mike | 26 Jul 2011 | 413 Views | 2 Likes | 0 Dislikes

The Super Early Super Bird Guide to What to Watch at TIFF

As of this morning's opening press conference, TIFF officials have announced most of the festival's upcoming special presentations and about half of the galas. While it'll be a week until our favourite program, Midnight Madness, is announced, we've put together an early short-list of what'll be worth looking for (in our humble, stupid-ass opinion, anyway) at this year's fest:

TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE LIST OF WHAT WE'RE FREAKIN' OUT ABOUT:

The Ides of March
Dir. George Clooney

Set to open the Venice Intl. Film Fest a week before winging up to Toronto, The Ides of March is George Clooney's adaptation of Beau Willimon's play Farragut North, which was inspired originally by the 2004 primary campaign of Howard Dean. Clooney plays Governor Mike Morris, hopeful Democratic presidential candidate, who will presumably do some political campaigny-type stuff.

Clooney's an underrated director (forget Leatherheads & focus on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), and he's roped together a pretty spectacular cast, featuring Marisa Tomei, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Mighella, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeffrey Wright. Couple of actors in this movie, you could say.

50/50
Dir. John Levine

In 2006 John Levine brought All the Boys Love Mandy Lane to Midnight Madness at TIFF. Folks (including myself) left the theatre at 2 a.m., drunk on Amber Heard, only to stumble directly into a white Escalade parked in front of the theatre. Which Weinstein brother was inside - waiting to snap the flick up - I'll never know, as I could only see a pair of friendly shark's eyes in the crack of the rolled-down window.

For whatever weird reason it looks like we'll get to see Levine's third film, 50/50, hit theatres before his debut does - Mandy Lane's spent 5 years in limbo. Levine's 50/50 stars Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Kyle and Adam, best friends trying to find the fun in a cancer diagnosis (the film's title referring to his prognosis). Loosely based on the life of screenwriter Will Reiser, it also features Anjelica Huston.

Dark Horse
Dir. Todd Solondz

Another trip to Molestation World courtesy of the fantastically talented Todd Solondz, whose latest awkward, dysthymic adults-trying-to-be-adults story features the talents of Christopher Walken, Selma Blair (who was also in Solondz's Storytelling) and Justin Bartha.

Drive
Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

Aaah! Aaaah! The first American movie from Danish wunderkind (I know that's not Danish but I don't know how to say "wunderkind" in Danish (OK, google says it's "wonderkind")) and TIFF favourite Nicolas Winding Refn (the Pusher trilogy, Bronson, Valhalla Rising), Drive stars Ryan Gosling as the unnamed Driver in this super-gritty genre work-out adaptation of James Sallis's book of the same name. Featuring a script by Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove) and a score by Cliff Martinez (Traffic, The Limey), it got a great response at Cannes this year and looks to be exactly the smart, nasty and super tense North American fans of Winding Refn were hoping for. A clip follows:

Melancholia
Dir. Lars Von Trier

Von Trier showed his newest film, the surprisingly polished, apocalyptic tale of a wedding and the end of the world, to great reviews at Cannes, and then was promptly declared persona non grata after he announced that he was a Nazi at a press conference. The weirdest part is that that's not particularly surprising to folks who have followed his almost savant-like career.

Even without a is-he-crazy or is-he-a-crazy-genius director Von Trier attached, Melancholia would surely be one of the most talked-about movies at this years fest: it's a painterly, spectacularly shot, massively depressive elegiac film about doom and annihilation and death, starring people that normally act in Spider-Man movies and play hero terrorist agents on 24. The trailer is below:

Jeff, Who Lives at Home
Dir. Jay & Mark Duplass

The Duplass bros.' Cyrus was solidly in my top-10 for 2010, a deeply weird, deeply funny and equally well-observed mumblecore-goes-mainstream story of a love triangle between a man, a woman and her 21-year-old best friend son. Their follow-up is Jeff, Who Lives at Home, which makes its world premiere and stars Jason Segal, Ed Helms and Susan Sarandon. All I know is that it's about glue, and will be funny.

Killer Joe
Dir. William Friedkin

William Friedkin's had one of Hollywood's weirdest careers, one that includes masterpieces (The Exorcist and To Live and Die in L.A.), massive flops (Sorcerer) and films about S&M that enraged the gay community to the point where pissed off dudes tried to interrupt production (Cruising). In the past 10 years he's made two films: the slightly weird, knife-fetishizing action pic The Hunted and the very very good paranoid motel-room drama Bug. Emile Hirsch and Matthew McConaughey star in the new Killer Joe: will it be Friedkin at his left-field genre-master best, or is he in "make money" mode? We'll see in September.

Take This Waltz
Dir. Sarah Polley

Polley's hyper-Canadian, apparently very funny follow up to Away From Her is one of only a couple of Canuck flicks announced so far, but it's a good one, starring Seth Rogen and the best actress working at the moment, Michelle Williams. Also famously rumoured to contain footage of Sarah Silverman's actual vagina.

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