Film Festivals: 13 Influential Sundance Films

Film Festivals usually display important or interesting movies that we will see in the following year.

If any of you actually live in Toronto and get to see the movies shown, please report in.

In the meantime: Toronto v. Venice

 

With the birth of my son, i haven't been able to get out to the festival over the past 2 years, but before that my sister and i had become regulars over the previous 5 years...

Got to meet Aaron Eckhart at the premiere of "Neverwas" and Jeff Bridges and Terry Gilliam at the premiere of "Tideland", and young Keira Knightley at the premiere of "Pride and Prejudice"...

Have to say i LOVED going to that festival in years past. There is no experience in the world like seeing a movie with a theatre FULL of people as diehard about cinema as you are.

My favourite series at the T.O. film fest is the Midnight Madness series. Every night during the festival at 11:59pm there is a different movie that is usually either: horror, scifi, or something bizarre to the extreme and always HIGHLY entertaining.

Won't be making it out to this year's festival at all but my sister and i are starting to plan some form of trip to next year. Eventually I hope to be able to devote a week of vacation from my work to attending the festival's entire run...Though i do have to say that it's starting to become the very thing that it used to strive to not be...

It used to be a festival for the masses of film fans. Now it's just become another oogle-the-stars extravaganza.

 

That sounds like great, great fun. Nearly worth living in the Centre of the Universe...but not quite.

 

I go to Ryerson University where a lot of movies are being shown (either at the Ryerson Theatre or the AMC Theatres) but nothing has really interested me this year. I did get to see The Fountain a couple years ago.

 

Toronto Film Festival blog

 

From the Wall Street Journal: Amid Slump, Toronto Film Festival Energizes Film Industry

 

Good maybe it will rejuvenate the job market in Toronto as well...

 

Music and Musicians at Toronto Film Festival

 

Bill Maher's "Religulous"

 

I'm a regular viewer of Real Time with Bill Maher so I definently want to watch Religilous, too bad I'll have to wait until a dvd...

 

Toronto on My Mind

"[WARNING: This article features spoilers about movies you're never going to see. So if you don't like having movies you'll never see spoiled, you are way too sensitive about spoilers.]"

 

Sundance documentaries

 

Sundance: Stars on parade, and the Doors doc

Jan 19, 2009, 08:16 AM | by Owen Gleiberman

Categories: Sundance Film Festival 2009

"Famous actors who star in offbeat movies that appear at Sundance are trying to "stretch," but all too often the exercise doesn't look good on them. Over the years, it's become a little too obvious that they're making a move, throwing their fans a curveball, Doing An Indie Movie. Still, some overly calculated image tweaks work better than others. Jim Carrey, in I Love You Phillip Morris, as a gay Texas role-playing con artist who keeps pulling weirder and wilder scams for love? Compared to some of Carrey's misbegotten outside-of-the-comedy-box roles, this one fits him like a rubber glove. Ashton Kutcher, in the unfortunately titled Spread, as a Los Angeles hustler who beds rich women so that he can sponge off them? You've got to salute the Kutcher chutzpah, but at moments he comes close to punking himself.

When Jim Carrey tries to play ordinary Joes, he can seem like a replicant, using his elastic face to create facsimiles of feeling. Strangely enough, that quality sort of works for him in I Love You Phillip Morris. As Steve Russell, a Texas cop who is not what he seems, Carrey looks craggy and twitchy and a bit sinister, with spooked eyes and an overly coiffed shell of hair. There's a vacancy behind those eyes, but this time it belongs there: Early on, Steve reveals to the audience that he's a closeted homosexual, and that's but the first of his many deceptions. Coming out of the closet, he moves to Miami, perpetrating insurance and credit-card scams to pay for his newly ritzy gay lifestyle, which gets him tossed into prison -- at which point you realize that the movie is going to be one damn thing after another, with a plot that keeps twisting like a Rubik's Cube.

Directed by the team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and supposedly based on a true story, I Love You Phillip Morris is like one of those out-of-the-frying-pan capers by the Coen brothers crossed with Catch Me If You Can, featuring a hero as blithely comfortable with the metaphysics of identity fraud as Tom Ripley. In prison, Steve meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), a blonde blue-eyed Southern inmate as sweet as he is pretty, and the novelty of seeing these two actors smooch and get randy and make goo-goo eyes at each other is certainly ... well, novel. But their romance is just one more cog in the movie's abundant machinery. I Love You Phillip Morris keeps pulling surprises out of the air -- I liked the way that Steve wins, then executes, a white-shoe CFO job -- but emotionally it barely exists. It's Jim Carrey reveling in the dark side of a put-on, trying to fool the audience into thinking that he's found a hidden truth in one man's lies.

