10 Days! 14 Theatres! 300+ Films! ~700 Screenings! It's the '08 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival!
Passchendaele
With a 21 million dollar budget, Passchendaele is the most expensive Canadian film ever made! What a way to open the Festival, with a overwrought melodrama directed by the Mountie from
Due South!
A passion project for [Paul] Gross, the film was based on stories told to him by his grandfather, a veteran of the war to end all wars. This deeply personal connection is evident in his direction. Passchendaele pays tribute to the foot soldier, privileging the world-weary Dunne's perspective on war. Having witnessed the horrors of combat, he is well aware that this gruelling form of fighting bears no glory. But what Gross finds in Dunne is a man capable of hope and devotion despite all. In his love for Sarah, the promise of a future beyond the clouds of war begins to take shape.
Achilles and the Tortoise
Takeshi Kitano, apparently driven insane after his motorcycle "accident" (possible Lawrence of Arabia style suicide attempt), has focused more and more on his artistic side in recent years, when all fans want to see is more Yakuza holiday pictures. Achilles and the Tortoise acts as the third part in a thematic trilogy which hopefully means that "Beat" Takeshi will be back to swinging swords and shooting guns by this time next year!
As a young adult, Machisu (Yurei Yanag) continues to find comfort in his mediocre art and in the company of a group of fellow students with whom he shares the unrealistic dream of becoming famous. With banal results, he mimics all of the fashionable trends, from pop art to abstract expressionism, and struggles through life in a crescendo of crazy irrationality. Machisu (now played by Beat Takeshi himself), his stubborn lack of talent persisting into adulthood, eventually spirals into disturbed, upsetting behaviour.
Chocolate
Hey! Did you like Ong Bak? Tony Jaa was pretty awesome right? You know who discovered him? Some fight choreographer and stuntman named... Pan... Panna Rittikrai? Why is that important? Cause he just discovered this badass chick by the name of Jija Yanin, who's gonna mess some peoples up!
Director Prachya Pinkaew and action choreographer Panna Rittikrai ushered in a new era of action cinema featuring no-holds-barred, full-contact fight sequences matched with death-defying stunts, leaving bruises all over the genre. Five years later, Pinkaew and Rittikrai unveil a new action discovery: twenty-four-year-old Jija Yanin, the delicate yet deadly star of Chocolate, who seems destined to join other femmes of fury like Angela Mao, Michelle Yeoh and Kara Hui.
Che
262 minutes, are you kidding me?
Steven Soderbergh, screenwriter Peter Buchman, Benicio del Toro and consultant and Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson have set themselves the daunting task of telling his story. The result is fascinating, recreating Che's life not in epic terms, but as a long, hard slog, consisting of countless small victories and defeats. Whether struggling to overthrow a corrupt regime or attempting to export the revolution, the scale is always intimate. The final effect is complex, as we are shown a powerful and decisive figure who is also human, flawed and at times painfully frail.
Still Walking
Kore-Eda takes a break from his usual ultra-depressing subject matter, such as abandoned children slowly dying of neglect, or the recently deceased having to face their personal memories to give us... Just kidding, his new film is about a middle-aged man trying to live up to his parents expectations while he visits them during events surrounding a funeral. The feel good film of the year!
Engraved onscreen with the intense luminosity of a bright summer day, Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest meditation on family drama is a quiet masterpiece that seems to originate from a deeply personal yet universal experience of regret.
Still Walking conjugates the languages of poetry and documentary into a compelling account of modest joys and gentle resentments. Draped in the colours of memories that will not fade, the film keeps a slightly off-centre focus on echoes of the past, and concentrates on recording, with genuine simplicity, the mundane events of a family reunion.
Sexy Killer
Woo! Foreign exploitation films!
A serial killer is loose at a medical school in Spain, and the police have no clue who is responsible for the carnage. Certainly, nobody suspects Bárbara (Macarena Gómez), a sexy, fashion-obsessed student with a hunger for blood that can't be satiated by what she gets in anatomy class. Killing has become a hobby for Bárbara, who would just as easily suffocate an unsatisfactory one-night stand as she would slice the throat of a peeping tom.
Tickets on sale September 3rd! Official sched here:
http://tiff08.ca/filmsandschedules/filmsearch/default.aspx
Any films Gaffers looking forward to?
