Reincarnated begins, appropriately, with a big cloud of smoke. Over the course of the documentary, which premiered today in Toronto, rapper Snoop Dogg (real name: Calvin Broadus) transitions into his reggae-focused new alter ego Snoop Lion, dropping classic lines left and right. Will Snoop Lion be around for long? "I'm Snoop Motherfuckin' Dogg till the day I die," he told reporters, "but at the same time when I'm making my reggae music I'm in the light of the Lion." Well then! Get to know the Lion a little better with 9 Snoop Lion quotables from Reincarnated.
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Joe Wright's latest Anna Karenina had a cast, screenplay and plan of action in hand in the spring of 2011, but the acclaimed filmmaker of Atonement and Pride & Prejudice made a bold step a mere two months before beginning the shoot. Instead of another straightforward narrative telling of the story of the epic novel by Russian great Leo Tolstoy, he opted to go for a theatrical angle in depicting the saga of a late-19th century Russian high-society aristocrat who breaks entrenched taboos and embarks in a torrid love affair with affluent soldier, Count Vronsky. In Toronto where the film is having its World Premiere Friday night, cast members including star Keira Knightley and Wright likened the sudden change to "jumping off a cliff," but they were ready for the challenge, though not all were sure if it would ultimately succeed.
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Prancing around in a fluorescent bikini while going on a partying and crime-fueled rampage through the so-called "red neck riviera" — that could be the one sentence log-line for Toronto's Spring Breakers, which arrived in North America after its first premiere last week in Venice. Fascination with former Disney star Selena Gomez's romp through the new film in a not-quite-so-squeaky-clean role continued on this side of the pond but Gomez, director Harmony Korine and fellow stars James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine provided a few racy laughs of their own in Canada's biggest city Friday. Harmony Korine even joked that a few rugged gentlemen on spring break were taken by Gomez's presence while they shot the feature. "All these thick-necked jock dudes were rubbing up against Selena," he said.
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Rust and Bone is essential. It’s life and death. It’s like fucking at a funeral. It throws the grit of existence in your face and while you reel at our insubstantiality and balk at our crudity as human beings, it shows you that love is the only transcendent force we possess. What separates man from beast.
There is no doubt it will polarize. There is nothing commercial here apart from the pulling power of Marion Cotillard. Cinematographically it is an expressionistic essay; intellectually, a two-hour conversation with its filmmaker. And physically it is a kick in the teeth, a depiction of poverty, sex and violence which crosses most known codes of acceptability.
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Kristen Stewart said that the sex scenes and the nudity weren't the difficult part of playing Marylou in On The Road. Rather it was her character's emotional openness. "She loved so openly — and that's hard," Stewart said of Lu Anne Henderson. She also referred to her character, who Neal Cassady married when she was just 15, as "a bottomless pit" — presumably a reference to her emotional capacity — who would have been "ahead of her time even now." (For more photos of Stewart, check out our Toronto Film Festival photo gallery.) more »
The Toronto International Film Festival is off and rolling. TIFF's official opening night is Rian Johnson's Looper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt... and all kudos to them, but Toronto is sharing the opening spotlight with Walter Salles' On The Road, a "surprise" event for Dredd, Rust & Bone — starring Gordon-Levitt's The Dark Knight Rises co-star Marion Cotillard — and others.
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If, like me, you've been lamenting the steady bleed of thoughtful, investigative journalism from newspapers and magazines, the Toronto International Film Festival offers hope via visual media. Scanning the list of documentaries that the festival will be screening, the subject — and the fresh, innovative ways in which the filmmakers are tackling them — calls to mind the original, smart, and, often, great journalism that came from the pages of Harold Hayes' Esquire magazine in the 1960s and early'70s, arguably, the gold standard of 20th Century magazine writing. And here are the 10 docs that will have my undivided attention here in Toronto. Now I just have to find the time to see them. more »
The Toronto International Film Festival annually boasts one of the deepest and glitziest line-ups of the year, and while there are many under-the-radar discoveries to be made, TIFF can be a very effective launching pad for upcoming studio releases and Oscar hopefuls alike. With Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, Ryan Gosling, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Spike Lee, Keira Knightley, Bill Murray and more bringing films to Toronto, which films and A-listers are set to make the biggest splash at the fest starting tomorrow night?
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With just under 300 features, the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival is a yearly behemoth that regularly churns out a number of films that will head to U.S. theaters and vie for the year-end awards race. In fact, Toronto is considered a launch pad for the long, long awards season that will culminate in the Oscar ceremony February 24th. Some recent Oscar winners that played TIFF before heading out to audiences in North America include The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. Over the next several days, ML will preview some of the titles we believe will be catching attention either with audiences, the awards race (or of course both).
