Results tagged “johnnieto”

No Film Friday again today, as we’re still too busy with the festival A few of the films that played at the festival are out already, with Neil Jordan’s The Brave One, David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises and Julie Taymor's Across the Universe all on general release. Not even new release Mr. Woodcock escapes a connection—it’s directed by Craig Gillespie, director of festival film Lars and the Real Girl.

The Toronto International Film Festival have announced 73 films today, which is, er, a lot. Too many for us to even pretend to give them even coverage, so as usual we’re just going to pick and choose from today’s announcements, which are made of films from international filmmakers, and tell you about the ones that interest us personally.

If today’s column title gets Rachel Sweet’s Hairspray stuck in your head for the rest of the day, good! Because then we’ll have made our point that the version of Hairspray hitting this weekend isn’t as good as the John Waters original. Though the music not being as good is only part of it. There’s also the inherent irony about making a musical in which one of the central themes is integration through a shared love of largely-African American music that features only music written by a couple of white dudes. Hell, the irony of just making a musical about that. Musicals are basically the whitest form of entertainment we can imagine.

A quiet night in yesterday, but then we did go and see four films...

Fairly big news in the world of TIFF today with the announcement of a new programme, Vanguard. The first word of the press release is "edgy" which we kind of wish they’d spelt with a 3, considering the new programme is "fearless" and features "a raw, pulsating aesthetic that speaks to sexual, cultural and cinematic freedoms". Whoa! If I want sexual freedom in the cinema I’ll go to the Metro! To be honest, we’re not entirely sure what separates this programme from their Visions programme, but, we guess maybe Visions is more about the filmmaker’s quirks than the film’s totally extreme 3dgyness? Bottom line – “These films are edgy, irreverent, definitely sexy, and have a palpable, youthful zing.” Means, “Dear hipsters, please come to our festival.”