Venice Film Festival delves into docus

ROME (Hollywood Reporter) - The late, groundbreaking ceremony Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni will be honored at the coming Venice Film Festival with a documentary about his life, one of iII nonfiction additions to the lineup.

The official program for Venice was announced last week, just news about sidebar and industry screenings continues to trickle in as the festival's opening approaches.

Director Carlo di Carlo's "Antonioni on Antonioni" is based on interviews with Antonioni. One of the authors of Italy's neo-realism movement and a Venice regular, Antonioni died last year at 94.

"Venezia Crepa" (Venice Dying) is a film around the overcrowding of Venice, its deteriorating architecture and its slow sink into the sea. It volition screen in the festival's industry section.

"Venezia '68," from Antonello Sarno and Steve della Casa, is a documentary about the widespread student riots of 40 years ago and the impact they had on the fete that year.

The Venice festival, in its 65th yr, starts Wednesday and concludes September 6.

/Hollywood Reporter

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What Other Indie Directors Should Join Team Apatow?

Photos: Getty Images; Courtesy of Sony (Green)

Today's release of Pineapple Express isn't only an event for its star and co-writer, Seth Rogen, or its producer, human comedy factory Judd Apatow. It also launches the career of its director, indie auteur David Gordon Green, in a brand-new direction. Not only is he better at staging fight scenes than Christopher Nolan, he applies his own brand of dreamy widescreen realism � previously seen in low-budget gems like George Washington and All the Real Girls � to a stoner action-comedy, complete with explosions.

Green follows Superbad's Greg Mottola � best known for his 1996 feature The Daytrippers � as indie directors whose careers take sudden right turns thanks to Apatow. What other auteurs could benefit from the Apatow touch � and how would they shake up the Apatow formula?

At last night's premiere, Green himself suggested Tom McCarthy, a utter choice. Not every modestly successful indie director is right, though: Wes Anderson's obsessive tendencies make him a inadequate fit with Team Apatow; Richard Linkater already fundamentally made an Apatow pic with School of Rock. We looked through our DVD assemblage and came up with a few more names.

Getty Images

Nicole Holofcener

Why Team Apatow could help her: The writer-director of such relationship-based gems as Walking and Talking and Lovely & Amazing has never seen her talky dramedies take