Best of the Fests: Venice & Toronto

Venice and Toronto, two late summer film festivals known in the past to launch films into the end-of-year award melee, recently announced their line-ups for this year.

As has become the norm with these fests, several movies will emerge as front-runners, guaranteeing that we will be talking about them ad nauseum from now 'til Oscar night. For example, both Brokeback Mountain and The Queen made impressive debuts in Venice the past two years.

What will be the standouts this year? No one knows at this point, but a look over the scheduled films does weed out a few of interest:

- One can only imagine the Cassandra's Dream on-set conversations between Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell and director Woody Allen.

- I can usually take (The Royal Tenenbaums) or leave (The Life Aquatic with Steve with Steve Zissou) Wes Anderson, but his The Darjeeling Unlimited does boast a nice teaser poster (above).

- Nicole Kidman did make a movie this year without Daniel Craig. She plays Margot at the Wedding (in an ugly hat) for Noah Baumbach.

- Michael Cain graduates to the Olivier role in Kenneth Branagh's high tech remake of Sleuth, opposite his Alfie doppelganger Jude Law. Check out the nifty trailer here.

- Todd Haynes finally returns with the bizarre Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. Dylan will be played by multiple actors, including Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and ... Cate Blanchett???

- A post-Brokeback Ang Lee does a 360 with the Chinese language spy thriller Lust, Caution.

- First Anne Hathaway (in this week's Becoming Jane), now Keira Knightley: James McAvoy romances another talented young actress, who reunites with her Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright, in Antonement.

- And on the documentary front, Joan Allen, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane, Josh Lucas and others give voice to Trumbo, an examination of the life of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.

Click here to buy Darjeeling Limitedposters from Amazon.com.

Links via GoldDerby.LATimes.com, Imdb.com and YouTube.com.