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The International Jury for this year’s Venice International Film Festival has been finalized after the previous confirmation of French actress Isabelle Huppert as its chair.

Now, American director and screenwriter James Gray, British director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh, Polish director, screenwriter, and producer Agnieszka Holland, and Brazilian director-screenwriter Kleber Mendonça Filho are the latest additions to the jury. They will join Mauritanian director, screenwriter and producer Abderrahmane Sissako, Italian director-screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore, German director-screenwriter Julia von Heinz and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

The prestigious Golden Lion for best film and other awards will be revealed during the festival’s closing ceremony on Sept. 7.

Gray made his directorial debut in 1994 with Little Odessa, which received the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His other projects include The Yards (2000), starring Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers (2008) and The Immigrant (2013). The Lost City of Z had its world premiere at the New York...

Darryl Hickman, a child actor in Leave Her to Heaven and The Grapes of Wrath, died at 92 on Wednesday, May 22, his family said. No cause was given.

Hickman appeared in more than 40 films, having been a contract player at Paramount and MGM.

He portrayed the youngest member of the Joad family, Winfield, in John Ford’s 1940 adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, as well as a role as the younger version of Van Heflin’s character in the 1946 noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

In 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven, Hickman played Danny, younger brother to Cornel Wilde’s Richard. Danny was disabled by polio and when he comes to live with Richard and his wife, Ellen (Gene Tierney). He drowns by Ellen’s hand in the middle of a lake due to jealousy of Richard’s affection for the boy.

In 1951, he briefly retired from acting to enter a monastery,...

Darryl Hickman, who appeared in such films as The Grapes of Wrath and Leave Her to Heaven as a youngster before becoming a CBS executive in charge of daytime drama and an actor once more, has died. He was 92.

Hickman, who lived in Montecito, died Wednesday, his family announced.

He was the older brother (by three years) of the late Dwayne Hickman, who starred on the 1959-63 CBS comedy The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Darryl appeared with his brother in Captain Eddie (1945) — he played famed fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker as a boy — and on three first-season episodes of Dobie as older brother Davey, who came home from college.

In 1951, after appearances in more than 40 movies, Hickman — who had been a contract player at Paramount and MGM — became disillusioned with the business and entered a monastery, though he was back in show business before long.

Hickman had made his first...

Anna Gross, the film executive behind such acclaimed titles as Tootsie and The NeverEnding Story, died on July 23 at her home in Twentynine Palms, CA, following a long battle with cancer. She was 68.

Gross was born in New York City on October 25, 1952. She spent the first eight years of her career working alongside famed Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis. In her time with the Oscar winner, she worked in various capacities on 14 films, including Charles Bronson starrer Death Wish (1974), Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor (1975), Western The Shootist (1976), King Kong (1976), starring Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin, and Milos Forman’s Ragtime.

Gross subsequently served as Vice President of Production for Pollack, working on his 1979 film The Electric Horseman and developing two others: 1982’s Tootsie and 1985’s Out of Africa.

Gross spent much of the 1980s working in Germany alongside producer Bernd Eichinger, overseeing production on classic fantasy pic...

No foreign-language film has ever won an Oscar for Best Picture.

But given the promotional push that Netflix is giving Alfonso Cuaron‘s “Roma,” which just made the cut as one of the nine titles to make the subtitled short list as Mexico’s entry, the Golden Lion winner at Venice has one of the best chances in years to finally take home both statuettes.

Not that subtitled nominees haven’t tried before. There have been 10 bold movies that have attempted grab the Academy Award’s ultimate gold, starting with France’s 1937 World War I masterpiece “Grand Illusion” and including Italy’s 1994 romantic drama “The Postman” and Clint Eastwood‘s 2006 Japanese-American World War II effort “Letters From Iwo Jima.” But none competed for foreign-language film as well. In the case of France’s “Grand Illusion,” directed by Jean Renoir, the category did not officially exist until 1956. The year that “The Postman” competed,...

By Terence Johnson

Managing Editor

The Oscar race is never a dull one and that couldn’t be any more apparent than in the race for Best Foreign Language film. This year is certainly shaping up to be a battle of David vs. Goliath if you looked at the histories of the countries competing. In one corner, you have Italy, with a whopping 12 wins in this category, facing off with a country like Cambodia, with no Oscar nominations. But such is the beauty of the awards season and the Oscars. So before the nominations come out, here’s an Oscar primer to get you caught up on the Foreign Language films.

Belgium – 2013 Nominee: The Broken Circle Breakdown

Logline/Synopsis: Elise and Didier fall in love at first sight, in spite of their differences. He talks, she listens. He’s a romantic atheist, she’s a religious realist. When their daughter becomes seriously ill,...

