My Year Without Sex.

The final tally of my annual visit to the Toronto International Film Festival: Nine days, 26 movies, press conferences top-billed by George Clooney (twice), Matt Damon, Robert Duvall, Drew Barrymore and Natalie Portman, and lots of good eats at my favorite restaurant, the New Yorker Deli.

I was very happy with my festival experience this year. Matt Damon and George Clooney are terrific interviews and seem to enjoy talking about their movies; as a bonus, their films were worth talking about. Of the 26 movies I saw only four were really bad, and while I didn’t see any movies that totally blew me away, there were several that earned 31/2 stars (see my previous Toronto blog for my scorecard).

My last two movies were My Year Without Sex from Australian animator/filmmaker Sarah Watt and Accident, a Japanese film noir. The former jumped near the top of my list, as did Watt’s previous movie, Look Both Ways, my favorite film at the 2007 film festival.

My Year Without Sex is a movie about a family that has to deal with mom (Sacha Horler) recovering from an aneurysm in her brain. The standard Yank treatment of this material would be tons of big, dramatic moments and a likely slot on the Lifetime Channel as a made-for-TV movie. In Watt’s hands it deals with the big issues in a quiet way. This is real life and feels so genuine. It is full of laughter and just a few tears as this family deals, month to month with the recovery of mom, as she grasps with the realization that death could be one sneeze away and her husband deals with the notion that having sex with the woman he loves could kill her. I hope this movie makes it to theaters in the US but it is likely to have the same fate as Watt’s earlier film and wind up going directly to video. Either way, My Year Without Sex is the type of small scale, rewarding movie that film festivals are all about beyond the excitement of the big name Hollywood stars.

P.S.: Don’t you hate it when you get back from vacation and the first day back at work feels like it is taking forever to reach 5pm? I’m there.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

Toronto, Ontario – Tomorrow (Friday, Sept. 18)  is my last day at the Toronto Film Festival. My scorecard so far is impressive with only a few clunkers among my 24 films viewed to date in eight days, not to mention great press conferences with George Clooney and Matt Damon.

First the Oscar buzz flicks: I think Jason Reitman’s Up In the Air might be in the Oscar running. Not only is it funny and poignant, but it features a performance by Clooney that is guaranteed to earn a nomination for best actor.

Get Low, the terrific period drama with a heavy dose of droll humor which stars Robert Duvall, is also an Oscar candidate, not just for the tremendous lead performance by Duvall, but a hilarious supporting turn by Bill Murray. His is not quite a comeback, since he hasn’t been away that long, but it has been awhile since Lost In Translation.

In the category of an outside chance is writer-director Don Roos’ Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. This look at a second wife (played by Natalie Portman) and her struggles with the loss of her own baby while trying to be a stepmom to a precocious 9-year-old, is likely to be a Spirit Award winner. However, it is worthy to step up in class since it takes situations we’ve seen countless times – including the bitchy ex-wife (played by Lisa Kudrow) – and never reaches for the easy clichés.

In the category of documentary nominations, I wouldn’t be surprised to see both Ahead of Time and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers wind up with Oscar nods. Both feature compelling subjects. In the former, we learn about Ruth Gruber, a 97-year-old photo journalist and author who covered stories around the globe including the Nuremberg trials and the plight of Jewish refugees on the ship Exodus. In the latter, we not only learn that Ellsberg is an activist today, but what motivated him to leak the Pentagon Papers and that it was Nixon’s rage at Ellsberg that directly motivated him to organize his dirty tricks squad.

Drew Barrymore’s Whip-It, about a Texas teen (played by Ellen “Juno” Page) who becomes a roller derby queen, leads the way when it comes to pure fun. This isn’t really a festival-type movie, it is commercial Hollywood filmmaking, and it delivers exactly what it promises.

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It’s the opening of the NFL season for the Eagles, so I basically take the day off from the fest to check out the game at Hoops, my favorite Toronto sports bar. I might even ask them to set me up with both the Eagles-Panthers game and the Phillies-Mets. The Eagles are such a puzzle, especially with the offensive line and now I hear Brian Westbrook might not play. I have no idea what to expect.

I’m not skipping the fest entirely. I have a screening of the new Robert Duvall film, Get Low, at 10am and after football, a roller derby publicity event with the stars of Whip-It, the derby themed flick with which Drew Barrymore is making her directorial debut.

Below is a picture of the self-titled “Bench Babes,” a bunch of fun-loving friends from Ottawa who were in Toronto for the weekend and wanted me to take their picture at the bar where I had dinner. They aren’t a team or anything, they just all bought the same sweater.

