Venice 2013: Blast off... George Clooney and Sandra Bullock kick start film festival with space thriller

 
Glamorous pair: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney at the Gravity premiere which opened the 70th Venice International Film Festival
Getty
29 August 2013
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George Clooney and Sandra Bullock got the Venice Film Festival off to an explosive start with the premiere of 3D space movie Gravity.

Gravity line-up: from left, producer David Heyman, director Alfonso Cuaron, actors Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and screenwriter Jonas Cuaron
AP

The pair play astronauts whose shuttle is destroyed by an avalanche of space debris triggered by a Russian missile strike on a spy satellite.

Clooney has a joke with photographers
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Sandra Bullock in dramatic red at the premiere
AP

Bullock and Clooney, speaking at the post-film news conference, said the film, directed by Mexico's Alfonso Cuaron, had been one of the most demanding in which they had ever appeared.

George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are joined by director Alfonso Cuaron for the screening
AP

Bullock said: "Physically and mentally it was the craziest, most bizarre, challenging thing. But you find what you're made of."

Italian model Eva Riccobono at the Gravity premiere
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Green goddess: Italian model Fiammetta Cicogna at the premiere
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In possibly the strongest female space acting performance since Sigourney Weaver killed the female reptile in Alien, Bullock plays Dr Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, and Clooney the veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky.

Earlier Clooney and Bullock appeared at the festival's opening ceremony at the Palazzo del Cinema.

Pals: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney arrive to promote their film Gravity at the Venice Film Festival
AP
Overexcited: Clooney meets some delighted fans at the Gravity press conference on Venice Lido
Getty

The pair had arrived in Venice aboard water taxis with Bullock in shorts - and carrying her young adopted son Louis Bardo Bullock - and Clooney sporting a T-shirt promoting his own brand of tequila.

Bright sparks: Sandra Bullock, in a colour block dress, and George Clooney have a ball at the Gravity photocall
Getty

A catalogue of big names including Scarlett Johansson are expected to keep the star quotient high during the 10-day event.

Johansson appears as an alien in Under the Skin, the long-awaited adaptation of the Michel Faber novel by English director Jonathan Glazer who made waves with his debut Sexy Beast in 2000 but has not made a movie since its follow-up, Birth, seven years ago.

It is one of three British films in contention for the prestigious Golden Lion award. Terry Gilliam unveils The Zero Theorem, another sci-fi drama, starring Christoph Waltz. And Judi Dench and Steve Coogan star in Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears and based on a book by former journalist Martin Sixsmith.

George Clooney arrives at the Venice Film Festival
AP

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Announcing the line-up earlier in the summer, festival director Alberto Barbera said the “real novelty” was having three British films in competition. “British cinema does not always produce films of such great interest. It really is an impressive and unusually strong year for UK films.”

Splashing around: Eva Riccobono poses before she takes to hosting the opening and closing ceremonies
Reuters

The festival runs until September 7.

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