All Toronto articles – Page 145
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Reviews
Who Do You Love
Toronto: Breezily-entertaining, this jazz-fuelled biopic may still face a commercial struggle, says Jan Stuart. Dir. Jerry Zaks. US. 2008. 90 minutesA breezily-entertaining dramatisation of the life of blues entrepreneur Leonard Chess (Nivola), Who Do You Lovewill test the public’s appetite for recording studio soap operas. While ...
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Reviews
Fifty Dead Men Walking
Dir. Kari Skogland. UK/Canada. 2008. 118 mins.It was only in the aftermath of the Vietnam War that filmmakers were able to create a substantial body of work reflecting the complexities of what had happened there. The same is proving to be true of the recent ‘Troubles’that ...
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Reviews
What Doesn't Kill You
Dir. Brian Goodman, US, 2008, 100 minutesSouth Boston’s Irish gangland fatalism returns to the screen in Brian Goodman’s debut, a buddies-in-crime drama. Two childhood friends in the Southie slums graduate from petty crime to robbery, murder, drugs and prison, and even to a little self-awareness.The challenge ...
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News
IFC buys Che from Wild Bunch; plans Oscar-qualifying December run
In one of Toronto's most-anticipated deals, IFC Films has taken North American rights to Steven Soderbergh's epic Che starring Benicio Del Toro.IFC plans a one-week Oscar qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles, followed by a release in January through multi-platform initiative IFC In Theatres.IFC president Jonathan Sehring, VP ...
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Reviews
A Year Ago In Winter
Dir: Caroline Link. Germany. 2008. 128 mins.Caroline Link’s first film in seven years is an elegantly-woven portrait of a family in crisis after the suicide of an 18 year-old boy and the steps which occur on their way to healing. Never overly gloomy or downbeat, A ...
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Reviews
Afterwards
Dir. Gilles Bourdos, France/Canada/Germany, 2008, 107 minutes.Afterwards requires some serious suspension of disbelief. A man, now a lawyer, who came back from the dead as a boy, meets a doctor with the ability to identify people who are about to die from a white light they ...
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News
Axiom strikes UK deals for Goodbye Solo, Sugar, The Sea Wall
UK distributor Axiom Films has picked up three titles from Toronto to add to its growing slate. They are Goodbye Solo, Sugar and The Sea Wall.Memento is selling Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo, which won the Fipresci prize at Venice Critics Week. The story follows an African-born cab driver who befriends ...
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News
Summit picks up Hurt Locker, IFC Films gets Che at Toronto
Summit Entertainment has picked up US rights to Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker in the second significant domestic deal of the festival. The distributor closed the deal late on Tuesday night and plans to release the film in 2009. The deal follows a successful North American premiere for the war ...
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News
Palisades Tartan extends Fortissimo library deal
Palisades Tartan UK, the Palisades Pictures subsidiary formed with the takeover of the library of the now-defunct Tartan Films, has struck a deal to extend its UK distribution rights to Fortissimo Films titles.The library includes more than 30 films including Mysterious Skin, Capturing The Friedmans, 2046, Super Size Me, The ...
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News
Buyers look into Carlos Sorin's Window
Bavaria Film International has continued more sales here on Toronto titles. Carlos Sorin's The Window (La Ventana) has been sold to Benelux (Cinemien) and Brazil (Imovision). There are several French offers in play and a deal is expected by the end of TIFF.The Patagonia-set film about an elderly man and ...
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News
Maximum takes six films apiece from Fortissimo, Cinetic
After an earlier TIFF deal for Steve Jacobs' Disgrace, Canadian distributor Maximum Film Distribution has taken on a package of six films from Fortissimo's current slate.Maximum has also taken Canadian rights to six titles from New York-based Cinetic Media as part of an exclusive output agreement between the two companies ...
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News
Newton heats up next projects after Three Blind Mice
Australian actor/writer/director Matthew Newton, here with Three Blind Mice, has two new scripts in development.People People is about a 40-year-old married couple trying to stay together. 'It's about comfort versus freedom,' Newton says. 'It's like an anti-rom-com, about how we relate to each other.'He also has LA-set genre piece about ...
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News
Ole Christian Madsen plans sex addiction drama
Ole Christian Madsen, here at TIFF with Danish smash hit Flame & Citron (The Match Factory has sold to 25 territories including IFC for the US), has several new projects in the works. The first to shoot will be a film about sex addiction to shoot in Denmark in December ...
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News
Arclight, Escape Factory and Infinity team up for Altitude
Gary Hamilton's Arclight Films, Vancouver-based Escape Factory and Infinity Features will produce the supernatural thriller Altitude.Short film-maker Kaare Andrews will direct the story of a rookie pilot and her four teenage friends who battle a malevolent force when their plane malfunctions. Paul A Birkett wrote the screenplay.Principal photography is set ...
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News
Martin McGartland settles with Fifty Dead Men Walking producers
The producers of Fifty Dead Men Walking have settled with Martin McGartland, whose autobiography provided the basis for the film. McGartland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary mole who infiltrated the IRA and survived two attempts on his life, had taken issue with the film's misrepresentation of true events. Since viewing a ...
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News
Rotterdam 2009 to examine Asian horror, post-cinema screens
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is planning two special programmes for its 2009 edition: Hungry Ghosts, devoted to Asian horror; and Size Matters, about the omnipresence of multiple screens in the post-cinema age.The festival's director Rutger Wolfson, confirmed in March for a four-year term after a temporary helming of ...
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Reviews
$9.99
Dir. Tatia Rosenthal.Israel/Australia, 2008. 78 mins.Dealing with such lightweight issues as ‘the meaning of life’ and ‘happiness’ may seem a bit excessive for a stop-motion animated film weighing in at less than 78 minutes. But the film doesn’t take itself that seriously after all, defusing some ...