Toronto Film Festival 2011

melbert wrote:But, I also think that he makes statements about drinking all the time to maintain his "party boy" persona, and that he really doesn't drink much anymore. JMHO...

U2 doc to kick off Toronto fest, but directors say opening slot has drawbacks
The Canadian PressBy Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – Wed, 7 Sep, 2011 4:30 AM EDT

Canadian film director Jeremy Podeswa poses during a photo call for the screening of "Fugitive pieces", at the Rome Film Festival, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2007. Podeswa says every filmmaker jockeys for the best slot they can, based on the amount of press they're most likely to get and the number of deal-makers available to see the movie. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ AP - Sandro Pace

TORONTO - Irish supergroup U2 doesn't usually open for anyone, but the rock gods will make an exception Thursday when a movie about their career kicks off the Toronto International Film Festival.

The screening of "From The Sky Down" will mark the first time the city's annual movie marathon has launched with a documentary, a choice that co-director Cameron Bailey says hits the right note for the 36th annual fest.

"It's about the biggest band in the world, it's by one of the best documentary filmmakers in the world," Bailey says of the film helmed by Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning director of "An Inconvenient Truth."

"We felt like it would get people going in terms of just charging them up."

There's a delicate alchemy to picking the right film to open a festival.

"We're looking for a film that can play to a fairly general audience," says Bailey, noting that all kinds of film-goers attend opening night so the kick-off movie should have broad appeal.

"You want a movie that has the kind of scale that suits the opening or the closing night position — a smaller, more intimate film may not work as well as a grander film. And you also want a film that's going to set the tone ... Is it an upbeat film in a year when you want that?"

The Toronto fest has traditionally given the pole position to a homegrown filmmaker — the campy romance "Score: A Hockey Musical" claimed the berth last September, Paul Gross's war epic "Passchendaele" took it in 2008, Jeremy Podeswa's holocaust drama "Fugitive Pieces" launched it in 2007 and Deepa Mehta's Oscar-nominated period piece "Water" kicked things off in 2005.

It's arguable that Toronto actress-turned-director Sarah Polley gets a better slot than any of them when her much-anticipated romantic drama "Take This Waltz" debuts Saturday at Roy Thomson Hall. It lands on the heavily attended first weekend of the fest and screens at its most prestigious venue.

Polley says she's happy to have scored the gala spot, noting it's just what she had been hoping for.

"I think opening night can be a tough slot," says Polley.

"I think it can be really great for some films and not so great for other films. For us, our ambition was just to have a gala at Toronto and we didn't really care in what context it was so we're really thrilled."

Despite mounds of publicity, there are drawbacks to being the curtain-raiser, says Canadian uber-producer Robert Lantos, whose films have launched Toronto's annual movie marathon several times.

He says any filmmaker seeking foreign sales is better off avoiding the opening slot, noting that it has "become kind of a ghetto" over the years.

"The international distributors and buyers didn't bother showing up for it because it was considered a strictly Canadian event," says Lantos, who expected this year's surprise documentary selection to help stir things up.

"The very people that you want to see your film the most are not there."

He says the real prestige spot is the first weekend when attendance tends to be highest.

"However, it's also the most competitive," he acknowledges.

Friday night galas this year include Brad Pitt's baseball drama "Moneyball," George Clooney's political thriller "The Ides of March," the Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm comedy "Friends With Kids" and the Jude Law relationship drama "360."

Saturday's stellar lineup includes Polley's relationship study, David Cronenberg's psycho-sexual feature "A Dangerous Method," Lars von Trier's arthouse sensation "Melancholia," Clooney's family drama "The Descendants" and the Ryan Gosling thriller "Drive."

Podeswa says every filmmaker jockeys for the best slot they can, based on the amount of press they're most likely to get and the number of deal-makers available to see the movie.

"There are all kinds of considerations about when people come into town, when they leave town, how big is the venue and how many screenings you're going to get," says Podeswa.

Bailey says such attention to detail can make his job as programmer all the more difficult.

"We have over 250 films in the festival, all of them are looking for what they consider to be the prime position," he notes.

"And there's only one first Saturday night at the festival, there are only two films that play in Roy Thomson Hall that night. A lot of films want that because they feel like that's the best exposure you can possibly get. But the fact is that actually each film has its own best place."

He notes that a lot of filmmakers prefer to screen later in the week when hype over the big-name titles has dissipated, allowing them to break through into the spotlight.

Determining the right day and time a film should have its debut has become a fine science for some filmmakers, says Bailey.

"There are some people who swear that certain cinemas play certain kinds of films better, comedies will play better than dramas, long films will play in some cinemas better than short films and how wide or narrow a theatre is, the angle of the seats, all of those things seem to matter," he says.

