Thrash metal god Frank Bells says Penn Badgley nailed his portrayal of the late singer Jeff Buckley in Greetings From Tim Buckley — and he's one to know. As unlikely as it may seem, the Anthrax bassist, who plays punk icon Richard Hell in the movie, is, as he put it, "a Jeff Buckley diehard forever." And after seeing the film for the first time at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday night, Bello was singing Badgley's praises. more »
Kristen Stewart fans may have been disappointed that the Twilight superstar did not make an appearance at last week's MTV Video Music Awards, but crowds here in Toronto had the chance to see the actress on the red carpet for the North American premiere of Walter Salles' On The Road along with fellow cast members Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Sam Riley. Stewart spoke with ML about the part she had actually landed before she filmed her first Twilight installment. Stewart shared her thoughts on the steamy relationship between her character Marylou and Hedlund's Dean Moriarty — a life-long relationship that was rife with affairs, drugs and a wild ride on the road.
more »
The two most chilling films I've seen so far in Toronto are both documentaries: Dror Moreh's The Gatekeepers and Alex Gibney's Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God." I'll be writing more about Gibney's film in the coming days, but I got a chance to briefly interview Moreh at a dinner Sony Pictures Classics threw at Creme Brasserie in the Yorkville District of Toronto, and I want to share his comments. more »
Call it the zen of Ryan.
During a roundtable interview with Ryan Gosling and filmmaker Derek Cianfrance for their latest film, The Place Beyond The Pines, I asked the actor if he felt that the media focused too much on the superficial aspects of his fame — remember the hubub over Bradley Cooper being chosen over him as People magazine's sexiest man of the year last fall? — when he keeps proving himself to be one of the finest actors working today. more »
The night began with a little celebrity-fueled silliness. As Ryan Gosling arrived at the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto for the premiere of his latest picture, The Place Beyond The Pines, a crowd of eager fans barged across traffic-stalled King Street to swarm the object of their affection. But once Gosling's second film with filmmaker Derek Cianfrance — they made the remarkably pure heartbreaker Blue Valentine together — got started, it was clear that the two friends and a remarkable cast that included Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes and Ben Mendelsohn had made a seriously good movie. more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
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.
more »
Apparently Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy went ahead and filmed Before Midnight, their sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, without telling anyone about it. But there's something about the loose intimacy of Céline and Jesse's ambling, every now and again relationship that makes the idea of the trio making their next movie in secret so fitting. Hit the jump for the first image of Hawke and Delpy in the Greece-set Before Midnight, which will court buyers this week at Toronto.
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?
more »
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.
more »
Bad 25 is having its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which opened Wednesday, but the Spike Lee-directed documentary, which recalls the late pop-star's creative process leading up to his follow-up album from his seminal Thriller release. This year marks the 25th anniversary of MJ's 1987 mega-seller Bad. ABC will broadcast the feature on Thanksgiving in the U.S. after picking up television rights.
more »
