For this week's podcast, a special Toronto International Film Festival edition. Your regular players Nathaniel, Katey and Nick welcome Tim Robey from the Daily Telegraph and Angelo Muredda from Film Freak Central to discuss our experiences at this year's TIFF. We cover festival favorites like the joyful experiment Strange Little Cat, super-lengthy documentary At Berkeley and Clio Barnard's follow up to The Arbor, The Selfish Giant and spend time with 12 Years a Slave which blew (most of) our minds. (It also blew the TIFF audience's mind and took home the coveted People's Choice prize, that Oscar bellwether, with Philomena in second place)
We also hit mainstream titles like the Daniel Brühl pictures Rush and The Fifth Estate. No one really liked Labor Day which Angelo calls "my summer of erotic pies" and which reminds us uncomfortably of previous Kate Winslet projects. Some slightly more divisive experiences include the sci-fi wow of Gravity, Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtain, the erotic thrillers Stranger by the Lake and Eastern Boys, animation giant Sylvain Chomet's first live action feature Attila Marcel, as well as two doppelganger movies The Double &. Enemy starring Jesse Eisenberg & Jake Gyllenhaal respectively.
Mixed in with these pre-release screening buzz-discussions there's plenty to chew on in terms of Oscar's Best Foreign Film category including possible entries from Singapore (Ilo Ilo), Romania (Child's Pose), Chile (Gloria) and Cambodia (The Missing Picture). And, last but not least our panel loves Jonathan Glazer's long awaited Birth follow up Under the Skin (starring Scarlett Johansson) and offers up advice for any readers who'd like to go to TIFF next year.
Clockwise from top left: Strange Little Cat, Gloria, Gravity, Eastern Boys, and 12 Years a Slave
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes.
(I tried something new in the processing / uploading so let me know if the sound is okay and how it compares to other weeks)