As I mentioned in an earlier post, my favorite movie at the Toronto International Film Festival this year was "Lebanon," Samuel Maoz's gripping and cinematically innovative war movie set in 1982.   Other highlights from this year's program, in my mind, include Harmony Korine's playfully bizarre "Trash Humpers" and the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man." The first two features still need to secure U.S. distribution, but "A Serious Man" comes out Oct. 2. Take note of them, because TIFF audiences apparently did not.   None of these movies won awards Saturday (although Oscar buzz for the Coens movie has commenced). Instead, the top prize of the festival -- the Cadillac People's Choice Award -- went to Lee Daniels' "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," a moving if sensationalistic chronicle of Harlem strife.   Its triumph is a rather conventional one, considering the acclaim that this movie has developed since its Sundance premiere back in January. Lionsgate bought the movie and managed to secure endorsements from Tyler Perry and Oprah, both of whom walked the red carpet at the movie's Toronto premiere a few days ago.   Is it possible that audiences were manipulated into voting en masse by the presence of these showbiz giants? Maybe, although that shouldn't detract from the merits of "Precious" as a flashy shot of dramatic intensity. Expect this movie to continue to hog the spotlight as it careens toward a November 6 release date -- but keep your eyes peeled for "Lebanon," too.   The full release from the TIFF awards ceremony is listed below:   AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN SHORT FILM The award for Best Canadian Short Film goes to Pedro Pires for Danse Macabre. Based on a concept by Robert Lepage, director Pires’s exquisitely photographed morbid ballet pushes the traditional dance film to new cinematic heights. The jury remarked: “There was one film that had such devastating beauty, that watching it was having fireworks shattering your heart. A prayer for the dying, a love song to the living, everyone must see this beautiful work.” The jury would like to recognize and support Jamie Travis for The Armoire with an honourable mention, an exciting filmmaker with an original voice and an exquisite vision. The award offers a $10,000 cash prize and is supported by the National Film Board of Canada.   THE SKYY Vodka AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN FIRST FEATURE FILM The SKYY Vodka Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film goes to Alexandre Franchi for The Wild Hunt for its assured, inventive and bold command of film form traversing contemporary and mythic landscapes marking the launch of an audacious new talent. Set in the fantasy-reality of a large role-playing game, this film captures the culture of costume play and the potentially dangerous intersection of the real and made-up worlds. The award carries a cash prize of $15,000.   THE CITY OF TORONTO AND ASTRAL MEDIA’S THE MOVIE NETWORK AWARD FOR BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM The City of Toronto and Astral Media’s The Movie Network Award for Best Canadian Feature Film goes to Ruba Nadda for Cairo Time. Described by the jury as a superbly directed lyrical waltz of longing and desire across disparate worlds, with exquisite performances by Patricia Clarkson, Tom McCamus and Alexander Siddig. The film evocatively serves as an analogy for the intricacies of passionate romance that, for practical reasons, can never be realized. The jury is also honoured to recognize with a Special Jury Citation, the work of a master, Bernard Émond’s La Donation (The Legacy). Generously co-sponsored by the City of Toronto and Astral Media’s The Movie Network, the award carries a cash prize of $30,000.   CANADIAN FEATURE FILM AWARDS JURY All three awards are selected by a jury of film professionals. The feature films jury consists of filmmaker Jerry Ciccoritti (Blood, Trudeau, Chasing Cain, The Life Before This), Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival Director of Programming Sean Farnel, Canadian novelist Kerri Sakamoto (One Hundred Million Hearts, The Electrical Field), and filmmaker Peter Lynch (Project Grizzly, Cyberman). The short film jury members are Executive Producer of in-flight entertainment at Spafax and a Sundance programmer, Shane Smith, filmmakers Ingrid Veninger and Shane Belcourt.   