I remember going to see American Gigolo back in 1980, and being disappointed when the movie turned out to offer sleek alienation, angled white architecture, Richard Gere looking mannequin-fabulous in Armani -- everything, in fact, but good old down-and-dirty sex. (It was all, you know, implied.) What a difference three decades and the cachet of a Hollywood-boyz series like Entourage makes! Spread, starring Ashton Kutcher as an L.A. ladykiller with no job and no home, who moves in with the women he beds until they figure out that he's using them, doesn't repeat America Gigolo's high-minded mistake. It's full of tawny skinny writhing bodies, at least one of which belongs to Anne Heche, in one of those thankless, lonely-corporate-vixen-looking-for-love roles. She hooks up with Kutcher, and even after she discovers him making mischief in her bedroom with a blonde in a football helmet, she doesn't kick the bum out. Sex with this dude is just, you know, too hot.

Did Kutcher, who in interviews comes off as a very shrewd guy, realize that the role inevitably conjures thoughts of his real-life relationship with Demi Moore? Maybe he thought he was having an in-joke at the tabloids' expense. Either way, in Spread, there's no denying that Kutcher has the heartless sex appea

 

Anticipatory Salivation at Cannes

 

NOON-3:30AM
Ovation, TV-14

Preview
Vive Cannes

"Price of a first-class flight to France for the Cannes Film Festival? $10,168. Price of a marathon of festival faves ? including My Favorite Season and Diva ? at home? $14.99. Actually, the movies are free, but we're including the cost of brie and a bottle of rosé ? the French version of Sno-Caps and Diet Coke. ?Adam Markovitz"

 

Films to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival

 

That Midnight Madness program looks fantastic this year.


I saw the Spierig brothers' first movie at the TIFF a couple years back. I would love to see their second!


Throw in the sequel to "REC", ONG-BAK 2 and a new Romero zombie picture..

Good gosh i need to find a way to check that stuff out!

 

New Additions to the Toronto Film Festival

 

Toronto International Film Festival Preview

 

6 Films Likeliest to Start a Toronto Bidding War

 

Toronto: 'Dorian Gray' with Ben Barnes a train wreck, 'Waking Sleeping Beauty' solid

Colin Firth and Ben Barnes are probably hoping most moviegoers have forgotten about "Dorian Gray" already.
Credit: TIFF


"As always, Toronto is a mix of awards contenders (or pretenders) and new films looking for distribution. Here's a quick review of a few titles this writer has caught over the past day or so.

"Dorian Gray"


Oliver Parker's re-telling of the classic tale is pretty much a complete train wreck. It's not so bad it's good, it's so bad it's boring. Ben Barnes plays the title character whose portrait keeps him eternally youthful and beautiful as his soul gets darker and more evil. Well, at least we think that's why he's staying young. One of the movie's many faults is never adequately explaining what is keeping Gray so young. And the laughable orgy and sex scenes (like all immortals Gray appears to be bisexual), insinuating some moral neglect never connect or make sense. Colin Firth, who plays Gray's older mentor Lord Henry Wotton, seems like he's just waiting for the movie (or in his case the shoot) to end. At least Rebecca Hall ("Vicky Christina Barcelona") survives with her dignity intact as a love interest who arrives at the last minute to create some sort of dramatic tension. The film already opened this month in the U.K., but its clear why no one has stepped up in the U.S. Look for this one on DVD and on cable at your peril.

"Waking Sleeping Beauty"

A solid documentary chronicling the rebirth of Walt Disney Studios Animation between 1984-1994, "Waking" is the perfect example of a filmmakers involvement in his subject matter both being an asset and a liability. Don Hahn worked for Disney as a producer during this time period on such films as "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas." The archive footage he has from behind-the-scenes of productions such as "The Black Cauldron," "Oliver and Company" and "The Little Mermaid" is impressive. It clearly illustrates the competitiveness between company leaders Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Roy Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg and their growing rift after peacemaker Wells' tragic death in a helicopter accident, but too much seems left out of the backstory. It's almost as though Hahn wants to explain the situation, but really doesn't want to insult the subjects who helped rebuild the company. What really works and is incredibly moving is how the doc chronicles music lyricist Howard Ashman's involvement in "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast." Ashman, who teamed with composer Alan Menken, died of AIDS related symptoms before "Beast" was ever finished, but was more than just a songwriter. Footage shows just how much of a creative force he was overall on both "Mermaid" and "Beast" and the film illustrates what a great talent the industry really lost. Still, for any serious animation fan it's a raising the curtain opportunity you should see.


"A Prophet"

From the mind of acclaimed French writer/director Jacques Audiard, "A Prophet (Un prophete)" tells the six-year story of a troubled, but somewhat innocent arab man who after being jailed at the age of 19 rises to become a criminal powerhouse among his release. This material has been done many times before, but Audiard brings a fresh perspective to it and the film's twists and turns provide genuine -- and more importantly -- realistic tension to the proceedings. He's also assisted by a star making turn by Tahar Rahim who could have quite the career ahead of him around the world, especially if he speaks any English. Rahim has that much charisma on screen. "A Prophet" won the Grand Prix at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and should make numerous critic's ten best lists at the end of the year. France has not selected it's official entry to the Oscars yet, but "A Prophet" has a chance of being nominated for best foreign film if its their candidate."

 

roger ebert writes extensively from the festival as well

 

Nicholas Cage makes a great "Bad Lieutenant"; Plus Bad Boy Michael Cera

 

Toronto Wrap: Indie Bloodbath

 

Anticipating Sundance