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It’s been a rather brutal week for the column… my apologies. But I spent most of Tuesday night trying to research the bulk of the 336 films that will appear at the Toronto Film Festival, starting in just two weeks from tomorrow.
My list of the top 74 titles, based on yesterday’s efforts, is on Movie City News. I encourage any of you with any insight on any level to pipe up and push me in the right direction if you feel I've strayed or neglected deserving titles. I suspect that by Monday I will have a much clearer focus.
I have virtually no insight into the festival’s “Discovery” section and I need to invest some more time looking at Perspective Canada, since there are always a few films there that deserve more attention than they end up getting. Last week, I had the joy of watching one of the stars of Ginger Snaps get killed in New Line’s Freddy Vs. Jason. Ginger Snaps is a much better movie.
As I broke out titles to the films with distribution and the ones without, it struck me how niche-y the distributor-free product is and how much more interesting the studio product is than it was just a few years ago. Also, none but one of the documentaries had distribution, which is very frustrating.
The Festival’s official site can be found here, if you want to take a look. And I will spend much of the day on Wednesday trying to gather even more information as the festival grows closer.
READER OF THE DAY: THE PERFECT SORM writes: “Accurate or not, give Hollywood a reason to jump in fear and run about over "evil" technology and they will.
I'm eagerly watching the Federal Register, awaiting the transcript of Uncle Jack's tearful testimony on how legislation must be passed to ban cellphones, text pagers and all other manner of electronic horrors from within 500 yards of all theatres everywhere.
"Why, don't you know that these evil little boxes are to weekend takes what the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone!?!?!??
Don't poor Ben and J. Lo deserve at least ONE weekend of bilking the masses!?!?!? We expect that the Senators from Disney will have draft bills on our desks in the morning to ban Texting While Screening. What the hell do you think we bought you for in the first place?"”
And this from HANK THE SHANK: “I read with much interest the comments of CC Fights about Johnny Depp's work in "Pirates." And his attitude is PRECISELY why great comic performances don't end up winning Oscars. Hell yes, Depp deserves to be nominated for it. Look at all the films we've seen so far this year and ask yourself how many of the performances we'll remember five years from now.
It's interesting that CC Fights brings up some examples of overlooked, un-nominated performances that we remember vividly, but then he does exactly the sort of dismissal of Depp's work that Oscar voters did of his examples. Thus doth pretension make cowards of us all.
My own pet hate is the recent tendency among the Oscar folks to not vote for things that are financially unsuccessful, but I digress. Maybe that would make a good category--the top stupid reasons Oscar voters vote the way they do. We could have sub-categories for various shades of the complaints about voters being swayed by the ad campaigns (nominations for that borefest "The Cider House Rules"?) and for central performances that were passed off as "supporting" to increase the chance of an award (Kate Hudson springs to mind).”
E Me: Color my Toronto world…
