Thompson on Hollywood

Ex-'Island President" Nasheed Talks Timely Eco Doc': "It's Not Just Us"

Video

One of the surprise hits to come out of Telluride and Toronto (where it won the People’s Choice Documentary Award) was small political doc "The Island President," which takes the drama of climate change to another level.

By Anne Thompson
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March 28, 2012 3:52 PM
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Rachel Weisz Talks 'Deep Blue Sea,' Consuming Love

Features

Rachel Weisz is a terrific actress at the height of her beauty and power who is trying to push good roles up the hill, with varying results, from "The Whistleblower" to "Agoura." (More mainstream thriller "Dream House" yielded husband Daniel Craig, but was not a critics' picture.)

By Anne Thompson
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March 21, 2012 8:47 PM
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Rising Star Tom Hiddleston Talks Davies' 'Deep Blue Sea,' Spielberg's 'War Horse,' Marvel's 'Thor' and 'Avengers'

Features

Five years ago rising star Tom Hiddleston could not have imagined that he would have a year like 2011. At the time, as the theater actor was shooting the "Wallender" crime series with Kenneth Branagh in Sweden, he went to see Marvel's "Iron Man" and asked himself if he could ever star in a film like that.

By Anne Thompson
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March 21, 2012 8:10 PM
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Cameron Bailey Moves Up as Artistic Director of Toronto International Film Festival

Festivals

It was inevitable, given how well he's taken to the job of co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival. Now congrats are in order: Cameron Bailey is moving up as the artistic director.

By Anne Thompson
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March 15, 2012 12:48 PM
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Watch: Michelle Williams Navigates Life and Longing in Trailer for Polley's 'Take This Waltz'

Michelle Williams considers the fact of being alive (and a kind of idiotic, marvelous, ridiculous longing) in the new trailer for "Take this Waltz" (Magnolia, June 29), Canadian actress-writer-director Sarah Polley's follow-up to 2006's "Away from Her," which earned two Oscar nominations, for her screenplay and star Julie Christie.

By Sophia Savage
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February 6, 2012 2:17 PM
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Oscar Watch: Janet McTeer Talks Gender-Bending Albert Nobbs and Glenn Close

Awards

Janet McTeer didn't mean to steal the gender-bender drama "Albert Nobbs" from its writer-producer-star, Glenn Close, who developed and willed the $8-million period film into being. But McTeer does, partly because the tall powerful stage actress (Oscar-nominated for "Tumbleweeds") has the showier part as free-wheeling house painter Hubert. Actors will recognize the degree of difficulty for the diminutive Close, whose character is locked in a 30-year prison, passing as a man in 19th century Dublin. While Nobbs is closed in, lonely and isolated, hiding behind a mask, frightened of any disturbance in her world, Hubert owns the physicality and freedom of a man--and lives with a woman. My video interview with McTeer is below.

By Anne Thompson
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November 14, 2011 4:28 PM
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Goldwyn Acquires Global Warming Doc The Island President

News

The Toronto Film Fest doc audience award-winner The Island President has been acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films for stateside release in February 2012. The film will be screened at DOC NYC on Tuesday November 8, followed by a Q and A with director Jon Shenk by Michael Moore. Goldwyn has acquired all ancillary U.S. rights including theatrical and home video. The movie follows President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives as he struggles to save his Indian Ocean island archipelago from climate change that threatens to literally drown his country.

By Anne Thompson
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November 7, 2011 7:26 AM
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Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz Goes to Magnolia for Summer 2012 Distribution; Williams & Rogen Star

Sarah Polley's sophomore feature, Take This Waltz, has gone to Magnolia Pictures for U.S. distribution, planned for Summer 2012. Starring Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen, the film received mostly strong reviews at its Toronto premiere, as did Polley's 2006 Away from Her. Here is Meredith Brody's review from TIFF:

By Sophia Savage
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October 17, 2011 6:56 AM
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Werner Herzog Talks 'Into the Abyss,' Looks "deep into the heart of ourselves" (video)

Features

One reason that Werner Herzog's docs are so compelling and entertaining is that his powerful personality is all over them, commenting, narrating, querying. Herzog's docs, as lauded as they are, are often overlooked by the Oscar documentary branch, which nominated while Encounters at the End of the World but did not recognize Grizzly Man, Into the Abyss and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (which was not screened in 3-D). (Michael Moore cites these oversights in his successful quest for changing the Academy rules.) "It's not easy to figure out how the system works," says Herzog. "It doesn't give me sleepless nights. This one is more what they think the documentary is supposed to be. It's so straightforward. No radioactive albino crocodiles. No commentary."

By Anne Thompson
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October 3, 2011 8:18 AM
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Sony Pictures Classics Acquires Lebanon Official Oscar Entry Where Do We Go Now?

With Almodovar's The Skin I Live In out of the foreign Oscar race (Spain chose Black Bread instead), as I had suggested, Sony Pictures Classics has indeed picked up U.S. rights to its fourth foreign language Oscar submission, Lebanon's Where Do We Go Now?, directed by Nadine Labacki, which played at Cannes and beat out considerable competition to win the audience award at Toronto.