Contact Help Wanted

Toronto 2009: IndieWIRE’s Critics’ Poll

Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man (top); Joel and Ethan Coen (bottom)

Peter Knegt reports that an indieWIRE poll of "more than 25" film critics and bloggers (blogging film critics?) shows that the overwhelmingly favorite film screened at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival was Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man (not to be confused with Tom Ford’s A Single Man or the Michael Douglas vehicle Solitary Man), a black comedy about a suburbanite (Michael Stuhlbarg) whose life suddenly unravels after his wife asks for a divorce. A Serious Man hits US theaters on Oct. 2.

Colin Firth, Julianne Moore in A Single Man

The best performance was delivered by Colin Firth in A Single Man (not to be confused with either [...]

2009 Toronto Film Festival Winners

Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (top photo); Lee Daniels

The bizarrely titled Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, formerly known as Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire, was the Audience Award winner at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival. The Toronto win, which follows widespread critical acclaim and a couple of Sundance awards earlier in the year, has pushed Precious to the forefront of likely Oscar contenders come February 2010. (Last year’s Toronto winner and critics’ favorite, Slumdog Millionaire, eventually turned out to be the best picture Oscar winner.)
Directed by Lee Daniels, Precious tells the story of an overweight, illiterate, pregnant teenager (Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe) who is abused by her mother (Mo’Nique), [...]

Toronto Film Festival Awards 2009

2009 Toronto Film Festival Awards
2009 Toronto Film Festival: Sept. 10-19
2009 Toronto Film Festival Winners
 

Cadillac People’s Choice Awards:
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE

Runners-up:
MAO’S LAST DANCER (above, top)
MICMACS (above, lower photo)

Documentary:
THE TOPP TWINS

Runner up:
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY

Midnight Madness
THE LOVED ONES

Runner up:
DAYBREAKERS

FIPRESCI Special Presentation Prize: HADEWIJCH

FIPRESCI Discovery: THE MAN BEYOND THE BRIDGE

Best Canadian Feature: CAIRO TIME

Skyy Vodka Best Canadian First Feature: THE WILD HUNT

Best Canadian Short: DANSE MACABRE

Honorable Mention: THE ARMOIRE

 
Toronto International Film Festival Site
Toronto Film Festival Awards: 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Film Awards: 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Toronto 2009: UP IN THE AIR, YOUNG VICTORIA, Israel Controversy

George Clooney in Up in the Air

Nomi Morris on Up in the Air in GlobalPost, via The Huffington Post:
"This year, the film that has generated the greatest buzz is Up in the Air, the latest by [Jason] Reitman, director of the hits Juno and Thank You for Smoking, and son of Hollywood director Ivan Reitman (Ghost Busters). Up in the Air stars [George] Clooney as a "termination engineer," who has no home life outside of his job, jetting around the country helping American companies fire people. Both funny and sad, the film examines a society where frequent flier points become a substitute for family attachments. Reitman used documentary footage of 25 real people who had lost their jobs in Detroit [...]

Toronto 2009: Michael Moore Photos

Michael Moore at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival screening of Capitalism: A Love Story
"The true believers of socialism in the United States of America are Wall Street and corporate America," Moore remarked. "They want the safety net there for themselves and they have very willingly taken … trillions (of dollars) of our money."

Anti-bailout protesters

Photos: Overture Films
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Toronto Film Festival 2004: HOTEL RWANDA Wins Audience Award

Based on the true story of a hotel manager who saved hundreds of lives during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda has won the People’s Choice award at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival.
In the film, hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle) saves the lives of those hiding in his hotel by bribing military officers with cash, liquor, and other goods. While the world looked away, approximately 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were massacred during the spring and early summer of 1994.
Pete Travis‘ Omagh, the story of the relatives of victims of the bloodiest terrorist attack of Northern Ireland’s 30-year conflict, won the festival’s Discovery award, given out by attending journalists.
In My Father’s Den, [...]

Toronto Film Festival 2004: African Cinema

Besides the usual Planet Africa program, which presents five features and eight shorts, the 2004 Toronto Film Festival is offering a look at South African cinema. The five features presented in the sidebar South Africa: Ten Years Later are Red Dust, the Zulu-language Yesterday (directed by Darrell Roodt), Drum, Cape of Good Hope, and Forgiveness.
Film topics range from the bleak (AIDS in Yesterday) and the political (the fight against Apartheid in Drum) to the uplifting (the bond created among humans through their love of animals in Cape of Good Hope).
Other African films to be presented at the festival include Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene’s La Noire de … (Black Girl), which was first released in 1966 and is widely [...]

Toronto Film Festival 2004: Controversies

At the 2004 Toronto Film Festival, besides Charlize Theron’s no-show and Kevin Spacey’s show sporting a dyed scalp, there’s writer-director Paul Haggis‘ Crash (Haggis also wrote Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby), a well-received new film that has the same title as the 1996 David Cronenberg picture about car crashes, mutilations, and kinky sex. According to the Toronto Star, those behind Cronenberg’s work are now threatening to take legal action against the producers of the new Crash (above, with Matt Dillon).
Then, there’s George Butler’s documentary, Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, about Kerry’s (seemingly never-ending) Vietnam war years. Of the U.S. presidential candidate, Butler told the Associated Press, "I truly believed the moment I saw him: This [...]

Toronto Film Festival 2004

The 2004 Toronto Film Festival will screen 321 features and short films from 61 countries.
Among the festival’s 100 world premieres are Being Julia, starring Annette Bening and directed by István Szabó; David O. Russell’s comedy i heart huckabees, with Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin as a duo of "existential detectives"; and two biopics: Beyond the Sea, directed by Kevin Spacey, who also stars as 1950s-60s singer and actor Bobby Darin, and Kinsey, which stars Liam Neeson as controversial scientist Alfred Kinsey, who created a furor in the postwar years with his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
Other festival highlights include The Good Woman, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan starring Helen Hunt; Jean-Luc Godard’s Notre musique; [...]

Recently Posted

• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Actor - Drama
• Oscar 2010: Animated Short Film Semi-Finalists
• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Picture – Comedy or Musical
• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Picture - Drama
• Noel Clarke's ADULTHOOD on IFC Festival Direct
• Oscar 2010: Documentary Feature Semi-Finalists
• THE FUPLERS: Q&A with Matt Koval
• Yoav Shamir's DEFAMATION Opens in NY/LA
• TCM Classic Film Festival: A STAR IS BORN, METROPOLIS, BREATHLESS, 2001
• FOUR SEASONS LODGE Screenings

Most Popular Tags

2008 Oscar 2010 Oscar Academy Awards Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Animation Best Films Books Box Office Brokeback Mountain Censorship Classic Movies Daniel Day-Lewis Documentaries DVDs Film Awards Film Festivals Film Reviews Gay Film Festivals Gay Interest Gay Movies Heath Ledger Helen Mirren Interviews London Film Festival London Film Festival 2009 Los Angeles Screenings Martin Scorsese New York Screenings No Country for Old Men Oscar Movies Photos Political Movies Politics Sex Shorts Silent Films Slumdog Millionaire Sundance Film Festival Trailers Turner Classic Movies


Related Posts

DARFUR NOW at the Toronto Film Festival 2007OBSCENE at the Toronto Film Festival 2007Toronto Film Festival 2004: HOTEL RWANDA Wins Audience AwardToronto Film Festival Awards – 2005Toronto Film Critics Awards 2005Toronto Film Critics Awards 2004