‘Miracle’ in Toronto: Lee’s War Epic won’t Preem at Venice

It’s the Toronto International Film Festival that have got dibs on Spike Lee’s war drama which was set (and shot!) in Tuscany. I would have thought that because of its geographic proximity, that Miracle at St. Anna would have preemed in Venice, but TIFF will give the WWII pic a spot in the Special Presentations sidebar, a good three weeks before its September 26th theatrical release.

Also, in the Special Presentations sidebar we find, Peter Sollett (the filmmaker behind the brilliant, slice of life, indie film Raising Victor Vargas) comes along with Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist. Based on the novel, the story revolves around two bridge-and-tunnel teenagers, nursing broken hearts, who fall in love during one sleepless night in New York while searching for their favorite band’s unannounced show. With Michael Cera on board this might be seen as a second serving of Juno.

Steve Jacobs’ second feature length film is also a novel to screen piece. Disgrace is an adaptation of 1999 Booker Prize winning novel written by JM Coetzee, screen-written by Anna-Maria Monticelli, Malkovich plays a professor of romantic poetry who has an affair with one of his students and is driven into exile. But his new love is tested when the pair become victims of a vicious attack. John Malkovich headlines this pic.

Vincente Amorim’s Good finally sees the day of light (it’s been completed a while back). Starring Viggo Mortensen in an European co-production set in Germany’s 1930s. This is a contemporary study of how a “good” man can be seduced by the forces of evil.

TIFF will also present one of my favorite films from this year’s Cannes in Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo – the story of Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who has been elected to Parliament seven times since is was established in 1946 and who has many “daggers” pointed at him and finally, Kathryn Bigelow’s delayed The Hurt Locker looks headed to Venice before making a splash in Toronto.