Imagine if Rupert Murdoch could not only run for president of the United States, and not only win, but also govern his lowbrow media fiefdoms via an army of stooge-proxies while occupying the Oval Office. Transplant that cultural drama to Italy, and you've got the staggering Videocracy, director Erik Gandini's documentary about Silvio Berlusconi's three-decade climb from ribald quiz-show producer to Italian Prime Minister. Videocracy doesn't address that history so much as it maps Berlusconi's TV empire, a wasteland teeming with half-naked showgirls, would-be reality stars, and supported by a population in which the image is more than just king -- it is God.
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The Weinstein Company did what any self-respecting distributor would do after premiering its terrific Youth in Revolt this week to near-universal acclaim: Its genre label Dimension Films pushed the Michael Cera comedy back four months to the midwinter graveyard of Jan. 15. As usual, the TWC spin is the best part: "After the fantastic response from audiences and critics at the Toronto Film Festival, we chose Jan. 15 as the best date to release Youth in Revolt. [... T]his smart comedy [will] be great counterprogramming to some of the heavier fare at that time of year." Indeed -- like its own Hoodwinked Too, opening the same day. Brilliant. [Variety]
Few countries outside the U.S.-European movie axis had quite the year Australia has had in Toronto, where the 2009 festival programmed an unprecedented 17 films from Down Under. They run the gamut from mainstream awards-season fare (The Boys are Back) to offbeat indie musicals (Bran Nue Day) to old-school revivals (the 1971 classic Wake in Fright) and ultimately to Last Ride, the sublime debut feature by director Glendyn Ivin. The film stars Hugo Weaving and 10-year-old Tom Russell as Kev and Chook, an ex-con father and his son on the run from something. They cross the Outback in stolen cars, hiding in forests and on desert ridges, mismatched yet devoted until a series of revelations rattles young Chook into second thoughts, then third thoughts, and finally action that will test the breaking point of family.
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Natalie Portman's latest, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, premiered this week in Toronto. Distributors have yet to pull out their checkbooks as we predicted around Movieline HQ, but no rush! It'll happen. In the meantime, the actress and recent first-time director sat down Wednesday with Pursuits filmmaker Don Roos and a few TIFF press for a late breakfast, a little conversation and an all-too-brief round of My Favorite Scene.
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Karyn Kusama has occupied the director's chair on both sides of the mainstream filmmaking spectrum, from the microbudget Sundance darling Girlfight to the poorly received, big-budget anime adaptation Aeon Flux. She settles somewhere between the two tomorrow with Jennifer's Body, the breathlessly anticipated Megan Fox horror comedy that premiered to mixed reactions (including my own thumbs-up) last week in Toronto. The filmmaker sat down for drinks with Movieline on the final day of her Canadian marathon, elaborating on contemporary criticism, feminine monsters, guiding her young stars and what you might see on the Jennifer's Body director's-cut DVD.
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Actress Samantha Morton's directorial debut Unloved premiered last night at the Toronto Film Festival, but according to one report, she got the celebrating started a day early at a party hosted by South by Southwest. "Suddenly, someone grabs me as I move by and I look over and there's a woman dancing and smiling at me, obviously intensely drunk," wrote indieWIRE's Peter Knegt. "She looks really familiar but I get my cue to start moving through the crowd so I start walking away. It suddenly dawns on me: It was Samantha Morton." The Oscar-nominee eventually summoned enough courage, inebriation or both to join a fellow partygoer for a duet of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." [The Lost Boy]
Whooop! Whooop! Sound the TIFF acquisition alarm: Sony Pictures Worldwide has purchased U.S. and international rights to Defendor, the best Woody Harrelson-as-developmentally-disabled-vigilante-superhero movie you're likely to see this year, or any other for that matter. It's the first feature from Canadian writer/actor/director Peter Stebbings, and stars also Elias Koteas as a bad lieutenant, Kat Dennings as the hooker he roughs up, and Sandra Oh as the shrink who decides Defendor's fate. Also picked up, the disturbing and excellent Dogtooth (our review here) by New York-based Kino Intl. [Variety]
Even as Tom Ford's writing-directing debut A Single Man was always destined for the hype (and distribution deal) attending its Toronto Film Festival debut, it seemed equally bound to be beautiful, elegant and, well, good. It is all of those things and not a whole lot more -- a showcase for Ford's eye and Colin Firth's chops, a perfect storm of unfailing taste. Christopher Isherwood's source novel about a gay professor (played here by Firth) grappling with the death of his lover in the 1960s Los Angeles rewards both men's efforts with a substance they wouldn't have otherwise, and the results yield the awards-ready class that will sweep enlightened audiences (and, presumably, the Academy) off their feet. Beyond that, however, the primary impact that will stick with most viewers is how much more Man could have been.
