TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ’07
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL ’07
$4.95
IN THE ISSUE:
fe a t u re s
THE MAESTRO 14 Everyone's favourite nebbish NewYorker,Woody Allen, comes to town.
departments
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FESTIVAL HISTORY A look at the "Festival of Festivals" unreel rise.
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FUGITIVE PIECES Can a Canadian literary work have cross-over potential? Director Jeremy Podeswa hopes so.
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SPROCKETS FAMILY ZONE A venue for the next generation of filmgoers.
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GOTSYLE ON STYLE Special Advertising Supplement.
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ON THE SHELF Faithful adaptations: great books that made great movies.
THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE 30 When it comes to movies, Toronto filmgoers know how to pick'em.
ARCHITECTURE 38 The Bell Lightbox Building: TIFF’s new film fortress.
CANADIAN RETROSPECTIVE 40 A tribute to director and cinematographer Michel Brault.
COVER PHOTO: Patrik Giardino/Corbis
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PUBLISHERʼS NOTE
BAY STREET PUBLISHING Vol. 4, No. 3 SPECIAL ISSUE
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
VICE PRESIDENT, PUBLISHER Fred Sanders EDITOR Catherine Roberts CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Dianne Fowlie ASSOCIATE EDITOR, SPORTS & MUSIC Sean Littlejean ART DIRECTOR Mark Tzerelshtein CONTRIBUTORS Mike Dojc Marc Phillips Sarah Scott PROOFREADER Rob Smythe PHOTOGRAPHER Ruslan Sarkisian WEB DESIGN Karl Stahl DIRECTOR, ADVERTISING SALES Bill Percy COMMUNICATIONS FACILITATOR David Rees The Bay Street Bull is published six times yearly and distributed in Toronto’s financial and business districts. Distribution method: hand-delivered, inserted, mailed and retail. Editorial + subscription + retail advertising enquiries 305 Evans Ave., Suite 305, Etobicoke, Ontario M8Z 1K2.
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eptember is suddenly here, and while the warm weather shows no sign of leaving anytime soon, the Labour Day weekend traditionally hints at the transition into fall. Many families anticipate the return to a regular routine after the slower, less structured days of summer fun. There is on the one hand a sense of winding down as plans are made to close up the cottage, and on the other hand of starting over with back-to-school activities. Excitement has also been building over the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Now in its 32nd year,TIFF runs September 6 – 15 at various locations around the city, where a quarter of a million people are expected to take in the screening of 349 films from 55 countries. This special issue of The Bull takes a behind-thescenes look at the places, people, and productions that define the festival. The Bell Lightbox, featured on page 38, reflects the glitz of the film industry in its design. The five-storey glass building is set to open in 2009 as the festival's new headquarters. On page 6, writer Mike Dojc chronicles TIFF’s journey, from its shaky start in 1976, financed with loans and overburdened credit cards, to the cinematic extravaganza it is today. Woody Allen, despite being a notorious no-show at most such events, will make a first-time appearance at Toronto’s festival. Dojc profiles the work of the 71-year-old prolific filmmaker, on page 14. On page 8, contributor Sarah Scott turns the spotlight on Fugitive Pieces, the Canadian production that was selected over a number of strong contenders to open the festival on September 6. The movie, about a writer struggling with the memory of seeing his parents killed by the Nazis, explores how people overcome tragedy, and how love becomes the conduit to recovery. Scott also checks out the offerings for younger audiences on page 10, with a look at the Sprockets Family Zone. With this special issue, The Bay Street Bull is pleased to welcome our newest partner, Gotstyle. Known for its new and innovative approach to men’s retail, Gotstyle offers everything from casual to classic. We hope you enjoy our first “Gotstyle on Style” section. We are always interested to hear how you think we’re doing. If you want to write in about this issue, or have an idea that you would like to see featured, please address your letter to The Publisher, The Bay Street Bull, 305 Evans Avenue, Suite 305, Etobicoke, Ontario M8Z 1K2 or e-mail me at fred.sanders@cdnpub.com.
