All Toronto articles – Page 156
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Reviews
Nothing is Private
Dir: Alan Ball. US. 2007. 124 mins.Perhaps the most polarizing film of the Toronto International Film Festival this week, Nothing Is Private marks the feature directorial debut of American Beauty writer and Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. As you might expect from Ball's oeuvre to date, it is a ...
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Reviews
The Stone Angel
Dir. Kari Skogland Canada , 2007. 115 minutes.The Stone Angel is a perfectly respectable, solidly-made film which, beyond the expert performance by the always reliable Ellen Burstyn, has unfortunately little to recommend it for consideration for theatrical release beyond its home territory. Adapted by director Skogland from a beloved Canadian ...
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Reviews
The Past (O Passado)
Dir: Hector Babenco Argentina-Brazil 2007. 114 mins.Brazilian director Hector Babenco's latest film is an utterly misbegotten effort, a long way from his earlier successes such as Pixote and Kiss of the Spider Woman, or 2003's Carandiru. Despite the presence of international heart-throb Gael Garcia Bernal, the tortured, sometimes unwittingly laughable ...
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Reviews
Mother of Tears
Dir/Scr: Dario Argento. Italy. 2007 98mins .The new work of Italian horror specialist Dario Argento, Mother of Tears forms a trilogy of the two macabre, hyper stylized works that made his international reputation: Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). The time away from the material has certainly not dulled the director's ...
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Reviews
Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame (Buda As Sharm Foru Rikht)
Dir: Hana Makhmalbaf. Iran / France , 2007. 81 min. Hana Makhmalbaf is the younger scion of the Makhmalbaf Film House factory. All of eighteen years old and already a veteran with a short film, a documentary and a book of poems to her credit, she handles this first feature ...
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Reviews
Jane Austen Book Club
Dir. Robin Swicord, US, 105 minutes, colour, 35 mm. In The Jane Austen Book Club, five women and one man lead lives that seem torn from the pages of Jane Austen's novels as they discuss those writings in a book club in a California suburb. 'What would Jane do' becomes ...
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Reviews
Chaotic Ana
Dir: Julio Medem. Spain, 2007, 120 minutes. Many viewers felt that director Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle was one of the best films of the 1990s. Its mixture of poetic visual and verbal imagery, coupled with a strong dose of mysticism and steamy insights into love and sex, ...
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Reviews
Lars And The Real Girl
Dir: Craig Gillespie USA 2007. 106 mins.Ryan Gosling, one of the finest actors currently working in American independent cinema, is once again outstanding in this offbeat but exceptionally accomplished film. Starting off as funny and quirky, Lars and the Real Girl gradually becomes a riveting yet never heavy-handed psychological portrait ...
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Reviews
Before The Rains
Dir: Santosh Sivan US/India. 2007. 98minsA bittersweet journey from blinkered loyalty to rueful independence, Before The Rains captures the crumbling of British rule in 1930s India through a doomed love affair and its tragic consequences. In its more obvious moments it strays perilously close to the conventions of romantic fiction ...
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Reviews
A Jihad For Love
Dir: Parvez Sharma USA/UK/France/Germany/Australia. 2007. 81minsFilmed over six years in twelve countries, A Jihad For Love compiles personal stories that illuminate the bitter struggles of lesbians andgay men to reconcile their homosexuality with their Muslim faith. The film presents itself as a modest first step in attempting to foster a ...
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Reviews
Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou)
Dir: Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, 2007. 95minsThe closing film at the Venice film festival, Blood Brothers is a dark gangster fable set in 1930s Shanghai - and a stylish but hollow debut for John Woo protege Alexi Tan. For all the film's lush cinematography, spot-on period detail and all-star Asian ...
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Reviews
Battle in Seattle
Director/Scr: Stuart Townsend. US, Canada. 2007. 100minsA labour of love for actor turned director Stuart Townsend, Battle In Seattle is an uneven but ultimately impassioned recreation of the riots at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle . Documentary footage and fictional drama scenes make for initially uneasy bedfellows ...
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Reviews
Across The Universe
Dir: Julie Taymor USA 2007. 129mins.The post-Chicago boom in screen musicals takes a novel twist with Across The Universe, a concept album-style love story set against the social upheavals of the 1960s and largely told through the songs of The Beatles. This ambitious Julie Taymor project veers between the soaring, ...
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News
China Clipper to fly with China's Hengdian, Canada's Long Tale
Vancouver-based Long Tale Entertainment has signed with Chinese production colossus Hengdian Studios for the $30m Canada-China co-production China Clipper.Long Tale's Harry Sutherland put the package together with US MoviePlus, the LA-arm of worldwide film finance entity set up by Stuart Little producer Steve Waterman and Chris Brough, founder of Vancouver's ...
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News
Veneziano to leave GreeneStreet to head new partner Icon
Ariel Veneziano is leaving GreeneStreet Films International (GSFI) to head Icon Entertainment International (IEI) as part of a strategic alliance between IEI and GreeneStreet Films (GSF).Effective Sept 17, the Los Angeles-based Veneziano will acquire rights to select GSF films and library titles as IEI bulks up sales on third party ...
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News
Seema Biswas set for Deepa Mehta's Stella
Bandit Queen star Seema Biswas has signed for a lead role in Deepa Mehta's Stella, a $4m comedy set to shoot in New Delhi immediately following production of the recently announced Heaven On Earth.In a departure from form, Mehta will co-direct with her brother Dilip Mehta, production on many of ...
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News
Santoro may climb Old Mountain for Buena Onda Americas
Latin American specialists Buena Onda Americas, in Toronto as a partner with Canana on Cochochi, is in pre-production on The Old Mountain, a $2.7m Brazilian story to shoot in 2008.Producers are talking to actor Rodrigo Santoro about coming on board and Fernando Meirelles may executive produce; Ondamax will handle sales.The ...