"The people who bring movies here year after year, they have opinions about all of these different factors and so we get into very long conversations and negotiations about when and where and how each film should play."

If there's a spot to avoid, veteran director Norman Jewison says it would be the last one.

"If it was me, I wouldn't like to close a festival because I think people are worn out," says Jewison, who adds he's "not a great believer that opening a festival means that you've got the most important film."

"There's too many films in front of you."

Lantos says the best slots depend on the festival.

For the Cannes Film Festival, he prefers to screen towards the end of the run because those are the films that the jury tends to favour.

"The times that my films have won there, like 'Sweet Hereafter' won the Grand Prix and 'Crash' won a jury award, whenever that's happened it's usually been that the films have been late (in the schedule)," he says.

"And I think you could say the same in any festival that has a jury. A jury tends to be most critical at the beginning and then after they see a dozen films that they're not thrilled about they are more enthusiastic about one that they really like and tend to remember it best."

No slot can help a bad film, says Jewison.

"If a film works with the audience first that's what's important," he says.

Several Toronto openers have failed to springboard to box office glory. Last year's kickoff, "Score: A Hockey Musical" disappeared quickly after mixed reviews while 2009's Brit biopic "Creation" drew a lukewarm reception and collected less than $900,000 worldwide.

Podeswa says scoring the opening slot for his 2007 drama "Fugitive Pieces" helped his film overall, noting it secured him a U.S. distribution deal.

"It's always hard to say what exactly consequentially relates to what or what's the causal thing but our film got picked up by (Samuel) Goldwyn and we got distribution and that was all good," he says.

"And then the opening night was really exciting and fantastic. In a way, for me, that's an end in itself — it was so nice for the cast and the crew and my parents, you know. For all the personal reasons it was so great to open the festival."

Bailey admits he continues to rethink his choice right up until the night of the screening, and even as it plays in front of an audience.

"We've had great opening nights, we've had opening nights where the audience hasn't been as thrilled as we were," he admits.

"We're making these decisions on our own as programmers because we spent a long time doing this, we have experience in it but we also hope that we understand our audience well enough to know what's going to interest them. But we're not right 100 per cent of the time and so we have to evaluate that after the fact and see, 'Well, did our choice really match what they were interested in seeing that year?'

"And if not then we try to do better next year."

George Clooney: The man who we stare at

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Mike Cassese / Reuters
Whatever the glib answers to questions he comes up with, the press can't help but love "the Clooney."

Adam McDowell Sep 8, 2011

“Does this feel strange to you?” George Clooney asked the photographers, trying to keep his eyes open wide in the face of dozens of camera flashes per second at the Toronto press conference for Up in the Air in 2009.

If you can measure fame through the rate of camera fire at a TIFF press conference — and in a crude way, you can — Clooney’s calibre is confirmed with the Uzi burst of shutter clicks that greets him every time he sits down for a grilling.

Maybe each session really does strike him as odd. Clooney was a latecomer to fame, after all. He is now so famous he almost seems to be embarrassed by it; he feels the need to downplay it. Someone at a TIFF conference in 2009 once asked Clooney when he learned he was famous; he responded that his parents told him when he was very young. At a more recent press conference, for his new film The Ides of March at the Venice Film Festival last month, he came up with another aw-shucks answer to the fame question. “Hollywood’s still a playground,” he said, “and I get to hang around with seductive people.”

Meanwhile, Toronto remains a city where it pays to pretend you’re blasé about celebrity. Perhaps it’s fitting that arguably more than any other star, Clooney has become the face of TIFF in recent years.

Clooney’s affair with Toronto surely counts as one of the most lasting relationships he’s had. And it is a love affair, insofar as the press loves Clooney, both the Toronto-based home team and foreign journalists. Over coffee and cocktails, they ask each other if they’ll be covering “the Clooney,” as his appearances have come to be known. Bet on Clooney’s face gracing more newspaper sections and website home pages than any other over the next 10 days as he promotes The Descendants, a family dramedy, and The Ides of March, in which he does double duty as both director and star.

Every TIFF press event at which Clooney shows up becomes all about him. Much has been written about the actor’s natural charm, and there’s no denying he’s got it. His act for reporters is the jovial big brother, always quick with a put-down for the beta male stars in his orbit. He joshed that Matt Damon “can’t actually grow a moustache.” With his hand in a cast, he joked that he broke it punching Ewan McGregor. He once called Brad Pitt a “tiny little man,” famous for doing nothing. And so on.

Personal questions, meanwhile, prompt a curt “Next!”