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F E S T I V A L
H I S T O R Y
FROM
Fourth-Run Fest Fiddle TO
All-Star Premiere Powerhouse A BRIEF CHRONICLE OF THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL’S UNREEL RISE By Mike Dojc
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ever in their wildest dreams could the Toronto International Film Festival’s motley trio of creative engineers William Marshall, Dusty Cohl and Henk Van Der Kolk fathom how exalted a place their little TIFF would occupy on the world glamour calendar back when the brazen concept was first hatched in 1976. The Toronto International Film Festival was initially conceptualized as a “festival of festivals” stitching together a best-of package of films that had run in other fests. The inaugural affair had cinephiles champing at the bit, but lacked the Hollywood sparkle and wow factor the festival is now synonymous with. All the big studios shunned the upstart festival altogether. With financing cobbled together from loans from friends and maxed out credit cards year 1 bore no resemblance to the star-studded tourist magnet we take for granted today. Marshall’s brash publicity machine did tease young starry-eyed ladies and gentlemen’s hearts pitter patter with news that marquee actors of the day such as Jack Nicholson and Julie Christie were expected to show their famous mugs. But the only stars in Toronto that actually showed that week were those that could be seen in the night sky from the observation deck of the newly erected CN Tower. Notables that did grace the city with their attendance included Canadian character actor Lou Jacobi, Darren McGavin (Kolchak: The Night Stalker), and Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul), hardly warranting a paparazzi pilgrimage from south of the border. Shrugging off the smug Hollywood snub, a diverse and taste-making lineup was crafted with a plethora of entries from edgy young independents setting the tone for the Fest’s future success. 155 films from 23 countries
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spooled that week and featured something for everybody, from an all-nighter of classics from the the King of B’s Roger Corman to a spotlight on wunderbar German director Wim Wenders. Amongst the gala selections in 1976 were Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala and the French romantic comedy Cousin, Cousine which later garnered three Oscar nominations. REVVING UP IN THE 80S By 1980 the fledgling festival is no longer just crawling at the feet of Cannes, Venice, and Berlin and begins to take its first steps up the entertainment industry ladder. It’s clout had grown to the point that world renowned avant-garde Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is enticed to attend a retrospective of his work. By 1982 the festival’s enlarging orbit had grown to the point that A-Listers were now being seduced by its glitzy allure. A tribute to Martin Scorsese draws not only the famous director but also acolytes Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, and Harvey Keitel. In 1987 promoter Helga Stephenson became the director of the Festival and during her six year tenure cements Toronto’s budding reputation as not only an Oscar incubator but an igniter of commercial successes as well. Rob Reiner’s quirky fairytale The Princess Bride wins The Peoples Choice Award and goes on to gross double it’s $16 million budget at the box office. That year the director’s spotlight introduces moviegoers to the then unknown Spanish director Pedro Almódovar showing six of his films. The next year Almodovar’s Women on theVerge of a Nervous Breakdown makes the TIFF docket and earns a nomination for Best Foreign Language film at the Academy awards. In 1989 Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary Roger & Me (exploring gloomy Flint, Michigan after GM plant
closings left 40, 000 unemployed) debuted at Colorado’s Telluride festival the previous month, but only gained widespread appeal after being named the Audience Choice Award winner at the Toronto festival. Roger & Me went on to gross $5.5 million, which may not sound all that impressive until you take a closer look at the numbers and see that it only cost $160 grand to make. By the mid-nineties with Helga Stephenson passing the torch to Piers Handling Toronto’s annual cinematic extravaganza had joined the ranks of the world’s top film festivals. “Toronto, Toppling King Cannes?” posits a 1994 Washington Post headline. That same year festival-goers discover New Zealand Director Peter Jackson whose crime thriller Heavenly Creatures wins the Metro Media
Award. Jackson of course would go on to direct the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That year’s festival boasts a guestlist which gets stargazers’ autographing pens wagging with Tom Cruise and J. Lo rubing shoulders with Meryl Streep and Cameron Diaz. The last Toronto film festival of the twentieth century answer erased any doubt of whether Toronto’s quality matches the European Fests. Its colossal lineup launched 11 future Oscar nominees: American Beauty,The Cider House Rules, Sweet and Lowdown, East-West, Tumbleweeds, The Music of the Heart, Boys don’t Cry, Snow Falling on Cedars, Caravan, When the Day Breaks, and The Hurricane. The gathering momentum continued into the new millennium as audiences rushed to catch sneak peaks of films already bristling
with buzz: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Prachya Pinkaew’s Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda, and Jason Reitman’s ThankYou For Smoking. The next decade of Toronto film festival lore will unfold at the Bell Festival Centre, a five level, five-auditorium exhibition hall which is expected to be open for business in 2010 at the corner of King and John. This new year-round home of the Film Festival will house galleries and hold Cinematheque screenings. Serious cinephiles can insure that they’ll be first in line for TIFF tickets by movin’ in right upstairs. Architect Bruce Kuwabara’s plans include a 42-storey Festival Tower condominium, a joint venture of Daniels Corp and the family of Hollywood mogul Ivan Reitman, who owned the property being redeveloped.