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Dogtooth is a delightfully twisted little fable from Greek filmmaker Giorgos Lanthimos, with all the markings of a cult classic. Alternating between the banal, the hilarious and the downright horrifying, it's the tale of three young adult children, cut off from all civilization by their psychotically controlling father (Christos Stergioglou, reminiscent of Dan Hedaya) and their passive accomplice mother. The family passes their long days in a rural Athenian suburb -- a landscape interchangeable with Southern California's -- in a modern ranch home with a sparkling swimming pool and meticulously tended yard. Surrounding the compound, however, is a twelve-foot fence from which only dad is ever permitted to emerge for his work as a factory manager.
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The Topp Twins are more than just New Zealand's most famous yodeling, protesting, joke-cracking lesbian-sister musical export. They're now the subjects of their own oddly fascinating documentary at the Toronto Film Festival. Appropriately enough titled The Topp Twins, director Leanne Pooley's doc profiles the irrepressible Lynda and Jools Topp from their bucolic Kiwi upbringings to their development of a populist blend of folk, protest and comic songwriting that made them worldwide cult sensations. Or maybe "cult" is misrepresenting things -- especially when their immensely popular street performances require their own laws on the books in Auckland.
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You may find the roots of the global economic meltdown on Wall Street, but Marc Levin might suggest looking further uptown in Manhattan for the most dramatic microcosm of the ongoing crisis: The Garment District. The prolific director Levin (Slam, Mr. Untouchable) was in Toronto on this week for the debut of his new docuementary Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags (premiering Oct. 19 on HBO), which outlines both the history and demise of famous manufacturing zone over the last century -- and, more specifically, the last decade of outsourcing, layoffs and other industry devastation. According to Levin, you need look no further than the New York's recently completed Fashion Week for the first hints.
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Yesterday, we chatted with Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston about their roles as would-be kidnappers who find themselves increasingly in over their heads in The Disappearance of Alice Creed, which has already secured some international distribution at TIFF but is still being circled by studios for domestic rights.
Movieline has obtained two clips from the film, both are after the jump.
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A sale! We have a TIFF sale! In an overly cautious marketplace, A Single Man, Tom Ford's hyperstylized (and you'd expect anything less?), Mad Men-era tale of Grief and the Gays in the Southern California sunshine, was purchased by The Weinstein Company after an "all-night negotiating session" that resulted in a "seven-figure" buy (plus a couple pair of those Tom Ford aviators Harv and Bob love so much but are just no longer economically viable).
Our intrepid TIFF man S.T. VanAirsdale is seeing film as we speak; it remains to be seen if he'll emerage as enthusiastic about the gay love scenes in this Julianne Moore picture as he was with the ones in Chloe. In the meantime, the trailer is after the jump. Dab a little behind your ears and see if it's you.
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Had I gone through life never having seen a movie in which a dad and his son wrap themselves up in filthy Timberland outerwear and wander aimlessly around fire-ravaged back country meant to resemble a post-apocalyptic America, occasionally stumbling into entire families swinging by their necks from barn rafters and hungry bands of cannibals who eye the younger of the two as if he were a delicious turkey drumstick, I think I would have been OK. But I have seen that movie, and it's called The Road.
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At a glance, The Joneses seems like a can't-miss and must-miss proposition all at once: Filmmaker Derrick Borte's feature debut. A cast comprising Demi Moore as David Duchovny as the parents of a mysteriously affluent and happy exurban family (with next door neighbors played by Glenne Headly and Gary Cole). Ben Hollingsworth and shirt-allergic starlet Amber Heard as their kids. A semi-secret first-act plot twist and oddly vague plot details beyond that. Potential bidding-war fodder or gimmicky letdown. And after all that, The Joneses did wind up missing -- but only by this much.
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