Who needs Eeyore when you've got the lovely and witty Greta Gerwig feeling blue in black and white in this clip from Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha. Gerwig is Frances, a live-in-the-moment New Yorker with a knack for getting herself into awkward situations. more »
Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut Don Jon's Addiction will be among the headliners at the Berlin International Film Festival's Panorama program. Starring Gordon-Levitt along with Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Tony Danza, the feature revolves around a modern-day Don Juan who attempts to change his ways. The film will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month.
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Onetime collaborators Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach each have a new DVD release this week. The two last worked together on Anderson’s gorgeous and witty Fantastic Mr. Fox, and their idiosyncratic proclivities and points of view are very much on display at both ends of the High/Low spectrum. (As a bonus, both films feature Frances McDormand!) more »
Greta Gerwig has gone from so-called Mumblecore actress, appearing in indie titles LOL, Hannah Takes The Stairs and Nights and Weekends to bigger fare by the likes of Ivan Reitman and Woody Allen in No Strings Attached and the recent To Rome with Love. But what most audiences may not know, is that she's picked written some of the material she's played on screen, including her latest Frances Ha, which she co-wrote with director Noah Baumbach. The comedy is Gerwig's second match-up with Baumbach following 2010's Greenberg and the pair began bouncing ideas off each other, eventually creating the hysterical black and white feature that debuted at the recent Toronto International Film Festival and will be having its U.S. premiere at the upcoming New York Film Festival.
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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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Also in Monday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, the Hamptons International Film Festival revealed its list of the "10 Actors to Watch" for this October's event. Minnie Driver joins a "horror musical." A Toronto and Cannes film is headed for U.S. theaters. Abbie Cornish joins a Fellini pic. And two jail-bound punks flee Russia after being convicted of Russian Orthodox Church offense.
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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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Both of the trailers that preceded the screening I attended of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted featured burps as punchlines. Like, each one built to and then peaked with a bug-eyed animated creature’s belch. After the first burp the little kids a few rows ahead of me erupted in jubilant, little kid laughter; the second was met with bored silence. If even your short-limbed target audience doesn’t like being played for a chump, how to keep them entertained across two previews, much less two sequels?
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