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G A L A
P R E S E N T A T I O N
Fugitive
Pieces Can a Canadian literary novel have cross-over potential? Director Jeremy Podeswa hopes so.
By Sarah Scott
W
hen Jeremy Podeswa first read the poetic novel Fugitive Pieces ten years ago, he asked himself the question: Is it a movie, or not? It was a natural reflex for a director and screenwriter who worked in TV and film. Now most people who read Anne Michael’s prize-winning novel would say no: the novel is too complex, too internal, too multi-layered for a medium that requires you to show a story, not tell it. But Podeswa saw something different—a powerful narrative line about a man who is saved from his wartime nightmares by love. It was a movie all right, but he never thought he’d be the one to make it. And yet he did. On Sept. 6, Podeswa
stepped onto the red carpet to watch his film open the Toronto International Film Festival. It was a surprising choice for the prime spot. Other Canadian contenders included Days of Darkness, starring Quebecois comedian Marc Lebreche, and directed by Denys Arcand, whose 2003 film The Barbarian Invasions earned an Oscar nomination, and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises starring Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen, both of which had the star power that would surely delight the paparazzi. But if the crowds were wondering where the stars were, Podeswa basked in the joy of the moment as he launched the $11-million film that began in his imagination a decade earlier.
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Fugitive Pieces bewitched Podeswa from the very beginning. “If you look beyond the surface of the novel, which is very complex and poetic, it is the story of a man who goes through a horrible trauma and then spends the rest of his life trying to come to terms with what he’s been through. It’s a very compelling story. I was also attracted to the tone of the novel, the style, the complexity, the richness of it.You can’t do something literary on film, but you can find a cinematic equivalent and make an equally poetic film.” That was the dream, but back then, at age 35, it seemed beyond his grasp. Then Podeswa made The Five Senses, the film that won him an invitation to Cannes plus a Canadian Genie for best direction. After returning from Cannes,
he made his first move to turn Fugitive Pieces into a movie, only to discover that the author, Anne Michaels, had sold the rights to a Canadian company that had never produced a feature film before. Not put off, Podeswa approached Robert Lantos, the Toronto movie producer who had just launched Serendipity Point Films. It wasn’t the kind of project that Lantos would package himself, but he liked Podeswa’s vision of it. Podeswa wrote the screenplay for Fugitive Pieces while working on TV projects like Six Feet Under and Nip/Tuck. He made a few changes to the book to focus the story on Jakob Beer, the writer struggling with the memory of seeing his parents killed by the Nazis. “It’s about how people overcome tragedy, and how love becomes the conduit to treating tragedy,” he says. Once he and Lantos were satisfied with the script, they moved to the casting. “Ninety percent of your movie is casting,” says Podeswa. “If you don’t have the right cast, you’re done. Most actors, if they’re in the wrong role or the wrong movie, it doesn’t matter how good they
Rosamund Pike (as Alex) and Stephen Dillane (as Jakob)
Ayelet Zurer (as Michaela) above and Robbie Kay (as young Jakob) and Rade Serbedzija (as Athos) in Greece (opposite page)
are”—the movie will flounder. Casting is not a science. “It’s really about taste and intuition. You have to really understand the character on the page.You have to have a mind’s eye picture of the person, a sense of the character’s temperament, spiritual quality, essential personal characteristics. He and Lantos hired casting directors in Canada, the U.K., the U.S., and Eastern Europe to find the key characters.” Stephen Dillane, the actor who plays the adult Jakob, is a distinguished Tony-winning theatre actor. “There’s not a lot of male actors who are really bright, interesting and complex who can
be a romantic lead in the Daniel Day-Lewis mode,” says Podeswa. Although Lantos was heavily involved in the development of the script and the casting of the movie, he doesn’t like to spend a lot of time on the set, says Podeswa. “Sets can be a really boring place for a producer. For the director and the actors, it’s all very exciting, but if you’re visiting the set, it’s a very arduous process. It can take five to six hours to do a scene, or a whole day as you do the same dialogue over and over again, from different angles. Lighting set-up can take an hour. It appears slow, as if nothing is happening, although a lot is happening, always.” The film was shot in Toronto, Hamilton, Athens, and two Greek islands. Lantos re-entered the picture once the editing began. It is said that a film is made three times—by the writer, by the director, and by the editor. Podeswa, as writer and director, was involved in all three phases. “Putting the words on the page is one thing, but when it becomes real, when actors are speaking the words, you start to rewrite again.Then, once you have the material you’ve shot, you start to rewrite the movie again with the footage as raw material.You can restructure it, move it around, manipulate it.” In the editing room, Podeswa cut scenes and chunks of dialogue as it became apparent that the movie didn’t need dialogue to move the