A winner at the Cannes and Venice film festivals, and led by the arthouse director behind hits like "Cinema Paradiso," "The Star Maker" and "Malena," any work from Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore is usually worth paying attention to. So when he assembles the kind of talent he's got in his latest "The Best Offer," it's certainly hard to resist. Starring Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland, and featuring new a score by Ennio Morricone, the art world drama tells the story of an auction house director, Virgil Oldman, who receives a special assignment to sell the family antiques belonging to a mysterious young woman, who refuses to appear in person. And so begins a unique mystery, but as you'll see in this clip, it isn't long until Virgil tries to learn the identity of who he's working for. "The Best Offer" is now playing in limited release and is available on VOD.

While ordinarily we'd totally understand anyone's excitement for the latest from Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore ("Cinema Paradiso," "The Star Maker," "Malena") you might want to temper that a little bit when approaching his latest, "The Best Offer." The film, which has already seen release overseas and played some festival dates, hasn't earned that much buzz, nor did it impress our own Jessica Kiang when she caught it in Berlin earlier this year. Declaring the movie "strangely old-fashioned in its construction and requiring a Golden Gate-level feat of engineering to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to unironically enjoy it," it does at least have the always enjoyable Geoffrey Rush at the center of it. The actor plays an aging auctioneer asked to handle the valuation and sale of a mysterious woman’s priceless heirlooms, finding himself soon enveloped by a passion that will change his life. Or, you can look at this way,...

As the man behind such films as "Cinema Paradiso," "The Star Maker" and "Malena," there was an era when Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore was a familiar name at the arthouse. However, it has been a while since he's had a movie arrive stateside with quite the same attention as those pics, but "The Best Offer" could change that. Featuring his "starriest" cast in quite some time, the film features Geoffrey Rush, Donald Sutherland and Jim Sturgess, in the tale of an eccentric art expert who is invited by a mysterious woman to assess a piece, and it's a journey that will change his life forever. This new teaser trailer for the movie is in Italian, but you can still get a sense of the story, but most of all, you can drink in Tornatore's typically gorgeous widescreen compositions. Seriously, this thing looks pretty great. Also featuring a score by Ennio Morricone,...

Celebrated Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore doesn't exactly crank them out, and while he made waves on American shores in the late '80s and '90s with "Cinema Paradiso," "The Star Maker," "The Legend Of 1900" and "Malena," it has been over a decade since the latter and the subsequent movies -- "The Unknown Woman" and "Baaria" -- have made the same splash.  But his next effort is gearing up, and drawing upon two well-known names, it could see him once again back in American arthouses in bigger form.

Geoffrey Rush and Jim Sturgess are set to star in "The Best Offer." Details are pretty scarce, but the film is said to be an "art auction world drama" set in Vienna and the Alps that will start shooting at the end of the month. But adding a bit of excitement to the news is the mentoin that 83-year-old master composer...

Rome -- Giuseppe Tornatore's epic coming-of-age story "Baaria" has been selected as Italy's hopeful for a 2010 foreign-language Oscar nomination, the Italian cinema and audiovisual association Anica said Tuesday.

It is the fourth time Tornatore has had a film tapped for the honor by Anica. Three years ago, Anica selected Tornatore's "La sconosciuta" (The Unknown Woman) as Italy's hopeful, and in 1995 it selected "L'uomo delle stelle" (The Star Maker), though it was not chosen as a candidate by the Academy either time. But in 1990 his "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" won the foreign language honor.

"Baaria," the most expensive Italian film ever made, has already had a banner year, as the first Italian film in a generation to open the storied Venice Film Festival, where is screened in competition and won the coveted Pasinetti collateral prize.

  The film tells the story of three generations in Tornatore's hometown of Bagheria in Sicily (the...

ROME -- Giuseppe Tornatore's La Sconosciuta (The Unknown Woman) dominated Thursday night's 51st annual David di Donatello Awards, taking home the awards for best picture, director and actress.

But Tornatore had to share the spotlight with the Centoautori (Hundred Author) movement of writers and directors who are calling for greater government efforts to promote culture and make it more accessible. Several prize winners dedicated their award to the year-old movement and others mentioned it in their acceptance speeches.

It was the second major award in the Italian capital for La Sconosciuta, which tells the story of an illegal Ukrainian immigrant in Italy. The film, which has had only limited success outside Italy, also was named best film at the first RomaCinemaFest, where the film had its world premiere.

Tornatore has taken home Davids for two other films: in 1995 for L'Uomo delle Stelle (Starmaker) and three years later for "La Leggenda del Pianista Sull'Oceano" (The Legend of 1900). Tornatore is best known for Cinema Paradiso, which earned the foreign-language Oscar in 1990.