Fests and events, 4/29.

"The Coen brothers' Burn After Reading will open the 65th Venice Film Festival," reports Nick Vivarelli. "World preem of the dark spy comedy, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, will launch from the Venice Lido Aug 27, ahead of its UK release Sept 5."

Also in Variety: Adam Dawtrey on the Edinburgh International Film Festival's new "cult" sidebar, "Under the Radar," and Jay Weissberg, wrapping the 23rd Turin International GLBT Film Festival.

"On May 10, audiences will gather at screenings, online, and around cell phones and televisions in far-flung locales from Cairo to Rio de Janeiro. They'll be there to watch four hours of documentaries and short features made by people around the world, on pressing issues ranging from climate change to political repression." Corey Binns for Good Magazine on Jehane Noujaim and Pangea Day.

David Bordwell posts an extensive entry on the just-wrapped Ebertfest, prefacing his and Kristin Thompson's takes on offerings with this: "You can get a sense of what was happening by checking Jim Emerson at scanners and Peter Sobczynski at Hollywood Bitchslap and Kim Voynar at Cinematical and Lisa Rosman at A Broad View and PL Kerpius at Scarlett Cinema and Andrew Wells at A Penny in the Well and many others. There is some coverage at the News Gazette, although the most informative stories from the paper aren't on the net. Then there's Roger's own blog, Ebertfest in Exile, which in one entry goes off on an unexpected trajectory... toward Joe vs the Volcano."

Blake Ethridge rounds up Udine-related interviews.

More from Bob Turnbull at Hot Docs: Talking Guitars, Shot in Bombay and All Together Now. And then, a wrap up.

Also: "Every once in a while, a film arrives that calls upon its audience to question everything that it believes about film," writes AJ Schnack. "Tehran Has No More Pomegranates is just such a film. Director Massoud Bakhshi has built a daring essay doc out of scratchy black and white historical films, beautiful film images from present-day Tehran and a series of narrations that defy logic and good sense. It's madness, this picture, deconstructing every notion of film, propaganda and history."

In the Guardian: Jonathan Glancey on Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-Tech Britain. Wednesday through October 25 at London's Science Museum.

Recently updated entries: Cannes, Tribeca, San Francisco and Boston.

Posted by dwhudson at April 29, 2008 3:03 PM