story ahead; pictures did the job much more efficiently. “My editor has a phrase: ‘You’ve got to kill your babies.’ Whatever favourite thing you have in your movie, you’ve got to lose it.” It may be slowing down the action. It may be beautiful, but unnecessary. This part of the movie-making process is about whittling the material down to the bare essentials. “You have to be tough on the material,” says Podeswa. “You have to try to remain objective, and if you can’t, bring in people who are.” The international sales pitch began at the Toronto festival. It was a propitious time for Lantos, who had just announced his return to the business of film distribution. Charlotte Mickie, an employee of Lantos at Alliance Communications back in the 1990s, worked the festival to sell Fugitive Pieces outside of North America, while New York agent John Sloss took charge of U.S. sales. “It’s a serious film for intelligent people,” said Mickie, as she prepared for a blitz of parties, galas, and cocktails. “But it’s got ‘cross-over potential’ because you can connect to it emotionally. The good thing about the Toronto festival is that buyers go to the same movies as the public, so they can hear the buzz in the halls and the bathrooms after the show.” “I’m hoping for word of mouth,” says Podeswa. “It’s hard to say with a movie like this, but I hope it breaks out.”
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C H I L D R E N 始 S
P R O G R A M
F A M i L Y
Z O N E
By Sarah Scott
W
hen Jane Schoettle was a girl in Edmonton, she had some lifechanging moments while watching movies with her parents. She watched Douglas Sirk’s 1959 masterpiece, Imitation of Life, on TV with her mother. She went to the epic Ben-Hur in the movie theatre with her father. After every movie, she and her parents would talk about it—even about the ones she was too young to see, like Doctor Zhivago. It was a great way to start a conversation, and “it had a very big impact on me,” she said. She could see the world through the lens of the movies, and it was a far richer world than the one she saw in Edmonton back in the 1960s. Since then, movies—children’s movies, that is—have been Schoettle’s world. She’s the founder of the highly successful 10-year-old Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children, held every April. And this year, for the second time, she’s created a six-movie Family Zone in the Toronto International Film Festival to reach out to a new generation of film festival goers age 7 and up.The films on the roster, both animated and live action, are wildly different. Terra, an animated feature by Cana-
Sam and Fred Guillaume — the directors of Max & Co (above) scene from Max & Co (below)
dian filmmaker Aristomenis Tsirbas, tells the story of a precocious alien girl who wants to save her gentle planet from human invaders. The Substitute, by Danish director Ole Bornedal, is a thriller about a bunch of six graders who suspect their pretty blonde substitute teacher is an alien. The Mid Road Gang is a pack of six stray dogs in Bangkok who are searching for a Dogtopia on the other side of a ten-lane superhighway. Insects are the stars of Philippe Calderon’s La citadelle assiégée (The Besieged Fortress), a “meditation on war, protection, sacrifice, fear and chaos,” according to the TIFF guide. Rounding out the program are two more animated films: Max & Co., about a boy who, while searching for his father, stumbles into a troubled manufacturer of flyswatters, and Nocturna, a lovely exploration of what TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2007 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 11
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makes the night so mysterious. The topics may make parents wonder, but not the kids, said Schoettle: “Kids are adventurous,” she said. At 51, Schoettle watches 600 kids’ movies a year. “A good film for kids is no different from a good film for adults,” she said. “It needs to be a lot better, because kids are more impatient.They cannot wait for half an hour for the story to really kick in. Kids are pretty unforgiving. Either you have a good story with good characters that I care about or I’m not staying or I’m talking all the way through it.” When Schoettle launched Sprockets a decade ago, there was no shortage of kids’ films, but they were mainstream Hollywood movies, fantastic perhaps, but formed out of the same mould. She wanted to offer movies from different points of view. Where movies are concerned, “I’ve always felt that you are what you eat,” she said. “The same is true for adults. Nobody wants to eat just crackers. You should have a well-balanced media diet. It’s all fodder for the spirit and the mind.” The movies that Schoettle picks open up worlds that look very different from the streets of