The organizers at the Toronto International Film Festival have put together one hell of an impressive line-up that has grown significantly since my first list announcing the Galas and Special Presentations, a pair of lists that have also grown since then.
The lists have grown to include Massy Tadjedin’s Last Night starring Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes and Guillaume Canet, which will serve as the closing night film.
It’s also grown to include Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours starring James Franco. Boyle recently spoke about the film at Movie Con and told the audience there it may be a challenge to watch saying, “It’s a lovely way of doing a new kind of filmmaking, really. We want it to be a challenge to you [the audience] to see if you can sit and watch it.”
In the film Franco plays real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston who ended up trapped under a boulder for five days without food or water, recording video messages to his family because he believes he’s going to die. He ultimately had to resort to cutting his own arm off in order to survive and Boyle alludes to the moment saying, “There is something in it that’s quite tough to watch.”
Beyond that, it’s now being reported the film will be taking Paul Thomas Anderson’s dialogue-free first 15 minutes of There Will be Blood to task with the first half-hour of 127 Hours being dialogue-free.
Next we have learned that while Clint Eastwood’s latest feature Hereafter starring Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard (pictured) may be closing the New York Film Festival on October 10th, it will be playing first in Toronto in September.
As far as anyone really knows about Eastwood’s latest film only a minor blurb has been posted by anyone of any real significance to this point and that’s the vague praise tossed out by “Los Angeles Times” blogger Patrick Goldstein who said:
On Tuesday, I caught an early screening of Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film, Hereafter, and though it’s too early for a mini-review, let’s just say that Eastwood, who turned 80 this year, is still The Man when it comes to making movies, showing off a range and depth that puts him right up there with John Huston, Robert Altman and the other great old masters from past ages.
It would seem that while WB was willing to let Goldstein see it, they kept him on a very tight leash when it came to saying much about the film, which is set to hit theaters on October 22 following its festival run.
Other new additions to the Special Presentations category include Dan Rush’s Everyting Must Go starring Will Ferrell and Rebecca Hall and Matt Reeves’s Let the Right One In remake Let Me In will play Toronto before it has its US premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 23. The film hits theaters on October 1.
Additionally, Toronto’s Midnight Madness line-up has secured some heavy-hitters of its own including James Gunn’s Super, Saw creator James Wan’s Insidious, Brad Anderson’s Vanishing on 7th Street and the return of John Carpenter with The Ward.
In all honesty, these newest releases make for a film fest of their own but you still have films from previously announced directors including Darren Aronofsky, George Hickenlooper, Robert Redford, John Madden, Tom Hooper, Francois Ozon, Ben Affleck, Emilio Estevez, Im Sang-Soo, Mike Leigh, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Rowan Joffe, Tony Goldwyn, Susanne Bier, Ji-woon Kim, Alex Gibney, Werner Herzog, Xavier Dolan, Andrew Lau, Julian Schnabel, Mark Romanek, Tran Anh Hung, Rachid Bouchareb, John Cameron Mitchell, John Curran, Stephen Frears, Michael Winterbottom, Dustin Lance Black and Woody Allen. Whew! I’m out of breath and I could go on…
I have included all of the titles announced thus far on the next page thanks in large part to Peter Knegt at indieWire. So click to the next page and have at it. Titles in the RopeofSilicon.com database are all linked and the six films I saw and reviewed at the Cannes Film Festival have their respective reviews linked to as well.
I will be in Toronto for the 35th Toronto International Film Festival from September 8-16 so stay tuned as I will be posting reviews throughout those eight days and most likely a couple days after I return as this is easily shaping up to be a major advancement in what films will be doing what in terms of early Oscar predicting, which guarantees the RopeofSilicon “The Contenders” section will be updating at a fast and furious pace.
