TIFF: Sean Baker's Wondrous "The Florida Project"

by Chris Feil

With Sean Baker’s compassionate ingenuity, The Florida Project is a heartbreaking (and heart-renewing) fable of American poverty seen through the resilient eyes of children. Set in a slum motel just a stone’s through away from Disney World, the film follows a boisterous toddler names Moonee and her mother Halley as they struggle to get by. But like Baker’s other tales of people on the fringes, Project lives more in their joy than their pain.

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Doc Corner: Emmy Awards Go to Meryl Streep, Ava DuVernay, and Somebody Close to an EGOT

Like sand through the hourglass, the Emmys gave out far too many trophies. I actually forgot that the television Academy’s ‘you’re not famous enough’ ceremony was on last weekend – because who wants to see RuPaul win an Emmy? Hello, anybody? Good call, Emmy! – and so my planned pre-Emmy focus on some of the documentary/non-fiction titles proved poorly timed. However, I thought we might look through the winners of the unfairly forgotten ceremony since at least in these categories, the voters are often forced to choose new winners every year. Meanwhile, the televised telecast could be a repeat and, truly, would anybody actually notice?

O.J.: Made in America, Meryl Streep, and which winner is just a Tony away from en EGOT after the jump.

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TIFF: Jamie Bell, Daniela Vega, and Donald Sutherland

our ongoing TIFF adventures

Helen Mirren & Donald Sutherland at the Leisure Seekers premiereI've hit a brick wall here on Day 5 for which I blame the parties of days 1 through 4... or rather my eagerness to attend them. As with most week-plus long festivals much of the press and industry vanishes after the first half of the fest so... grab the free drinks, scrumptious eats, and celebrity chatter while you can. Saturday night's Sony Pictures Classics dinner presented the opportunity to congratulate Donald Sutherland on his Honorary win. Which I took don'cha know...

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Two more Oscar submissions announced

The foreign Oscar submissions keep on coming. Egypt will be submitting Sheikh Jackson, a potential crowd pleaser about an Islamic cleric undergoing an identity crisis when he flashes back to his Michael Jackson obsessed youth when Michael dies. Egypt has yet to be Oscar-nominated but who knows.

A more likely nominee on paper, given the history, is Poland's Spoor (originally called Pokot) a murder mystery directed by Agnieska Holland. The film about an animal rights activist that becomes involved in a string of mysterious crimes has been getting interestingly mixed reviews. Holland first came to international fame (and Oscar love) with her big arthouse hit and WW II drama Europa Europa (1990) and was recently in the hunt again with the foreign film nominee In Darkness (2011). You could argue that she's Oscar's second favorite Polish director (of those who kept making movies in Poland, that is) after the late legendary Andrzej Wajda who was up for the foreign film Oscar four times and eventually received an Honorary.

The charts are here

Sneakers Turns 25

by Lynn Lee

Sneakers turns 25 today, and until last week I’d never seen it.   Although it came out when I was of moviegoing age, it was barely on my radar.  All I remembered of it later was that it was about hackers and maybe also spies and the NSA, and I tended to confuse it with Hackers (which I’d never seen either).  My husband was amazed to learn this, having seen Sneakers more times than he could count, and said I had to see it.  But wouldn’t it be awfully dated now, I wondered?  He insisted it still held up, despite admitting he hadn’t seen it in a while.  There was only one way to find out…

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