Toronto. “If kids can’t grow up to see the world right away, certainly the world can come to them,” she said. “The message to children is that people are people. No matter what you see on the news, the fact is that people all around the world are the same.They think the same, feel the same, want the same things.” Their lives may be very different, though.They may not have warm shelter or health care or decent food. “That’s important for our children to understand,” she said. Teachers are some of Sprockets’ biggest fans. The spring film festival encourages teachers to bring kids to the movies as a way of igniting their interest in topics on the regular course curriculum. Sprockets has even created a study guide and a website (reellearning.ca) to help teachers use the films in their regular course work. The festival also encourages kids to learn the craft of filmmaking by introducing them to real-life filmmakers and helping them to make a film themselves. It’s a great way to get kids to open up about their feelings, or about touchy subjects like bullying, said Schoettle. When Schoettle convinced the powers at TIFF to expand the children’s presence last year, producers and distributors were grateful. Apart from the spring Sprockets festival, they don’t have many venues to buy and sell children’s film. Films for kids are “not perceived as sexy and interesting,” she said. “They don’t get treated with the same respect they deserve.” So this provides the six films selected for TIFF a highly visible spot in one of the world’s great cinematic bazaars. It also helps to build an audience for the future. Even though the stars are not likely to turn up on the red carpet (the dogs couldn’t make it from Thailand), the seats will be filled with kids. “We’re creating the next generation of film festival goers.” 12 | THE BAY STREET BULL | TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2007
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10 From the movies: Nocturna (1,2) Terra (3,4,5) The Substitute (6,7) Max & Co (8) La citadelle assiégée (9,10)
T H E
M A E S T R O
WOODY ALLEN Comes to Town The New Yorker who is as neurotic as the VIX during a sub-prime meltdown makes his virgin swing into the Toronto Film Festival By Mike Dojc
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© Nicolas Guerin/Corbis
oronto’s annual film fest has been upping the ante on its star-strewn guest lists with every passing year, but the celebrity wranglers have really outdone themselves this September. In addition to notables Ang Lee, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Reese Witherspoon and Cate Blanchett, TIFF’s tractor beam has managed to snag a notorious no-show at showbiz schmoozapaloozas. Allen, a three-time Oscar winner, attended the film industry’s biggest to-do only once, in 2002, and only then to urge filmmakers to continue shooting movies in New York City in the aftermath of September 11. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this will be everybody’s favourite nebbish New Yorker’s first appearance at the TIFF. Allen’s latest film Cassandra’s Dream, his 38th, is the third of the prolific 71-year-old director’s London trilogy films following Match Point (2005), and Scoop (2006). Cassandra’s Dream pairs Ewan McGregor with Colin Farrell as Cockney brothers lured into a life of crime by a beautiful woman, newcomer Hayley Atwell. The movie, officially unveiled at the Venice Film Festival, makes its North American debut as one of the gala presentations at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival.
ALLEN’S ORIGINAL OEUVRE If you could trade moviemakers the same way you trade securities, investors who bought a stake in Woody Allen (NYSE: LAFF) back in 1966, when the manic Manhattanite made his directorial debut by overdubbing a Japanese spy flick with his own madcap dialogue, would either be the most enlightened penny stock pickers on the planet or just completely bananas. Sure, Allen’s films aren’t exactly boxoffice gold—more like tin if you have to make a metallurgical analogy—but thanks to his legendary status, he is able to attract an endless parade of celebrities who work for him for next to nothing, keeping costs low. Plus, he’s never had a problem finding financial backers for his pictures. Allen’s inaugural feature film, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? re-cuts Senkichi Taniguchi’s International Secret Police: Key of Keys into a hilarious James Bond spoof. Including voicework by Allen’s second wife Louise Lasser and predating by four decades Spike TV’s Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (a series which takes sim-
Scenes from Cassandra’s Dream starring Ewan McGregor (top left), Colin Farrell (top right) and Hayley Atwell (below).
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WOOD LATELY Even novice cineastes know the scenes in Allen classics Annie Hall and Manhattan by heart, but what about his twenty-first-century work? Now in his 70s, Allen continues his prodigious movie-a-year pace and the results, as is often the case when an old master’s current works suffer comparisons to celebrated classics, are a mulligan stew of turkeys and terrificos.
