2012 Toronto Film Festival Updates


GET LIVE UPDATES FROM TORONTO ON TWITTER @WKNDWARRIORCS!


ComingSoon.net has exclusive interviews with actors Clive Owen and Jason Statham, talking about their parts in Gary McKendry's Killer Elite, which opens nationwide on Friday, September 23.

Deadline is confirming their earlier report that Lionsgate have picked up the distribution rights for Jennifer Westfeldt's hot Toronto Film Festival title Friends with Kids, a romantic comedy that teams the Kissing Jessica Stein star with Adam Scott, playing best friends who decide to have a baby together while dating other people.

Finally, our last two reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival (other than movies we'll be reviewing with their theatrical release). We'll end things with two movies from New York City auteurs, one of them who is trying to reclaim the glory of his 1995 debut, the other who hasn't had a movie released since 1998. Todd Solontz has made a lot of movies in recent years I found to be unwatchable, so his latest Dark Horse is a surprisingly pleasurable experience, while Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress is an extremely clever twist on college comedy stereotypes.

The Toronto International Film Festival is officially over today, and they've announced the awards winners with the Cadillac's People Choice Award going to Where Do We Go Now?, the new war drama from Nadine Labaki (director of Caramel). Gareth Evan's Indonesian martial arts thriller The Raid received the People's Choice Midnight Madness Award, while Jon Shenk's The Island President received the Cadillac People's Choice Award in the doc category.

While lots of major studios regularly bring their movies to TIFF, Paramount has taken a different approach with their two festival offerings, as they're both movies with links to the Sundance Film Festival and produced by Steven Rales' production company Indian Paintbrush.

A former Toronto native, Jason Reitman is a regular fixture at TIFF, but this time, he wasn't there to show off his latest movie (Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody), as much as to offer support to other filmmakers. In this case, he co-produced the Duplass Brothers' fourth film Jeff, Who Lives at Home , which moves them further into studio filmmaking. ("Jeff" isn't being release until next March, so it's somewhat of an odd choice for Paramount to premiere it at TIFF over Reitman's new film.) Meanwhile, Drake Doremus' Like Crazy was picked up at this year's Sundance and is being released in October through the resuscitated Paramount Vantage imprint.

Jeff, Who Lives at Home is the fourth film by Sundance regulars the Duplass Brothers as they move further into studio filmmaking, while Drake Doremus' Like Crazy was picked up at this year's Sundance and is being released in October through the resuscitated Paramount Vantage imprint. Oddly, "Jeff" isn't being release until next March, so it's somewhat of an odd choice for Paramount to premiere it at TIFF over Reitman's new film.

Probably one of our bigger general regrets from this year's TIFF is that we haven't been able to see as many of the "Midnight Madness" movies as we would have liked. Programmed by the jovial Colin Geddes, one of the programmers at TIFF who really gets how genre works as well as appreciates the support of online journalists attending the fest, "Midnight Madness" premieres some of the best genre films in the world mostly to the rabid crowd of fans who have decided to stay up late with like-minded individuals at the Ryerson University theater. Since we tend to do early morning screenings, we can't stay up that late, which is why we hadn't seen a single "Midnight Madness" movie at this year's TIFF.

On our very last full day in Toronto, we decided to make up for that by seeing three of the movies showcased in "Midnight Madness"--Doug Aarniokoski's The Day, Eduardo Sanchez's Lovely Molly, and Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's You're Next, the latter which had been getting huge buzz at the festival and many raves from our colleagues.

WWE Studios announced today that the company has purchased the distributions rights to action-thriller The Day.

Our latest reviews from TIFF have absolutely nothing in common as one is a crime drama, a genre that’s been explored quite frequently in film, the other is a British romantic comedy set in an odd foreign environment. Rampart stars Woody Harrelson and it's Oren Moverman’s second movie as a director while Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (CBS Films), starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, feels like Lasse Halström’s hundredth movie. One of them works infinitely better than the other.

As we continue our coverage of TIFF, here's a blast from this past weekend. We somehow managed to see three movies on TIFF Day 4—that was three more movies than we watched on Day 3—and they all seemed to share an unintentional link in that all three are by women filmmakers who got a lot of attention with their previous movies and were coming to TIFF with movies that would be getting a lot of attention due to expectations for their follow-ups.

The screenplay for Sarah Polley's drama Away from Her received an Oscar nomination and she returns with Take This Waltz, an original drama starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen and Luke Kirby. It's been quite a bit longer since Jennifer Westfeldt starred in Kissing Jessica Stein and she brought TIFF her directorial debut Friends with Kids, a comedy co-starring Adam Scott and a good chunk of the cast from Bridesmaids. In turn, Lynn Shelton brought her follow-up to Humpday called Your Sister's Sister, which stars Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt and Mark Duplass.

Oddly, none of these three movies have received distribution at the time of this writing.

ComingSoon.net talks with the lovely and talented Michelle Monaghan about her role in Marc Forster's action-drama Machine Gun Preacher, starring Gerard Butler as Sam Childers, the former convict who took up preaching and went to Africa to help in the effort to save kids there. Monaghan also talks about some of her upcoming projects including the action movie The Blonde, which she's also producing.

« Older Posts Newer Posts »  

Follow ComingSoon.net on Twitter
MOST ACTIVE
MORE MOVIE & GAMING NEWS