Search results for: Mark Lewis

The good news is that a handful of films that I predicted that would be at the fest and that I wanted to see (Blue Valentine, Happythankyoumoreplease, Hesher, Howl, Sympathy for Delicious and Winter's Bone) have indeed been selected.

This August (2009), we are keeping tabs on: a Canadian financed pic with top tier talent, that for the next weeks becomes known as the film that the radiant Rachelle Lebevre committed to and which annoyed Summit Ent., the re-appearance of The Details (it receives a second life), three French filmmakers (Julie Bertucelli, Fabienne Berthaud) on their sophomore efforts and Guillaume Canet on pic number three and finally, master filmmaker Mike Leigh is getting set for his latest project for Focus Features.

I wrote the script for Paul Giamatti. Luckily, I won a screenplay competition at the Nantucket Film Festival in 2006 and by a strange coincidence meet Paul in person, who was there to present an award to Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. I told him about the dream. He got intrigued. Few days later he read the script and accepted the role. This never happens. It was beginner’s luck.

TIFF have added eight more titles, and with the news we get the confirmation that highly anticipated titles from Werner Herzog and Michael Moore will be heading off to Venice before making the quick back trip to Toronto, and the latest from the Coen brothers and Danis Tanovic will be receiving their world preems in Toronto.

From an outsiders point of view, you'd think that winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for 2007's No Country for Old Men and winning Best Actor and Best Cinematography for There Will Be Blood would be a sign of better things to come, but at the end of the day, it's not the number of Oscars you win, but the plus and minus on the balance sheet.