Little known factoid: I actually don't like hearing about festival awards IF I attended said festival. Unless I'm on a jury of course. Invariably it makes you feel like a lightweight no matter how many movies you sat through because it's impossible to have seen everything when 100s of films are on offer. I saw 25 films over 8 days of screening or basically 3 a day (since I had to make time for writing / parties / eating / sleeping) and it looks like I saw only one of the films that won a prize at TIFF.
Here are the awards...
the pray-cry mittens come out again! "I would like to thank the Academy for --er, I mean the people of Toronto!"
PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD -This is the biggie and the only one that people use as any kind of Oscar barometer. It went to the Weinstein Company's The Imitation Game. That's the only award winner that I saw and I liked it, particularly the WW II story at the center. I didn't see it at a public screening though so I couldn't gauge the reaction. Of the public screenings I attended its chief Oscar rival at the fest The Theory of Everything definitely had the biggest freak-out reaction from the crowd. Learning to Drive (with Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley) and St. Vincent (with Bill Murray) were the runners up for this most coveted prize.
TRIVIA MADNESS: The previous 36 winners of this prize have gone on to a collective 122 Oscar nominations and 47 wins... so if The Imitation Game is an average English language performer as far as the winners go it can expect a handful of Oscar nominations. Of those 36 previous winners, 11 went on to Best Picture nominations with 5 of them winning.
MIDNIGHT MADNESS PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD: What We Do in the Shadows a mockumentary about New Zealand vampires. Runners up were Kevin Smith's grossout walrus movie Tusk starring Justin Long and a thriller called Big Game starring Samuel L Jackson as the President of the United States (I guess running SHIELD just wasn't enough for him) whose life is in the hands of a teenager's skill set when Air Force One crashes in the Finnish wilderness with terrorists on its trail.
DOCUMENTARY PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD -Hajooj Kuka's Beats of the Antonov is about Sudanese farmers, herders, intellectuals, militants, rebels and everyday folk celebrating their cultural heritage "to reverse conventional representations of victimhood." I'm not much of a doc guy so I only saw the one about Studio Ghibli, mostly because it fit neatly in my schedule.
FIPRESCI PRIZES
This international critics organization (Our Glenn is a member) is always on the prowl for worthy films at festivals to hand prizes too.
SPECIAL PRESENTATION FIPRESCI: Oren Moverman's Time Out of Mind
DISCOVERY FIPRESCI: The rapper Abd Al Malik's debut film May Allah Bless France is a black and white biopic based on his own autobiography. They say write what you know.
NETPAC AWARD
This award is intended to promote Asian cinema and the prize went to Margarita, with a Straw a love story about a girl with cerebral palsy
CANADA SPECIFIC PRIZES
BEST CANADIAN FEATURE Felix and Meira - a romantic cross faith drama about a Hasidic woman and her secular neighbor
BEST CANADIAN FIRST FEATURE Bang Bang Baby - i had intended to see this, the only musical in the festival outside of The Last Five Years, but time got away from me.
BEST CANADIAN SHORT FILM The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer