Snipes wins best actor at Venice Film Festival

Wesley Snipes recently won the best actor prize at the 54th annual Venice International Film Festival.

Snipes won the coveted Volpi Cup for his performance in the Mike Figgis-directed infidelity tale One Night Stand, one of Venice's most acclaimed competition entries, in which he stars opposite Nastassja Kinski.

Hana-Bi (Fireworks), Japanese director Takeshi Kitano's lyrical thriller about a police detective coping with Yakuza mobsters and an ailing wife, received the Golden Lion prize for best film.

The Jury Special Prize went to Ovosodo (Hard-Boiled Egg), a comedy in the traditional Italian vein by young director Paolo Virzi depicting the growing pains of a pimply kid in a tough neighborhood.

U.S. actor Robin Tunney got the Volpi Cup for best actress for her role as a misfit with a neurological disorder in Niagara, Niagara.

Pinellas County moviegoers will get a peek at The Full Monty on Friday, one week after this acclaimed British comedy opened in Brandon and Tampa. The management of Movies at Pinellas Park and Movies at Clearwater announced that the film will begin a limited engagement at those venues on that day.

The Full Monty is the story of six unemployed steel workers who organize a male exotic dance revue as a last financial resort. It stars Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) and Tom Wilkenson (Priest). The film's Hillsborough County engagements also will continue through next week.

Rapper-turned-actor Mark Wahlberg (Fear) is in advanced negotiations to star opposite Robert De Niro in the independent biopic Out on My Feet.

Wahlberg will play real-life boxer Vinnie Curto, who despite physical and mental abuse from his father, won the cruiserweight championship. De Niro will play Curto's seasoned trainer Angelo Dundee. Curto is also set to play his own father.

Edward Furlong (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) is set to star in John Waters' satire Pecker for Fine Line Features. The film begins production next month in the director's hometown and favorite film location, Baltimore.

In the tradition of such Waters projects as Hairspray and Cry-Baby, the new film tells the story of a young man (Furlong) whose idiosyncratic photographs of working-class Baltimore life takes the New York art world by storm.

A year after drawing critical acclaim for Breaking the Waves _ which drew an Oscar nomination for actress Emily Watson _ Danish director Lars von Trier plans to shoot his next film in Germany and Sweden, sources confirmed.

The musical drama Taps will be the second part of a planned trilogy; Breaking the Waves was the first part.

Taps is set in the United States in the 1950s and tells the story of European immigrants misled by the American dream.

_ Compiled from staff and wire reports