Toronto Film Festival

TIFF ’11 Review: Goodbye First Love

With her latest film, Goodbye First Love, Mia Hansen-Løve handles her subject matter of adolescent love in a way that’s remarkably free of pretense and condescension, even as her youthful characters occasionally make choices that make you want to throttle them. The story is pretty simple: 15-year-old Camille (Lola Créton) and 18-year-old Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky)…

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Three Canucks Comment On Whit Stillman’s Extended Absence

Three Canucks Comment On Whit Stillman’s Extended Absence

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Kaufman Digs TIFF’s Sex, Death And Corruption

Kaufman Digs TIFF’s Sex, Death And Corruption

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The Weird Return Of Screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher

The Weird Return Of Screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher

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67-Year-Old Richard Corliss On 72-Year-Old Francis Coppola

“Young men live in the present and the future, old men in the past.” 67-Year-Old Richard Corliss On 72-Year-Old Francis Coppola

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TIFF ’11 Dispatch: So Long, and Thanks for All the Films

This was a pretty fantastic year to be at TIFF. I saw many solid films, a fair number of fair-to-middling films, only one film bad enough to warrant a rare walkout, and even a few that were great. The area around the Lightbox and Scotiabank felt like a real live festival center this year, complete…

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Refn Narrates A Scene From Drive

Refn Narrates A Scene From Drive

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Jason Statham Does Not See Himself In A Cape

Jason Statham Does Not See Himself In A Cape

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Howell TIFFs With His Rock Ghosts, Including Same-Age John Lydon

Howell TIFFs With His Rock Ghosts, Including Same-Age John Lydon

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Jay Duplass Finds Inspiration In M. Night

Jay Duplass Finds Inspiration In M. Night

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Producer Drabinsky And Convicted Fraudster Lord Black Of Crossharbour May Lose Order Of Canada Honors

Producer Drabinsky And Convicted Fraudster Lord Black Of Crossharbour May Lose Order Of Canada Honors

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Dargis Talks TIFF

“In the cinematic war of the sexes, Mr. Fassbender’s penis and howls in Shame are no match for Ms. Knightley’s tumescent rage.” Dargis Talks TIFF

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Annnnd…. Scene!

It was the easiest, hardest, best, worst, perfectly imperfect TIFF ever… made more so by the fact that I am summing it up days before it even ends. Sony, first through Sony Classics and then through the only studio doing serious TIFF junketting this year, Columbia Pictures, dominated the festival in every way. Clooney and…

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Transcribing Coppola’s TIFF Talk

Transcribing Coppola’s TIFF Talk

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5 Questions For Loneliest Planet’s Julia Loktev

5 Questions For Loneliest Planet‘s Julia Loktev

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Panahi’s This Is Not A Film Picked By Palisades Tartan

Panahi’s This Is Not A Film Picked By Palisades Tartan

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TIFF Buy: IFC’s Got Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s Sister

TIFF Buy: IFC’s Got Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s Sister

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Oscilloscope Squares Wuthering Heights

Oscilloscope Squares Wuthering Heights

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IFC Brings First Ferrara To U.S. In Ages With 4:44 Last Day On Earth Buy

IFC Brings First Ferrara To U.S. In Ages With 4:44 Last Day On Earth Buy

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Macaulay Talks TIFF Hit Girl Model With Directors Sabin And Redmon

Macaulay Talks TIFF Hit Girl Model With Directors Sabin And Redmon

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“I’m in Locarno, my movie is premiering for 1,000 people, which is nuts. A huge-ass screening, second day of the festival, 7:30pm in the sidebar competition. It’s comparable to Un Certain Regard or Director’s Fortnight. Every movie I saw in that section was fun, brilliant movies from around the world. The main competition was like Aza Jacobs and Mia Hansen-Løve, people who have been around. And I was like, “This is crazy. What am I doing inside the bloodstream of this establishment? I’m 27. I don’t belong here.” Every person I talked to there couldn’t believe what the movie cost, and then couldn’t believe when I told them what other American movies cost. We were the cheapest movie there by 65%. The next cheapest movie cost I think three times as much as we did. And they were just like, “You can’t make movies for what you’re telling us your movie cost.” And I told them, “Well, I can, I’m here, I’m in the same section as you are, so you are wrong. People think I’m lying when I tell them my budget. And also everyone likes it. I’m having a great time and people are being very responsive. Maurice Pialat’s widow was like, “I heard your movie’s good, I want a copy of it.” I’m like, “Well this is f**kin’ crazy.” Pedro Costa saw it there and really liked it and I’m like, What am I doing? I had gone in two months from screening at BAM for a lot of friends to Pedro Costa? This is the exact sentence: “Pedro Costa saw your movie. He’s a huge Jerry Lewis fan. He wants to talk to you about your movie and also Jerry Lewis.” And I thought, “I’m out of my element. I cannot have that conversation because that’s ridiculous.” Because his retrospective was happening at Anthology when I worked at Kim’s, and his Criterion box set came out when I was working at Kim’s. He can’t want to talk to me. That’s not possible. That’s not allowed. There is no world where that makes any sense!”  Or like when you wrote me to say that David Gordon Green wrote you to say, “I’m watching The Color Wheel and then I’m going to see Tree of Life.” There is no world where this is allowed! Again, somebody whose DVDs I was putting on the shelf, as, like, a hero. And it’s just like, “Oh, I’ll watch this movie.” There’s just a very fuzzy area in the middle there and it happened very quickly and I don’t understand why.  I still have a voice-mail from Sean [Price Williams, cinematographer]. I wish he was here to talk about it, but the voice-mail is a long pause and he’s just like, “I don’t want to tell you this, because it’s gonna make you so insufferable. I hate having to tell you this, but Leos Carax watched your movie and he really loves it, and he wants to meet you when he comes to New York.” I can’t live in a world where Leos Carax knows who I am, watches my movie, likes it, and thinks, “I wanna meet that guy.”
~ It’s Alex Ross Perry’s World

“I don’t know. It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. I was in Italy a few years ago scouting for this very beautiful film I wanted to make with Richard Linklater. We worked really hard on the script for a couple of years and couldn’t get the money together. It was an expensive idea. It’s heartbreaking when that happens over and over again and then the movies that do get made are ones that have lots of women being beaten up or zombies being killed. It’s all fine, it’s all okay, but it’s hard. I remember when River Phoenix died, he was ahead of me on this curve. He kind of realized how hard it was to make serious movies. People like Sidney Lumet figured out how to walk that line, but it’s hard. And it requires patience. It’s a life’s work and I wonder if I’m up to the task.”
~ Weary, Wary Ethan Hawke

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