Toronto Lineup, Oz Redux: Trade Roughage 08/22/07

By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago

indieWIRE points to the 17-page PDF detailing the 349 films that will unspool at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival. New details just announced today include a special screening of Grand Illusion presented by Peter Bogdanovich, who will in turn be presented an award for his film preservation efforts; Jason Reitman’s Juno, scripted by blogger Diablo Cody; and several Reel to Reel program additions, including a Joy Division doc by Grant Gee and a Lou Reed doc by Julian Schnabel.
This is what the DVD format wars have wrought: Michael Bay came home from a dinner party and wrote a drunken blog post saying he wouldn’t do Transformers 2 unless Paramount starts releasing movies on Blu-ray. Cue massive internet scandal. Then the next day he was like, “Whoops. I really shouldn’t blog after midnight. HD DVD rocks!”
The people who brought you Spawn and A History of Violence are partnering to bring “a revisionist take” on The Wizard of Oz to the screen. Don’t let that logline turn you off right away–Michael Fleming’s Variety story is actually fascinating. “Conversations with [Todd] McFarlane and [Josh] Olson make it clear that they are still working out the tone of the film,” Fleming writes. “McFarlane has a vision of Oz that is a dark, edgy and muscular PG-13, without a singing Munchkin in sight. That was clear with a toy line he launched several years ago that featured a buxom Dorothy and Toto reimagined as an oversized snarling warthog. Olson has something a little tamer, and PG, in mind.”