• The 66th Venice Film Festival kicks off today. Variety says guests are in store for "a daring and diverse selection that comprises more countries, more newcomers, more Americans, more genre pics and what the fest boasts will be more 3-D on display than at any other nonspecialized event." Among the most anticipated US representatives are the festival's day of celebration of Disney and Pixar, the Weinstein Company's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. Spoiler spies who have sneaked peeks at the Moore film inform us it is their guess that the title in fact may be just a tiny bit ironic. Who woulda guessed? [Var]

• Director Paul W.S. Anderson of Resident Evil honors has signed on to shoot a 3-D version of The Three Musketeers. Anderson says he will create a contemporary feel for the classic tale while retaining its period setting. Just picture Too Fast, Too Furious with funny feathered hats and perhaps a pie fight or two. [THR]

• HBO has ordered 11 episodes of the Martin Scorsese produced 1920's gangster series Broadwalk Empire. [The Wrap]

• Jerry Springer has singed a deal to host a live Vegas stage version of America's Got Talent at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. Nick Cannon, you may relax now. [Var]

• Iron Man BFF's Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. are reuniting for Cowboys and Aliens, a sci-fi Western. The Dreamworks project will be Favreau's first directing gig after he finished Iron Man 2. [THR]

• Doug Wright is turning his acclaimed 1987 documentary Hands on a Hardbody into a stage musical at the La Jolla Playhouse. [Var]

Stylistically, it's agile, alert and most interested in what's going on in the characters' faces. And that is a lot. Physically imposing at 57 [sic], with a face that bespeaks untold battering and alteration, Rourke is simply staggering as Ram. The camera is rarely off him, and one doesn't want it to be, so entirely does he express the full life of this man with his every word and gesture. Ram's life has been dominated by pain in all its forms, but he's also devoted it to the one thing he loves and excels at, so he asks for no sympathy; he may have regrets, but no complaints.

In fact, Rourke only turns 52 this month — yet another testament to his prodigious talent for playing older, uglier and more selflessly than his preening peers. Look for the discussion to continue to this week in Toronto, where The Wrestler will square off with another has-been high-water mark, Jean-Claude Van Damme's JCVD — thus reviving the Rourke/Van Damme rivalry that so engrossed Razzie Award voters after their doomed 1997 collaboration Double Team. We're likely as glad as they they are to see those days behind them, but we still hope they'll follow proper star-reunion etiquette when passing each other en route to screenings. If we didn't pay to see the fight then, Lord knows we wouldn't pay to see it now.

• 'The Wrestler' [Variety]

We recommend that you steel yourself before viewing this YouTube clip of an obviously crazed fan bum-rushing universally worshipped movie star Brad Pitt at the Venice Film Festival, as the footage demonstrates how easy it is for virtually any deranged admirer to penetrate a celebrity's defenses and attempt to embrace him in thanks for the urchin-collecting good works that have alleviated overcrowding in a variety of Third World orphanages. Make sure you watch the the video all the way to the end; most chilling is the moment where Pitt's Italian assailant cheerily waves to the camera, a gesture clearly meant to signal a fresh wave of hug-based attacks on Hollywood's goodwill ambassador by a legion of smiling stalkers emboldened by the fact that one can lay hands on the actor without so much as a tasering by his permissive security detail.

• Brad Pitt Attacked by Crazed Fan in Venice [Breitbart.tv]