TIFF’08 - The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival announced its awards at the Awards Reception at the Intercontinental on Front Street today.

AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN SHORT FILM
The award for Best Canadian Short Film goes to Chris Chong Chan Fui’s Block B. The film examines the lives of an expatriate Indian community weaving itself through the contradicting soundscapes of contemporary Malaysia. The jury notes: “simple, graphic, hypnotic - this is an achievement of bringing cinema to its bare essentials.” A special citation goes to Denis Villeneuve’s Next Floor. The short film jury members are filmmakers Louise Archambault and Min Sook Lee, and Rotterdam International Film Festival programmer Peter van Hoof. The award offers a $10,000 cash prize and is supported by the National Film Board of Canada.

CITYTV AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN FIRST FEATURE FILM
The Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film goes to Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu’s Before Tomorrow “for its arresting beauty, its humanist, innovative storytelling and its artistic integrity in capturing the narrative of a people through an intimate tale.” Based on the novel by acclaimed Danish author Jørn Riel, Before Tomorrow is a moving drama about a strong Inuit woman and her beloved grandson, who become trapped on a remote island as they face the ultimate challenge of survival. A special citation goes to Lyne Charlebois’ Borderline. Established by Citytv, the award carries a cash prize of $15,000.

CITY OF TORONTO-CITYTV AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM
The City of Toronto-Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film goes to Rodrigue Jean’s Lost Song. Elisabeth (Suzie LeBlanc), Pierre (Patrick Goyette) and their new-born baby move to a summer cottage in a remote area north of Montreal. Isolation and the difficulty of coping with her new situation and surroundings send Elisabeth into a spiral of depression. The jury described the film as “constantly surprising,” and “profound, masterful and devastatingly sad.” A special citation goes to Atom Egoyan’s Adoration. Generously co-sponsored by the City of Toronto and Citytv, the City of Toronto-Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film carries a cash prize of $30,000.

CANADIAN FEATURE FILM AWARDS JURY
Winners of the Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film and the City of Toronto-Citytv Award for Best Canadian Feature Film were selected by a jury of film industry professionals, consisting of filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, filmmaker and actor Sarah Polley, programmer for the Locarno Film Festival Vincenzo Bugno, and producer Michael Burns.

DIESEL DISCOVERY AWARD
The Diesel Discovery award goes to Steve McQueen’s Hunger. The film follows Bobby Sands and the other political inmates of Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison in 1981 as they seek to gain special category status for republican prisoners. The Festival press corps, which consists of 1000 international media, voted on the Diesel Discovery Award. The award offers a $10,000 cash prize and a custom award sponsored by DIESEL Canada.

PRIZE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICS (FIPRESCI PRIZE)
The Festival welcomed an international FIPRESCI jury for the 17th consecutive year. This year’s jury was expanded and considered eligible films in the Discovery and Special Presentation programmes. The jury members consist of jury president Jonathan Rosenbaum (USA), Nick Roddick (United Kingdom), Elie Castiel (Canada), Ranjita Biswas (India), Kim Linekin (Canada) and Pablo Scholz (Argentina).

The Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Discovery is awarded to Derick Martini’s Lymelife. From the filmmaking team behind Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire (TIFF 1999) comes an examination of first love, family dynamics and the American Dream in late 1970s Long Island, as seen through the innocent eyes of a 15-year-old. Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin) is a gentle boy - a direct contrast to his blustery father, Mickey (Alec Baldwin). After an outbreak of Lyme disease hits their suburban community, the lives of the Bartletts and their neighbours begin to crumble in the wake of illness, confrontation and paranoia.

The Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Special Presentations is awarded to Steve Jacobs’ Disgrace. Professor David Lurie’s (John Malkovich) life falls apart after he has an impulsive affair with one of his students. Forced to resign from Cape Town University, he escapes to his daughter’s farm in the Eastern Cape. Their relationship is tested when they both become victims of a vicious attack. In order not to lose the love of his daughter, David stands by her as she accepts her tragic circumstances. She continues her life on the farm and their individual disgrace finally settles to an uneasy grace.