Plot: College journalist finds romance while investigating a string of murders. Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman. Critical Barb: “It’s not that Scoop isn’t funny. It is. It’s just that, well, it’s not that funny. Funny the way he used to be, back in the glory days of Bananas (1971), Annie Hall (1977) or even Mighty Aphrodite (1995), when humour was the acid that ate through to deeper human truths about life, love and the impossibility of finding a decent parking spot.” –The Age Artistic Affirmation: “Woody Allen has written himself an ideal role, creating a character and a situation that results in a continuous stream of winning bits.” –San Francisco Chronicle
2005 - Match Point Plot: A modern-day Crime & Punishment. Stars: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson. Critical Barb: “Approximating Woodspeak, Rhys Meyers sounds as if he’s faking his own accent, while the naturally warm and ironic Johansson is a square peg slammed into the round hole of her role’s cliché—sultry, cigarette-and-come-hither-look femme.” –The Village Voice. Artistic Affirmation: “Woody Allen’s best movie in years means to trip us up: Sexual sizzle. London instead of Manhattan. Brit actors. Dark humor with a sting that leaves welts.” –Rolling Stone
2004 - Melinda and Melinda Plot: Contrasting stories about the same woman strive to answer the question: Is life tragic or comic? Stars: Amanda Peet, Will Ferrell, Chloë Sevigny. Critical Barb: “An attractively mounted misfire that calls attention to its shortcomings by insisting on a schematic plot. The problem is that the scheme never yields the seriocomic contrasts Mr. Allen wants to emphasize—or thinks he does.” –Washington Post Artistic Affirmation: “Smart, satisfying and compact but so modest in scale that only true-blue fans will sense—immediately—that it’s Woody Allen’s best outing in many years.” –USA Today 16 | THE BAY STREET BULL | TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2007
© Alonso Gonzales/Reuters/Corbis
2006 - Scoop
Woody Allen honored with Statue in Spain
ilar comic liberties with Japanese to English translation), Tiger Lily gave us glimmers of this gag writer-turned-moviemaker’s endearing genius. The movie’s incongruous plot hinges on the recovery of a stolen recipe for egg salad that the fate of the world depends on. A sample of the comic mayhem that is Tiger Lily: “Back off! My secret spy camera has taken pictures of you all through your clothes. Unless you release me, your naked photos will be sold in every schoolyard in Tokyo within the hour. Unless you are totally comfortable with your body, you must release me.” Over the years Allen has created a venerable catalogue of classics (Hannah and Her Sisters, Sleeper, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), and many more) as well as a discount bin full of duds (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Small Time Crooks, AnotherWoman, Anything Else). “I have made some films better than others. But I’ve disappointed myself most of the time. I’ve often said that the only thing standing between me and greatness is myself,’’ said the auteur recently. While by critical consensus Allen’s most fertile period was from 1977 to 1994 (during which he made six movies starring Diane Keaton and twelve starring Mia Farrow), his subsequent releases continue to be eagerly awaited by his adoring hardcore fan base who return to theatres again and again. Allen’s talky pictures are an acquired taste but chances are if you enjoy one Allen movie you’ll be back for a second and third round. A chronic procrastinator, Allen is also a creature of habit. Whenever he’s roosting in his hometown he makes it a weekly priority to jam with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band at Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel. His disciplined approach to moviemaking is equally grounded in routine and so, like clockwork, when one movie project is finished Allen begins work on the next. Leaving his London series behind, Allen’s next film will be shot in Barcelona and Oviedo, Spain, and released in 2008. Scarlett Johansson—fast becoming Allen’s modern day muse (this will be her third Allen movie)—is set to star alongside Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem.
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The People’s Choice A quarter of a million people take in the Toronto International Film Festival every September. Far more accessible than Cannes, where even veteran film critics have trouble landing a seat in a screening, TIFF tickets can be easily snapped up by the avid filmgoers who plan in advance. While tastemakers have long distrusted the wisdom of the masses, TIFF proves that Joe Public can pick’em just as well as the critics. It was TIFF’s film audience which catapulted Chariots of Fire (1981) to four Oscars and buoyed The Big Chill (1983) to a trio of Academy Award nominations. TIFF’s People’s Choice Award, renamed the Cadillac People’s Choice Award, continues to live up to its reputation. Mike Dojc reports on the highlights from recent years.
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Hotel Rwanda (2004) Don Cheadle went from bit player with face recognition to leading man with name recognition after his moving portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who saved over 1000 Tutsi refugees from genocide at the hands of the Hutu militia. Hotel Rwanda garnered three Oscar and three Golden Globe nominations. Cheadle is now generating Oscar buzz in another true story, this
Š Kigali Releasing Ltd.
time as Washington, D.C. radio disc jockey Petey Greene in Talk to Me.
