By Nicole Sperling
By Nicole Sperling
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Sandra Bullock is going to be very busy come the end of summer.
The actress’ film “Gravity” was announced Thursday as the opening-night flick of the 70th Venice Film Festival, which runs from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7. This follows the news that the Alfonso Cuaron-directed film, also starring George Clooney, will screen at the Toronto Film Festival just a week later.
In all, 53 feature films will screen at the Venice festival, representing 33 countries. Twenty are in competition for the top prize, the Golden Lion.
James Franco’s writer/director effort “Child of God,” starring the multi-hyphenate and Tim Blake Nelson, will also bow at the festival, screening in competition against such films as David Gordon Green’s “Joe” starring Nicolas Cage, Stephen Frears’ Judy Dench-starrer “Philomena” and Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem,” starring Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz and Tilda Swinton.
Also in competition are Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” starring Scarlett Johansson; Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated film “Kaze Tachinu” (“The Wind Rises”), about Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed Japanese fighter planes during World War II, and Errol Morris’ documentary on Donald Rumsfeld.
Screening outside of the festival’s competition are director Alex Gibney’s documentary on Lance Armstrong, Paul Schrader’s “The Canyons” starring Lindsay Lohan, and Frederick Wiseman’s documentary “At Berkeley,” among others.
The festival jury will be headed by director Bernardo Bertolucci.