I am going to have to keep this short because I only have 20 minutes of internet time at the hostel where I am staying. But I know that many of you are eagerly waiting for some gossip from the world premiere of The Black Dahlia so I am writing down a little bit of my experience.

I arrived to Venice’s Lido island, where the festival is held, at 1pm. I had not slept during the previous night because my plane left so early and I figured it was better to wait at the airport than book a night in a hotel for basically nothing. On top of this, I had travelled in a train for 6 hours to get to Liverpool, where I flew from. So considering this, I was suprisingly “sober”, lol. The main premiere of The Black Dahlia was invitation only and there was only one other screening of the film, during the same evening, two hours later. I was scared that I had missed my chance to see The Black Dahlia because the booking had already started the previous day. Thankfully I got my ticket, had breakfast/lunch and then headed for the red carpet. When I first arrived there, there was not many fans waiting. Not more than 15-20. But it got quite growded fast - after all, this was the opening night of the Venice Film Festival!

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Big thanks to Kelly for sending in the following news.

Today AOL Music is premiering Bob Dylan’s new video “When The Deal Goes Down”. The video is directed by Academy Award nominee (Capote) Bennett Miler and features the lovely Scarlett Johansson.

Bob Dylan - When The Deal Goes Down

I am not able to watch it myself but please, check it out and let me know what you think! I am very excited by the news! It has been a while since Scarlett did a music video and Bob Dylan — wow!

Scarlett Johansson will be a guest on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday, 5th September 2006 to promote The Black Dahlia.

On 20th September, the first unofficial biography about Scarlett will be published. It is written by Brandon Hurst. You can pre-order it at Amazon. Thanks to Maria for the heads up.

I attended a ‘Reel Life’ interview with Brian De Palma yesterday at the Edinburgh Film Festival here in Scotland. De Palma spoke a little bit about The Black Dahlia too, though the focus of the event was mainly the New American Cinema. When asked about his favorite actors (whom De Palma has worked with), he mentioned that he worked with several talented British actors on The Black Dahlia, most notably Fiona Shaw, whom he thinks “can do anything”. De Palma said that he originally read The Black Dahlia about 15 years ago and thought it was a very good novel but would also be very difficult to adapt to the big screen. After seeing L.A. Confidential and how well James Ellroy’s novel was adapted to a script, he regained hope and when he read the script of Dahlia, he thought it was quite good. He mentioned that David Fincher (who was originally supposed to direct Dahlia) and Ellroy worked on the picture for nearly a decade and by the time De Palma got on board, Ellroy was not so involved with the project anymore. But De Palma has the utmost respect for the writer and how multi-layered his stories are.

Over all, Brian De Palma came off as a very confident filmmaker and he was not shy to voice his opinion on the state of contemporary American cinema. He mentioned that he loves to go out and see films and often when he does, he is reminded to go back to work to be able to deliver something good for the audience. But he is very much inspired by film festivals and thinks today’s independent cinema has a lot to offer. He did not mentioned Scarlett Johansson in this interview but a funny co-incidence, he did mentioned a couple of things indirectly related to her. When asked what he thought about Mission: Impossible 3 (a film that Scarlett was supposed to do), De Palma rolled his eyes furiously (he was not shy on mentioning his thoughts on Tom Cruise either and the fact that he did Mission: Impossible for commercial reasons). He also mentioned that he dislikes filmmakers like Michael Bay (director of The Island) and how they shoot action scenes by cutting so fast that you can hardly understand the big picture and the physique of the characters at all.

I am leaving for the Venice Film Festival in about a week from now to attend the world premiere of Scarlett’s latest film, The Black Dahlia on 30th August. If other fans are planning to attend and would like to meet up for the red carpet ceremony, feel free to email me at riikka@scarlett-fan.com and we’ll chat more. I will also try to come by to post my review of the film the next day!

As some of the fans are already aware, Esquire magazine is running a story where they partially reveal the identity of their Sexiest Woman Alive over the course of six months. Each month they have a partially revealling photo and a 20 question interview. The readers have made the guess in a poll that she is Renee Zellweger (53%) with Scarlett running right behind with 27%. The mystery lady sure does sound and look a lot like our Scarlett but I recommend for you to have a look and make up your own mind.

Esquire - Sexiest Woman 2006

Thanks to Peta informing me that Scarlett made a low-key visit to Auckland, New Zealand last week, which she spent supermarket shopping, buying take-aways and driving around town with Josh Hartnett in an environmentally friendly eco car. Josh is currently in town to film 30 Days of Night and Scarlett accompanied him on set.

Hello from the good ole rainy Scotland! Still no flat but I just had to come by to post this fabulous find!

One of my favorite websites, The Film Experience has been having a Scarlett Johansson week with lots of goss and chatter about our girl. Check out results of their poll here; the readers have voted Lost in Translation as Scarlett’s best performance with 51% - Match Point and Girl with a Pearl Earring follow. The blog also has awesome musings on Scarlett and her career. They even voted Scarlett-Fan.com as the best Scarlett Johansson website!

These photos are all of Scarlett celebrating Lost in Translation at various bashes, premieres, festivals. For thousands more (you heard me right) —or if Scarlett week had you all hot and bothered, visit Scarlett Fan. It’s a huge spiffy website. If all movie actors had websites this comprehensive the world would be a better, prettier, happier, more satisfying place.

I am blushing. Literally.