Venice, 9/6.

"Mad Detective by Hong Kong directors Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, is this year's surprise entry at the Venice Film Festival," reports the AP. Somewhat related: The Exiled entry's been updated through today.

"For me, the most striking thing at both this year and last year's festival is the number of excellent European and Asian films that were lured to Venice and yet that will most likely never make their way into an American theater." Mick LaSalle's also participated in a panel "on the role of film festivals and of Venice specifically on a film's subsequent life."

"A documentary that's no more than a string of images, Useless is pretty much that," declares Variety's Derek Elley. Jia Zhangke's "elegant tracking shots and good HD photography can't hide the film's poverty of ideas, nor its underlying arrogance that anyone could be interested in such lazy filmmaking."

"A murder in a small provincial town yields multiple suspects in The Girl by the Lake, an engrossing thriller that keeps auds guessing and reps a handsome feature debut for helmer Andrea Molaioli," writes Variety's Jay Weissberg.

"Searchers 2.0, Alex Cox's first feature since 2002's Revengers Tragedy is a road movie - ah, we have had so many, some would moan - but it goes a couple of steps beyond that," writes Gautaman Bhaskaran.

Also in the Hollywood Reporter, Ray Bennett on Hotel Meina: "Italian director Carlo Lizzani's WWII story about a group of mostly Italian Jews trapped by the Nazis in a luxury resort ends with such a horrifyingly brilliant sequence in Lago Maggiore that it prompts forgiveness of the film's small failings."

James Christopher in the London Times on the new, third cut of Blade Runner: "[T]here is something utterly awe-inspiring about this remastered vision of Los Angeles in 2019."

Online listening tip. The Observer's Jason Solomons gathers half an hour of Venetianiana for Film Weekly.

Posted by dwhudson at September 6, 2007 3:23 PM