CADILLAC PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
The Cadillac People’s Choice Award is voted on by Festival audiences. This year’s award goes to Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. From acclaimed director Danny Boyle comes a story about a kid with nothing, who has everything to lose. Jamal Malik, an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?” Arrested on suspicion of cheating, he tells the police the amazing tale of his life on the streets, and of the girl he loved and lost. But what is a kid with no interest in money doing on the show? And how does he know all the answers? First runner-up is Kristopher Belman’s More Than A Game and the second runner-up is Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M. The award offers a $15,000 cash prize and custom award, sponsored by Cadillac… [Full Story]

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Cinematical - Based on journalist Mark Boal’s real experiences following bomb disposal experts in Iraq, The Hurt Locker isn’t just a welcome return to big-screen action from director Kathryn Bigelow (who has wrung both fame and infamy with Near Dark, Strange Days and Point Break). It’s an assured, confident, swaggering piece of moviemaking that manages to not only evoke every war of the 20th century but also, despite the claims by makers and some reviewers that it’s an ‘apolitical’ film, speaks very specifically to the Iraq war. Even so, plunging us into the thick of things alongside the highly-trained men (and they’re all men here) who defuse bombs for the Army, Bigelow and Boal avoid the speeches and postures and long, contemplative talks of home front films like Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah by staying in Iraq, and they shun the loopy, loony formal experiments of Brian De Palma’s Redacted. Boal and Bigelow stay laser-focused on one group of men with a singular mission, and make us live in the constant possibility of death. Viewed from half a world away, a bomb is a political concern; viewed from less than a foot away, a bomb’s just a high-stakes exercise in problem-solving, where making a mistake means a final, terminal education in the physics of expanding gases.

The Hurt Locker follows three soldiers — bomb tech James (Jeremy Renner) and his subordinates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldrige (Brian Geraghty) into the jaws of death; it’s all last names in The Hurt Locker, as seen on patches and heard in urgent radio dispatches. Early on, Bigleow establishes that people will be killed in this film — with a bravura sequence that depicts a bomb’s detonation on the macro and micro level, billowing bursts of smoke and pressure and flame intercut with gravel and dust leaping choreographed in lockstep by the pressure wave, as if God had slammed his fist on reality hard to make a point — and while Renner, Mackie and Geraghty are fine actors, they’re also unknown enough to subconsciously let us know that they aren’t safe from what may happen… [Full Story]

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Twitch - There are so few bonafide movie stars these days. These are actors that can light up the screen in such a way that even in a highly stylized and kinetic motion picture about an infamous personality, all eyes are riveted on the curve of the mouth or the lift of a brow of the player: Insouciance is celebrated. Vincent Cassel is certainly one of those actors. Whether he is hamming it up in the all star Ocean’s movies (or the goofy Sheitan) or turning into a monster in Irreversible or La Haine. Few stars of Cassel‘s caliber can go from the charm and sex appeal of Warren Beatty to the pure motherfucker-ness Charles Bronson to full on nutter of Jack Nicholson. And director Jean-François Richet allows for all of the above in Public Enemy Number One (Part One). While we get little real insight into one of Frances most notorious criminals, Jacques Mesrine, what we do get is one of the most snappy crime thrillers in quite some time. The stylish presentation and driving narrative do not let up. The film asks you to root, cheer, and laugh for a truly despicable human being, and with its stars charm and menace at the helm, you might just find yourself doing so. Yes, in a the strangest of ways this is a good thing… [Full Story]

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TIFF’08 - Voted on by Festival audiences, the Cadillac People’s Choice Award winner is Slumdog Millionaire.

Tickets for the free screening of the Cadillac People’s Choice Award winner will be available on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 7:00pm on September 13 at the Elgin Theatre.

You must be in line to receive a ticket. One ticket per person only.

