George Clooney and Brad Pitt lived la dolce vita in Venice Tuesday night, partying into the wee hours.

In town to promote their film Burn After Reading, which opens the film festival Wednesday, the pair first attended a black tie fundraiser for their Not On Our Watch charity. Some 200 Italian VIPs - plus their costar Tilda Swinton - attended the dinner at the Hotel Cipriani on Giudecca Island.

“They both have such passion and such dedication,” a guest told PEOPLE of the pair.

After the event wound down, the two actors partied on with some 20 fundraiser guests, arriving at the Cipriani’s poolside bar just after midnight.

“We’ve had a lot to drink,” said a jacketless Pitt, 44, laughing and raising his champagne glass. A tan and trim-looking Clooney, 44, had his shirt unbuttoned.

Later, the actor shimmied while the hotel’s guitar player strummed Gloria Estefan’s “Mi Tierra.”

“In case you didn’t know, the water’s salty,” Clooney yelled as he headed upstairs at 2:15 a.m.

Pitt, who arrived in Venice Tuesday with sons Maddox, 7, and Pax, 4, stayed chatting until just before 3 a.m.

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Two months after of the birth of Knox and Vivienne, Brad Pitt told reporters at a Venice press conference Wednesday, “The twins are fine.”

He then raised his water glass like a toast, and took a sip.

Pitt and his pal George Clooney are in Italy’s City of Bridges to promote their film Burn After Reading, which has its world premiere Wednesday night at Venice’s annual film festival.

The pair joked their way through the press conference, knocking back personal questions with charm - and a few winks.

Asked if he planned on getting married and having children, Clooney, 47, said: “I am so surprised to hear that question. This honestly is the first time I’ve ever been asked that question. I’m getting married and having children today.”

Added 44-year-old Pitt: “And until then, I’ll be sharing mine with him.”

Then - in response to a question about how many kids were enough - Angelina Jolie’s other half wisecracked, “I’ll have two more by next year.”

Together an Awful Lot

Clooney, who noted he and Pitt only had one scene together in Burn After Reading - which is the first movie from the Coen Brothers since their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men - joked that his frequent costar was sitting at the opposite end of the dais “because there’s a restraining order.”

The pair did get serious, however, when asked whether they’d prefer to be in Venice or in Denver, for the Democratic National Convention.

“I’m happy to be here. This is one of my favorite places in the world to be,” Clooney said. “I like to watch the conventions on TV. I think the stars of the convention should be the people who are being elected.”

As for the upcoming election, he added, “I’m pessimistic, but I’m optimistic. I think it’s a very exciting time in American politics.”

Pitt chimed in: “I’m optimistic, too. It’s a vital time. It’s a defining time. I’m excited about where things are going.”

Fight Club just got a whole lot more real.

It turns out Brad Pitt really is a no-holds-barred fighter - as a member of the Australian Olympic boxing team.

The Aussie Pitt, 25, quit his day job as a painter to train as a heavyweight boxer for the 2008 Games. And while he still gets the occasional taunt about his name, he’s learned to put up with it.

“Mate, I’ve been living with that other bloke’s name for years, it doesn’t worry me at all,” he told Australia’s Herald Sun while practicing.

His mother said he found out about his more famous counterpart during elementary school, when a child brought in a newspaper clip about the actor during show and tell.

“He likes to be known for his talent, not his name,” his mother Leanne told Australia’s The Age.

“I’ve always been Brad,” he tells the Daily Telegraph. “Let him change his name.”

In the wake of the untimely death of Bernie Mac Saturday morning at age 50, fellow entertainers fondly remember the standup comic and actor as a quintessential funnyman - and a warm guy.

George Clooney, who starred with Mac in 2001’s casino caper Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels, says, “The world just got a little less funny. He will be missed dearly.”

Said fellow Ocean’s colleague Brad Pitt, “I lament the loss of a ferociously funny and hardcore family man. My thoughts are with Rhonda and their family. Bernie Mac, you are already missed.”

Mac, who died at a Chicago hospital of complications from pneumonia, will be seen this fall in the comedy feature Soul Men opposite pal Samuel L. Jackson, who says, “It goes without saying that Bernie was one of the preeminent comedians of our generation.”

“My sincere prayer is that his family will be comforted by the warmth of love from all of us who knew and respected this man.”

George Lopez, Luke Wilson Remember

To fellow comedian George Lopez, “He was one of those comics that was unique because of his approach, his look, his voice %26#91;and%26#93; the content of his material.”

Admitting that at times Mac’s material might have sounded a little rough, especially to the ears of younger people, Lopez, during the press junket for Henry Poole Is Here, told PEOPLE, “Bernie fell into that category of people who were inherently different like when you saw them, you knew they were different and when they spoke, you knew they were different .”

Admiring Mac’s gifts, Lopez also said, “As comics, we’re all brothers. and I’ll miss him a lot. He was a good friend of mine.”

Henry Poole star Luke Wilson, Mac’s costar in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, told PEOPLE, “He couldn’t have been a nicer guy. He just seemed like a real family man and just a nice guy on the set, just very kind of normal guy.”

Actress-comedienne Niecy Nash, who played Mac’s sister on The Bernie Mac Show, recalls his knack for making fellow actors feel at home on the set.

“When I showed up to work, he said something to me that had never been said to me on a set before,” she says. “He said, ‘Baby girl, the script here is not the Bible. Do you, and I’ll follow. I got mine, you get yours.’ When he said that, I knew everything was going to be all right. I was happy to have the freedom to make up some funny with him. It was simply delicious.”

Adds Nash, “My working experiences with Bernie were so amazing, that from that point on, I wouldn’t have cared if he called me in the middle of the night to come and be in a scene where I didn’t have anything to do but sit in the background and eat cereal. I would’ve just done it because I loved him like that.”

• Reporting by ELAINE ARADILLAS, JED DREBEN, MARY GREEN, JULIE JORDAN, BRENDA RODRIGUEZ and HILARY SHENFELD

It’s back to work for busy father - and movie star - Brad Pitt.

As has been rumored for weeks - since the recent 3-disc, DVD release of the original 1977 version of the EuroCult WWII adventure Inglorious Bastards - Pitt will play Jewish resistance boss (and Southern rebel) Lt. Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming remake, set in German-occupied France.

The trade publication says shooting is slated to begin in Germany on Oct. 13 - and go at breakneck speed, so the finished film can debut at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, in May.

The Reporter also quotes a production source as saying the Pitt character is prone to spouting such lines as, “We’re gonna be doing one thing, and one thing only, and that’s killing Nazis” - shades of Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Band of Brothers British actor Simon Pegg is said to be in discussions to costar with Pitt.

Directed by Italy’s Enzo Castellari, the original Inglorious Bastards starred Bo Svenson (who re-surfaced in Tarantino’s Kill Bill) and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson - and, with its violence quotient on overload, was considered even dirtier than The Dirty Dozen.

MORE: Check out PEOPLE’s exclusive first look at Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newborn twins

One is 7, and the other’s 44, but together they share … a need for speed.

And that explains why, for his seventh birthday on Tuesday, Maddox Jolie-Pitt and his father, Brad Pitt, spent a guys’ day out behind the wheel, pursuing one another around a go-kart track in the South of France.

The two have demonstrated their love of wheels before - competing with radio-command cars, racing various bikes and visiting Formula One races. Only, this time, it was their feet on the cart pedals.

“It was just Maddox and Brad,” says a source. “Just father-son time.” And even though Brad stripped down to don his racing leathers, according to the source, it was Maddox who crossed finish line first.

As the guys sped around the track, the rest of the Jolie-Pitts, including mother Angelina Jolie (whose 2002 adoption of Maddox from Cambodia helped launch the celebrated clan), remained at the family’s home, Chateau Miraval.

They’re known for their love of pranks and practical jokes, but good friends Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon have come together for something far more serious.

The Ocean’s 11 stars - all past or present winners of PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive title - helped launch an advertising campaign aimed at getting more aid into Myanmar, whose ruling regime has made access to the country difficult for aid agencies and relief workers in the wake of last month’s cyclone Nargis.

The ad campaign is sponsored by the activist group Not On Our Watch, headed up by Pitt, Clooney, Damon and other Hollywood heavy-hitters. On Wednesday, the group bought a full page in the Indonesian English-language newspaper, the Jakarta Post, reports the Agence France-Presse.

The cyclone ravaged the country May 2 and 3, leaving around 138,000 people missing or dead. The ad claims Myanmar’s ruling junta is putting in danger thousands of more lives by resisting foreign aid since the storm hit.

MORE: Matt! George! Brad! See who PEOPLE magazine picked as the Sexiest Man Alive over the years

How do you say “Fight Club lives!” in Italian?

That’s the question sharp-eyed Radiohead fans were asking themselves Wednesday evening, when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton - costars in the 1999 cult hit - reunited in the V.I.P. section for the band’s Milan show.

Wearing a straw fedora and sporting a mustache and goatee, Pitt left his Chateau Mirival home in the south of France - where he’s awaiting the impending arrival of his twins with Angelina Jolie - late Wednesday afternoon.

Norton has told interviewers in the past that he and Pitt share a passion for Radiohead’s early work. “Brad has definitely been to see the band perform before,” says a source. “He loves %26#91;their%26#93; music.”

Fans’ photos of Pitt - smiling and proudly showing Norton and Pearl pictures of his children on his cell phone - began circulating on Italian Web sites before the concert was even over.

Following the gig, it seems Pitt did not return to France right away. Both Italian and French news agencies are reporting Pitt bunked down overnight at the nearby home of another famous friend.

That would be George Clooney, of course, who lives 50 miles away in Lake Como.

• With reporting by PETE NORMAN

While the rest of the world speculated - falsely! - about the birth of Angelina Jolie’s twins, Brad Pitt slipped out of France on Tuesday.

His destination? Art Basel in Switzerland, considered the premiere international art show for modern and contemporary works.

“Yes, Brad Pitt visited and had lunch here,” communications manager Peter Vetsch told PEOPLE.

Although the show was not yet open to the public, Pitt (a notorious art buff) enjoyed a special showing of stylish furniture from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s at the Design Miami gallery.

“Brad asked questions that only an art expert would ask,” Wendelin Lang, who organized the exhibit, told Blick, a daily Swiss newspaper. “You can feel that he is an absolute maniac.”

The actor and Jolie - who are expecting twins this summer - recently signed a long-term lease for a chateau on the French Riviera.

After the visit, Vetsch said, Pitt hopped an evening flight back home - just in time for Jolie’s 33rd birthday on Wednesday.

Soon-to-be father of six Brad Pitt is one busy daddy - as he’s been named designer of a green hotel and resort in Dubai.

“Whilst acting is my career, architecture is my passion,” Pitt, who is also building affordable, environmentally-friendly homes in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, said in a statement. The 44-year-old movie star will be part of a team of design consultants for the 800-room, five-star hotel spearheaded by L.A.-based architecture firm GRAFT.