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Rachel McAdams & Olga Kurylenko Discuss The Challenges & Thrills Of Terrence Malick's 'To The Wonder'

  • By Oliver Lyttelton
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  • September 14, 2012 10:57 AM
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  • 5 Comments
Interviews
Anyone who says that actors are an afterthought in a Terrence Malick film are doing a serious injustice to the director and his work. It would be somewhat surprising to find A-listers queueing up to work with the filmmaker if he wasn't someone who worked well with his performers, and one doesn't have to think very hard to come up with memorable turns in his pictures -- Sissy Spacek in "Badlands," Richard Gere in "Days Of Heaven," Jim Caviezel in "The Thin Red Line," Q'orianka Kilcher in "The New World," Hunter McCracken in "The Tree Of Life" -- even if the landscape and imagery is just as important.
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More: TIFF, Interviews, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko, To the Wonder, Terrence Malick

TIFF Review: 'Free Angela & All Political Prisoners' A Fascinating Chronicle Of Justice & Strength

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • September 12, 2012 4:27 PM
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  • 1 Comment
Reviews
"Black power means dignity," is a phrase that lingers from Shola Lynch's documentary about activist and scholar Angela Davis. And dignity is just one of the many qualities that one can attach to Davis, a bold and powerful figure whose own battle for justice and freedom is chronicled in "Free Angela & All Political Prisoners." A fascinating slice out of a turbulent time in an American history, this detailed doc is a compelling portrait of a legal case that found activism, politics, freedom of speech and more all dovetailing together into an event that not only captured the attention of the nation, but of people worldwide.
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More: Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, Review, TIFF

Neil Jordan On The Influences Of 'Byzantium,' And Why He Cast Gemma Arterton & Saoirse Ronan

  • By Oliver Lyttelton
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  • September 12, 2012 3:30 PM
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  • 1 Comment
Interviews
For a director who made his name with the excellent adaptation of Angela Carter's gothic deconstructed fairy tales with "The Company of Wolves" and his big studio breakthrough with "Interview with the Vampire," it's been a while since Neil Jordan traveled into more horrific territory. There were genre elements to his last film, "Ondine," but that was more of a warm, romantic fable (and a very underrated film). It's really been thirteen years since 1999's "In Dreams," when Jordan tackled the darker side of the supernatural world.
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More: Neil Jordan, Byzantium, TIFF, Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Interviews

TIFF Review: Goran Paskaljevic's 'When Day Breaks' Is Well Shot, But Overly Sentimental

  • By Nikola Grozdanovic
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  • September 12, 2012 10:00 AM
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  • 1 Comment
News
“With this film, I’ve attempted to do something very complicated,” says Goran Paskaljevic during his introduction to the screening of "When Day Breaks." “To make a simple film.” One of Serbia’s most prominent filmmakers, Paskaljevic’s films have been premiering at TIFF since the 90s, and his brand new one, about a 70-year-old man learning about his true identity, follows suit. Believing that nowadays world cinema is lacking in emotion and true feeling, the director hopes that "When Day Breaks" will prove different. This envelope of hope however, was pushed too far.
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More: Review, TIFF, When Day Breaks

TIFF Review: 'Song For Marion' Hits A Predictable, But Sour Note

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • September 12, 2012 9:00 AM
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  • 0 Comments
Reviews
There is a certain strain of mid-budgeted British comedy -- films like "Calendar Girls," "Made In Dagenham," "Greenfingers," "The Full Monty" etc. -- that generally tends to find an audience on both sides of the ocean, make a modest profit, and then land on specialty cable where it lives on in reruns forever. They all have the easily recognizable stock characters, follow a famililar arc and culminate in manufactured emotion designed to make you feel good. And while it's hard to fault a film for being exactly what it sets out to be and nothing more, there is something almost offensive about how inoffensive the template guiding "Song For Marion" is.
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More: TIFF, Unfinished Song, Review, Paul Andrew Williams, Gemma Arterton, Terence Stamp, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Eccleston

TIFF Review: 'Great Expectations' Is A Handsome But Stodgy Literary Adaptation

  • By Drew Taylor
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  • September 12, 2012 12:02 AM
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  • 0 Comments
Reviews
Adapted a dozen times for television and film (most memorably by David Lean back in 1946), the Charles Dickens classic "Great Expectations" is a tale ripe with thematic undercurrents, one that is more-than-ready for reinvention, interpretation, and reconfiguration. Sadly, no one told this to the makers of the new "Great Expectations" (among them writer David Nicholls and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" director Mike Newell) a stodgy staging of the original text that benefits from occasionally lively characterizations but very little in the way of effervescent freshness, which is desperately vital to a story that has been told so many damn times.
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More: Ralph Fiennes, Mike Newell, TIFF, Great Expectations, Review

TIFF Review: 'A Late Quartet' Is A Soap Opera Symphony That Hits All The Wrong Notes

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • September 11, 2012 6:28 PM
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  • 7 Comments
Reviews
Certainly, if a film pulls together a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffmam, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener, there's going to be something worth enjoying. And indeed, the trio give top shelf performances as we've always come to expect from them in "A Late Quartet." But it's just too bad that they're in service of Yaron Zilberman's film, which takes the unique focus of a string quartet in Manhattan, and puts it in the middle of a standard and unsatisfying soap opera, that spins off into one subplot too many.
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More: TIFF, A Late Quartet, Review, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Imogen Poots, Christopher Walken

Joe Wright Says He Wanted To Work With Keira Knightley Again & "Challenge" The Conventions Of Naturalism In The Stylized 'Anna Karenina'

  • By Oliver Lyttelton
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  • September 11, 2012 4:35 PM
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  • 3 Comments
Interviews
Near the eleventh hour of pre-production, while director Joe Wright (“Atonement,” “Hanna”) was preparing to shoot his adaptation of “Anna Karenina,” it became clear that the budget was going to be an issue -- plans to shoot on location were causing the film’s budget to double in cost. As such, Wright and his team had to quickly rethink the picture. As it turns out, they reimagined it with ideas that had been simmering in the filmmaker’s mind for quite some time.
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More: Anna Karenina, Joe Wright, Keira Knightley, TIFF, Interviews

Exclusive: First Listen Of Wyclef Jean's Original Song For TIFF Doc 'Venus & Serena,' Artist Says He Wanted A Feeling Of “Triumph” In The Music

  • By Christopher Schobert
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  • September 11, 2012 4:11 PM
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  • 0 Comments
News
Timing, as they say, is everything, and the timing of today’s premiere screening of “Venus and Serena” at the Toronto International Film Festival could not be better. After all, just two days ago, Serena Williams won her fourth U.S. Open, her fifteenth Grand Slam title. She, and her sister, Venus, have been perhaps the most dominant players in women’s tennis for the last decade or so, but the documentary from directors Maiken Baird and Michelle Major takes a look at two of the most trying years of the duo’s lives, 2010 and 2011, when each battled major health problems.
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More: Venus and Serena, Wyclef Jean, TIFF

TIFF Review: Unnerving ‘Lords of Salem’ Is Rob Zombie’s Best Film Yet

  • By Simon Abrams
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  • September 11, 2012 2:10 PM
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  • 16 Comments
Reviews
“The Lords of Salem” is probably goth rocker-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie’s best film, though it does often prove that the cinephile writer/director is a gifted tyro. At the same time, as his most formally mannered and tonally tempered film, Zombie’s latest also proves his versatility. Set in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts, the film follows the seduction of a disc jockey (Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob’s wife), whose family was cursed by a coven of centuries-old witches.
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More: TIFF, Rob Zombie, Lords Of Salem, Review

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