Among the highlightsof the just-announced 63rd Venice Film Festival (August 30 th September 9): Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (which I favorably riffed about after seeing it during Comic-Con), with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz; Allen Coulter‘s Hollywoodland) with Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins; Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men (which has been seen by Babel director Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu and “on a shot-by-shot basis [is] beautifully filmed and superbly composed, like Kubrick”, as he told me last night).

Plus Brian DePalma‘s The Black Dahlia; Stephen Frears‘ The Queen with Helen Mirren, James Cromwell and Michael Sheen; Emilio Estevez’s Bobby, which will probably never be as intriguing as the stories about the making and financing of this film, which costars Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne and Lindsay Lohan; Alain Resnais‘ Private Fears in Public Places and Benoit Jacquot‘s L’intouchable . The two big docs are David Leaf and John Scheinfeld‘s The U.S. vs. John Lennon and Spike Lee‘s When the Leeves Broke: A Requiem Iin Four Acts, which runs for 240 minutes.