What’s Doing in Toronto

Is it just me or is there a little bit of Toronto ennui in the air? It’s not just indifference at LiC, I’m noticing it on the blogs actually covering the event. I didn’t focus on Toronto last year so perhaps this is par for the course.

I didn’t mention yesterday that Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler scooped up the Golden Lion prize at Venice (another festival marked by few high points this year). Now that it has showed up at Toronto, it seems to be garnering similar acclaim.

There is good news for those of us who continue to hold out hope that Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness will prove to be better than its Cannes reputation. Cinematical’s Kim Voynar was one of the Cannes detractors but saw it again at Toronto. Her biggest issue originally was some heavy-handed voiceover by Danny Glover. Apparently the film has been re-edited and the voiceover is now gone and Voynar gives it a much better review calling the film “a vast improvement over what we saw at Cannes.”

Screen Daily’s Allan Hunter echoes Patrick Goldstein’s enthusiasm for Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles calling it “a sweetly entertaining putting-on-a-show period drama that celebrates a defining moment in the life of American theatre and one of its most iconoclastic stars.”

Miracle at St. Anna. Sight unseen, certain web-flies were expressing reservations about the 2 hour 40 minute length of Spike Lee’s story about African-American soldiers in World War II, and now it looks like the film is getting kicked to the curb by the trade of record. Variety’s Todd McCarthy calls it “a clunky, poorly constructed drama designed to spotlight the little-remarked role of black American soldiers in World War II. Clocking in at 160 minutes, this is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don’t mix well.”

Several positive reviews of Bill Maher’s Religulous have already leaked out following a week’s Oscar qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles and now Cinematical’s James Rocchi adds his voice to the chorus from Toronto. He concludes his review:

“Religulous is full of contradictions — it’s a funny film about some depressing things, it’s a lighthearted tour through terrorism, injustice and intolerance. But those contradiction and challenges are, ultimately, what make the film linger uneasily in your mind, reaching past comedy and confrontation to challenge the audience with a fierce and forceful prayer that there might be no god.”

However, over at SpoutBlog, Rocchi’s former Cinematical colleague Karina Longworth wasn’t so impressed:

“It quickly becomes apparent that Maher’s journey is not about finding out what makes religious people tick, but about using the tics of mostly fringe religious people to prop up the thesis Maher came in with. Which is–in a nutshell, but totally without irony–that everyday religious practice will soon result in global apocalypse.” That kind of fits in with my opinion of Maher’s smug attitude in general so Longworth’s response doesn’t bode well for my own reaction to the film.

Finally for now, screenwriter Guillermo (Babel, 21 Grams) Arriaga’s directorial debut, The Burning Plain starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, got mixed reviews at Venice with Variety’s Derek Elley among the detractors calling it a “Multi-character head-scratcher.” The LA Times’ Mark Olsen follows up from Toronto saying the film “fizzles.” There are positive voices out there, some of the UK papers included, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of genuine enthusiasm.

Filed under: Buzz, Film Festivals
Tags: Bill Maher, Blindness, Darren Aronofsky, Fernando Meirelles, Me and Orson Welles, Miracle at St. Anna, Religulous, Richard Linklater, Spike Lee, The Wrestler, Toronto International Film Festival, Venice Film Festival
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