Whether due to general festival raggedness or some iffy shrimp, I’ve been decidedly under the weather today, and a day spent in a darkened movie theater was not the obvious solution. So I’m writing to you from a quiet cafe on a canalside terrace near the Biennale site, where a combination of sunshine and pistachio pastries are doing the healing.
Luckily, my festival time-out has coincided with a bit of a lull in the lineup, apparently quite normal at this stage in the proceedings: no Competition title in the last two days has really set the Lido alight, with the reviews for George A. Romero’s “Survival of the Dead” suggesting the Venice programmers’ mainstream punt hasn’t paid off.
(I was, however, a little disappointed to miss a midnight premiere of Antoine Fuqua’s out-of-competition “Brooklyn’s Finest,” which has accumulated some buzz for Ethan Hawke’s performance.)