The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
I have to apologize for my absence yesterday on TIFF's closing weekend. A broken laptop charger prevented me any access to the internet. As you already know, David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook snatched the coveted People's Choice Award. In keeping with my tradition of not watching films with set public release dates at the festival, I passed on the film in my original planning. And yesterday, when people lined up for the film’s honorary additional screening, I was in a different theatre watching my favourite actress Julianne Moore playing a rock star in What Maisie Knew.
More including Oscar buzz and a Festival jury of one after the jump...
The Toronto International Film Festival wraps up today (movies are still being projected, though, even as I type) and the awards are out. Silver Linings Playbook took the Audience Prize, which is usually a good sign for Oscar. 10 of the 34 past winners have gone on to Best Picture nominations with 4 eventually winning the top prize (The King's Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty and Chariots of Fire). That group of 34 films also includes 1 Best Documentary Oscar winner and 9 Best Foreign Language Film nominees (5 of them eventual winners.) It's not fail safe of course. Last year's winner Where Do We Go Now? looked strong for Oscar foreign play but wasn't nominated and the previous winner's list includes various sixth-slotters like Amélie and Hotel Rwanda which didn't quite make their respective Best Picture lineups. But to make this long story much shorter this is the silver lining for Silver Linings come December; expect big golden things.
Other Winners...
Canadian Feature: Xavier Dolan's transsexual drama Laurence Anywaysstarring Melvil Poupad. Canadian Directorial Debut: [TIE] Brandon Cronenberg's (Son Of David!) body horror drama AntiviralandJason Buxton's teen violence drama Blackbirdtwo chillers from up north. Canadian Short: Keep a Modest Headby Deco Dawson
Brandon Cronenberg's debut features Sarah Gadon, his dad's current muse (A Dangerous Method / Cosmopolis).
FIPRESCI Prize Special Presentation: François Ozon's In the House which stars Kristin Scott Thomas as the wife of a French teacher (Fabrice Luchini) whose gifted teenage student is writing too intimately about the people in his life. FIPRESCI Prize Discovery: Mikael Marsiman's Call Girl is based on the true story of a 1970s prostitution ring in Sweden. Audience Award Documentary: Artifact finds Jared Leto's band "30 Seconds To Mars" battling their record label. More on this one soon. Audience Award Midnight Madness: Seven Psychopaths from the singular comic talent Martin McDonagh Asian Film: Sion Sono's Japanese tsunami survival drama The Land of Hope
THE LAND OF HOPE (The Impossible isn't the only tsunami drama out there)
TIFF hits that lost out included Sarah Polley's reportedly bewitching Stories We Tell and the two runners up to the big People's Choice prize: Ben Affleck's Argo (of which you're already as familiar as you can be without seeing the damn thing) and Eran Riklis' Zaytoun which is a war drama about an Israel fighter pilot (Stephen Dorff) shot down over Lebanon.
TIFF fringe dweller who never even made it to Canada: Nathaniel... [sniffle]
For what it's worth expect much more festival coverage for NYFF (coming very soon). Michael Cusumano and I will both hit the fest and share our reactions right here.
Are you rushing to plan an international jaunt days before said jaunt? I can't recommend!
Last week I realized that TIFF was upon us and realizing that I hadn't at all planned for it (the summer was bumpy) - no accreditation requests, no tickets, nothing, I attempted to course correct. I thought I'd pop up to Toronto for the last four days of the festival and scrambled: line up premiere invites, find lodging, buy new premiere outfit, order first pair of glasses ever (for long nights staring at my laptop). I closed my eyes tight-shut and hit "purchase" on the expenses as my card buckled in protest. Then Tuesday evening whilst packing, I realized that my passport had vanished. When was the last time I'd used it? Iceland??? Seven hours later my apartment, looking like Dorothy had just been violently whisked off to Oz, still refused to give the sacret document up. I brought every document of my existence with me to the airport last night (expired passport, birth certificate, you name it) and was unceremoniously turned away. I was offered the option of driving with one caveat -- Canada would let me in with my current documents but the US would not let me back in.
The worst part of the whole experience? The Boyfriend said "You're like Nasseri in Charles de Gaulle". And just when I had managed to forget all about the existence of Steven Spielberg's woeful The Terminal, too! Argh!!! and thanks a lot.
The bright side? (Always make lemonade, people.) The airline and the hotel did not rob me blind on cancellation fees but merely pickpocketed. Amir is still there to cover the fest. And now that I'm not in Toronto there's time to catch up on posting, hit some screenings right here, share my Lizzy Caplan interview, and tell you the story of how I met Kristen Stewart and Gabby Sidibe. Stay tuned! Yes, Fall Film Season, and Starry Oscar Campaign Trails are already upon us. I'm thrilled despite being grounded for the forseeable future.
