Michael Almereyda talks to Rania Richardson at Downtown Express about his new documentary on photographer William Eggleston, "William Eggleston in the Real World," which will be featured at this year's Toronto Film Festival.

Niki Caro's "North Country" starring Charlize Theron, James Mangold's "Walk The Line" about Johnny Cash and June Carter, Phyllis Nagy's "Mrs. Harris" about Jean Harris who killed her lover Dr. Herman Tarnower, author of the best-selling The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. Also on tap are Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" with Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst and John Gatins' "Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story".

Among the films singled out as star-studded new fest titles include Scott McGehee & David Siegel's "Bee Season", baed on the best-selling novel, Neil Jordan's "Breakfast On Pluto" starring Cillian Murphy, Mary Harron's "The Notorious Bettie Page" with Gretchen Mol as the famous pin-up model, Udayan Prasad's "Opa!", Michael Winterbottom's "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story", Roger Donaldson's "The World's Fastest Indian", Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble", Mike Johnson & Tim Burton's stop-motion animated "Corpse Bride", Liev Schreiber's "Everything Is Illuminated", Shane Black's "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", Abel Ferrara's new film "Mary", and John Turturro's "Romance & Cigarettes".

The Johnny Cash movie "Walk the Line," starring Joaquin Phoenix as the "Man in Black," will receive its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, organizers said. Reuters reports.

[Festival Press Release]: With a final tally of 328 films (including 98 world and 81 North American premieres), from 60 countries, unspooling over 10 days, the 29th Toronto International Film Festival wrapped on Sunday, September 19th with its annual Awards Brunch at the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto.

The complete list of winners follows, information provided by the festival.

The Toronto International Film Festival has developed a status in recent years as the curtain-raiser to Oscar season, when trophy-hungry directors premier their late-season star-studded epics, biopics, and dramas, Cameron French reports in Reuters.

"Their efforts to show up the Hollywood star machine in Toronto are captured in 'Why Can't I Be a Movie Star,' Neremberg's feature-length film, which got its premiere here this week," Etan Vlessing profiles the film in the Hollywood Reporter.

In the Miami Herald, Rene Rodriguez reports on sex and politics on the screen:

Halfway through the 29th Toronto International Film Festival, one trend has become inescapable.

In John Waters' endearingly silly, NC-17 rated A Dirty Shame, Tracey Ullman plays a prudish housewife who turns into a nymphomaniac after suffering a concussion. The underlying message of Bill Condon's Oscar-bound Kinsey, a drama about the life of 1950s sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson), is that when it comes to Americans' attitudes toward sex, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

"Director George Butler says he hasn't seen the ads that attack U.S. presidential hopeful John Kerry's record in Vietnam, noting that his documentary 'Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry,' was well under way before the commercials were first aired," Cameron French reports in Reuters.

A.O. Scott weighs in on a few Toronto festival films:

If you mixed up a handful of different breakfast cereals and flung it in the air, the randomly falling Corn Flakes, Cocoa Puffs and Froot Loops might appear to be arranging themselves, by color and shape, into interesting patterns and clusters. Similarly, if you gathered together more than 300 movies and scattered them across a large Canadian city, a serendipitous sense of order might emerge.

The image of cascading cereal does not come from left field but from "Mysterious Skin," a new movie directed by Gregg Araki that played this week at the film festival here. As it winds on, the festival, which began last Thursday and ends on Saturday, feels both utterly chaotic and at the same time governed by some strange, complex principle of symmetry. As you go from movie to movie to movie, they seem to pair off and bunch together.

Tom Long reports from the Toronto International Film Festival, for the Detroit News:

It may be an unusual business, but it’s also business as usual midway through the 29th Toronto International Film Festival, which began Thursday and runs through Saturday. Stars promote their films, publicists coddle the stars and corral journalists, gawkers take pictures of even the most marginally famous and — most importantly — tens of thousands of fans gather to celebrate cinematic efforts, both great and small.

The hands-down indie favorite is predictably “Sideways,” the latest from writer-director Alexander Payne (“About Schmidt,” “Election”), a hilarious and touching story of two buddies (Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church) on a road trip before one marries. Also garnering considerable buzz are “House of Flying Daggers” from “Hero” director Zhang Yimou and “Being Julia,” with Annette Bening as a cunning-yet-strained aging actress.

A.O. Scott reports from Toronto, in the New York Times:

By the time this year's Toronto International Film Festival ends on Saturday, 328 films will have been screened. Spread over the 10 days of the festival, which began on Thursday, that comes to more than 30 movies a day, which means, according to my bleary-eyed calculations, that to see one movie is to miss about seven others, and that the statistical accuracy of any single critic's impressions of the festival as a whole will be roughly 12.5 percent.

What this suggests is that the Toronto festival, which has become, during the last decade or so, the most important such event in North America, is really 8 or 12 or 35 festivals gathered under one roof. (The numbers are wildly imprecise, and the roof is metaphorical, because the screenings are in shopping-mall multiplexes, college auditoriums and concert halls scattered across this city's sprawling downtown business and entertainment districts.)

Glenn Lovell reports on the festival's hot films:

It's never easy to predict which films will become breakout hits. The Toronto International Film Festival (through Sept. 18) is making it doubly hard to play favorites because it boasts such a range of choices this year.

Still, let's give it a shot.

Dan Brown reports on the Toronto International Film Festival for CBC News:

Opening night at the Toronto International Film Festival, as you may or may not know, is always reserved for a high-profile film with a Canadian pedigree. Being Julia qualifies because it was produced by Canada's Robert Lantos, the filmmaker known as much for CanCon classics like In Praise Of Older Women as he is for his prickly responses when reporters ask him about the Canadian-ness of his productions.

