Category Archives: TIFF ’11
Buzzed
As is often the case, it’s not whatcha know as much as it’s whoya know… and, in this case, it means I was invited, again, to participate in The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell‘s annual pre-TIFF feature called Chasing The Buzz, wherein li’l film-loving bloggers like me get to throw our 2¢ into the pot along with the pocket change from professional film columnists and reviewers, critics and professors, festival programmers and assorted muckety-mucks (Hello, Piers). What’s in the pot, you ask? Well, Pete wants us to explain–in a single sentence (although a garrulous few get away with more)–which three films we are most excited about seeing at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Take Shelter, dir. Jeff Nichols
Jeff Nichols wrote and directed one of my happiest discoveries of the past year, Shotgun Stories (2007), which also features the star of Take Shelter, the estimable Michael Shannon. (Okay, full disclosure: I have an extreme case of the h-h-hots for Mr. Shannon. Fair ’nuff? In fact, Shotgun Stories may have been the Shannon performance that hooked me. You might know him best as Agent Van Alden Awesome in HBO‘s “Boardwalk Empire”.) It is a quiet but devastating little film about a feuding family that I highly recommend–the writing and performances are beautiful.
It is on the basis of Shotgun Stories that I am keen to see Take Shelter. Again written by Nichols, it is the story of Curtis–a young husband and father and a crew chief for a mining company in the American Midwest–who may or may not be taking a frightening trip around the proverbial bend. I expect it will be up to the viewer to decide which is the case… as Curtis struggles to understand the same thing onscreen. Continue reading
West Memphis 3 freed
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory had made my TIFF ’11 shortlist and now it’s gotta go back under the knife for a new ending. Long time coming…