"Available in an eye-popping new 50th Anniversary blu-ray edition, the film remains a surpassingly well designed and executed example of the Great American Musical. Through a synthesis of styles, the film echoes the great cultural melting pot of urban America post WWII, and uses an array of rousing set pieces to hint at the era’s growing unrest and generational division. Under the feel-good, entertaining veneer of Steven Sondheim’s witty lyrics and Jerome Robbins’ acrobatic choreography is a genuine whiff of the sour xenophobia that plagues the nation to this day."
With big names like Cronenberg and Polley already announced a couple of weeks ago, it came time this morning to announced the rest of the home team for the Toronto International Film Festival. This morning, they filled in some of the gaps in the Special Presentations, Vanguard, and Real to Reel sections, and at the same time presented the full line-ups for their Canada First! and Short Cuts programmes, the former highlighting feature debuts, and the latter comprised of a whopping 43 Canadian short films running anywhere from 4 to 28 minutes long.
While last year we got such items as Monsters, Our Day Will Come and Adam Wingard's A Horrible Way to Die (he returns to the line-up this year in the Midnight Madness section), this edition appears to be a cut above, they've got a pair of excellent features we caught back in Cannes with Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31 (Un Certain Regard) and Justin Kurzel's Snowtown (Critics' Week). A highly touted item from Venice has also made the cut, and we're especially glad that we'll be able to see Tahar Rahim violently and emotionally lose it in Love and Bruises - Lou Ye's first film in another language and perhaps his "comeback" film of sorts.