Well, the Venice film festival is over.

Before the festival's closure, Kenneth Branagh unveiled his new film, The Magic Flute, which is based on Mozart's famous opera, only now set in the trenches of WWI. Apparently, this reinterpretation of Mozart's opera obtained some decent reviews, although some pointed out several flaws (oversuse of CG was one for a critic).

Today, the Venice festival gave out its awards. Surprisingly, the frontrunner The Queen did not win the golden lion, but a chinese independent film entitled "Still life" by director Jia Zhang-Ke won the award in a surprise. This film was the last film to enter the Venice festival and was rushed in as a surprise entry earlier last week, so the director must be very happy over his film's prize. The film revolves around the opposition of a small group of individuals to the Three Gorges Dam project.

Helen Mirren obtained the best actress award for The Queen as predicted. Peter Morgan, the film's writer, won the best screenplay award.

Surprisingly, Ben Affleck won the best actor award for his role as George Reeves in Hollywoodland. Having just seen the film, I am thoroughly confused by his win. Although I admit that it is Affleck's best performance in a considerable while, that is not really saying much. Personally, I did not think Affleck was the actor needed to do the role justice, nor did he have the acting ability to do so.

Veteran filmmaker Alain Resnais won best director for his film Private Fears in Public Places.

A Best Technical Contribution award went to Emmanuel Lubezki for Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, which has obtained some positive reviews (and features Michael Caine as a hippy, which is reason enough to see it).

Emanuele Crialese's film Golden Door, which was praised by critics and a Lion contender, was merely named the "revelation" of the festival and did not win any awards. Even though it did not win any awards, this film is supposedly one of the best in the festival and I personally can't wait to see it.

Well, that was the Venice film festival. I will move on to better things in the following weeks such as a summary of Toronto film festival highlights after its closure.

Although unrelated to the Venice film festival, earlier this week, the new host for the 2007 Academy awards was announced. After the succession of male hosts in the past three years, next year, Ellen DeGeneres will be hosting the Academy awards. A surprising, but quasi-interesting choice. We'll see how she does in March 2007 (unless they move the awards show earlier).