Reminder: Toronto '04 Looking for Oscar Buzz

From:E!Online


{I was nice and have put the Johnny bit in bold [img]tongue.gif[/img] }

Toronto '04 Looking for Oscar Buzz

by Barry Brown
Sep 8, 2004, 1:00 PM PT

TORONTO--Blame Canada, indeed. If those Canucks didn't know how to throw such a kick-ass cinema party, then there would actually be players in Hollywood this week.

Instead, Los Angeles is emptying out for the better part of two weeks and heading north of the border for the camera-ready 29th installment of the Toronto International Film Festival.

If anyone needs more evidence that the Toronto film orgy is challenging Cannes as the most important staging ground for filmgoers and film financiers from Hollywood to Bollywood, this year's lineup of a record 100 world premiers among its star-studded 328 films from 61 countries should make even the most cynical critics blush.

Filmmakers and distributors have "decided that we're the first place they want their films shown," says festival co-director Noah Cowan, adding the city's multicultural make-up offers a unique proving ground for the increasingly global nature of the Industry.

Of course, the "savvy, knowledgeable and appreciative" film lovers in this city, many of whom skip work to attend the largest publicly attended film festival in the world, are another factor, he added.

This year, those spearheading Toronto's movie star invasion include Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Charlize Theron, Naomi Watts, Scarlett Johansson, Johnny Depp, Sandra Bullock, Kenneth Branagh, Helen Hunt, Penélope Cruz, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Bacon, Dustin Hoffman, Danny Glover and native daughter Sarah Polley, most of whom are starring in films seeking some early Oscar heat.

Kicking things off on Thursday night is Being Julia, in which Annette Bening plays a waning middle-aged British stage actress circa 1930 who has a fling with a younger man. Nine days later, on Sept. 18, the fest concludes with Canada's own Martin Short in Jiminy Glick in Lalawood. The cynical satire of celebrity culture features Short's bloated film critic, Jiminy Glick, at the Toronto fest, where he becomes embroiled in a scandal of sex and murder. The film features cameos from Steve Martin, Kurt Russell, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Kline and Whoopi Goldberg.

Along the way there's plenty to keep the popcorn-crunching set bound to their seats--and the Oscar handicappers buzzing all the way to Vegas.

Spacey writes, directs, stars and even sings in his biopic of '50s pop icon Bobby Darin, Beyond the Sea. Hunt and Johansson star in A Good Woman, based on the Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere's Fan, a searing social satire about the clashes and quandaries that bind the rich and famous to the "infamous and poor" among the American expat set in 1930s Italy.

Hoffman and Lily Tomlin bring their brand of ensemble comedy to the party in David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees.

Theron and Cruz share a kiss in the romantic drama, Head in the Clouds, set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and WWII.

If that isn't sexy enough, Liam Neeson and Laura Linney steam up the screen--at least intellectually--in Kinsey, a flick about Alfred Kinsey, America's pioneer in sex research.

And no one can accuse the lineup of not having any soul. Foxx stars as the late musical genius Ray Charles in the biopic Ray, while Antoine Fuqua will screen his concert doc Lightning in a Bottle, which chronicles a blues tribute concert held last year at Radio City Music Hall featuring such all-timers as B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Solomon Burke.

For those who like a good costume drama, Toronto has plenty with solid pedigrees. Pacino headlines a new version of Shakespearke's The Merchant of Venice; Modigliani stars Andy Garcia in the title role in the film about the impressionist painter's bitter rivalry with Picasso; The Libertine features Depp as a seedy poet in the court of Charles II (John Malkovich) who nearly sparks a war between England and France; and Arsene Lupin stars Romain Duris as the 19th century gentleman burglar alongside Kristin Scott Thomas in a swashbuckling adventure based on the novel The Countess of Cagliostro.

Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels and Emile Hirsch offer up the coming of age tale Imaginary Heroes, about a family coping with the suicide of their "perfect" son, while Bullock and Matt Dillon star in Crash, a story of eight characters drawn together by a car wreck and the subsequent murder investigation.

Keeping with the murder theme is The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Penn and Watts star in the film, based on a true story of a failed salesman who tries to off Tricky **** in 1974.

A different kind of murder-themed movie has stirred up all kinds of controversy. Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat, a film that looks at the motivations of three people who videotaped their grisly felinicide has sparked outrage among the PETA set.

But fest co-director Cowan defends the documentary as "a journalistic essay" that "tries to come to a larger social understanding" of the crime. Cowan notes that not a single frame of the actual cat torture made by the subjects of the documentary appears in Casuistry, but because of threats made against the filmmakers, security will be beefed up for the screenings.