Anyone For Venice?

The 61st Venice Film Festival opened, as always, with a dash of chaos. Hoping to get a bite to eat for lunch, Empire's posse enquired whether the festival restaurant was open for business. "Technically, yes," said our host. Which meant it wasn't. Within the next hour, dozens of people were queuing out the door for their accreditations (we predict the hike in admissions this year will end in tears), Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were wrestling with faulty mikes and John Travolta's stylist was frantically trying to track down the case with his suit in, which had been lost by the airline en route from LA. Other than that, it was a quiet start, but the list of the day's arrivals promised more, including a certain Q. Tarantino, who's in town for a sidebar season called Kings Of The B's that ends next Saturday with a rare public screening of Cannibal Holocaust. Spielberg and Hanks were the first of the big arrivals, kicking off proceedings with a packed press conference for The Terminal, which, it must be said, had not set the press alight. Hanks looked slightly ruffled and Spielberg bemused as the pair fielded questions ranging from the inane ("What was your first memory of flying?") to the bizarre ("Mr. Spielberg, will you make a sequel to Saving Private Ryan, called Saving Private Bush?"). Spielberg deflected the latter with a wry grin, adding, "I think you've made your statement." Twenty or so minutes of this, however, soon proved wearing. It's safe to say we learned little or nothing about the film that couldn't be gleaned from a quick glance at the press kits (don't journalists ever look at them?) and bugger all about Spielberg's plans for War Of The Worlds. The day's other celebrity guests mainly came from the Jury, headed by John Boorman, who is flanked by Spike Lee and Helen Mirren, among others. And among those others is the buzz girl of the festival: Scarlett Johansson, who set the Lido alight last year with Lost In Translation. Fans of that film, or just Miss Scarlett, will be licking their lips in anticipation of her new film A Love Song For Bobby Long, in which she plays a teenage girl who moves in with her late mother's alcoholic friends. Travolta plays the lead, a drunken, failed college professor, but despite his best efforts this lumpen effort never manages to fly, which is a great shame. Similarly underwhelming is Francois Ozon's 5X2, an impressionistic collage of a marriage going wrong. After the commercial advances of Swimming Pool, this technically brilliant drama feels more like an art experiment than a movie, solidly cast but grim, with few glimmers of light in the tunnel. Today, Day Two, feels quiet too, with press conferences for Bobby Long (we assume JT got his suit back) and The Manchurian Candidate. Screening-wise, this is a quiet day too. Man On Fire and Collateral, which Empire has seen and approved of, get their press showing day, while we'll be checking out Mysterious Skin by the long-lost Gregg Araki and PS by Dylan Kidd. However, we think any peace will be shattered at 2.30pm on Friday, when Mr. Thomas Mapother Cruise hits town to promote his recent adventure with Michael Mann