TIFF Lineup! The Special Presentations & Galas

by Nathaniel R

Elle Fanning as author Mary Shelley

The annual Toronto International Film Festival, our personal favorite, is just two months away. Today they held a press conference to announce the first batch of films from their special presentations and gala sections (i.e. the premieres of multiple kinds, be it world premiere, international premiere, canadian premiere or whatnot).

A ton of films after the jump...

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Would you rather...?

WOULD YOU RATHER

...model rompers with Taika Waititi?
...pay tribute to Antonio Banderas with Miguel Angel Silvestre?
...soak up some sun with Elizabeth Banks?
...study a screenplay with Saîd Taghmaoui?
...have a peroni with Zoe Kravitz and Karl Glumsan?
...appreciate your sycophantic base with Charlize Theron?
...eat a slice with Laura Dern and Jim Sturgess?
...or do some facepainting with Paul Bettany?

Photos are after the jump to help you decide...

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La Pfeiffer Gets Waspy

No, not WASPy though perhaps she is that, too. As you've undoubtedly heard by now -- especially if you eagerly listened to the latest podcast -- Michelle Pfeiffer will co-star with Michael Douglas in Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018). While Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are playing the title characters, so are Douglas and Pfeiffer in a way since their characters Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne were the original heroes that went by those names. Douglas was introduced in the first movie if you'll recall and we were supposed to believe that Janet was dead.

Whether this means CGI-youngered flashbacks or merely exposition scenes with famous faces we won't know for some time but it's a nice treat for pfans and Pfeiffer's first superhero movie since her legendary work in Batman Returns (1992). If we have to hear about superhero movies every minute of every day now, it goes down so much easier if actresses we love are in the mix. See also Cate Blanchett being delicious in every single trailer released thus far from Thor: Ragnarok. 

So in case you've fallen behind on The RePfeiffal, here are your important dates to know

Photograph by Mikael Jansson for Interview Magazine, 2017

The RePfeiffal Calendar
Save the Dates

• July 29th, 2017 Our Pfeiffer series Pfandom returns after a long accidental hiatus. Catch up!
• Sept 15th, 2017 Darren Aronofsky Directs Michelle Pfeiffer opens in theaters (working title: mother!)
• Sept 17th, 2017 EMMY AWARDS. Michelle Pfeiffer and her husband David E Kelley are both nominated. (Wizard of Lies marks Pfeiffer's pfirst nomination. The script for Big Little Lies is Kelley's 29th nomination - 10 of which he won)
• November 10th, 2017 Murder on the Orient Express Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Some Other People opens in theaters
• Jan 7th, 2018 GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS. Cross your fingers that she'll be nominated / attend whether due to her movies or to Wizard of Lies.
• April 29th, 2018 Pfeiffer's 60th birthday
• March 4th, 2018 THE OSCARS. Cross your fingers that she'll be nominated or presenting.
• July 6th, 2018 Ant-Man and the Wasp (feat. Pfeiffer) opens in theaters 

Still no word on a release for Where is Kyra? though.

Doc Corner: 'An Inconvenient Sequel' and 'Chasing Coral'

Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth was a brilliantly effective work of agitprop. It pushed Al Gore’s pet climate change cause into the cultural stratosphere and won two Academy Awards for the effort. Of course, one’s mileage with it as a good film or not likely depends on whether you consider good intentions as Oscar worthy. I personally don't care for the movie, and could easily list a dozen documentaries from 2006 worthier of the Oscar. Not the mention dozens of enviro-docs that are worthier of your time.

Still, despite this, I do not necessarily begrudge Guggenheim his Oscar (remember, Gore did not get a statue – something a right-wing commentator mistakes in the opening passages of this sequel). There is something to said about a film, documentary or not, that makes an audience feel and become as impassioned about as subject like this one did. It's just particularly frustrating with Truth given the inherently fascinating subject that inspires so many critical and scientific paths and which took the easiest and most pedestrian path.

Which brings us to a rare documentary sequel...

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"Justice League" to Deny Us the Cavill-stache

Chris here. Depending on which report you believe, Justice League has been in nearly constant state of filming since production initially wrapped. But the latest bit of news out of a new batch of reshoots has the superhero tentpole going too far - Justice League will digitally erase Henry Cavill's mustache.

Think of all the possibilities that we are being denied with this false CGI smoothness aside from a change of pace for the squeaky clean hero! Evil Superman, Euro-Superman, Tom-Selleck-Tribute-Superman. Jokes aside it is an odd sort of digital trickery and another level to the ongoing saga of this tentpole's preproduction. (But reminder: the goal of all reshoots is to make a movie better!)

This is also an interesting tidbit to emerge considering that Warner Bros. has been dancing around admitting that Superman will return from the dead in some form (that new poster out of Comic Con has Supes' logo though he is nowhere in the actual lineup). The practical reason is that Cavill will be back and forth between Superman duties and the next Mission: Impossible. What are the odds on the Cavill-stache being one of the best M:I stunts?

Would you keep or CGI out the Superstache?

A post shared by Henry Cavill (@henrycavill) on Jul 19, 2017 at 5:40am PDT