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Zatoichi (2003)
© Miramax Film Corp
Director Takeshi Kitano, who plays the lead role under his acting pseudonym ‘Beat Takeshi’ slashed his way into North American audience’s hearts with this slapstick 19th century samurai tale of a blind masseur, Zatoichi, who conceals a sword within his red walking stick. Reviving the popular Japanese film and TV character, Kitano mixes blood splattering CGI, enhanced swordplay, and a mile-high body count that would make Quentin Tarantino envious with playful melodrama to create a truly awesome adventure romp. Zatoichi was nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards and took home five.
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© Buena Vista Home Entertainment Inc.
Life Is Beautiful (1997) Director Roberto Benigni stars as Guido, a Jewish hotel waiter in Mussolini’s Italy, who hides the horrors of life in a concentration camp from his son by constructing elaborate games. Humour and the Holocaust make strange bedfellows and the pairing turned some away from this fairy tale altogether. But Life is Beautiful’s message that a wild imagination and a loving heart can nurture the spirit thorough life’s most horrific tragedies resonated with audiences. Life is Beautiful was a triple Oscar winner.
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American Beauty (1999) This wry black comedy smashes the neat picket fences and McMansions synonymous with suburban bliss with a wrecking ball. British director Sam Mendes’ engrossing satire features Kevin Spacey in top form expressing a mid-life crisis by smoking reefer, quitting his ad exec job to flip burgers, and developing an erotic obsession with his daughter’s cheerleader friend. American Beauty was not only a knockout at the box office, raking in more than $130
© Dreamworks LLC
million, but was also rewarded with five Oscars including best picture.
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© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Roger & Me (1989) This is the film that launched the career of Michael Moore, the most commercially successful documentary filmmaker ever. While considered quirky, comic, and endearing when it was released, the film’s credibility as a documentary has since come under fire. The central theme of the movie is Moore’s inability to gain an audience with GM CEO Roger Smith. However, Toronto directors Debbie Melynk and Rick Caine’s 2007 documentary Manufacturing Dissent claims Smith did indeed grant Moore an interview. The verdict is still out whether Roger & Me is more fiction than fact, but one thing is for sure: it changed the documentary world and in the process earned nine “Best of” awards.
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A R C H I T E C T U R E
THE BELL LIGHTBOX BUILDING T
Photos courtesy of TIFFG
he intersection of King and John Streets, already sizzling amidst the bonfire of the city’s night vanities, prepares to raise the Toronto Film Festival’s new glass fortress dubbed the Bell Lightbox. The glitzy hotspot promises to give winter strollers along Canada’s Walk of Fame a cultural enclave to warm up in after they finish stepping on actors and artisans like Joni Mitchell, Mike Myers, and Kiefer Sutherland. Designer Bruce Kuwabara’s spectacular five-storey glass bauble even has BCE CEO Michael Sabia waxing poetic: “It evokes the power of film to captivate us and illuminate our ideas.” Since forming KPMB (Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg) in 1987, Kuwabara has created a coffee table book’s worth of contemporary masterworks. In fact, if you want to scope Kuwabara’s many contributions to the cultural renaissance of this country’s skylines, Birkhauser, a leading European publisher of architectural books, put together a monograph of KPMB projects in 2004. Highlights of their illustrious portfolio include Kitchener, Ontario’s City Hall, Manitoba Hydro’s corporate headquarters in Winnipeg, and Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto. The 150,000-sq.-ft. festival headquarters will house five cinemas ranging from 80 to 550 seats, a film reference library, an education centre, and two galleries. Opening: 2009. —Mike Dojc
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CANADIAN RETROSPECTIVE
Michel Brault By Marc Phillips
T
he Toronto International Film Festival’s Canadian Retrospective showcases Canada’s cinematic history. In past years, the programme has focused on such notable Canadian filmmakers as Peter Mettler, Nell Shipman, and Allan King.This year’s retrospective filmmaker is Michel Brault.