PRIZE OF THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF FILM CRITICS (FIPRESCI PRIZE) The Festival welcomed an international FIPRESCI jury for the 18th consecutive year. The jury members consist of jury president Diego Lerer (Argentina), Jan Schulz-Ojala (Germany), Hynek Pallas (Sweden), Kirill Razlogov (Russia), Denis Seguin (Canada) and Jorge Gutman (Canada).   The Prize of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Discovery is awarded to Laxmikant Shetgaonkar for The Man Beyond the Bridge (India). Far from the sensory overload of India’s big cities, this film explores smaller but enduring dilemmas, drawing together keen environmental sensitivity with a nuanced view of village dynamics. A widowed forest ranger Vinayak develops an intimate relationship with a mentally ill woman, risking becoming an outcast. Director Shetgaonkar, immersed in the culture of the region, tells his tale with grace and attentiveness, taking the villages traditions and beliefs seriously, while casting a jaundiced eye on those who exploit them.     The Prize of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Special Presentations is awarded to Bruno Dumont for Hadewijch (France). This film is a hypnotic study of the possibilities and consequences that arise from an absolute belief in God, and the fascinating dynamic that emerges. Hadewijch is beautifully conceived and rigorously developed and speaks to the present with care and insight. Dumont has previously played at the Festival with La Vie de Jésus (99), Twentynine Palms (03) and Flandres (06). L’humanité and Flandres were both awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.   CADILLAC PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD The Cadillac People's Choice Award is voted on by Festival audiences. This year’s award goes to Lee Daniels's Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. From director Lee Daniels comes a vibrant, honest and resoundingly hopeful film about the human capacity to grow and overcome. Set in 1987 Harlem, it is the story of Claireece "Precious" Jones, an illiterate African-American teenager who is pregnant for the second time by her absent father and abused by a poisonously angry mother. Despite her experiences, Precious has a dream that other possibilities exist for her and jumps at the chance to enroll in an alternative school. There she encounters Ms. Rain, a teacher who will start her on a journey from pain and powerlessness to self-respect and determination. The film stars Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz and introduces Gabourey Sidibe. The award offers a $15,000 cash prize and custom award, sponsored by Cadillac.   First runner-up is Bruce Beresford Mao's Last Dancer and the second runner-up is Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs (Micmacs à tire-larigot).  The Cadillac People's Choice Award presents a free screening of the Cadillac People’s Choice Award-winning film tonight. The screening takes place at 9 p.m. in the Visa Screening Room at the Elgin. Tickets will be available on a first-come, first served basis beginning at 7 p.m. at the Visa Screening Room at the Elgin. For more information on this screening, visit tiff.net.   New this year is a Cadillac People’s Choice Award for Documentary and Midnight Madness. The Cadillac People's Choice Award – Documentary goes to Leanne Pooley's The Topp Twins. Fun, disarming and musically provocative, the Topp Twins are New Zealand’s finest lesbian country-and-western singers and the country’s greatest export since rack of lamb and the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Runner-up is Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.   The Cadillac People's Choice Award – Midnight Madness goes to Sean Byrne's The Loved Ones. A troubled teen’s prom dreams are shattered by a series of painful events that take place under the mirrored disco ball, involving syringes, nails, power drills and a secret admirer in this wild mash-up of Pretty in Pink and Misery.  Runner-up is Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig's Daybreakers.  