UPDATE (from indieWIRE): The festival’s Discovery Award went to Steve McQueen for his first feature, “Hunger,” winner of the Camera d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The FIPRESCI critics prize went to Derick Martini’s “Lymelife,” also in the Discovery section at TIFF… [Full Story]

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/Film - Fox Searchlight isn’t wasting any time. Earlier this week they purchased the North American rights to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, and not even a week later, a release date has been solidified:

December 19th 2008

As expected, the film is being released by the end of the year so that the film can qualify for Award consideration. I don’t think I’ve read a review yet that didn’t mention both Mickey Rourke and Academy Award nomination in the same sentence. I wouldn’t be surprised if the film didn’t get a few more nominations as well. From what I understand, part of the decision that went into the acquisition earlier this week, was which studio could position the film for awards consideration.

Note: I’m not sure how wide the initial release is. Fox Searchlight is known for their platform releases. So it is possible that the film might initially open in New York and Los Angeles on this date, before expanding wide in January 2009… [Full Story]

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/Film - I didn’t get a chance to see the early cut of New York, I Love You, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week, although I wish I had. For those of you who don’t know, the film is the second in a series of films which began with Paris, je t’aime in 2006. The idea is to bring top directors and actors together for an anthology of short films that take place in one particular city.

Now to the news. Someone told me that the producers of New York, I Love You revealed during the question and answer session that they already have two more films in the works for what they are referring to as the “Cities of Love franchise.” The next film in the series will be called Shanghai, I Love You, and is intended to coincide with the World Expo in 2010. The fourth film will take place in Jerusalem, and will probably be released in 2011 or 2012… [Full Story]

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Variety.com - Startling performances, searing dialogue and an archaeologist’s sense of late ’70s period detail power the violently funny “Lymelife.” Named, a tad regrettably, for the paranoid condition of wood-tick-fearing middle-class Long Islanders, the second feature written by the Martini brothers, Steven and first-time director Derick, gradually reveals itself as a film about the pressures and consequences of upward mobility and ordinary adolescence. Intense perfs by Rory Culkin and Alec Baldwin are standouts in a movie that brims with vivid supporting turns. Cross-generational marketing ops make “Lymelife” a solid bet for specialty distribs seeking a leaner and meaner “American Beauty.”

The Martinis’ previous screenplay, for “Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire,” showed considerable promise but not the ambitious sort on display here. Coalescing into a representative portrait of pre-Reagan change, the pair’s admittedly autobiographical film, dedicated to their late grandparents, centers on thin, 15-year-old bully magnet Scott (Rory Culkin), whose older, bulkier brother, Jim (Kieran Culkin), prepares to ship off to military duty, and whose longtime crush, Adrianna (Emma Roberts), reluctantly begins to return his timid gaze.

Two sets of parents seem to compete for dysfunctional-behavior prizes: Adrianna’s pill-popping father, Charlie (Timothy Hutton), shoots self-made targets in the woods with a rifle, dressed in suit and tie, while her uptight mother, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), trysts in a dingy cellar with Scott’s angry-workaholic dad, Mickey (Baldwin).

Mickey’s underappreciated wife, Brenda (Jill Hennessy), duct-tapes her youngest son from head to toe to protect him from Lyme disease. Periodic cutaways to wandering deer and the real or imagined threat of wood ticks — not to mention scenes of believably harsh marital bickering — serve the pic’s point that these frightened, emotionally starved people, kids included, are animals at best… [Full Story]

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Variety.com - Following the more outre concepts of several features including “After Life” and “Nobody Knows,” writer-helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda seems to be scaling back with the writ-small “Still Walking,” which chronicles 24 hours in the life of a mildly dysfunctional family. But its modest surface belies the depths of a lovely seriocomedy that concisely lays bare all kinds of uncomfortable dynamics in seemingly casual, low-key fashion. Just released theatrically in Japan, this gem should attract interest from discerning offshore fest, arthouse and tube programmers.

