Search results for: George Hickenlooper

The King of the B’s gets an A documentary.

It was a wonderful night celebrating documentary filmmaking at the fourth annual Cinema Eye Honors, held in the beautifully renovated Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, N.Y. on January 18th. Hosted by filmmakers AJ Schnack (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) and Esther Robinson (A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory), the nominees comprised of some of the best documentary films of 2010, truly a celebration of nonfiction filmmaking rather than a competition. David Schwartz, the chief curator of the Museum, relayed the thoughts of many filmgoers who say that “the best films at festivals are the documentaries.”

What we do know from the list below is that along with Black Swan, we have Barney's Version, The King's Speech, Potiche and The Town heading to Venice. The Debt is likely to debut there as well, joining Helen Mirren in The Tempest, but for some reason I'm seeing it more as a Telluride item. Among the world premieres that will service the Toronto public well, we have a pair of buyer titles in Little White Lies and The Conspirator and we have the shot in the streets of Toronto, Casino Jack (no longer being called Bagman). Among the off the radar selections, I'd say not many were expecting Emilio Estevez's The Way, Barry Blaustein's Peep World, David M. Rosenthal's Janie Jones.

After holding back for about a month's time, today at 10:00 a.m. EST, Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling will announce the first wave of films to be part of the 35th festival edition and with Venice releasing their list tomorrow, TIFF will measure up by throwing out some huge red-carpet titles (25 to be exact). Tweeted by Bailey, 8 Gala World Premiere titles and 17 Special Presentation World Premiere titles are expected to be mentioned at the press conference.

You'd think a festival with 300 + film title offerings would pretty much covers all bases, but I think there'll be more broken hearts than usual as a result of the unbalanced production year that was 2009. Like a vintage year for wine, Toronto International Film Festival co-directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey should see in 2010, a significantly higher number of World and North American premieres (loads from Cannes and Venice) than previous years for the 35th edition.