The last time that Tim Blake Nelson directed a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was a bleak affair -- and not just because it was a Holocaust story.

Nelson brought "The Grey Zone" to TIFF in 2001, when the festival proceedings coincided with 9/11. This year, he returned to TIFF with his latest feature, "Leaves of Grass," and encountered much more satisfying results.

The movie stars Edward Norton in two roles as sibling rivals. Guided by a strange tone that oscillates from stoner comedy to crime drama, it focuses on Bill (Norton), an established college professor who heads south to visit his brother Brady (Norton in a goofy wig and exaggerated accent).

As the family screw-up, Brady drives Bill nuts with his latest scheme, proposing that they trade places so Brady can evade a debt.

Although the movie received a mixed response at the festival, Nelson told The Wrap that he enjoyed the experience. "It's as film-friendly a festival as there is," he said. "Because it's a larger city, those who come aren't only industry people."

Nevertheless, he seemed a little perturbed by the uncertain future for "Leaves of Grass." "I was hoping to get distribution interest started, and we've done that," he said. "One hopes that the process will go quickly. That simply is not the reality anymore."

But Nelson is content with the finished project, which he wrote with Norton in mind. "The beating heart of the movie is Edward's performance," he said. "The movie succeeds because you get to watch this tremendous actor up there having a blast with an exhilarating challenge."

Despite its offbeat rhythm and sometimes confounding plot twists, the movie does get one thing right: Norton's exchanges with himself are seamless illusions.

Nelson used a combination of motion control photography and other camera illusions, along with digital effects such rotoscoping and split screen, to complete the scenes shared by Bill and Brady.

The actor usually first performed in these scenes as Brady, then switched to Bill and responded to the audio track of his other character. "Edward has this sort of mind where he can map out what the scene is going to be for both characters," said Nelson.

The story came out of Nelson's own experiences traveling around his native stomping grounds as a teenager in Oklahoma. "I considered myself very lucky to be growing up there," he said. "The movie is a menagerie of some of my favorite people I knew."

While Nelson said he did associate with a pair of twins in high school, Norton's characters emerged from a more abstract inspiration.

"Brady and Bill are really version of what I feel I am right now," he said. "Since I'm a filmmaker and an actor, I travel around and do these strange projects, never knowing what's next in my life. I embrace what's unpredictable and unknown. There's little structure in my life, and yet I'm a father of three and a husband of fifteen years. Everything at home is incredibly structured."

Nelson's acting career is busy as usual. He has a role in the Steve Buscemi comedy "Saint John of Las Vegas," which opens later this year, in addition to the pilot of episode of Tim Robbins's upcoming TV series "Possible Side Effects."

He's been rumored to play a part of Joel and Ethan Coen's "Hail Caesar," but Nelson said, "that's something Joel and Ethan are writing. They've mentioned that's something I might be in." Even with his success, Nelson said he remains cautious, a factor he inserted into "Leaves of Grass."

"I think the turn the movie takes is a reflection of my own reality," he said. "Everything can be going so well for you, and then just out of the blue, it can change."

It turns out the movie that takes my personal top prize at TIFF already won one: Samuel Maoz's "Lebanon," a startlingly innovative and ceaselessly gripping narrative about Israeli soldiers huddled in a claustrophobic tank during the Lebanon War in 1982.

The movie took the Golden Lion Best Film Award at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend, leading to a crowded room at its press and industry screening in Toronto, where it's playing in the Visions section of the festival. Many people were turned away, myself included -- so I dashed to another packed screening at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. The blitz was worth the effort.

Maoz uses the classic mechanics of cinematic suspense to craft an engrossing story with understatement and visual complexity. Boil it down to its bare ingredients and you have "Waltz with Bashir" meets "The Hurt Locker," meaning an accessible war movie with unique creative flourishes and plenty of thrills.

With the exception of its epic opening and closing shots, the men never leave the tank. As a result, most of the movie takes place in close-ups, creating a eerily claustrophobic atmosphere. The soldier in charge of the tank's rocket launcher constantly hesitates to pull the trigger; we witness his discouragement in the first person, as his crosshairs veer uncertainly around the battlefield. The technique feels simultaneously terrifying and strongly engaging.

Maoz, like "Bashir" director Ari Folman, fought in the Lebanon war and seems to have a deeply personal understanding of the typical Israeli soldier's plight. In the United States, where it has yet to land distribution, it could easily win the Best Foreign Language Film competition in the hands of Sony Pictures Classics or another high level specialty label with a good foreign movie track record.

Given the brouhaha at this year's TIFF over the presence of a Tel Aviv sidebar, there's something enjoyably ironic about the national origin of the best movie at the festival.
 

