Eric Lavallée

North of the Oscar land, Canada should be represented by Denis Villeneuve's gripping drama Polytechnique, while Latin America has some pretty solid contenders in Chile Sebastian Silva's The Maid (a multiple film festival award). Chile's neighbour to the North (Peru) has got a Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear winner in Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow (her first film Madeinusa got a nom couple of years back) and its neighbour to the East (Argentina) has a triple Berlin winner in Adrián Biniez's debut drama Gigante which won for Best Debut Film, Alfred Bauer Award and 2nd place - Silver Berlin Bear.

Winner of the Best Feature Documentary at both the 2008 Hotdocs and Silverdocs, I haven't seen the doc but the trailer alone packs an emotional punch (see below) and is certainly worth checking out. Opening in New York on July 24th and in Los Angeles July 31st, and featuring original music by Nick Cave, Geoffrey Smith's The English Surgeon which the press kit calls a "gory medical thriller as well a meditation on mortality and the struggle to find meaning in life."

I'm not sure whether the pharmaceutical business on the big screen is the current "it" subject matter of the day, but closely following in the footsteps of the just recently announced 20th Century Fox project Love and Other Drugs, Universal is pegged to get into the drug business as well with Reese Witherspoon looking to top-line and produce (via Type A Films) Pharm Girl.

Perhaps this Xmas you'll want to dig into Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon - Sony Pictures Classics has just announced that the 25th is the best date for a tale that pits adults versus children and where strange events happen at a rural school in the north of Germany during the year 1913.

They kept a film crew for what I imagine would have been a cool postcard look back and perhaps a DVD release, but word from the music blogs today is that The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights is supposed to close the next edition of the Toronto FIlm Festival.