Summer is a busy time for movies, so usually I postpone my vacation until after the last Eddie Murphy or “Mummy” flick has stunk up the multiplex. This year, I’ve been planning to take my vacation around Labor Day, to coincide with the Venice Film Festival. (FYI: That’s Venice, Italy, a slightly more expensive destination than Venice, Illinois.)

This week, the organizers of the filmfest, which is the oldest in the world and one of thmost prestigious, announced the line-up. Surprise: It stinks.

OK, maybe it’s simplistic to say it stinks. The festival is run by cinema scholars who get their choice of the most anticipated films of the year,  so they wouldn’t deliberately pick lousy movies. But this year, there are slim pickings, particularly from the U.S. There are only five English-language films in the entire 10-day festival. The reason? The recent Hollywood writer’s strike, which lasted 14 weeks and postponed a lot of the productions that would have been done by now. So Venice, as well as the concurrent film festival in Toronto, will be skewed toward foreign movies.

Do I really want to fly halfway around the world to see a seven-hour slum epic from the Philippines?

The multilingual slate might be fine with Wim Wenders, the German director who is heading the Venice jury, but it’s a drag for someone like me, who depends on the autumn film festivals for a preview of the movies that will be contending for Oscars and debuting in St. Louis at the end of the year.

True, the opening night film at Venice is “Burn After Reading,” the Coen brothers’ new spy comedy starring my old college chum Brad Pitt. But after that, I’ll be stuck in Venice with nothing to do but ride in gondolas, drink espresso in St. Marks’ Square and eat Italian food on with a moonlight view of the Aegean Sea.

I may never forgive those damn writers.