De Palma a la Mod

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

TIFF 2009 TIDBITS
DE PALMA AT TALENT LAB; LIKES FISH TANK; ALSO: NOE & EGOYAN

Brian De Palma was a surprise guest Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival's Talent Lab, which took place September 9-12. According to Catbird Productions' Twitter page, De Palma, actress Tilda Swinton, and director Scott Hicks all showed up on the last day of the lab, which offers development opportunities to up-and-coming Canadian filmmakers. De Palma has participated in the event a number of times over the years.

ANDREA ARNOLD'S FISH TANK AT TORONTO
According to the Globe And Mail's Johanna Schneller, De Palma liked Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank (pictured above), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes earlier this year. The film stars Katie Jarvis, who had never acted before this, as a foul-mouthed 15-year-old who dances with headphones on and has a crush on her mom's boyfriend. The newcomer is said to have been approached by the casting director on a railway station platform. The trailer can be viewed here.

GASPAR NOE'S ENTER THE VOID AT TORONTO
Meanwhile, the Globe And Mail's Rick Groen reports that Gaspar Noé was excited to hear that De Palma was at the Toronto press screening for his latest film, Enter The Void, which features, we hear, the most extreme use of subjective point-of-view camerawork possible, moving from death to womb. Noé and De Palma shared an interesting link in 2002, when each of the films they released that year (Noé's Irreversible, De Palma's Femme Fatale), which were both made in France, featured Jo Prestia as a menacing rapist (although in De Palma's film, Prestia's character is no less than a tool used by the femme fatale to provoke Antonio Banderas' Nicolas into a rage). Here is what Groen posted on Saturday:

"Did you see Brian De Palma in the audience for my film?" The question bubbles up in a boyishly excited rush, which both charms and surprises me. That's because the questioner is French director Gaspar Noé, the last guy you'd expect to give a tinker's damn about the audience or anybody in it. His approach to filmmaking, in Irreversible and now again in Enter the Void, is, well, combative, assaulting us with triple-barrelled bursts of brutal imagery and fractured time-frames and kaleidoscopic effects. All sighted through his talented eye, the result is riveting to some and revolting to others. People get mesmerized by his movies, people walk out of his movies, and Noé has always seemed delighted with either reaction. Clearly, though, this is an exception: He wants Brian De Palma to have been there, and he really wants Brian De Palma to have stayed. So Noé continues in the same bubbly rush: "Someone told me he was in the audience yesterday. At the press and industry screening. So I rushed over and looked at the seats but I couldn't see him." A pause, then he repeats: "Did you see Brian De Palma in the audience for my film?"
Okay, I was there, the theatre was maybe half-filled, and, since poor Noé seems on the cusp of imploring, I'd love to give him the right answer. But. "Um, sorry, I did not see Brian De Palma in the audience. But I was looking up, not around, and I've heard that De Palma, even when he doesn't have a film at the fest, has a history of coming to Toronto anyway just to watch lots of movies, so, you know, maybe he was there."
Noé, who spent several years raising the money for Enter the Void and two more years shooting and editing it and who doesn't yet have a North American distributor for his prodigious labour of love, tries to take heart from that "maybe." And who can blame him?

ATOM EGOYAN'S CHLOE AT TORONTO
The Film Farm, which announced yesterday that De Palma's Tabloid is currently on the company's production slate, produced Atom Egoyan's Chloe, which had its premiere in Toronto Sunday. The film is a "reinvention" of Anne Fontaine' Nathalie..., with an all new screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, Fur), that is said to have more Hitchcockian overtones than the original film. Amanda Seyfried, who also stars in Jennifer's Body, is said to give a breakout performance in Chloe. She and De Palma were spotted by The Star's Rob & Rita at a Toronto party the other day.

OTHER DE PALMA SIGHTINGS
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Stephen Rea spotted De Palma "walking from one screening to another, and then later out in Yorkville, sitting on a rock in a pocket park in his trademark safari jacket, adjusting his iPod." Rea added that "De Palma is one of the fest's annual fixtures." The opening of Rea's post offers an interesting contrast of viewpoints:

Never mind health care, here's the real difference between the United States and Canada: Driving into the country from the States side of Niagara Falls, you pull up to the customs officer's booth; he asks you the purpose of your visit, and when you say you're covering the Toronto Film Festival, his next question is, "What's your favorite movie?" And then he tells you his (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and then he wants to know what's up with James Cameron's Avatar because he'd heard that it's going to revolutionize the moviegoing experience. And then: What are you looking forward to seeing in Toronto? Are there going to be a lot of stars?
Somehow I can't picture the Homeland Security dude on my return through New York asking me if the new Pedro Almodóvar is as good as All About My Mother.

And finally, Bill Chambers of Film Freak Central tweeted yesterday, "I think I just pissed off Brian DePalma." After someone asked him for more details, Chambers wrote, "It might be too abstract to sum up in a tweet. I should add that my DePalma encounters are always fantastically unpleasant."

Posted by Geoff at 6:11 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 6:20 PM CDT
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Thursday, September 10, 2009

DE PALMA AT TIFF
WELL, OF COURSE HE IS

Looks like Brian De Palma is attending his favorite film festival again this year in Toronto. This photo of the director was taken in Yorkville, and posted today at The Hollywood Minute. Meanwhile, Johanna Schneller at the Globe And Mail, looks at the reasons various people have for attending the Toronto International Film Festival. For her own self, she writes that she is looking for the type of chance encounter she had at last year's fest when she met De Palma:

And for me? I'm looking, as always, for moments of truth. I'm hoping for a chance encounter that gives me goosebumps, as happened in my final TIFF screening last year, where the gracious man I chatted with turned out to be Brian De Palma. I'm hoping for that rare unguarded flash when an actor says something personal enough to reveal something universal - like the time Dustin Hoffman said of his children leaving home for university, "Nobody tells you about the empty bedrooms," and his eyes filled with tears. (I can't tell you how many people I've mentioned that to when their kids fly off, and it's utterly true.)
I'm hoping for a film that makes my hair stand on end, and for a collection of them that shows us where we are as humans. So far, the ones I've seen are suffused with a sense of loneliness, of people fighting very hard simply to get by. Maybe it's just my state of mind (and credit-card bills).

Posted by Geoff at 6:12 PM CDT
Updated: Thursday, September 10, 2009 6:13 PM CDT
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Friday, September 12, 2008

REPORT FROM TALENT LAB
DE PALMA GIVES "SOLID ADVICE" TO YOUNG FILMMAKERS

Tom Quinn reports that he was honored to be "the first American filmmaker to take part in the Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab" last week. Quinn provides details of all the guest speakers at the Lab, including Brian De Palma. Of the latter, Quinn writes:

Brian De Palma kicked off the week by reminding us to always be assertive; to seize every opportunity. He spoke of meeting young filmmakers who complained about their lack of money and studio attention, or worse, filmmakers who did not take charge of their own careers. De Palma feels that breakthroughs in video technology over the past 10 years has erased any lingering excuses. "If you can’t go get a digital camera and get some actors together," he asked, "why are you here?" However, his best advice was regarding clear communication on set. "Be careful," he told us, "Not with what you’re saying, but what they’re hearing. Red to one means blue to another." Solid advice.

Posted by Geoff at 7:53 PM CDT
Updated: Friday, September 12, 2008 7:59 PM CDT
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Sunday, September 7, 2008

Holland & Koepp Nest Fest Reviews
GENOVA EVOKES ROEG'S DON'T LOOK NOW

Willa Holland is pictured here at last night's premiere for Middle Of Nowhere, one of two features she has premiering at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. We haven't seen any reviews yet for that film, but Michael Rechtshaffen at the Hollywood Reporter has filed a review of Holland's other Toronto film, Michael Winterbottom's Genova. While Rechtshaffen does not single out any specific evaluation of Holland in his positive review of the film, he does mention "fine performances," and states that Colin Firth is "well-cast." More interestingly, Rechtshaffen writes, "With Italy providing an evocative backdrop, not to mention an unsettling vibe that intentionally evokes Nicolas Roeg's 1973 classic, Don't Look Now, the tautly-choreographed, effectively acted film shouldn't have any trouble finding a distributor despite the generally downbeat tone." Interesting that the film stars Firth and evokes the Roeg film with its Italian setting, because Don't Look Now was one of the reasons Brian De Palma wanted to make Toyer, which was to star Firth, in Venice. There are many (including myself) who still hope De Palma's Toyer will get made someday.

KOEPP COMEDY A MODEST AFFAIR
Screen Daily has filed the first review of David Koepp's new film, Ghost Town, which premiered a couple of days ago at the Toronto fest. Calling it "a minor studio comedy," the review states that Koepp "has a light touch with the comic material and actors, and there's a sweetness to the supernatural storyline that gives the film its heart." Jeffrey Wells writes elsewhere that Ghost Town is "a playful mainstream studio wanker that has no business being in Toronto, really, except to satisfy the ambitions of its distributor, Paramount Pictures." Koepp collaborated with De Palma on a trio of films in the '90s: Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, and Snake Eyes.

LINKLATER PRESENTS A "DAZZLING" WELLES
Also of interest at Toronto, Richard Linklater's Me And Orson Welles has been reviewed by Screen Daily's Allan Hunter as "a sweetly entertaining putting-on-a-show period drama that celebrates a defining moment in the life of American theatre and one of its most iconoclastic stars." Hunter is particularly taken with Linklater's casting in the role of Orson Welles, writing:

If you are going to make a film about Orson Welles then you need an actor who can provide a brilliant impersonation of this colossus of the New York stage. They have found such an actor in Christian McKay who gives a superlative performance. He captures both the look and sound of Welles, convincing in every aspect from his sing song cadences to the mischievous twinkle that dances in his eyes. It is a performance that achieves the same kind of verisimilitude and depth that earned Philip Seymour Hoffman plaudits and a Best Actor Oscar for Capote.

Posted by Geoff at 4:10 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, September 7, 2008 5:02 PM CDT
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Friday, September 5, 2008

DE PALMA IS AT TORONTO FEST
DIRECTOR IS GUEST AT TALENT LAB
Brian De Palma had to cancel his master class at this year's Montreal Film Festival due to "serious dental surgery," also referred to as "killer dental surgery," and also as just plain old "crazy dental surgery." But we're happy to report that De Palma has safely made it to another of his regular festivals, the Toronto International Film Festival, where the director is a guest at this year's Talent Lab. De Palma, pictured top left in front of participants at the lab yesterday with Talent Lab governor Don McKellar (a multi-hat Canadian filmmaker who most recently wrote and acted in Fernando Meirelles' upcoming Blindness), has participated in the lab multiple times over the past few years.

It is there that he met producers Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss, who produced Redacted and will produce two more upcoming De Palma features. At right, De Palma is pictured with fellow Talent Lab guest, actress Samira Makhmalbaf, at last night's Talent Lab dinner.

WILLA HAS 'STAR QUALITY'

As mentioned in my post yesterday, not only will De Palma's friend and collaborator David Koepp be at the Toronto fest with a new film, but so will De Palma's step daughter, Willa Holland. Holland has two films premiering at this year's fest, and one of them has received a rave from Baz Bamigboye, a columnist for the U.K.'s Daily Mail. Bamigboye is quite taken with Holland, writing that the camera loves her, and that Michael Winterbottom's Genova shows that she is "blessed with star quality." Bamigboye writes, "There's a scene where she's riding pillion on a Vespa, the camera lingers a while on her face and we see the sense of panic, fear and grief she must be going through. I just hope this gifted young actress is allowed to continue to make brilliant choices." One of Holland's costars in Genova is Colin Firth, who earlier this decade was prepared to make a film with De Palma that has never yet panned out: Toyer, an adaptation of the play by Gardner McKay that De Palma wanted to make with Firth and Juliette Binoche, transfering its setting from Los Angeles to Venice. De Palma had written the screenplay himself, and it was reported that Ted Tally had worked on a revision, but the timing (Venice in the winter) never quite worked out for everyone involved.

Posted by Geoff at 10:51 AM CDT
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