To what do we owe the pleasure of Clooney’s smooth-talking company? Toronto’s film festival occupies an especially prime space on the movie industry’s calendar. It kicks off the fall season, when the studios schedule their awards hopefuls. The industry appreciates Toronto audiences for speaking English, being down-to-earth and knowing how to pick a winner — many a People’s Choice recipient has been a breakthrough, particularly since 2002’s Whale Rider, continuing through 2010 with The King’s Speech. As Time magazine noted in 2007, “civilian TIFFies are closer to regular audiences than, say, the scowling critics of Cannes or rude industry swag hogs of Sundance.”

Shopping Oscar bait in Toronto is the star’s usual MO. As Clooney matured over the 2000s, so did TIFF. The festival was in a state of rapid growth when Clooney brought Michael Clayton in 2007. We may have felt burned the next year when he didn’t show up to promote Burn After Reading, but in 2009 he made up for it when he returned with The Men Who Stare at Goats and the aforementioned Oscar bait Up in the Air.

Clooney is not Hollywood’s most “bankable” star, though. Having turned 50 in May, he probably never will be. (The honour, according to Forbes magazine, belongs to Shia LaBeouf of all people, with Will Smith having held it before.) Nor is he Hollywood’s best-paid actor: That is a contest between Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio.

But if “most likeable” were a category, Clooney might have it. It goes deeper than his looks and swagger. The years he spent as a non-celebrity civilian almost qualify him as a regular guy. He was 34 years old by the time playing a hunky but emotionally unavailable doctor on television’s ER made him famous, around 1995.

As an example of Clooney-as-normal-guy, his character in Up in the Air fires people for a living. At the press conference, the actor couldn’t believe it when his co-stars and director said they had never been fired before. Clooney had. Lots. “You’ve got to remember,” he said, “I did 12 years of bad television.”

He said this period of struggle makes him “fortunate” enough to know not to take praise too seriously. And if everyone’s maturity freezes the moment they became famous, he is indeed lucky to be 34 forever rather than, say, 17.

For Clooney is famous in the way a grown-up would want to be famous. Take the house at Lake Como, Italy. Nice choice. Or his heartfelt campaigning for Darfur. Or the rumour that he carries around $100 bills for homeless people. For some, the refusal to be tied down to one of those weird Hollywood marriages is admirable, too.

For those who watch more closely, the details that leak out about Clooney’s life can be endearing. The injuries he sustained filming Syriana led to what sounded like a harrowing series of operations. And what celebrity watcher didn’t feel a little sad when reading of the demise in early 2006 of Clooney’s late potbellied pig, Max?

So we can forgive Clooney when he spends most of his time at film festivals coming up with glib answers to stupid questions. He’s just playing it cool, like the Toronto diner pretending not to be freaking out when a movie star slides into the next table at a restaurant. We want to act like the glitz and excitement that TIFF has brought to the city, especially over the past half-decade, is no big deal.

Of all the seductive people the filmfest lets us rub shoulders with (at least at a distance), Clooney may be the most seductive. He is famous but professes a gee-whiz alienation from his fame. Toronto wants to be famous but pretends a nonchalance about fame itself. These are two sides of the same coin. With one another’s help, George Clooney and Toronto can pretend we’re good enough for Hollywood, but not of it.

laetval wrote:When Clooney and his party exited the scene, (George and Stacy indeed arm-in-arm)

Cinderella wrote:Where's Stacy?

cindigirl wrote:laetval is our supermaximus detective. She sees all. LOL

cindigirl wrote:I can't get the video. Oh well.

G looks really thin in picture above. I hope he's eating right.

sandwiches wrote:The crowds are crazy! I went for a ride to see if anything was going on and I was forced to turn around by a traffic cop.

Cinderella wrote:Where's Stacy?

Henway wrote:

Cinderella wrote:Where's Stacy?

She's in here hotel room tweeting...

StacyKeibler Stacy Keibler
Hi Tweeples! Happy Friday What's everyone up to?
1 hour ago

Oh Snap! George Clooney Takes a Reporter to Task

Don't try to be slick with George Clooney in interviews, you'll just get your dignity handed to you on a plate in front of, well, everyone.

During a press junket at the Toronto Film Festival today for his flick with Ryan Gosling, Ides of March, Hollywood's hottest bachelor was asked a question that caused him to respond with wit and sarcasm, which was funny for us.

The reporter in question? Not so much.

So what'd he ask?

"Which is harder, directing or dating in the spotlight?"

Harmless, right?! Eh, not so much.

"Well, that's funny, I knew someone would do it. I'm a little disappointed it's you. I mean, everyone is a little ashamed of you right now," Clooney says, right before asking what the reporter's name is so he can mockingly say, "The hard-hitting interview by Paul Chi."

We were almost a little stunned to see Georgie so standoffish on the question, but then we remember that he's just being funny and obviously doesn't want to discuss why Stacy Kiebler is joining him in Toronto.

Watch the clip to see how it all went down!

PHOTOS: Who could stay mad at this face?

Read more: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]