By Steve Pond LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The awards picture is now a muddle, but in a month it’ll be a lot clearer. The reason: film festivals.

The Venice International Film Festival begins on Wednesday, and continues through September 10. The Telluride Film Festival starts on Friday and runs through Sunday.

And the Toronto Film Festival kicks off on Thursday, September 8 and runs through September 18.

These three festivals (plus a slightly smaller player, the Deauville Festival du Cinema Americain) paves the way for the New York Film Festival (September 30-October 16), the Aspen Film Festival (September 21-25), the AFI Fest (November 3-10) and the other festivals that litter the fall movie season.

But we won’t have to wait for those other festivals to have some answers about this year’s contenders. By the time the smoke clears in mid-September, we should have a sense of the following pressing questions:

Which of the two George Clooney movies, “The Ides of March” and “The Descendants,” stands the best chance of impressing the Academy?

Can “Moneyball” appeal to an audience of more than just baseball fans?

Do directors as diverse as David Cronenberg Steven Soderbergh, Fernando Meirelles and even Madonna (!) have what it takes this year?

More than 250 films will screen in Toronto, 50 in Venice and another 30 to 40 in Telluride. A festival rundown:

Venice Film Festival

The oldest of the three film festivals is also the most old world, both in its setting and in the fact that its jury clearly isn’t exactly representative of Academy voters. Last year’s winner, for example, was Sofia Coppola’s austere and European-style “Somewhere,” which was completely overlooked by the Academy.

Toronto, on the other hand, has an audience award rather than a jury, and last year the top prize

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