TORONTO ANNOUNCES TITLES FOR 2010 FEST

Titles for the 35th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival were announced today. The mixture of world and North American premieres range from directors like Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden‘s It’s Kind of a Funny Story, to Julian Schnabel‘s Miral to Susanne Bier‘s In A Better World. The full list of titles screening in the Gala and Special Presentations sections are below. TIFF has also announced that the festival, running from Sept. 9 -19, will be extended one day longer this year and in celebration of their 35th year will be running a “TIFF For Free” series were past films that have screened at the fest will be shown at no cost (some of the titles include The Big Chill, Crash and Water). Learn more at the fest’s site.



Galas

The Bang Bang Club, directed by Steven Silver (Canada/South Africa)
(World Premiere)

Barney’s Version, directed by Richard J Lewis (Canada/Italy)
(North American Premiere)

Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky (USA)
(North American Premiere)

Casino Jack, directed by George Hickenlooper (Canada)
(World Premiere)

The Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford (USA)
(World Premiere)

The Debt, directed by John Madden (UK)
(North American Premiere)

The Housemaid, directed by Im Sang-Soo (South Korea)
(North American Premiere)

Janie Jones, directed by David M. Rosenthal (USA)
(World Premiere)

The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper (UK)
(North American Premiere)

Little White Lies, directed by Guillaume Canet (France)
(World Premiere)

Peep World, directed by Barry Blaustein (USA)
(World Premiere)

Potiche, directed by Francois Ozon (France)
(North American Premiere)

The Town, directed by Ben Affleck (USA)
(North American Premiere)

The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez (USA)
(World Premiere)



Special Presentations

Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh (UK)
(North American Premiere)

Beginners, directed by Mike Mills (USA)
(World Premiere)

The Big Picture, directed by Eric Lartigau (France)
(World Premiere)

Biutiful, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Spain/Mexico)
(North American Premiere)

Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance (USA)
(Canadian Premiere)

Buried, directed by … Read the rest

THE INSIDE MAN By Scott Macaulay

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Scott Macaulay interviewed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly director Julian Schnabel for the Fall ’07 issue. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is nominated for Best Director (Julian Schnabel), Adapted Screenplay (Ronald Harwood), Editing (Juliette Welfling) and Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski).

Most films draw us in with some promise of possibility. Buy a ticket, sit back and have your world expanded for a couple of hours. Be someone new and go places you’ll probably never see in your own life.

But there’s another sort of movie that derives its drama from the opposite journey. Movies as diverse as Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot and Gary Tarn’s recent doc Black Sun place the audience within a world that’s drastically — and painfully — smaller than their own. Through the strength of their storytelling, these films both dramatize their protagonists’ quests to conquer the challenges of their new worlds while confronting viewers with the existential questions posed by their dilemmas. Julian Schnabel’s third feature, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is a challenging, sagacious and unexpectedly sensuous addition to this genre. Adapted from the best-selling memoir, the film tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, an editor at French Elle, who is one day stricken with locked-in syndrome. Although his mind functions perfectly, he is paralyzed except for the ability to move one eye. In a harrowing tour de force reel of filmmaking, Schnabel shoots the beginning of the film almost entirely from Bauby’s viewpoint, forcing us into the most extreme identification with his character.

As the film progresses, however, it opens up. The details of this world — the color of the columns in the hospital hallway, the hue of the linoleum on the floor — seduce us. Bauby develops relationships with a series of spectacular nurses who not only teach him to communicate but also enable him to write the book the film is based on. By the film’s … Read the rest