TIFF 08 looks promising, but still some disappointment

There have been complaints in recent years that the Toronto International Film Festival had gone Hollywood, openly courting the directors and stars to bring their films to town.  Like Dorothy beginning the journey down the yellow brick road, the fest began to become a launching point for Oscar campaigns. No secret, many films that premiere at Toronto move on to win Academy Awards or grab nominations. What began as the upstart Festival of Festivals is now among the top three festivals on the planet, certainly the most important of the fall.

I have many fond memories. Seeing Robert Duvall’s superb film “The Apostle” for the first time, not realizing a bidding war was happening in the lobby; watching Atom Egoyan’s haunting “The Sweet Hereafter” with the knowledge that Egoyan had become a world class director; seeing a star director born with “Boogie Nights”; knowing that “American Beauty” had begun its journey to Oscar here; screening “Almost Famous” and believing it too was headed for Oscar glory; Ellen Burstyn’s stunning performance in “Requiem for a Dream”; the brilliant Canadian films “The Barbarian Invasions” and “C.R.A.Z.Y.” both from our French speaking province of Quebec; Sofia Coppola becoming a major writer/director with “Lost in Translation”…on and on and on.

This year, once again, the programmers have done an excellent job finding films from around the globe to bring to our fair city. Among the Gala Presentations are “Burn After Reading,” the latest from the brothers Coen, “The Lucky Ones,” “Pride and Glory,” a cop drama with Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, “Nothing But the Truth,” which Kris revealed yesterday, “Loss of a Teardrop Diamond” with Bryce Dallas Howard in a little known Tennessee Williams screenplay, and “Dean Spanley” with the great Peter O’Toole perhaps again making a run for the Oscar?

I am thrilled that “Che” is coming, along with Ed Harris’s “Appaloosa.”  The Canadian film from Atom Egoyan “Adoration” is here as well.  Each will be daring and powerful cinema at the very least. Call me nutty, but I am interested in “Flash of Genius” with Greg Kinnear as a man cheated out of his invention of the intermittent windshield wiper by Ford. I thought Kinnear was superb in “Auto Focus” andI hope this film offers another solid opportunity.

And one of the great film crushes of my life was husky-voiced Debra Winger, as down to earth as they come and enormously gifted. She is here with “Rachel Getting Married,” the latest from Anne Hathaway and director Jonathan Demme

Now, there are some disappointments. The talk of the city has been “Body of Lies,” and yet it is not coming. I was holding out hope for both “The Road” and “Changeling,” but neither will be here. “The Road” was actually announced as bring here on IMDb, but no, it is not. Suffice it to say I will see them later in the year, but it would have been niceto get the earl peek.

So my hotel is booked, my program book is waiting for me at the press office, interviews are being set up, and my girls are already talking about their weekend in the city. They come in to swim while dear old Dad is at work.  Work…huh…seeing films and interviewing the artists behind them.  It can’t get better.