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Toronto focus on politics, comedy and horror
2006-09-15
Global politics, seniors in love, fantastical fairy tales, technical glitches and the Weinstein brothers dominated the 31st Toronto International Film Festival, which wraps Saturday with the world premiere of the slavery drama "Amazing Grace." The event was split between the haves (pictures with distribution in fall launch mode) and the have-nots (movies seeking buyers). And there were plenty of celebrities, such as producer-star Jennifer Lopez, selling her salsa musical "El Cantante," who flew in to strut the red carpets. The festival was dominated by studio-owned "mini-majors," which were more interested in hawking their fall films and building Oscar buzz than in acquiring hot titles. "For the past several festival cycles, more great films have been launched, with some interesting smaller film deals. The market was soft," said Bob Berney, president of Time Warner-owned distributor Picturehouse, which won raves for Guillermo Del Toro's horrific fairy tale "Pan's Labyrinth." Of the movie stars who flew to Toronto, elegantly confident "Babel" star Brad Pitt was universally adored; less favored were Sean Penn and Russell Crowe, whose films "All the King's Men" and "A Good Year," respectively, lost altitude. Politics, comedy and horror ruled, from popular premieres like Warner Independent Pictures' "For Your Consideration," a lampoon of awards season, to the comic-horror bloodbath "Black Sheep," to the year's most controversial film, the faux-documentary "Death of a President," which sold to Newmarket Films for $2.5 million, a risky move given its premise about the assassination of President Bush. Newmarket plans to rush the movie, which garnered major media coverage here, into release in a mere five weeks. This year's festival saw "themes of huge anxiety about politics and violence," said festival co-director Noah Cowan, who believes that "September 11 is part of a conversation about a violent age that has been with us for the last five years. Artists are using their imagination regarding the future, which is so hard to imagine. 'Death of a President' is a gentle, thoughtful film." Despite a projector breakdown at its first screening, 20th Century Fox's outrageous "Borat" took the festival by storm. The ultimate culture-clash comedy stars British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as a fearless anti-Semitic Kazakh reporter on the rampage in America. Along with Baron Cohen, another breakout was young Scottish star James McAvoy, whose films "Starter for Ten," "Penelope" and "The Last King of Scotland" also met with warm receptions. Among the Oscar wannabes, a new subgenre emerged: the dramatic thriller based on the real-life horrors of Africa. Following such recent Oscar contenders as "Hotel Rwanda" and "The Constant Gardener," Fox Searchlight's "Last King" stars Forest Whitaker as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, while Focus Features' "Catch a Fire" chronicles an African National Congress radical, played by Derek Luke. Building on word-of-mouth from the Telluride Film Festival, which took place over the Labor Day holiday weekend, Miramax Films' "Venus" also is looking good to nab an Oscar nomination for veteran actor Peter O'Toole. Films about seniors were unexpectedly prominent here, including Sarah Polley's directorial debut, "Away From Her," starring Julie Christie as a woman with Alzheimer's disease, which could be a 2007 Oscar contender for distributor Lionsgate. Paramount Vantage's "Babel" played like gangbusters. Viacom scion Shari Redstone and new CEO Philippe Dauman showed up to support Pitt and Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey. Sony Pictures Classics is steady as they go for "Volver," touting a foreign-film nomination as well as Penelope Cruz as best actress and director Pedro Almodovar for original screenplay. Sony Classics' German Cold War-era pickup "The Lives of Others" has a good shot at a foreign-film slot if Germany submits the film. New Line Cinema's satiric melodrama "Little Children" nabbed plaudits for writer-director Todd Field and star Kate Winslet for her role as a cheating stay-at-home suburban mom. Although Columbia was downplaying its Academy plans for the Charlie Kaufman-esque comic mystery "Stranger Than Fiction," starring Will Ferrell, the film played well and could garner interest for director Marc Forster, screenwriter Zach Helm and supporting actors Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal. On the acquisitions front, many festival buyers and sellers said this has been a lackluster event in terms of big sales, less frontloaded and with nothing to match last year's big buys. Art house fare and Midnight Madness horror dominated the action. Said IFC Films president Jonathan Sehring, who picked up the documentary "... So Goes the Nation" for IFC First Take: "There were no surefire hits." The Weinstein Co. cast a large shadow over Toronto, heavily pushing a fall slate that includes Barbara Kopple's politically charged documentary "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," Emilio Estevez's Robert F. Kennedy assassination ensemble piece "Bobby," and Anthony Minghella's "Breaking and Entering." The Weinsteins made the festival's biggest buys, plunking down $3.5 million for all worldwide rights to the teen horror flick "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" and $2.5 million-$3.5 million for the comedy documentary "Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights -- Hollywood to the Heartland." New festival buyer Netflix's growing indie label Red Envelope picked up Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's "The Prisoner, or: How I Tried to Kill Tony Blair" but will release an expanded version of the 54-minute graphic novel-style film about Abu Ghraib in the spring. The release will coincide with the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war to "generate news coverage," Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos said. Netflix, along with partner IFC Films, also debuted Jeff Garlin's "This Filthy World," starring John Waters, one of several Netflix-commissioned stand-up flicks. First Look won all North American rights to the big-name director- and star-filled romantic omnibus "Paris, je t'aime," Lionsgate took all U.S. rights to "Away From Her," Magnolia Pictures nabbed all English-language rights to director Johnnie To's Hong Kong action thriller "Exiled," and Strand Releasing landed Aki Kaurismaki's Finnish-language "Lights in the Dusk." Even as the festival wound to a close, though, "El Cantante," starring Marc Anthony as the Puerto Rican singer Hector Lavoe and Lopez as his Bronx, N.Y.-born wife, was looking to score a major deal. Produced by Lopez, Leon Ichaso's drug-fueled biopic was in heavy play Thursday night. Several buyers also are playing a waiting game to get prices down on such films as New Zealand's "Black Sheep"; the Reese Witherspoon-produced $15 million romantic fable "Penelope," starring Christina Ricci as a girl with a pig nose in search of a prince; Paul Verhoeven's World War II anti-Nazi drama "Black Book"; the romantic comedy "The Pleasure of Your Company;" the small-scale opera adaptation "The Magic Flute"; and the mountain-climbing documentary "Blindsight." Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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