We may be neck deep in summer blockbuster season, but fall really isn't that far away-- and if you count the beginning of fall as the start of the film festival season, it's really not far. The Venice Film Festival may be far away and expensive to reach, but it's a major component of the autumn rush toward Oscars, and one contender we've been eyeing for years has just staked its claim on Venice's share of awards buzz. Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, will be opening the festival on August 28, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Gravity is Cuaron's first movie since 2006's mind-bogglingly great Children of Men, which alone is enough to make this one the top of the "must-see" list. But everything we've heard about the project since Cuaron first started developing it back in 2010, when it was supposed to star Angelina Jolie and Robert Downey Jr. It's been a bumpy road of delays, cast shuffles and release date changes since then, but earlier this year we finally got a look at actual footage from the film, and, well, take a look for yourself to see why we kind of lost our minds for it:
What might be most intriguing about the film is that, aside from the basic premise of two astronauts lost in space, we don't know a whole lot about it. Bullock supposedly carries the bulk of the film, and we suspect that Clooney does survive much longer after the crash that leaves the two of them suspended, alone, in space. The teaser that we've seen doesn't give anything away, which is a beautiful thing in a world where most trailers are perfectly happy to give away the entire plot in hopes of getting you into the theater.
Gravity won't open in the United States until October 4, but the Venice premiere could serve to give it fantastic buzz leading up to that point. That festival, which happens right before the Toronto Film Festival, is a lower-key but sometimes significant precursor to awards season, with the top prize in years past going to the likes of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. Then again, last year Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist kicked off the festival to muted acclaim, and the year before it was the George Clooney-directed The Ides of March, an earnest political drama that didn't earn much critical heat in the end. Of course, like anything, the opening night of Venice depends on the quality of the film in question. And if Gravity matches half of our expectations, it will have no trouble earning its buzz come late August.