The ten titles that follow range from returning auteurs like Terrence Malick and Noah Baumbach to Toronto veterans that have managed to surprise audiences with their unique vision and will likely do so again. And there are some newcomers we just found interesting. This week, ML will profile some of the top "high profile" titles we'll be watching closely. Docs, Midnight/Genre and Foreign-Language titles will follow this week. Take a look and by all means, add your opinions.
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The 37th Toronto International Film Festival added more titles Tuesday, completing a lineup that includes 289 features of which 146 are world premieres from 72 countries. Among the titles revealed today are Cannes Palme d'Or winner Amour by Michael Haneke, Everyday by Michael Winterbottom, Like Someone in Love by Abbas Kiarostami and Me and You by Bernardo Bertolucci. The festival touted its huge list of directors and actors expected to attend the event, which takes place September 6 - 16.
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The Toronto International Film Festival added three Galas and 18 Special Presentations including eight World Premieres including dozens in its Contemporary World Cinema to its massive lineup Tuesday. Paul Andrew Williams' A Song For Marion with Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp will close the festival September 16th. New work from Dan Algrant, Paul Thomas Anderson, Dante Ariola, Yvan Attal, Susanne Bier, Nick Cassavetes, Daniele Ciprì, Lee Daniels, Brian De Palma, Bahman Ghobadi, Harmony Korine, Patrice Leconte, Spike Lee, Scott McGehee, Claude Miller, Henry-Alex Rubin, Walter Salles, Valeria Sarmiento, Pablo Trapero, Peter Webber join the 2012 lineup. Today's additions bring the final tally of TIFF Galas to 20, and the final number of Special Presentations to 70 including 49 World Premieres.
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The Toronto International Film Festival unveiled its Canadian lineup Wednesday, including new work from Sarah Polley, Bruce Sweeney, Xavier Dolan, Michael McGowan and Bernard Émond. Today's 19 titles will screen in the September festival's various sections. The lineup also spotlights first-time feature work from Jason Buxton, Brandon Cronenberg, Igor Drljaca and Kate Melville.
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After rolling out its Galas and other spotlights last week, the Toronto International Film Festival unveiled a swarm of new films added to its lineup, including documentaries by Ken Burns, Alex Gibney and Julien Temple. TIFF also added its genre-heavy Midnight Madness section including new work from Oscar-winners Martin McDonagh and Barry Levinson as well as Don Coscarelli and Rob Zombie. The festival's Vanguard section includes international work that "defies convention" and includes work from North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Also joining the 2012 roster is TIFF's City to City lineup which this year will spotlight Mumbai; the TIFF Kids lineup including the new Finding Nemo 3-D animation and a collection of restored work. In all, the festival announced over 70 films Tuesday.
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One of North America's biggest annual film events released details of its lineup Tuesday morning including 17 Galas and 45 "Special Presentations" that will screen in the 37th Toronto International Film Festival in September. Festival CEO and Director Piers Handling as well as TIFF Artistic Director Cameron Bailey announced the lineup this morning in Toronto at a live event about this year's festival, which includes 38 world premieres. As revealed earlier, Looper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis will open the festival.
Debuts from directors worldwide including Andrew Adamson, Ben Affleck, David Ayer, Maiken Baird, Noah Baumbach, J.A. Bayona, Stuart Blumberg, Josh Boone, Laurent Cantet, Sergio Castellitto, Stephen Chbosky, Lu Chuan, Derek Cianfrance, Costa-Gavras, Liz Garbus, Dustin Hoffman, Rian Johnson, Neil Jordan, Baltasar Kormákur, Shola Lynch, Deepa Mehta, Roger Michell, Ruba Nadda, Mike Newell, François Ozon, Sally Potter, Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, Eran Riklis, David O. Russell, Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski, Margarethe von Trotta, Joss Whedon and Yaron Zilberman are in the lineup.
TIFF takes place September 6 - 16. Today's lineup follows. More details from the festival will be announced the coming weeks...
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The synopsis of Precious screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher's feature directing debut Violet and Daisy sounds straightforward enough: "A brutal fable about a pair of teenage assassins, played by Saoirse Ronan and Alexis Bledel, who believe they've landed a straightforward assignment but soon find themselves thrown off their game when their latest target isn't who they expected." Evidently, however, that's not quite what its audience -- or even its stars themselves, for that matter -- seemed to take away from its Toronto Film Festival premiere.
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