Week Of September 11, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

September 11, 2006

If there is a single theme at this year's Toronto Film Festival, it's disappointment.

It's not the festival's fault. The show is being run as efficiently as ever with more than 250 features in play and plenty of access for local ticket buyers, executives, and press alike. The shows have been running pretty much on time, sold out press screenings have offered alternative opportunities to see the shows, to the point where the big parade of TBAs, a familiar expectation of years past, has all but disappeared.

But the bottom line... there just aren't enough festival films to fill the schedule with quality right now. Perhaps if the international element was more aggressively programmed, there might be something more interesting there. If the doc world was pushing the envelope with more variety, that could be something. But the classic balance of studio premieres, Dependent hot titles, Canadian product, Midnight Madness (which has become quite mainstream), and a sprinkling of Other just isn't very magical this year. The indie world could start coughing up better films... or maybe the festival - which I agree is now the world's premiere festival event - will have to make some changes.

Such a high percentage of the buzz films of the festival came here with domestic distribution or a previous spot at Cannes or the bloom otherwise off the rose this year, that the edge is gone. Of course, for Torontonians who are thrilled to have early access to these films and access to many films that will never get a theatrical release in North America, this is still a wonderland. The overall quality has to be said to be down this year - again, no fault of the festival - but if you haven't been at other festivals or had early access to these movies, it would be real easy to pick 30 films that are well worth your time this year. But the question of quality is, could you pick 75?

There is almost nothing to buy here this year. Even Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, which I quite liked, got snapped up just before it arrived in Canada. And most of the films that have been announced as purchased here were sold weeks and months ago. One film that I saw a few weeks ago that "sold" this week even had the distributor logo on the film when I saw it.

At the Galas, there are only two major studio films in the line-up, A Good Year and All The Kings' Men. Warner Indie has two, The Weinstein Company has three, Paramount Vantage has two and Sony Classics has one.

There are, of course, some terrific, high profile films here that are not Galas, especially in the Special Presentation section, but things remain fairly quiet there, give or take a Borat. (And what is interesting about these "special presentations" is that many probably could have been galas, but chose not to incur the expense and profile demands of that category of screenings. The Elgin has become more powerful this year than the Roy Thompson Hall.

On top of that, the celebrity quotient is way down this year. Brad Pitt and Matt Damon showed up, along with Penelope Cruz and Reese Witherspoon, but even adding in Will Ferrell and Sean Penn and Jude Law and etc, you have a wide array of great talents, but not a lot of real show biz heat.

Even on the wire services, Brad Pitt is still getting more attention for his declaration that he and AJ will marry when everyone can marry than his appearance here or the effort to raise the profile of African charities. The film Penelope is better known as "the pig faced girl movie" than as Reese Witherspoon's move into producing. Most of the TV coverage of For Your Consideration has focused on Eugene Levy calling TIFF the most important festival in the world. Russell Crowe came in for 36 hours and left. Peter O'Toole cancelled. Penelope Cruz gives a great performance in a great movie, but is stuck behind the latest shot of Lindsay Lohan's waxed body parts. And Kevin Costner wandered into town for a Disney junket and, aside from some private parties, was in no way part of TIFF.

The biggest celebrity news in Toronto this week was John Travolta in a dress... and that is one ugly story.

I wish I could suggest a different answer for TIFF that would make things better, but this year's fest walks like TIFF, talks like TIFF, and smells like TIFF. But in the end, you simply can't overcome a movie line up that is often good, but rarely sensational.

And with this realization, the question of what the future of independent film - even with a stretched out definition of indies that includes movies that cost more than $30 million - looks like. Are we really looking at 50 quality small movies a year, including international product? That's scary.

E Me.

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