In this second-to-last installment of ReelerTV from Toronto, Stu sits down with the legendary Phil Donahue, who is in town promoting his first documentary effort, Body of War. The film tracks the recovery of Tomas Young, a young American soldier paralyzed from the waist down after serving just days in Iraq. And Karina takes a look at Operation Filmmaker, Nina Davenport’s portrait of a young Iraqi wannabe-filmmaker who takes advantage of liberal Hollywood guilt to get his foot in the proverbial door.
I got a press release this morning about the new website for Body of War, otherwise known as “the Phil Donahue doc“, otherwise know as one of the most highly anticipated of the many highly political films set to debut at the Toronto Film Festival. Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be in town when it makes its debut — the premiere (which will apparently involve a live performance of songs from the film by Eddie Vedder) is on September 11, and I’m leaving on the 10th. I can stand to miss the Vedder, but I am disappointed that I won’t be able to see the movie or Donohue’s sure-to-be impassioned Q & A.
The website has pictures, a full synopsis and a trailer (embedded in a lesser-quality YouTube version above), which features one of the two songs Vedder wrote for the movie.
In an apparent bid to play every villain that, as a child, I found weirdly sympathetic (after the Grinch and, um, Andy Kaufmann), Jim Carrey will star as Scrooge in a Robert Zemeckis adaptation of The Christmas Carol. Zemeckis, who has spent the past few years mired in his soon-to-be-released motion-capture adaptation of Beowulf, is setting upCarol as another CG/motion-capture/3D stereoscopic extravaganza.
Todd McCarthy assesses Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. “Pottermania will reach a peak in July with the nearly simultaneous release of the fifth film and the seventh and final book, and only commercial concern for Warner Bros. may be that, after the second or third week, curiosity about the concluding tome could overshadow interest in the film.”
Is Phil Donahue the next Al Gore? The Man Who Fell To Oprah is shopping around a documentary, which he co-directed, called Body of War, described by Variety as “an unashamedly partisan film arguing the folly of the Iraq campaign.” The pic apparently paints most Democrats as ineffectual yes-men, while trumpeting Senator Robert Byrd as the lone maverick who dared to go against the pack.