Festival press and industry screenings kicked off with a bang today, with a large crowd (no doubt drawn by the racy, erotic film description) mobbing the Varsity 4 theater for today's 12:45 p.m. screening of Lukas Moodysson's "A Hole In My Heart." Ten minutes before the showing, only a few seats were left inside and a crowd of at least 100 people were still hoping for a spot.

While Indiewood studio buyers were escorted in to the showing ahead of the line, execs from smaller New York companies were simply shut out (as were we at indieWIRE). Some grumbled that the screening should have been scheduled to accomodate more, given Moodysson's strong following, and a few rejected audience members exchanged angry words with screening staffers. Fest organizers quickly added another P & I showing for tomorrow.

One fest programmer who saw the film reported to us after the screening that a number of people walked out of the graphic, intense film.

In article for xtra.ca, Shane Smith looks at the short films set to screen in Toronto this year:

Often the most interesting, original and provocative addition to a film festival, a good short is like an Olympic athlete — all muscle, no fat. Untainted by the commercial constraints handicapping many feature films, short film-makers are free to run their own race, resulting in tightly focussed, compact stories that retain the power to surprise, delight and leave you wanting more. And since the Toronto International Film Festival is the Olympics of film festivals, requiring world-class stamina to get through the obstacles (sold-out screenings, super-sized lineups) and hurdles (a program book that weighs more than your head, celeb-stuffed limos clogging the streets) of its action-packed 10 days, here’s a rundown of the mighty, meaty queer shorts that are on offer this year. Take the road less travelled and check out what the new kids on the cinematic block have to offer — you’ll find plenty of winners in these smart, speedy gems.

In the Toronto Star, Ho Anderson reports on a controversial festival doc about the killing of a cat:

Toronto International Film Festival organizers have no intention of pulling a controversial film from the 2004 program, despite the outcry from local animal-rights activists.

The 90-minute documentary examines the videotaped killing of a stray cat named Kensington at the hands of Jesse Power, Anthony Wennekers and Matt Kaczorowski in 2001.

Palm Pictures has acquired the Spanlish-language film "Cronicas," which will have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Festival. The crime/suspense thriller, directed by Sebastián Cordero, stars John Leguizamo as a Miami based journalist who travels to Ecuador to cover a series of murders. It will be released in theaters next year.

Canadian-based THINKFilm has announced a deal to release Niels Mueller's "The Assassination of Richard Nixon. The film stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle and Jack Thompson and will screen as a special presentation at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival next month and open in theaters at the end of December to qualify for awards consideration.

Tandem magazine < ahef="http://www.tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4343">reports on Italian films that will screen at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival:

Carlo Mazzacurati's An Italian Romance will make its international premiere as a gala at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. "Beautifully photographed and richly sensual, the film deftly captures all the possible intensity of romance," said festival co-director Noah Cowan at a press conference this week unveiling the remainder of films.

A report on anime in Toronto:

The Toronto International Film Festival appears set to host the North American premiere of Steamboy on Saturday, September 18 at 6:30 PM. They will also show Ghost in the Shell - Innocence at some point during the festival, however a screening date has not been set. The festival runs from September 9th to September 18th. Innocence has already screened in North America, with a semi-public screening at the DreamWorks' Campanile Theater in Hollywood this past Tuesday (August 24th).

The Hindustan Times reports:

Two Indian films will be showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival where 328 films from some 40 countries will be screened. The festival would unveil two Indian films - Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Chased by Dreams and the other is Hari Om from India, reported hollywoodreporter.com.

The stats from today's press conference in Toronto:

328 Films: Features – 253; Shorts – 75  (339 Total: Features – 254; Shorts – 85 in 2003)

207 Features that are world, international, or North American premieres: 100, 26, and 81 respectively (184: 63 world; 17 international; 104 North American in 2003)

82% Feature Films that are world, international, or North American premieres (73% in 2003)

indieWIRE's report on the lineup, including the complete lists of films in all sections, was posted earlier today.

More facts and figures are below...

The Melbourne Herald Sun in Australia looks at the new Australian film, "The Oyster Farmer," which will screen in Toronto:

The Oyster Farmer is the debut feature film from director Anna Reeves, who also wrote the screenplay, and tells the story of a young man who stumbles into a community of eccentrics on the Hawkesbury River in NSW. It stars recent NIDA graduate Alex O'Lachlan in his first leading role, along with fellow newcomer Diana Glenn, and Kerry Armstrong, David Field, Jack Thompson and local oyster farmers.

The London Free Press, via Canoe, surveys films at the Toronto fest:

The "international" portion of the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival was strengthened yesterday with the addition of films in the Visions program. Among the newly announced titles for the festival, which runs Sept. 9 to 18, are two major British entries. Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs intercuts between a London couple's explicit sexcapades and live music footage of bands such as Super Furry Animals and Primal Scream. Marc Evans' Trauma is a psychological thriller starring Colin Firth as an accident survivor haunted by visions of his dead wife.

Nine other titles were added to Visions, including two from established French directors who are veterans of the filmfest: Claire Denis offers L'Intrus, an experimental film that tells its story through visual and aural impressions, and the ever- controversial Catherine Breillat returns with Anatomie de L'Enfer, which pushes the envelope on what is considered sexual and sensual about women's bodies in Western culture.

Kathimerini, the English language newspaper of Greece, takes a look at four Greek films that will screen at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival:

Four Greek films will be presented at next month's Toronto International Film Festival, one of North America's most renowned, along with the Sundance Festival. The four films have been slotted into three categories. Two of the country's most celebrated directors, Theo Angelopoulos and Pantelis Voulgaris, will have screenings of their latest work in the festival's "Masters" category. Angelopoulos, a top prize-winner at the Cannes Film Festival, will take to Toronto "The Weeping Meadow," the first part of a trilogy.