Brault, who began his career as a cinematographer, developed a unique style in both his documentaries and feature films. As director, however, he changed the way the world perceived contemporary Quebecois culture. “He is not only revered for his talent with the camera,” says Piers Handling, director and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival
Group, “but he has also directed some of the most important films to have ever been made in Quebec.” Brault first became involved in film production in 1947 when he helped his friend and colleague Claude Jutra with his short Le dément du lac Jean-Jeunes. In 1956, he joined the National Film Board of Canada, co-directing Les raquetteurs (1958) with Gilles Groulx. During this period, Brault started to use a deliberately fluid style by carrying the camera on his shoulder. He also used a wide-angle lens, an innovative documentary technique, which put him close to his subjects and at the centre of the action. Several of his films produced in the early
’60s—La lutte and Golden Gloves, for example—became classics. In 1965 Brault, in search of more autonomy, left the NFB to start his own company, Nanouk Films. He did, however, return to collaborate on several NFB projects. By the 70s, the political climate in Quebec had him delving into the question of national identity with such films as L’acadie, l’acadie?!? (1971), co-directed with Pierre Perrault and Les orders (1974), a powerful fictional piece about the October Crisis that won the Best Director Award at Cannes and four Genie Awards. Brault directed what he has called his last feature, Quand je serai parti… vous vivrez encore in 1999 and his last documentary La Manic in 2002. Beyond his longevity, Brault is perhaps unique among Quebec filmmakers: he has been either director or cinematographer in more than two hundred films. The retrospective is a testament to Brault’s remarkable skills as a cinematographer. It also includes Brault’s films that cover the most important periods in the evolution of Quebec cinema: Les raquetteurs, the precursor of the documentary style known as direct cinema; Les ordres representing the triumph auteurcinema in Quebec in the seventies; and Les noces de papier (1989), a commercial and critical success here and abroad which marked the maturation of Quebec cinema. The programme also includes gems rarely seen by filmgoers, including
Above: Les ordres (The Orders). Top left: Les racquetteurs (Snowshoers). Bottom left: Quand je serai parti...vous vivrez encore (When I am Gone...You will still be alive)
the short fiction Geneviève (1964) –a 28 minute observation on women and young people, and Brault’s first fiction feature, Entre la mer et l’eau douce (1967), about the trials of a man who leaves his small village to fulfill his dream of becoming a folk singer in Montreal. The film accurately captures the pop-culture movements that emerged at the beginning of the Quiet Revolution. Given the influence and sheer creative genius of Michel Brault, this is one retrospective that film aficionados shouldn’t miss. 40 | THE BAY STREET BULL | TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2007
T H E
S H E L F
The Godfather by Mario Puzo is the story of Don Corelone, head of a New York crime family, and his desperate struggle for control. Puzo’s epic inspired one the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies ever. Filled with exquisitely detailed characters, The Godfather is the definitive gangster novel. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally recreates the daring exploits of Oskar Schindler, a German-Catholic industrialist, womanizer, and Nazi Party member, who saved the lives over 1000 Jews by using them as labourers in his factories. Schindler’s List is an absorbing, well researched, suspenseful account of Schindler's life. The Cider House Rules by John Irving is set in rural Maine in the first half of the 20th century. It tells the story of Homer Wells, an orphan who is raised and mentored by Wilbur Larch, the doctor at the St.Cloud’s orphanage. The book is ulti-
mately a coming-of-age story--thankfully with none of the standard clichés. If there were any doubts about Irving’s storytelling abilities before Cider House Rules hit the bookshelves, none remained afterwards. Mystic River by Dennis Lehanne begins in the working-class Boston neighbourhood where ex-con Jimmy Markum runs a corner grocery store. When his teenage daughter is found brutally murdered, Jimmy recruits his thuggish friends in an attempt to ferret out the killer and exact vengeance before a homicide detective and childhood pal can apprehend the culprit. This gripping, suspenseful novel isn’t your typical murder mystery, although there are trappings of whodunit. It’s more an exploration into the human psyche. Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien is the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The story centres on hobbit Frodo Baggins who acquires a magic ring that brings power,
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death, and hardship to its possessors. Frodo sets out from home, first to flee from the evil Sauron, and then to journey to Mordor to destroy the ring. A group of friends (an elf, a dwarf, two humans, a wizard, three hobbits) attempt to help him survive against the trolls, monsters, and an evil wizard that stand in his way. Tolkien creates a powerful, detailed, mythical world that is as popular today with readers as it was when it was first published in 50 years ago. The Hours by Michael Cunningham pays homage to his muse Virgina Woolf. It interweaves the stores of three profoundly unhappy women: Woolf, whom he portrays as suicidal and in the throes of writing Mrs. Dalloway; Laura, a young wife and mother suffocating from the confines of her tidy little life in L.A. in 1949; and Clarissa, who is giving a party in the present in New York for her closest friend, Richard, a writer dying of AIDS. Cunningham’s moving tribute reaffirms Woolf’s continued significance.
Photo: Ruslan Sarkisian
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CONTINENTAL GT. APPROACH YOUR DESTINATION.
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