The 68th Venice Film Festival was a pandemonium of pushy, autograph-hounding journalists, hapless stargazers and underage fashionistas talking their way into exclusive parties. Walking along the beach, as the late-summer sun beat down on the Lido, it was easy to forget that this festival was about movies of differing shapes and sizes, where big Hollywood productions vied with quirky indies and inaccessible foreign productions.

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References to Iran appear throughout this year’s Biennale. Filmmakers in exile Amir Naderi from New York and Marjane Satrapi from Paris present films in the competition and in sidebars. Italian journalist Monica Maggioni who was already on the Lido last year, with her documentary Ward 54 about returning war veterans, is back with another documentary, Out of Tehran, shown in Controcampo Italiano, the section showcasing new cinema trends.

In a past issue of the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, actor Ted Danson talks to Elizabeth Kolbert—the magazine’s environment expert—about his work in the field of oceanography and marine conservation. He talks about the protection of oceans and marine life, about his concern over the fact that a year after the BP oil spill, offshore drilling is again being promoted. (Though why he should be disappointed by

Is James Franco all over the place or what? Certainly, there are few careers as stimulating to watch (even the occasional booboo, like his hosting of the Oscar, somehow adds to his likableness). Edgy, edgy films like 127 hours, challenging roles (it took some nerve to play Alan Ginsburg in Howl) taking the time to attend a major university (Columbia),