Fall Film Season is upon us. And with it the 0 to 60 Oscar buzz. Even if you're blessed enough to have the means to jetset from Telluride to Venice to Toronto to New York, chances are you can't keep up with it all. I know I haven't been able to while juggling other demands. Before I fly up to Toronto on Wednesday for the last heady days of TIFF, I should do my best to catch up on the buzz and update those dusty Oscar charts. They're not yet a month old but.... 0 to 60, you know. The movies are upon us!
BUT FIRST LET ME VENT... So, they announced the winners of the honorary Oscars this week and as per usual, they've demonstrated their complete lack of respect for Actresses. There are so many fine actresses who never won Oscars who are still alive and yet year after year they ignore all of them to honor various men. I don't mean to take anything away from this year's talented recipients who all deserve a congratulatory round of applause (mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, stuntman Hal Needham, documentarian D. A. Pennebaker, arts advocate George Stevens, Jr.) it's just that the pattern is obvious and concerning.
Worse yet, when AMPAS does honor a woman, it's someone without a rich acting background (Hi, Oprah Winfrey). By the time this year's Oscars have wrapped, for a twenty year stretch from 1993 through 2012, thirty-eight people will have been given honorary Oscars or Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Awards and there are only three women among them (Deborah Kerr, Lauren Bacall, Oprah Winfrey). Oscar has a very real problem with women so if living screen giants like Maureen O'Hara, Doris Day, Catherine Deneuve, Mia Farrow, Eleanor Parker, Angela Lansbury, Gena Rowlands and other classic actresses ever want an Honorary prize, they might want to look into sex change operations or at least a tuxedo rental. Exasperating!
The Venice film festival has wrapped and with it come those winged lions and other elaborately shaped awards. The jury led by director Michael Mann named Kim Ki Duk'sPietathe best film in competition. It's a violent mother/son drama, the son being a loan shark. Kim Ki-Duk, best known stateside for spring, summer, fall, winter and spring (2003) is no stranger to the Venice Festival having won multiple prizes for 3-Iron (2004) eight years ago.
The winners...
Golden Lion (Picture)Pieta Silver Lion (Director) & Special Jury Prize (Director)there seems to be some confusion about this as Ulrich Seidl for Paradise: Faith andPaul Thomas Anderson for The Master alternate who won what in various reports Best Actress Hadass Yaron for Fill the Void Best Actor (Shared) Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master Screenplay Olivier Assasyas for Apres Mai (English Title: Something in the Air) Cinematography Daniele Cipri for E Stato Il Figlio
Best Young Actor & Best Actress
Mastroianni Award (Young Actor) Fabrizio Falco for Dormant Beauty and It Was the Son FIPRESCI Award (Competition) The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson) FIPRESCI Award (Orizzonti) The Interval (Leonardo Di Contanzo)
Orizzonti Jury PrizeTango Libre (Frédéric Fonteyne) Luigi De Laurentiis Award (Best First Feature)Kuf: Mold (Ali Aydin) Orrizonti: Best FeatureThree Sisters (Wang Bing) Orizzonti Jury PrizeTango Libre (Frédéric Fonteyne) Queer LionWeight Jeon Kyu-Hwan
a few notes...
The Weight, the winner of the Queer Lion, is about a hunchback mortician and the people in his life. Here is the NSFW trailer
IndieWire has a full lengthy list of winners since there are dozens of special awards outside the jurisduction of the main jury (including some of those prizes above). Several of these films picked up additional prizes.
Nice to hear the name "Frédéric Fonteyne" again, since he hasn't been on my radar since directing the wonderful romantic drama Une Liaison Pornographique. His new film is about a woman in a tangled relationship with three men. Must See!
PSH and the great Olivier Assayas accepting their prizes
Amusingly, news reports say that Philip Seymour Hoffman flying in at the last minute, barely arrived in time to pick up the prizes on behalf of The Master and apologized for his dishevelled appearance. You mean he's been aware of it all this time?!? The double actor win reopens the whole question of Oscar campaigns again. Will they actually let both stars compete in the leading category as they should? Can The Master leap the hurdle of critical darling Oscar problems like being more "challenging" and respected than actually warmly loved? Did There Will Be Blood set the stage for another Oscar run?
I'm kind of annoyed by The Envelope's suggestion that the jury wanted to give the Golden and Silver lion and Actor honors to The Master (sweeps not being allowed at most A grade festivals, thank god). If they really thought it was the best in every category, wouldn't they have handed it the Golden Lion? Instead let's congratulate Pieta and The Master and Paradise: Faith, all three of them winners to this jury.
Monday, September 17, 2012 at 8:11AM 
