Venice festival has focus firmly on capitalism

THE Venice Film Festival has capitalism in its sights this year, with premieres of Michael Moore’s documentary on the USeconomic meltdown and a drama starring Matt Damon as a corrupt corporate whistleblower.

Capitalism: A Love Story, in competition at the annual cinema showcase, sees Moore take on the corporate bosses with his trademark combative style, bringing recession to the picturesque Lido waterfront.

The Informant!, directed by Steven Soderbergh and featuring Damon as areal-life crooked executive who exposed his company’s price-fixing tactics, will be screened out of competition. The festival runs from tomorrow to September 12.

Damon is one of several Hollywood A-listers due to grace the red carpet, as studios appear prepared to foot the substantial bill and come to Venice in order to generate buzz for their pictures as the awards season kicks off.

Hundreds of fans waiting outside the main cinema where gala premieres are held each day will be hoping to catch a glimpse of Nicolas Cage, George Clooney, Oliver Stone, Charlize Theron, Eva Mendes, Richard Gere and Sylvester Stallone to name a few.

The 2009 edition of the world’s oldest film festival looks set to eclipse 2008, which, despite awarding Mickey Rourke’s acclaimed comeback, The Wrestler, the Golden Lion for best film, was seen as lacklustre and lacking star power.

“On paper it looks good, and these people will be doing the red carpet giving the festival the glamour I think it needs,” said Lee Marshall, film critic for Screen International and a Venice regular. “That was lacking last year, considered by many to be a limp festival from that point of view.”

Clooney, who has a home in Italy and is a local favourite, appears in The Men Who Stare at Goats, about a reporter who stumbles across a US army unit in Iraq which employs paranormal powers on missions.

Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic vision of the world in The Road makes it to the big screen, with Viggo Mortensen starring with Theron.

Cage appears in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a remake of the 1992 movie directed by Abel Ferrara, who has publicly criticised the new version.

US director Todd Solondz is in competition with Life During Wartime, while horror master George Romero presents Survival of the Dead, one of several horror movies this year.

Films touching on the 1982 war in Lebanon, the Tamil Tiger rebellion in Sri Lanka, recent Iranian protests and China’s violent past promise to make the headlines, as does Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.