It's official. The cruelest bunch on the film festival circuit are the programmers from TIFF. Once again they make choosing what films to cover during a film festival a painstaking process. A sizeable chunk of films among the just announced Gala and Special Presentations reflect ongoing trends, heavy on world premieres of Brit offerings, red carpet bling items that will be receiving a theatrical release with weeks of the T.O premiere, and a satisfying mix of Cannes items that are definitely worth re-watching and Venice items that have been circled as must see coverage items for the IONCINEMA.com team.
TIFF's co-directors Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling have got us salivating with the smorgasbord list of world premiere offerings for next September. Opening film comes as a surprise, as we've haven't heard much about it, but seeing that doc filmmaker Davis Guggenheim has a great relationship with the festival, From The Sky Down a doc about U2 (20 or so years after Phil Joanou's U2: Rattle & Hum) will take centre stage. Doc-programmer guru Thom Powers makes sure that the fest will be a rocking good edition by also adding Pearl Jam Twenty from fanboy Cameron Crowe.
Somewhat of a rarity that all three top vote-getters were put into production fairly quickly - and that 2011 will also be the year of release on the top trio of 2008. If there are any correlations to make it's that they're all comedies, relatively easier to mount and produce and grab an ensemble cast for short spurts. Will a comedy be the best ranked Black List item for 2010? We'll find out next week.
Of all the Black List years (dating back to 2005), 2006 has the distinction of being the only year where the top voted screenplay hasn't already been filmed. 2005 topper Things We Lost in the Fire was quickly put into production, 2007's Recount was an HBO film, 2008's The Beaver by Kyle Killen (read our profile) is in the can and ready to go forth with a theatrical release, and finally last year's The Muppet Man is currently lensing and still adding more faces (Emily Blunt and Ricky Gervais) while in production and it's pegged with a Holiday release next year. Here are updates on the top 5 screenplays for 2006.