October 11, 2009: While thousands of physically capable athletic types limbered up in preparation for the 32nd Annual Chicago Marathon, a slightly more pallid but no less courageous crowd was easing into their Snuggies and fluffing their pillows inside the Music Box Theater for an altogether different kind of endurance test. The Music Box Massacre V was getting underway, and a gorgeous historical theater was packed to the rafters with excited horror fans eager to binge on genre classics and meet a few very special guests.

Whatever it was those health nuts outside were running from, we horror fans were more than willing to take it on in a darkened theater, with a flat of Monster energy drinks and a hearty supply of pizza and breakfast burritos to fuel our fanaticism.

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If you’ve ever attended a Music Box Massacre, you know well that Movieside Film Festival founder Rusty Nails doesn’t skimp on the extra toppings; of course there’s the obligatory line-up of brain-bashing horrors both old and new (this year’s event sees the Music Box playing host to the Midwestern premiere of Bruce McDonald’s deliciously apocalyptic Pontypool in addition to projecting a print of the 1945 Boris Karloff classic Isle of the Dead), but on top of that you’ve got spectacular special guests, charity auctions for Vital Bridges, and dealer booths selling some of the best horror memorabilia around.

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My week at The International Film Institute got more exciting as it went along. If one has any interest in the entertainment business, L.A. is a great city for tourism, and the program takes advantage of that. Our group tooled around town in a stretch limo, had an unusually thorough tour of the Warner Brothers lot, and attended a press screening of Funny People at the impressive Arclight Hollywood Cinema. We were also lucky enough to be there during a rare U.S. visit by Hayao Miyazaki, who got a tribute at the AMPAS theater, where Pixar’s John Lasseter showed an amazing selection of clips and conducted a Q&A with the self-deprecating anime master.

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The International Film Institute, or InFilm, based in Los Angeles, offers four and five-day programs exploring various aspects of film production. For example, they will offer programs that focus on acting, on screenwriting, and on specific filmmakers like Hitchcock, Spielberg, and Tarantino. Most of these programs cost about $2,900 and include air travel (from many locations) and a stay at the Le Parc Suite Hotel in West Hollywood. It’s essentially an intensive guided tour of Hollywood with a group of like-minded cineastes. It’s a new endeavor and they were looking for media coverage, so I was invited to participate in their first FX Program.

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The last day of the Venice Film Festival was completely dedicated to the reflection upon the meaning of life. No kidding here. The amount of philosophical speculations on love, time, choice and responsibility, encapsulated in the last few films screened yesterday at the Lido was almost overbearing. And it doesn’t change much the fact that the closing film of this long, long day was Joe Dante’s new horror flick THE HOLE. As far as I am concerned, Horror is a genre that is deeply philosophical.

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The Venice Film Festival reached its conclusion on Saturday with the Israeli film LEVANON (LEBANON), by first time feature director Samuel Maoz, claiming the prestigious Golden Lion award.

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Some actors are synonymous with Cinema: they embody the seventh art effortlessly and gracefully. Such is the case of Egyptian icon Omar Sharif, a man so charming and talented that he could be reading the shopping list and still be capable of delivering stronger emotions than most younger actors will ever. Even after fifteen years of the cruelest “Method” training. And it doesn’t matter that the film he is starring in, AL MOSAFER (THE TRAVELLER), is virtually inconsistent. The Oscar-nominated actor plays the part of a man who has just one night in the company of a woman but spends the rest of his life figuring out whether the daughter she had is his own. Unfortunately, Sharif’s chops, as refined that they are, cannot fix the director’s broken intentions of what should have been an epic tale. It sadly ends up being merely a pretentious and somewhat confused character study. A lost opportunity for an actor that has given a lot to the acting craft, but will inevitably work less and less as the tyranny of time takes over.

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Press calls are always entertaining here in Venice and virtually anything can happen. We’ve had people proposing to the stars, people undressing to attract attention and people complimenting each other with blatant insincerity but they almost always lead to non-stop arguments. As far as I am aware however, there has never been a case in which a director has verbally abused a journalist. Well, there’s a first time for everything and yesterday Michele Placido, one of Italy’s most respected directors, lost his temper with a British reporter.

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