The Bench Babes

Jason Reitman

This is my open love letter to Jason Reitman. He is my new favorite director. I loved his first movie, Thank You For Smoking. I really loved his second movie, Juno. And now I really love his third movie, Up in the Air, starring George Clooney as a man who loves air travel far too much and relationships on the ground far too little. My rave review for the film and Clooney’s Oscar-worthy performance will be delivered at a later date.

Right now, I want to tell you how sweet and articulate Reitman was at the Up in the Air press conference. He loves what he does and he loves actors and it shows. He also likes ideas in movies and manages to create entertaining movies enriched with ideas and emotions.

Here is the wit and wisdom of J.R.

“The book [on which he based his screenplay] spoke to me, not because it is about a man who fires people for a living, but because we are living in a time in which we are more disconnected than we have ever been. We think we are connected because we text each other and have web chats and we e-mail each other but we don’t have conversations anymore. There is no sense of community. That’s why I found the book fascinating and it gave me the opportunity to tell the story of what it means to have someone important in your life.”

On George Clooney’s performance: “The first time you [turning to Clooney] read the script you said, ‘you see some connections and that’s what excites you about the script’ and you want to stare it straight in the eyes. I thought that was incredibly brave. I think this is one of the most vulnerable performances you have ever done. This type of emotionality was an enormous gift and I will appreciate it for the rest of my life.”

Toronto, Ontario — Today the big stars rolled into Toronto as George Clooney, joined by co-stars Jeff Bridges and Ewan McGregor, were in town for the opening of their film The Men Who Stare at Goats. Meanwhile Clooney’s bud and Ocean’s 11 co-star Matt Damon, as well as Ocean director Steven Soderbergh, were touting their new film, The Informant!

Matt Damon

The Informant!, a film about the most wacked out industrial spy you are ever going to meet, is a movie that grows on you, and Damon is earning props for gaining weight and wearing a fake nose and toupee in order to truly capture this true life character.

Clooney laughs!

Both Damon and Clooney share a wicked sense of humor, which was evident in their press conferences which took place back to back. Clooney, when asked about Damon being named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, explained that both he and Brad Pitt have earned that honor twice and as far as he was concerned, “It was a fluke that Damon even one it once.”

Damon, when asked about the fact that actors that gain weight and change their appearance, often earn Oscar nominations, joked that, “That was the only reason I took the role.”

Steven Soderbergh

The first day of the Toronto Film Festival is relatively low-key, and so it was for this reporter. After visiting my favorite dining spot, the heavenly New Yorker deli for cabbage borscht and  brisket on rye, it was on to my first film selection of the day by Spain’s national treasure, Pedro Almodovar. Broken Embraces is a minor work from the master, beautifully acted in spots, but the story was rather mundane, and his humorous touches were lacking as well. Still, anytime Pedro gets together with his muse, Penelope Cruz, you can be sure there is something worthwhile. Even middling Almodovar is entertaining.
Next up was one of the big gala presentations, Creation from Jon Amiel. It is the story of Charles Darwin’s home life, starring real life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. It seems that Darwin’s theories about evolution were in serious conflict with the religious beliefs of his spouse, which caused tension in the marriage, as well as the tragic loss of a child to illness. There are several heart-wrenching scenes in Creation. It is a good period piece but it falls short of great, despite  a wonderful performance by Bettany and fine support from Connelly and Martha West.

Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank.

My final film of the day was a British kitchen sink drama called Fish Tank, written and directed by Andrea Arnold, a film that earned the Jury prize at Cannes for good reason. It is a brilliant portrait of working class Brits, in particular, a tough 15-year-old named Mia (Katie Jarvis) who has a trashy mother, a pain-in-the-ass younger sister and aspired to be a hip-hop dancer. She becomes friends with her mother’s current boyfriend, a seemingly nice guy (Michael Fassbender). Their relationship skirts around the sexual predator clichés and makes the man surprising sympathetic without giving him a free pass for his stupidity.

Tomorrow is jam-packed with big name star press conferences so hopefuly I’ll be posting shots of Bettany and Connelly, Megan Fox, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges.

Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or my on-going battle to lose weight in our fast food world. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

With only five weeks to go before the start of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Sept. 10-19, announcements are coming daily about the big-ticket movies that will be playing in the Great White North.
I’m thrilled that I will get a chance to see the North American premiere of Michael Moore’s new documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. On the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece Roger & Me (which played at TIFF), his latest cautionary tale confronts an issue he’s been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).
Also on tap in Toronto is the newest film from the Coen brothers, A Serious Man, starring Adam Arkin and Richard Kind. The film explores questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality and Judaism.
From Jason Reitman, the Oscar-nominated director of Juno, comes Up in the Air, a comedy starring George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.
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