Toronto International Film Festival
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Five Questions with The Loneliest Planet Director Julia Loktev
With The Loneliest Planet, the follow-up to her acclaimed feature Day Night Day Night, writer/director Julia Loktev builds a piercing drama around the contrast between a beautiful wide-open landscape and the ugliness of a momentary, possibly reflexive, moment of human behavior. In the film, an adventuring couple (Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) trek through the Georgian mountains with a for-hire guide (Bidzina Gujabidze). A violent encounter changes everything. But in Loktev’s world, the hurt comes not from gunplay or kidnappings but from something more subtle. We asked Loktev about the relationship of landscape to story, about silence, and about […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 12, 2011 -
The Blue Velvet Project, #16
Second #752, 12:52 1. Jeffrey has just left the Williams’s, when their daughter Sandy appears slowly out of the shadows, to the swelling of music and the sound of wind moving through the tree branches, in one of the most remarkable entrances in cinema history, asking him, “Are you the one that found the ear?” 2. “How did you know?” Jeffrey says. “I just know. That’s all,” Sandy replies, in her pink dress, with no bra. The frame is overheated with information about light, and Sandy’s face, the way it is turned to Jeffrey, it’s as if she wants him […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Sep 12, 2011 -
TORONTO: JOHN LYDON IS IN A BAD MOOD
John Lydon is in a bad mood. He’s hungover from partying after the premiere of the Norwegian coming-of-age drama, Sons Of Norway, here at the Toronto International Film Festival. My photographer Linda and I arrive at a stuffy, claustrophobic mezzanine at the posh Hazelton Hotel. The busy publicist warns us that Mr. Lydon is an “unpredictable” mood. Great, though I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, John Lydon is Johnny Rotten, the surly singer of The Sex Pistols and the 56-year-old godfather of punk. That’s how he’s credited in this film in a cameo appearance near the end though he’s credited […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 12, 2011 -
Five Questions with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory Directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
In the mid ’90s filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky traveled to West Memphis, Arkansas for a documentary they were making for HBO on the gruesome murders of three boys and the trial of the three teens who were charged. The film, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, gave the trail nationwide interest as Berlinger and Sinofsky revelaed a case that was hardly open and shut. Coerced confessions as well as questionable evidence and testimony made viewers uncertain if the three defendants — Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin — were guilty and the fight to […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 11, 2011 -
Five Questions with Paul Williams STill Alive Director Steve Kessler
As director Stephen Kessler notes in his documentary, Paul Williams Still Alive, in the ’70s, the tiny blond singer was everywhere. He could be found on daytime game shows (The Gong Show) and nighttime dramas (The Love Boat), on The Muppets as well as in the lead of a Brian DePalma film (The Phantom of the Paradise). And then he faded from the cultural limelight. How much of his disappearance can be explained by the simple fact that people — audiences and performers — get older? Or does the fade of Williams’ quirky and emotional star say something deeper about […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2011 -
” I Love Nothing More Than to Kidnap an Entire Cast and Crew, Dragging Them Off to the Wilderness to Make a Movie”: Five Questions with Your Sister’s Sister Director Lynn Shelton
With Your Sister’s Sister, writer/director Lynn Shelton brings a top-flight cast (Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark Duplass and Mike Birbiglia) to an isolated island cabin on Puget Sound for a tale of grief, romance, and sibling rivalry. Duplass plays Jack, still reeling over the death of his brother a year earlier. Iris (Blunt), his best friend and dead brother’s ex, suggests he get his bearings at her father’s cabin, and there he’s unexpectedly confronted by Hannah (DeWitt). Needless to say, things get complicated in this latest from one of independent film’s most compelling new auteurs. Via email we asked her […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2011 -
FREE AT TIFF
There are some great films/events going on during TIFF that are free of charge. See below. This is not a Film Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran (Toronto Premiere) Sentenced to six years in prison and banned from writing and making films for 20 years by the Islamic Republic Court in Tehran, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi waited for the verdict of his court appeal for months. Through the depiction of a day in his life while he’s on house arrest, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (a documentary filmmaker and former assistant director) offer audiences an overview of the current situation […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 10, 2011 -
Five Questions with Bunohan Director Dain Said
It’s tempting to refer to Dain Said’s Bunohan as the Malaysian director’s debut film, but Said rides to Toronto on the tailwinds of notoriety stemming from the banning of his proper debut, Dukun. That film dealt with black magic and murder — the latter word being one meaning of his latest film’s title. (“Bunohan” also refers to a local village.) A violent tale involving three estranged brothers, the film is set within the worlds of kickboxing, murder-for-hire, and real estate, and it weaves brutal realism with elements of mythological fantasy. We talked to Said about Malaysian cinema, fight scenes and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2011 -
FOX SEARCHLIGHT BUYS MCQUEEN’S “SHAME”
Last night Fox Searchlight announced from Toronto it has bought the U.S. rights to Steve McQueen‘s latest, Shame. Starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, the drama, which is screening at the fest, follows New Yorker Brandon (Fassbender) who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. However, when his wayward younger sister (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon’s insular life spirals out of control. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and according to the release Searchlight plans to open Shame before the year ends. […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 10, 2011 -
Five Questions with Rampart Co-Writer/Director Oren Moverman
The Rampart scandal, which caused a huge black eye for the LAPD in the ’90s, has been sensationalized on TV shows like The Shield and movies like Training Day, but if The Messenger showed us anything it’s that Oren Moverman is not interested in embellishing anything in his films, so his latest, Rampart, should be no exception. For the film he reteams with The Messenger star Woody Harrelson who plays a corrupt LAPD cop who must come to terms that with the scandal the fun is now over. And if having Moverman and Harrelson making a film together again isn’t […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 10, 2011
