It's Toronto, it's the films, it's the big one
Ryan Gosling in “The Ides of March”.
Is “Anonymous” this year's “The King's Speech”? Is George Clooney a show-off? Are documentaries back?
These questions and many more are likely to be answered over the next 10 days, as the 36th Toronto International Film Festival -- which began Thursday night with a gala screening of Davis Guggenheim's Bono-worshipping U2 documentary “From the Sky Down” -- shifts into hyperdrive.
North America's biggest film fest, a launching pad for Oscar contenders and awards-season wannabes, boasts 268 features, 68 shorts, and Clooney times two.
The impressive and impeccably cool resident of Lake Como, Italy, comes to this bustling Ontario town (no recession here, it seems) with a pair of serious contenders: Clooney stars in “The Descendants”, Alexander Payne's (of “Sideways” fame) Hawaii-set portrait of an absentee dad reconnecting with his daughters, and he co-stars in “The Ides of March”, as a liberal-leaning Pennsylvania governor running for the presidency. Clooney directed this one, and gives Ryan Gosling, playing a key campaign strategist, a shot at the best-actor sweepstakes. (In fact, if “The Descendants” is as strong as its early buzz, Clooney and Gosling could be competing for the same Oscar.)
As for “Anonymous”, the Elizabethan intriguer stars Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a British noble who, Roland Emmerich's film suggests, actually wrote many of Shakespeare's plays. The film is set against the political upheaval of Queen Elizabeth I's succession, and Vanessa Redgrave plays the queen, and right there is reason enough to see this.
In addition to Guggenheim's U2 homage, the documentary field at TIFF 36 includes Werner Herzog's “Into the Abyss”, the profile of a Texas killer on death row; Alex Gibney's “The Last Gladiators”, about hockey players; Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory”, the latest chapter on the fates of the three men just released from prison after serving 18 years for the killing of three boys (charges that DNA tests finally proved false); a Morgan Spurlock survey of the annual fanboy fete Comic-Con; and a Neil Young concert film from director Jonathan Demme.
Comments