The 2008 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival begins today, and Kevin Kelly and I will be there for the next ten days reporting back. What follows is not exactly an iron-clad preview of our Toronto coverage––in addition to some of the films below, I’m definitely planning to see new works by Claire Denis, Agnes Varda, Jonathan Demme and Richard Linklater, and would of course recommend that anyone on the ground see some of my favorites from past festivals, including Medicine for Melancholy and A Christmas Tale. This is more of a list of predictions of what everyone else is going to be talking about, while I’m pushing my glasses up my nose and rushing to to the next screening of the a South Korean movie about drunken lonliness. Enjoy! If you have your own predictions for what will catch fire in Ontario, let us know in the comments.
Obviously, anything with “porno” in the title has a certain automatic contingent (hello, Google searchers! Sorry to disappoint!) But then, so does anything with the credit “written and directed by Kevin Smith.” And then there’s the leading man. Some perspective: Smith’s last three films have grossed an average of $26 million each; the last three films starring Seth Rogen have grossed an average of $117 million each. With Jay and Silent Bob finally retired (we think/hope), and Rogen in tow for the usual, MPAA-baiting Smithism, Porno could––however ironically––become what Jersey Girl was supposed to be: the tipping point that expands the Smith fan base beyond the longtime Clerks faithful.
Crowdpleasers make me itch. But then, to borrow a line from David Fincher, I’m an asshole. Assuming you are not, you might be interested to know that Slumdog Millionaire shows all the symptoms of becoming The Next Juno. Like Juno, Slumdog premiered in a TBA slot at Telluride, where reaction from all but our own Kevin Buist was enthusiastic, evenhyperbolically so. Also ike Juno, it’s a music-fueled piece of pop art in which young love results from unlikely circumstances. And, thanks to Warner Brothers’ loss of faith in this tier of the distribution market, it’s now being distributed by Fox Searchlight––just like Juno. If looking for The Next Juno is now part of our jobs, at least Searchlight is taking all the arduous work out of it.
Filmmaker and former Marine JD Johannes is selling a compilation DVD called Outside the Wireon his website. The DVD contains three short documentaries that Johannes shot himself whilst embedded with troops in Iraq (a trailer is embedded above). On a blog on the site, Johannes positions his “pro-victory, pro-troop” films in opposition to docs like Body of Warand The Ground Truth. “Actually going to Iraq, living down in the dirt with the grunts and making documentaries about what is happening on the ground appears to be a rather novel concept, but I think the best way to understand Iraq is to see it from 5′10″ off the ground,” he writes.
Fair enough. But wait––there’s a gimmick! Johannes is trying to sell 2,900 copies of his DVD in six weeks, in order to match the domestic box office gross of Brian DePalma’s fall flop Redacted.
I haven’t seen Johannes’ movies, and I’m certainly not opposed to as many views of the war as possible getting out into the market place. In fact, I’ve argued previously that the reason why films like Lions For Lambs and Stop-Loss are so disappointing creatively and commercially is due to a homogeneity of perspective––the anti-war choir really doesn’t need to be pandered to anymore.
But what is a little illogical to me is that Johannes has chosen Redacted as the target to beat. …Read more
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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