music for the WWII epic, which he tentatively agreed to. You kinda can’t blame him, Morricone and Tornatore have a long working relationship. So if ‘Basterds’ and don’t like it, you might want to shake your fist at Morricone next time you see him on TV or whatever (like that’s gonna happen).
[Note in one interview Tarantino called Ennio’s participation a “rumor,” but why then was it in the trades and why did Morricone take to his website to announce that he unfortunately wouldn’t have time to write the score? Mmm, yeah, we don’t think so]
“Baaria” will star Monica Bellucci (who starred in “Malena”), Michele Placido, Raoul Bova, Luigi Lo Cascio, Laura Chiatti and Donatella Finocchiaro. Last year, the big winner at the Venice film fest was Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” which arrived with a dripping wet new print and won the Golden Lion for Best Film. We saw a recent Italian article with strong speculation for possible films at Venice which we can’t seem to find, but the one film we remember that sticks in our mind was Soderbergh’s “The Informant.”
The 66th Venice Film Festival runs Sept 2 through 12, and no we ourselves won’t be going. We already broke what’s left in the bank.