In Contention

Tag: festivals

  • Venice puts cinema ahead of stars

    There are some major surprises in the competition lineup for next month’s Venice Film Festival, not the least of which are the global flavour and soberness of the lineup itself. In previous years, the Lido has proved a launchpad for starry, surefire awards vehicles (“Atonement” and “Michael Clayton” both made successful bows there last year, while recent festival hits include “Far From Heaven,” “The Queen” and Golden Lion winner “Brokeback Mountain.”)

    Looking down this year’s list, it’s difficult to find much that has quite the same cache – and the competition looks all the more intriguing for it. Artistic director Marco Mueller has commendably narrowed the English-language contingent, and has taken greater risks within that selection, most notably nabbing an unexpected “wet premiere” (as in straight from the lab) of Darren Aronofsky’s latest, “The Wrestler.”

    The film, about a retired pro wrestler struggling to make a comeback, sounds like an interestingly low-key change of pace for Aronofsky after his beautiful folly “The Fountain” (another Venice debutante) fell foul of pretty much everyone two years ago. This project finds the former wunderkind working from someone else’s screenplay for the first time, which could prove a healthy change, and there are some interesting changes of the guard elsewhere too – most notably swapping regular cinematographer Matthew Libatique for the exciting Maryse Alberti (continuing what might be a banner year for female DPs). With an almost too perfectly cast Mickey Rourke in the lead, and support from the ever-terrific Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, a warm festival reception could put this on the Oscar charts.

    There will be fewer megastars parading the Venice carpet than in previous years, but when one of them is Charlize Theron, how many do you need? Together with Kim Basinger, she will be at Venice to promote the competition title that, together with the new Miyazaki, I’m personally most excited about: Guillermo Arriaga’s helming debut, “The Burning Plain.”

    (more…)

  • TIFF adds Canadian titles

    TorontoIf there is a single aspect to the Toronto International Film Festival I enjoy most, it is the fact that the programmers have never lost sight of the event’s original mandate: showcasing homegrown talent in this country.

    Alongside the films that will no doubt be in the thick of this year’s Oscar season, a number of wonderful Canadian films will also earn rave reviews, stun critics and the audiences that see them, and then quietly disappear, perhaps never to be released or heard from again. Such is the legacy of Canadian celluloid. And it is quite the maddening reality, since so many wonderful films are made here by directors other than Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Deepa Mehta, which is not meant to be a slam on them.

    Already announced are the Canadian films “Adoration” — the latest from Atom Egoyan, previously an Oscar nominee for “The Sweet Hereafter” — and “Passchendale,” the opening night Gala film from director Paul Gross, which is shaping up to be the most aniticpated film of the festival thus far. Yesterday festival organizers announced a number of other titles thatw ill make their North American and world premieres in September during the ten days of TIFF.

    “Fifty Dead Men Walking” is the new film from Kari Skogland, who last helmed the adaptation of “The Stone Angel,” a premiere last year. Jim Sturgess of “Across the Universe” portrays a young man sent to infiltrate and spy on the IRA from within its ranks. Sir Ben Kingsley co-stars with Sturgess.

    Former “Dawson’s Creek” star Joshua Jackson will be seen in “One Week,” a new film from director Michael McGowan about a young man who impulsivlely buys a motorcycle and escapes his mundane life to become utterly reckless.

    Deepa Mehta, Oscar-nominated in 2005 for her seminal film “Water,” is back at the festival this year with “Heaven on Earth,” a study of a woman who travels from India to Canada and is hit with culture shock. Bollywood star Preity Zinta stars.

    Renegade director Bruce McDonald, here last year with Ellen Page and “The Tracey Fragments,” is back with his new zombie thriller “Pontypool” and we also have Canada’s first stop-motion animated feature “Edison and Leo,” which seems to have Oscar written all over it.

    From Quebec we will have “Lost Song,” a new film from the fine director Rodrigue Jean about a couiple dealing with the depression of the wife after a move to a summer cottage, and “Maman est chez le coiffeus” from Lea Pool, which explores a separation as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old child.

    I keep looking for some major anouncements to come but as always the programmers save those for last. Keep reading for reactions to the announcements each Wednesday.