“Chloe,” a psychological study of marriage that takes a turn to thriller, is a movie that comes with its own set of baggage.   Adapted from a French original by writer Erin Cressida Wilson and directed by Atom Egoyan, the film stars Julianne Moore as a long-married wife with suspicions toward her professor husband, played by Liam Neeson.   “Chloe,” (Amanda Seyfried) is the young, blonde-locked temptress who comes between them – except she’s not necessarily tempting who you think she is.   “I was struck by the complexities of marriage,” said Wilson, about why she was drawn to the project. “It’s about how, after 10 or 15 or 20 years of waking up every morning with someone, writing grocery lists, kissing each other on the cheek – how do you have hot sex?”   But what’s up on the screen – an attempt to plumb the depths of sexual desire within marriage – was given a jolt of perspective when tragedy struck during the shoot.   Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died suddenly after a routine fall on a Canadian ski slope earlier this year, while the actor was working in nearby Toronto.   Love, marriage, loyalty, boredom, hot sex – “We were talking about all these things beforehand,” said Egoyan, speaking in a hotel suite at the Toronto Film Festival, where the movie screened to a packed audience of press and industry insiders. (It’s still seeking U.S. distribution.) “It just made clearer all the things we talked about.”   Neeson and Richardson were known as a loving, rather normal married couple with two young children. It made Richardson’s sudden death all the more shocking on a set where issues of loyalty, rather than mortality, were on everyone’s minds.   “The film is about how fragile relationships are,” Egoyan continued. “And how you have to sieze them as they are, and try to stay together.” Egoyan has been married for 25 years, so he knows what he’s talking about. “You fight for that. It’s rare and precious.”   He went on: “What drives Chloe crazy is that they have something so powerful. You know, it’s painful to watch a couple from the outside, if you’re single. What’s between them is so strong. And whatever they go through, there’s a 99% chance they’ll come out ok. They’re unbreakable, actually.”   When the shocking news that Richardson, 45, had died after hitting her head when she took a minor tumble, Neeson – who had rushed to her side – returned to the shoot to finish the film.   “Nothing changed in the movie,” said Egoyan. “It’s a film. You have to keep going.”                                                                           ******   Robert Duvall plays a hermit who stages his own funeral in “Get Low,” another film available for distribution which screened to a standing ovation at the festival.   The role, written by Aaron Schneider, was tailor made for Duvall, a grizzled curmudgeon punishing himself and those around him for an illicit, 40-year-od love.   The bigger surprise is Bill Murray who plays an undertaker and gets most of the laughs in the movie. But Murray, who has neither agent nor manager, is notoriously hard to snag for any project.    “After we raised the money and we were a go we got in touch with him through his one representative (an attorney),” said Schneider in a chat at the bar at the Hyatt Hotel. “You submit a synoposis, and if he likes the project he calls.”   Murray finally did. He left a message on the voice mail of producer Dean Zanuck asking for a script. And the project, said Scheider, “snowballed from there.”  

Sony has picked up writer/director Peter Stebbings’ “Defendor,” starring Woody Harrelson, Sandra Oh and Kat Dennings.

The film, which screened at the Toronto film festival, is about a delusional man who thinks he's a superhero.

The deal was negotiated by Darius Films, Joker Films and Cinetic Media. Sony's deal includes all worldwide rights to the film, except Canada.

The pick-up marks Sony's first action at Toronto and follows a day in which the Weinstein Company grabbed distribution rights to hot title "A Single Man."

Joe Dante's "The Hole" made headlines this week when it beat out frontrunners "Up" and "Coraline" for the Persol 3D award at the Venice Film Festival. While the latter two films were met with critical and commercial success when they hit U.S. theaters earlier this year, "The Hole" has yet to land domestic distribution.

Like Dante, it has limited appeal. The "Gremlins" director generally makes pop culture-friendly movies with intelligent ideas and a keen awareness of film history. His latest movie, which is also a part of TIFF's program, is no exception.