The Yokohama clan gets together every year at the elderly parents’ seaside-town home to commemorate an eldest son’s death. It’s an occasion not looked forward to by all — or perhaps anyone — despite general efforts at good cheer. Particularly reluctant are surviving son Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), who feels the brunt of his elderly parents’ thinly disguised disapproval of his art-restoration profession and his new bride, Yukari (Yui Natsukawa). She’s anxious to impress the in-laws, and have them accept as family her child (Shoehi Tanaka) by her late first husband.

But Ryota’s biggest complaint is that his blunt-spoken mother (Kirin Kiki) and, in particular, his gruff father (Yoshio Harada) still treat him like a failure compared to shining-star Junpei, who died saving a drowning child. All their hopes were pinned on him; even long dead, he’s the yardstick by which Ryo is judged.

No such expectations are laid on daughter Chinami (You, the squeaky-voiced abandoning mother in “Nobody Knows”), a garrulous flake whose amiable car-salesman husband (Kazuya Takahashi) and two rambunctious children don’t bother brooding over any family conflicts, past or present… [Full Story]

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Variety.com - One of the more bizarre illustrations of racial injustice under apartheid is dramatized in “Skin.” First feature for Anthony Fabian tells the real-life story of Sandra Laing, born with black pigmentation and features to a white couple due to a genetic irregularity. Her rocky road makes for an involving tale presented with polished straightforwardness, acted with conviction by Sophie Okonedo as well as Sam Neill and Alice Krige as the well-intentioned but often misguided parents. Prospects are good for offshore sales to specialty distribs and broadcasters.

Framed by sequences set on South Africa’s first day of racially nonexclusive free elections in 1994, the otherwise chronological narrative starts in earnest three decades earlier. Ten-year-old Sandra (Ella Ramangwane) has been raised so far in rural isolation by her shopkeeper parents Abraham (Neill) and Sannie (Krige), with no real perception that she’s any different from them or from older brother Leon (Hannes Brummer).

But when she’s dropped off for the first time at boarding school, it’s immediately apparent that everyone else thinks she’s quite different indeed. “I’m not black!” she protests in all sincerity to a dormmate trying to demonstrate open-mindedness. Others, staff included, express their racial attitudes more cruelly.

At last expelled for fighting back against a viciously abusive teacher, Sandra is escorted home by police as if she were a public menace. Such treatment enrages Abraham, who fights for her reclassification as white all the way to the Supreme Court. There, a geneticist argues convincingly (if offensively to many) that, as a result of South Africa’s long colonialist history, most Afrikaners probably have some “colored” blood in them… [Full Story]

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Variety.com - Packing a high-caliber performance by Jim Sturgess and enough thrills to start a theme park, “Fifty Dead Men Walking” is a classic about the Irish “troubles.” Despite the unavoidably convoluted facts of the real-life story, pic boasts plausibly written, solidly acted characters and a conflict that pushes the viewer’s righteous-indignation buttons, and as such could become a crossover hit.

It’s 1988 Belfast, and the Brits are occupying the Irish streets; the IRA is waging an insurgent war; the innocent are caught in the murderous middle. Any parallels to current-day Iraq are probably intentional, but there’s enough historical distance between the conflicts to make “Fifty Dead Men” more about action than political metaphor.

And Sturgess — as Martin McGartland, the Irish informant for the British whose work reputedly saved at least 50 men from IRA execution — is a wonder. McGartland was a petty hustler and incipient criminal, selling stolen clothes and closing pubs when the British came to town. As such, he makes an ideal, formless informant for Fergus (Ben Kingsley), the intelligence agent tracking Republican activities in Belfast, who knows exactly how to wheedle his way into Martin’s heart.

When Martin’s pal Frankie (Conor MacNeill) is kneecapped by hooded IRA men, Martin is outraged enough that he uses his natural instincts as a con man to get inside the IRA… [Full Story]

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