Hollywood stars head Venice film festival

HOLLYWOOD rolled out its big guns at the Venice International Film Festival yesterday as John Travolta and Denzel Washington showed off their latest movies.

Washington is plugging Jonathan Demme’s blockbuster The Manchurian Candidate, a remake of John Frenkenheimer’s 1962 classic about how money influences politics.

The taut psychological thriller, which stars Meryl Streep as a razor-tongued US senator, features Washington as a US army major suspicious of his experiences in Desert Storm.