The story, about a couple of kids who discover a dark void in their basement that brings their fears to life, feels like a throwback to 1980s-era PG horror, a time before the onslaught of CGI-addled action movies threatened the role of imagination in the blockbuster formula.

Although only moderately scary and noticeably uneven, the movie's principle strength comes from its old-school 3D fun, which may account for its surprise win.

Both "Up" and "Coraline" represent the new age of 3D, given the dominance of the technology in the animation field (James Cameron's upcoming "Avatar" may signal the climax of this trend). With "The Hole," Dante brings an added dimensionality to his conventional live action feature.

He taps into the simplistically charming thrill of making objects drift through the air: Soon after discovering the hole, the trio of young characters drop nails down it to see where it leads -- and a cutaway to a shot from inside the hole shows the nails flying straight into viewers' faces.

Beyond these gimmicky moments, the movie also benefits from 3D due to its cautious composition. Dante creates a deeper sense of space even during perfunctory dialogue scenes, drawing us into the environment and heightening the anticipation and dread.

On a storytelling level, "The Hole" is moderately compelling. The main supernatural plot device provides a perfect mystery for generating ongoing curiosity and suspense. In its spookiest sequences, the movie recalls "Poltergeist" or even the carefully devised frights of classic horror movies produced by the great Val Lewton ("Cat People," "I Walked with a Zombie").

Still, the script only occasionally rises above the quality of a Nickelodeon-style adventure story, limiting its complexity -- until the finale, which contains an intriguing element of psychological insight as one of the character's latent fears turns into a physical beast.

The scene itself feels a little half-baked, but there's no question that Dante beats out the market standard for this sort of thing -- in other words, Robert Rodriguez's execrable "Spy Kids" franchise.

While breaking no new ground, Dante's movie does a fine job of reminding people of 3D's underlying (and long-lasting) virtues.

When the news came out that Werner Herzog planned on remaking Abel Ferrara's 1992 cop drama "Bad Lieutenant," the film community was collectively befuddled. Why would a veteran of the German New Wave bother with a gritty New York City noir that has limited appeal in the first place?

As it turns out, Herzog never saw the original movie, nor did he care about it. Producer Edward Pressman originally got the idea for a remake, but Herzog's new movie -- which stars Nicolas Cage as drug-addled investigator and premiered at TIFF earlier this week -- shares almost nothing other than the title with its predecessor.

Still, Herzog felt the need to speak out against skeptics of the project in the press notes for his production, titled "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." In the notes (excerpted below), Herzog decries "the pedantic branch of academia" that "will be ecstatic to find a small reference to that earlier film here and there."

On Tuesday, I sat down with Herzog and asked him why he felt compelled to issue an official statement on the matter. "In the speculation preceding the release of the film, before anyone had seen it, there were already complicated comparisons between Ferrara and me," he said in his distinctive baritone. "I've never seen any of his films and I don't know who he is. That kind of academic thinking is foreign to me. These parallels do not exist."

I pointed out to him that it sounded like he was complaining about a media problem rather than an academic one. "So be it," he said. "It's not my problem; it's their problem. It got out of control very easily, but it will die away as the film hits the screen."

When Ferrara was fuming to the press about his disdain for Herzog's production, he wondered aloud if Herzog would mind him remaking the German filmmaker's classic "Aguirre: Wrath of God." So I asked Herzog about that, too. "Let him do it," he said. "He would never manage to do it. No one would ever manage to do that one."

An undeniably unique storyteller, Herzog also has an infectiously self-centered manner of speaking about his own work. With his four-decade career of unforgettably strange and philosophical narratives, he has earned the arrogance, but it's still a wonder to behold: He claimed to have written all the memorably strange moments in "Port of Call," including a scene in which Cage's character has a vision of iguanas on a coffee table and another in which a dead man's soul rises up to break dance (oddly, the dancer is played by the credited screenwriter, William Finkelstein).

