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    Preview: Venice Film Festival

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    A woman rides her bicycle past a sign for the 71st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Monday, Aug. 25, 2014. The 71st edition of the festival opens on Wednesday, Aug. 27th and runs until Sept. 6. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

    By Jill Lawless

    VENICE, Italy --

    It has Al Pacino and zombie girlfriends, Owen Wilson and Lars von Trier.

    The 71st Venice Film Festival opens this week, bringing 11 days of high art and Hollywood glamour to the canal-crossed Italian city.

    Twenty films are competing for the coveted Golden Lion prize — 19 of them world premieres — and several dozen more will jostle for the attention of critics and audiences at an event that mixes adventurous fare from international auteurs with mainstream movies seeking awards-season momentum.

    Here are five films, trends and themes to watch for:

    BIRDMAN TAKES OFF
    The festival — and the annual awards-season battle — kicks off Wednesday with the world premiere of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's twisted comedy "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)."

    Anticipation is high for a film that promises to mix the bold, surrealism-tinged sensibility of Inarritu ("Babel," ''21 Grams") with inspired casting — former "Batman" star Michael Keaton plays a past-his-prime actor struggling to move beyond his best-known role as an iconic action hero. Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Emma Stone and Naomi Watts also star.

    PACINO DOUBLE-TAKE
    The revered veteran stars in two Venice films, handily screening on the same day and both infused with bittersweet longing.

    In David Gordon Green's "Manglehorn," Pacino plays a small-town Texas locksmith pining over a long-lost love. In Barry Levinson's "The Humbling" — adapted from a Philip Roth novel — he's an aging actor having an affair with a younger woman, played by Greta Gerwig.

    Also doing double duty are Ethan Hawke — starring in Andrew Niccol's drone-warfare drama "Good Kill" and Michael Almereyda's Shakespeare adaptation "Cymbeline" — and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who appears in Benoit Jacquot's romantic drama "Three Hearts" and von Trier's explicit "Nymphomaniac."

    AMERICA'S UNEASY CONSCIENCE
    Two competition entries look at issues troubling America's soul: war and economics.

    In "Gattaca" director Niccol's "Good Kill," Hawke plays a drone operator who grows disillusioned with remote warfare. "Mad Men'''s January Jones also stars.

    Ramin Bahrani's subprime mortgage drama "99 Homes" stars Andrew Garfield ("The Amazing Spider-Man") as an evicted man battling to get his home back. The cast also includes Michael Shannon and Laura Dern.

    UNPREDICTABLE AUTEURS
    Like its rival Cannes, the Venice film fest embraces actors and directors who are adventurous, unpredictable or down-right ornery. This year the festival is honoring James Franco, presenting the prolific American actor-director with the heroically titled "Glory to the Filmmaker Prize."

    Franco also will also premiere "The Sound and the Fury," his second adaptation of a William Faulkner novel, at an out-of -competition festival screening. It has an impressive cast that includes Seth Rogen, Tim Blake Nelson and Jon Hamm. But the elliptical Faulkner is not easy to adapt and Franco's screen version of the Southern scribe's "As I Lay Dying" received a decidedly mixed response from critics.

    Other directors sure to provoke include Abel Ferrara, competing for the Golden Lion with "Pasolini," a film about the outrageous life and violent death of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe.

    And Danish bad-boy von Trier is likely to bore and thrill in equal measure with the director's cut of his over-the-top sexual odyssey "Nymphomaniac."

    HIGH ART MEETS HOLLYWOOD
    It's the blend of big-name stars and cinematic surprises that makes festivals like Venice special.

    New features are on tap from exciting international filmmakers, including Russian director Andrei Konchalovksy's "The Postman's White Nights"; Turkish-German director Fatih Akin's "The Cut"; "Red Amnesia" from China's Wang Xiaoshuai; and "Tales" by female Iranian director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad.

    And if there were a prize for best title of the festival, it would certainly go to Swedish director Roy Andersson's "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence."

    But it's not all art and existentialism. The schedule also includes Joe Dante's "Burying the Ex" — a zombie rom-com starring Anton Yelchin and Ashley Greene — and "She's Funny That Way," a Peter Bogdanovich-directed Broadway comedy with Jennifer Aniston, Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots and Kathryn Hahn.

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    A Closer Look At Proposed Measures Designed To Curb Google’s Search Monopoly

    Thursday, November 21, 2024

    U.S. regulators are proposing aggressive measures to restore competition to the online search market after a federal judge ruled Google maintained an illegal monopoly for the last decade.

    The sweeping set of recommendations filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice could radically alter Google's business, including possibly spinning off the Chrome web browser and syndicating its search data to competitors. Even if the courts adopt the blueprint, Google isn't likely to make any significant changes until 2026 at the earliest, because of the legal system's slow-moving wheels.

    Here's what it all means:

    What is the Justice Department's goal?
    Federal prosecutors are cracking down on Google in a case originally filed during near the end of then-President Donald Trump's first term. Officials say the main goal of these proposals is to get Google to stop leveraging its dominant search engine to illegally squelch competition and stifle innovation.

    "The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages."

    Not surprisingly, Google sees things much differently. The Justice Department's "wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court's decision," Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, asserted in a blog post. "It would break a range of Google products — even beyond search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives."

    It's still possible that the Justice Department could ease off on its attempts to break up Google, especially if President-elect Donald Trump... Read More

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