"Room" is the People's Choice

Great News: Room won the People's Choice award at TIFF! 
It couldn't have happened to a more deserving film and I mean that literally since it was the best of the 29 films I caught there. Confession: I really thought that Spotlight would take it since festival goers wouldn't shut up about that one. In the past twenty years the People's Choice Award has been a very solid indicator of a future Best Picture nomination. In fact, with one exception only (Hotel Rwanda) if the winner was from the States or the UK, it was nominated at the Oscars. Canadian winners (Eastern Promises and The Hanging Garden) as well as most of the non-English language winners weren't so lucky. A Best Picture nomination would be a very big deal for A24 as a young distributor but they've already released so many fine and daring films they've earned one, don't you think? 

How high would you rank the film now in your predictions? 

Winners List
People's Choice Room (Lenny Abramson)
    1st Runner Up: Angry Indian Goddesses (Pan Nalin)
    2nd Runner Up: Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)

FIPRESCI Discovery: Eva Nová (Marko Skop) 
FIPRESCI Special Presentation: Desierto (Jonás Cuarón) 
NETPAC Asian Cinema Award: Whispering Star (Sion Sono) 
Toronto Platform Award: HURT (Alan Zweig) 
    Honorable Mention: Neon Bull, The Promised Land, The Clan
Best Short Maman(s) (Maïmouna Doucouré)
     Honorable Mention: Rate Me (Fyzal Boulifa) 

Best Canadian Feature Closet Monster (Stephen Dunn)
    Honorable Mention: My Internship in Canada (Philippe Falardeau)
Best Canadian First Feature Film Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino)
Best Canadian Short Overpass (Patrice Laliberté)
    Honorable Mention: Bacon & God's Wrath (Sol Friedman)

The odd thing about the Canadian prizes is that Closet Monster, my favorite LGBT movie from the fest, which won the "Canada Goose" for Best Canadian Film is also a First Feature; there's another prize for that that it did not win! Of the other award winners, I only managed to catch Spotlight, Room, and the Toronto Platform Honorable Mention The Clan. It's a gut-wrenching true crime drama about a notorious family in Argentina who kidnapped members of other upper class families, some of whom they knew personally, for ransom money. I suspect it will be Argentina's Oscar submission but they don't announce until the end of the month.

TIFF: Journalists at War. "Truth" vs "Spotlight"

On the first day of TIFF last Thursday I saw four consecutive movies from different countries and of different tones entirely that all had a surprise pregnancy reveal scene/shot during their stories. Festivals are funny like that providing you with unexpected throughlines. But sometimes you fully expect the comparisons, if not a schedule that has you watching two similar movies back-to-back. That happened to me with James Vanderbilt's Truth and Thomas McCarthy's Spotlight. Both are journalism pictures with A list casts and both will be gunning for awards honors at year's end. Spotlight is better positioned already with stronger reviews but Truth definitely has its pleasures. While watching them Truth felt more popcorn entertaining but Spotlight is stickier, staying with you afterwards.

Truth vs. Spotlight in 8 categories after the jump...

Click to read more ...

BYOYNMS: The Danish Girl

That's "Bring Your Own Yes No Maybe So," in case you're wondering. Acronyms for daaaays, henny! I'm seeing The Danish Girl very shortly at TIFF and I don't want to spoil my first experience since I haven't read the book (I know I know) and I'm hearing that this trailer gives away each story beat. 

But if you don't care about spoilers, or have read the book, please to watch and let us know where you fall on the Yes No Maybe So divide.

Or, rather, if the trailer moved your needle at all on this latest costume drama from frequent Oscar presence Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Les Misérables). Gender identity is such a hot topic of late (I Am Cait is basically like having an Intro to Genders Studies course weekly on E! of all places, and Transparent's about to win an Emmy or three, don't you think?) that this film's timing is probably very good. IF, that is, the film lives up to its hype.

The movie will be opening just after Thanksgiving in the US.

Pt 2 Smackdown Xtra: On the Waterfront with a Broken Lance

Nathaniel (your host), Brian, Mark, Anne Marie, Manuel and Todd VanDerWerff continue their Smackdown conversation. Here's part two of our 80 minute conversation

THE SMACKDOWN IF YOU MISSED IT
Pt 1 PODCAST - The High & Mighty & Executive Suite

Pt 2 (40 minutes)
00:01 Recap of Part 1 and we continue our On the Waterfront conversation seguewaying to the movie's rawness and experimentation, Elia Kazan personal voice, the influence of New York theater, and the slow death of the studio system
10:00 Broken Lance, Latino actors in Hollywood, Social Message Movies, and a shout out to Natalie Wood (?)
27:30 Thelma Ritter and other Supporting Actresses of 1954
35:45 Sign Off and Thank Yous. Last words from Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes.  Continue the conversation in the comments.

SUGGESTED READING: We reference two books in this conversation: Mark Harris's instant classic Pictures at a Revolution (which you've probably already read) and a brand new one: Brian Herrera's Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance. Pick those up. 

1954 Pt 2: On the Broken Lanced Waterfront

First Poster: The Danish Girl

[UPDATE: We have been asked to remove the posters] 

I currently have the film predicted in all five top categories (Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, Actress) as well as three more craft categories. Is this putting too much faith in it, too little or just right? How bullish are you feeling about this one? It's certainly timely in the year of Caitlin's coming out party.

Can Eddie Redmayne can be the first actor to pull off consecutive wins since Tom Hanks 21 years ago?