He also boasted about managing to collaborate with infamously difficult producer Avi Lerner. "He never read the screenplay," Herzog said. "Everybody warned me: 'Oh my god, you can't work with a man like him. I was the only one to ever invite him to the set." Herzog said he finished the production two days ahead of schedule and $2.6 million under budget. "Now, he wants to marry me," Herzog said of Lerner.  

The director stays busy. He recently began offering weekend seminars in filmmaking, and just finished an additional feature also premiering at TIFF this week: "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done," another police movie, stars Michael Shannon and was produced by David Lynch.

I asked Herzog if he takes on all these projects as a means of making a living, or exclusively to satisfy his creative needs. "I have always managed to make a living somehow," he said. "My standard of living is way under what you would probably expect from a director, but it always happens that once I earn money from a film, I immediately invest in the next film."

But was it daunting for Herzog, who often makes daring adventure documentaries, to make a movie with a big Hollywood star? "No," he said. "A force like Nicolas Cage and a force like me should be left in peace."

An excerpt of Herzog's statement from the "Bad Lieutenant" press notes:
It does not bespeak great wisdom to call the film The Bad Lieutenant, and I only agreed to make the film after William (Billy) Finkelstein, the screenwriter, who had seen a film of the same name from the early nineties, had given me a solemn oath that this was not a remake at all. But the film industry has its own rationale, which in this case was the speculation of some sort of franchise. I have no problem with this. Nevertheless, the pedantic branch of academia, the so called "film-studies," in its attempt to do damage to cinema, will be ecstatic to find a small reference to that earlier film here and there, though it will fail to do the same damage that academia -- in the name of literary theory — has done to poetry, which it has pushed to the brink of extinction. Cinema, so far, is more robust. I call upon the theoreticians of cinema to go after this one. Go for it, losers.
 

The biggest sale at TIFF this year happens to involve an equally big brand: Preeminent fashion designer Tom Ford makes his directorial debut with the heartbreaking character study "A Single Man," which the Weinstein Company purchased today.

The movie stars Colin Firth as George, a soft spoken gay professor reeling from the death of his partner in a car accident. Despite George's mourning period figuring heavily into the plot, it's predominantly an exercise in style. Ford bathes George's world in warm colors to express his heightened sensitivity to the poetic state of his despair.

Although the script occasionally falters, "A Single Man" is gentle enough in tone that George's world feels instantly engaging, emotionally fragile, and always a wonder to behold. Like Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," it uses cinematic imagery to reflect a recognition of beauty in sadness. George's relationships with a former lover (Julianne Moore) and a pristine young student bring his fragility into sharp focus. Firth certainly seems like he's headed straight into the Oscar race, which is probably music to Harvey Weinstein's ears.

Considering that a wealthy celebrity of Ford's stature could have made this movie with complete autonomy, its competence comes a welcome surprise. During a press conference today, Ford said that while he decided to try his hands at filmmaking after leaving Gucci a few years ago, he viewed his professional background as an entirely separate beast.

"I think a lot of people know me from my work as a fashion designer, which is very different than what I wanted to say as a filmmaker," he said. "It took me a while to figure out why anyone would want to see a Tom Ford movie." Nevertheless, he pointed out that working in another visual medium did provide him with a familiar reference point.

"Understanding the power of image, and how to tell a story with it, did help," he said. "But I'm not going to say there weren't moments where I thought, 'God, am I doing this the right way?'"

Firth expressed nothing but enthusiasm over his collaboration with Ford. "There are a million different ways you can be a wonderful director," he said. "If you're working with a highly imaginative person with an extraordinary set of skills -- which I think Tom already established -- it's nothing but intrigue from the beginning. A day or two into shooting, I realized that we had connected and harmonized in terms of what we wanted to do. I didn't feel it was a huge leap of faith."

Oddly enough, Ford actually sounded humbled by Firth's praise. "I'm so happy Colin took the chance with me," he said. "Fashion and film are two very different types of expression. Fashion is a commercially creative endeavor. Film is a purely expressionistic form. You want people to see what you do because that's how you communicate with them. It was definitely the most personal thing I've ever done."