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67th Venice Film Festival: No Malick, No WKW, but Tons More Possible
Now that all bets are off on Terrence Malick showing up on the Lido, and Wong Kar-wai's The Grand Master appears to be on the same no-show list (the fest have announced that Andrew Lau's The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen has their second opening night flick celebrating the anniversary of Bruce Lee’s 70th birthday).
Incendies: Denis Villeneuve’s Venice Bound Drama
Ask me who Canada's best working filmmaker is at the moment, and I'd make a convincing argument that it isn't Guy Maddin, David Cronenberg or Atom Egoyan, but instead, a French Canadian filmmaker who wasn't at Cannes this year but will be in Venice. I'd bestow the honor on Denis Villeneuve from August 32nd on Earth (1998) and Maelström (2000) fame, and most recently 2008's short film Next Floor and the sobering, Polytechnique (2009) and his fourth feature film, Incendies (Scorched) will be competing in the Venice Days sidebar section which regularly turns out some gems.
TIFF 2010 Viral: interview with Festival Co-Director Cameron Bailey
Sundance has Cooper, Cannes has Frémaux and Venice has Mueller, but in Toronto they have a duo splitting the festival director responsibilities. It sort of makes sense when you've got four to five times the amount of titles that Cannes has. One part of the tag team is Cameron Bailey with whom I got a chance to throw some questions at within the context of today's first release of titles.
TIFF 2010: World Preems Special Presentations for Beginners, Rabbit Hole, Conviction, Henry’s Crime, The Trip
As a result of a bizarre 2009 production year, TIFF is the happy recipient of some premium titles which include the world premieres to some of my most anticipated films this year in: Mike Mill's Beginners, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, Andrucha Waddington's Lope and Rowan Joffe's Brighton Rock. Then we have titles that are coming from this year's Sundance, Cannes or both (Blue Valentine picks up the trifecta honor) and then we have titles that come to us from out of nowhere with Michael Winterbottom's The Trip and Richard Ayoade's debut film, Submarine.
TIFF 2010: Gala Screenings to include Potiche, Little White Lies, Black Swan and Barney’s Version
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.
