(MENAFN- Arab Times) VENICE Sept 6 (AFP): Movies from the United States Indonesia and Japan are tipped by critics as the favourites to win this year's Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival due to be announced Saturday. American comedy 'Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance' directed by Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and starring Michael Keaton of 'Batman' fame opened the festival with a punch and immediately stole the show. Critics were universally wowed by the brilliant dark comedy which delves into the cinema and theatre worlds to explore the drug of fame through the story of a washed-up actor once famous for playing the 'Birdman' superhero. The film couldn't be more different to fellow front-runner 'The Look of Silence' Joshua Oppenheimer's shocking second documentary about the murder of over a million Communists following Indonesia's 1965 coup. Picking up where his acclaimed 'The Act of Killing' left off Oppenheimer follows a man who confronts his brother's killers and critics suggested the director who missed out on an Oscar in 2012 by a whisker could pick up the top prize for this moving follow-up. 'Making 'The Look of Silence' frightened me I think it frightened us all' a softly-spoken Oppenheimer told AFP in a beach-side interview in Venice. Violence and war are also at the heart of Cult Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto's film 'Fires on the Plain' which both thrilled and shocked Venice and might snap up the Lion for pushing the depiction of horror to new extremes. The remake of Kon Ichikawa's 1959 classic about defeated Japanese troops in the Philippines at the end of World War Two explores the lure of cannibalism and features shots of dismembered limbs and maggots devouring rotting flesh. Jury head Alexandre Desplat a French film score composer whose dozens of works include the music for 'The King's Speech' and 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' told AFP the Lion would go to an 'unusual' film which unites 'flawless method and a humanist theme.' The awards ceremony is set to begin at 1700 GMT. Best actor prize is tipped to go to Keaton for his powerful depiction of a man tormented by inner demons in 'Birdman' or Michael Shannon for his pitiless real estate broker in Ramin Bahrani's '99 Homes' a devilish tale of bankruptcy greed and despair. Favourites Other favourites for the award include Al Pacino for his portrayal of an ageing locksmith pining for a lost love in David Gordon Green's 'Manglehorn' and 'Lord of the Rings' star Viggo Mortensen as a teacher who befriends an Algerian dissident in David Oelhoffen's 'Far From Men'. Best actress may well go to Lu Zhong for her portrayal of an older woman troubled by a dark past and disorientated by the changes in modern China in Wang Xiaoshuai's stalking thriller 'Red Amnesia'. The world's oldest film festival has brought stars such as Owen Wilson Tim Roth and Ethan Hawke to the seaside resort of the Venice Lido speeding in by water taxi before attending a flurry of glamorous beach parties. Hawke plays the lead in Andrew Niccol's 'Good Kill' about remotely-operated drones in the war on terror but while his portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder has been praised critics have said the film is let down by a stilted script. A total of 20 films are competing including Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's 'The Postman's White Nights' his fifth film running for the Lion a warm-hearted critically-applauded tale about the loneliness of life in a remote community. First-time feature 'Sivas' by Turkey's Kaan Mujdeci a coming of age story a young boy who befriends a dog he saves from a dog fight divided critics as did Fatih Akin's 'The Cut' which tackles the early 20th-century mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. While Francesco Munzi's mafia drama 'Black Souls' was warmly received Mario Martone's biopic of poet Giacomo Leopardi in 'Il Giovane Favoloso' and Abel Ferrara's depiction of outspoken Marxist intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini met with mixed reviews. The festival has featured dozens of world premiers out of competition including horror-comedy master Joe Dante's gore-packed 'Burying the Ex' and Peter Bogdanovich's riotous romantic farce 'She's Funny That Way'. The age-old rivalry between Broadway and Hollywood took central stage at this year's Venice film festival which winds up on Saturday with a host of theatre-based tales and stars denouncing a declining Silver Screen industry. 'Hollywood's gone in the wrong direction' master of screwball comedy Peter Bogdanovich said ahead of the premier of his delicious theatre-based comedy 'She's Funny That Way' starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. 'They're making prequels and sequels and cartoons. The great days of Hollywood aren't with us anymore we're in a period of decadence' he said. This summer Hollywood faced its worst blockbuster season since 1997 with X-Men Transformers and even Spiderman failing to hit the spot and summer sales hitting just $4.05 billion (3.08 billion euros) down 15 percent from the previous year according to movie sales-tracker Rentrak. Broadway revenue and attendance figures meanwhile were on the up with box offices reporting a record total gross of $1.27 billion up 11 percent from the previous season. It's a dynamic reflected in the repeated odes to Broadway in the Venice line-up and the red-carpet sentiment that Hollywood has lost its way. Performances Among the most acclaimed turns at the 71st edition of the festival were performances from Al Pacino and Michael Keaton both playing actors facing existential crises that haunt them in dressing room mirrors and spill over on to the Broadway stage while Owen Wilson offered a gleeful appearance as a theatre director. In Barry Levinson's 'The Humbling' Pacino's character Simon Axler battles with his inner demons in a staging of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' while Keaton's character suffers a similar crisis of faith in Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 'Birdman' in which he struggles to step away from a blockbuster franchise by putting on a Broadway play. Keaton may have Tim Burton's 'Batman' to thank for his stellar rise in real life but Inarritu has the spiteful New York Times critic in 'Birdman' deride his character as representing a world in which 'young spoilt children give each other awards for cartoons and porn.' Pacino in Venice for both 'The Humbling' and in-competition flick 'Manglehorn' told journalists that 'in the old days the people who started Hollywood exchanged ideas.' 'Now it's changed they can't afford to do any of the movies we do anymore the smaller movies. Billions have to be spent' said 'The Godfather' star. Unlike last year when the festival opened with 3D space giant 'Gravity' starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock this year there has been barely a nod to special effects. Swedish director Roy Andersson pared his film 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence' down even further than most presenting a series of sketches in which furniture is minimal and props limited to the odd briefcase. Alongside its homage to theatre the world's oldest festival also spotlighted the growing market for high-quality television mini-series screening the premier of HBO's 'Olive Kitteridge' starring Frances McDormand a long-time collaborator with the Coen brothers. The series' director Lisa Cholodenko said that while 'there's an inherent restriction in big-buck cinema because it has to appeal to the biggest audience possible' television is living 'a golden age changing every minute.' 'Every season there are more and more channels Sundance Netflix Amazon moving into production it's kind of the Wild West. You can be as adventurous or subversive as you want to be' she said.
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