  • New Toronto films announced

    Miramax Films\' Happy-Go-LuckyThe press office of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF for future purposes) announced some new titles for the line up at this year’s festival yesterday.

    Two Gala Presentation announcements include “The Secret Life of Bees” with Dakota Fanning, Paul Bettany, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah, and “The Duchess” featuring Keira Knightley in the biographical role of a woman who brought sweeping political change to England with her progressive attitudes.

    In the Special Presentations Program we have “Every Little Step,” looking to be a fascinating documentary about the making of the Broadway sensation “A Chorus Line,” which dominated American Theatre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was royally screwed up as a film by the vastly over-appreciated Sir Richard Attenborough.

    From the great Wong Kar-Gai comes “Ashes of Time Redux,”  while Mike Leigh brings to us the highly anticiapted “Happy-Go-Lucky”. Guy Ritchie will unveil “RocknRolla” to audiences here with Larry Charles bringing to our fair city his new picture “Religulous”.

    “Ghost Town” sounds promising, as the story follows a man portrayed by Ricky Gervais who dies unexpectedly and is revived with the powert to see ghosts. And as expected, “Waltz with Bashir” will make its North American premiere here at TIFF.

  • International ‘Blindness’ trailer

    Can this overcome the critical thumping it took at Cannes this year?  Personally, I think it looks rather good.  I’m devoted to Fernando Meirelles, even if I found “The Constant Gardener” to be overbearing and overrated.  But it’s hard to argue with talent when it’s clearly there, and this guy has it.  Check out the new trailer:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azLX4jjngpY

  • ‘Miracle’ headed to Toronto

    This flew under my radar yesterday, but the Toronto International Film Festival has added a few more films to its Septmber line-up, including Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna.”  The press release has more.

  • “A duel between two powerful lone wolves”

    Yeah, Opie actually called it that.  A bit much, but anyway…

    Guy already passed along the news this morning that Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” will open the 52nd annual London Film Festival on October 15.  But I also stumbled onto this preview/interview with Howard at The Times of London that offers a little more insight than the Screen International story.

    Here’s more from the director:

    Peter Morgan calls it a thinking person’s Rocky and I agree with him…I loved the audacity of the story, this famous British guy being turned down by the US networks and then cobbling together his own network to clobber the Americans with their own stick. It’s just this tremendous act of entrepreneurial courage.

    And some key lines from Ben Hoyle’s copy:

    The stage play of Frost/Nixon opened at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London, in August 2006 before transferring to the West End and later Broadway. Howard said that he read the script early on in the initial run. When he discovered that a frantic bidding war for the film rights was already under way, “I jumped on a plane to London with my wife and went to see it.” What he found was “one of the best theatre experiences of my life”…

    Critics adored the performances but some complained that Morgan had oversimplified the story, playing fast and loose with the interview transcripts and suggesting that the interviews sealed Nixon’s ignominy in the minds of the American people…Both Morgan and Howard empha-sise that Frost/Nixon is an impression of what happened in and around the interviews, not a docudrama.

    Check out the rest here.

  • The buried

    Okay, I think we’re done cleaning out all the kinks here for the night. I wanted to mention, however, that the old site is still out there in cyberspace for you to peruse. Check it out here. It’s a little buggy over there in the wake of the move, but I’ll iron all that out in due time. But now that the new design is out and about, I wanted to link back to a few posts from the last month by both myself and a few contributors, lest they be lost in the shuffle of today’s goings-on:

    1) Guy Lodge previews the Cannes line-up. (4/22)
    2) John Foote takes a look at Brad Pitt’s Oscar hopes this year. (4/21)
    3) Steve Lopez talks about his new book, “The Soloist,” in Pasadena. (4/19)
    4) The “Valkyrie” pile-on knows no bounds. (4/8) and (4/22)
    5) Anticipating the summer movie season. (4/8)
    6) Very brief notes on the “W” screenplay. (4/1)
    7) Remembering Anthony Minghella. (3/23)
    8) And of course, the year-in-advance Oscar column. (2/26)

    That should cover it.