The award winners for the Venice Film Festival have been announced, but quite the controversy has arisen from the ceremony.  THR reports that the Michael Mann-led jury was poised to give Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, but due to a ridiculous festival rule they opted to give the award to Kim Ki-Duk‘s revenge film Pieta instead.  Apparently the Venice Film Festival’s new rules state that one film cannot win more than two major awards, so in lieu of the Silver Lion directing award going to Anderson and the acting award being split by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, the jury was asked to reconvene and “remove” one of The Master‘s awards.

As one can imagine, a heated jury session followed that ultimately resulted in The Master’s Golden Lion being taken away.  Ah, awards season.  Nevertheless, the film is currently making the rounds at the Toronto Film Festival so check back on Collider soon for Matt’s full review.  In the meantime, hit the jump to check out the full list of awards from the Venice Film Festival.

Once they’ve put their superhero films behind them, Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) and Michael Shannon (Man of Steel) will topline The Long Red Road.  The feature film will be an adaptation of the Brett C. Leonard play by the same name.  Hardy previously starred in the play as Sam, a man living on an Indian reservation in South Dakota who attempts to drink away his sorrows; Hardy will reprise his role in the film.  Shannon is attached to play Sam’s older brother, Bob.  Hit the jump for more on The Long Red Road.

It’s strange to have watched the cult of The Big Lebowski grow since release. The film was Joel and Ethan Coen’s follow-up to Fargo, which was an academy award-winning crime drama with a funny center. After the disastrous The Hudsucker Proxy (which has also gained a cult following) Fargo put the boys back in good graces, but the story of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), and the kidnapping that turns him into amateur sleuth with sidekick Walter Sobchek (John Goodman) was greeted as a sophomore slump. Now it’s revered as a masterpiece. Our review of the limited edition Blu-ray of The Big Lebowski follows after the jump.

A batch of new images from George Clooney’s next directorial project The Ides of March have hit the web. The political drama focuses on the backdoor politics of a presidential primary campaign and boasts a stellar cast that includes Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti and Evan Rachel Wood. We brought you one new image from the film this morning, but another batch of images has popped up giving us a good look at Clooney as the film’s presidential candidate, with Gosling taking on the role of Clooney’s press secretary.

The pedigree of the cast, combined with Clooney taking on directing and scripting (alongside co-writer Grant Heslov) duties, put this film at the top of my most anticipated releases this year. Audiences will get their first look at The Ides of March when it premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, with a public release set for October 7^th. Hit the jump to check out the images and yearn for October.

Columbia Pictures has released the first teaser trailer for Moneyball by way of Entertainment Tonight.  Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of Oakland Athletics who helped usher in a statistical revolution to professional baseball.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Stephen Bishop, Kathryn Morris, and Chris Pratt also star.  Bennett Miller (Capote) directed the movie from a script by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian.  Moneyball opens September 23.  Watch the trailer after the break.

[Update: Sony has released the official version of the trailer, which we've now included after the jump]

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most talented and most frustrating of the artists to emerge from the mid-90′s boom of next-generation film school brats. Though his first film was shuffled and recut, his sophomore effort was launched like the second coming. That film is Boogie Nights (1997), which – without setting the world on fire – became something of a cult hit, doing well enough to launch Anderson as a serious director. His follow up – 1999′s Magnolia – was viewed less favorably, though it too had its staunch defenders. With his cadre of returning players (Julianne Moore, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman, John C. Reilly, Melora Walters, Phillip Baker Hall, Ricky Jay, and William H. Macy), and stars like Tom Cruise, and Mark Wahlberg, Anderson was both one of the most successful (critically) and least successful (fiscally) of the new auteurs. My reviews of Boogie Nights and Magnolia after jump.

It was an unusually warm day in November when I got word that there would be an advanced screening of Focus Features’ newest picture, Pirate Radio. In addition to the screening, I would get the chance to talk with Tom Sturridge, a bit of an acting newcomer who would serve as the film’s lynchpin, and the writer/director of the film, Richard Curtis.  Well, I grabbed The Who’s Greatest Hits album, aptly titled after one of their greatest singles, My Generation, jumped in my Chevy and sped away towards midtown Manhattan.

Being a bit of a Richard Curtis fan for his work as a writer on one of Britain’s most celebrated sitcoms ever, Black Adder, and for his directorial debut with Love, Actually, to say I was amped up would probably be an understatement. I had also wanted to desperately see this movie since I had heard of it because I usually enjoy time-period pieces about one of my favorite subjects, the history of TV and radio.  What I thought of the film and more after the jump:

It was created with Claymation, its main characters speak with adorable accents, and funny-looking animals are involved – but “Wallace and Gromit” this ain’t.

Director Adam Elliot won an Oscar for 2003′s “Harvie Krumpet”, a 23-minute animated short about a one-testicled, Tourette’s-ridden World War II survivor and animal rights activist, and he brings that same gift for unique characters and melancholy overtones to his debut full-length feature “Mary and Max”. My review after the jump:

“Mary and Max” was the opening night selection at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film was a clayography feature from writer/director Adam Elliot and producer Melanie Coombs and it told a very unusual story about a pen-pal relationship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle (Toni Collette), a chubby, lonely 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia; and Max Horovitz (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a severely obese, 44-year-old Jewish man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in New York City. While the film didn’t get stellar reviews, it was a good movie that deserved to be seen. Thankfully, while it isn’t getting a theatrical release, I’ve just found out the film will premiere nationwide on most cable systems on October 14th, 2009 via Sundance Selects on-demand. More after the jump: