Toronto Film Festival Archive for September, 2013

Nayman On TIFF’s City-To-City Athens Survey Of Contemporary Greek Cinema

Nayman On TIFF’s City-To-City Athens Survey Of Contemporary Greek Cinema

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TIFF’s Cameron Bailey On Oscar’s Foreign Language Rules

“Scrap the significance of nation; Scrap the one-country, one-film rule; Institute a US release requirement.” TIFF’s Cameron Bailey On Oscar’s Foreign Language Rules

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Truly Taking TIFF As The “People’s Festival”

Truly Taking TIFF As The “People’s Festival”

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The Torontonian Reviews GRAVITY

Gravity is really, really cool.

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“Following up a torrent of increasingly irate tweets about TIFF’s “disregard for the integrity of cinema” and, ludicrously, attempting to mount “a major campaign to take action” (this from an adult man who deputizes hard-pressed TIFF volunteers to shush people for him), Billington has posted his own, billion-word, response. And is it ever a read: a full-on frothing expose of a treacherous conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of TIFF.”

“Following up a torrent of increasingly irate tweets about TIFF’s “disregard for the integrity of cinema” and, ludicrously, attempting to mount “a major campaign to take action” (this from an adult man who deputizes hard-pressed TIFF volunteers to shush people for him), Billington has posted his own, billion-word, response. And is it ever a read: a full-on frothing expose of a treacherous…

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Koehler Kisses TIFF

Koehler Kisses TIFF

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“There are always hard choices to make at film festivals. Looking at our numbers versus other major festivals’, I can only view complaints about Toronto’s size as compliments on the quality of our selection.”

“There are always hard choices to make at film festivals. Looking at our numbers versus other major festivals’, I can only view complaints about Toronto’s size as compliments on the quality of our selection.” 

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Errol Morris In Snowflake Town

“It was one of the strangest and most interesting and puzzling interviews I’ve ever done. I often think my job description is that I’m required to try to capture something of the complexity of the individual I am talking to and the complexity of the world that they were dealing with.” Errol Morris In Snowflake…

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Wiseman On His “Novelistic” Approach To Documentary

Wiseman On His “Novelistic” Approach To Documentary

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“During the first half of TIFF, when most industry executives and press are attending, there is simply too much going on at the same time. The last four or five days might feel more relaxed with programming conflicts, but that’s when most industry guests have already left town. No publication I’ve encountered has the resources to do proper reviews of all those films, or even just all the world premieres.”

“During the first half of TIFF, when most industry executives and press are attending, there is simply too much going on at the same time. The last four or five days might feel more relaxed with programming conflicts, but that’s when most industry guests have already left town. No publication I’ve encountered has the resources to…

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Behind TIFF People’s Choice Doc Winner The Square

Behind TIFF People’s Choice Doc Winner The Square

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The Torontonian Reviews UNDER THE SKIN

Glazer’s decision to light the film with heavy chiaroscuro makes getting lost in the ambiguity sexy and mysterious, and it’s rare that you see the fullness of a character’s face. There is almost always something obscuring the skin or hiding the face of both prey and predator, which makes the shadows and confusion a bewitching result.

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12 Years A Slave Wins TIFF Peoples’ Choice Award

12 Years A Slave Wins TIFF People’s Choice Award

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Deducing Benedict Cumberbatch

Deducing Benedict Cumberbatch

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Chastain And Benson On The 10 Years To Make TIFF Hit The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby

Chastain And Benson On The 10 Years To Make TIFF Hit The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby

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Infographing The Tweets Of TIFF

Infographing The Tweets Of TIFF

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The Torontonian Reviews PRISONERS

An unspoiled viewing of the film is so completely engrossing that every little clue or tidbit rattles and teases us. But the best mystery films are often those that withstand repeated viewings, for we watch these movies again and again to revisit how expertly handled each revelation is and how the characters react to them. Prisoners is this kind of mystery movie.

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Cumberbatch On His Correspondence With Assange

Cumberbatch On His Correspondence With Assange

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On Playing A Slave Master’s Evil Wife

On Playing A Slave Master’s Evil Wife

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“With due respect, there’s lots of talk about China. But there’s another country out there with 1.2 billion people,”

“With due respect, there’s lots of talk about China. But there’s another country out there with 1.2 billion people.”

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Toronto Film Festival

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon