Director Wang talks to ScreenDaily about working with Takeshi Kitano.
Us-based director Wayne Wang, known for films such as The Joy Luck Club, Smoke and Maid In Manhattan, wrapped his shoot with iconic Japanese actor Beat Takeshi, a.k.a. Takeshi Kitano, for suspense mystery While The Women Are Sleeping in Tokyo on Saturday (July 11).
Kitano, the award-winning actor/director of films such as Zatoichi, Beyond Outrage and Hana-bi, uses the name Beat Takeshi when he works as an actor or performer.
Based on Javier Marias’ short story of the same title published in The New Yorker, While The Women Are Sleeping debuted in early form at Busan’s 2013 Asian Project Market.
Shot mostly in Izu, the film is about Sahara (Kitano), a mysterious older man who is at a resort with his young girlfriend. It is told from the point of view of Kenji, a writer who is also visiting the resort for a week with...
Us-based director Wayne Wang, known for films such as The Joy Luck Club, Smoke and Maid In Manhattan, wrapped his shoot with iconic Japanese actor Beat Takeshi, a.k.a. Takeshi Kitano, for suspense mystery While The Women Are Sleeping in Tokyo on Saturday (July 11).
Kitano, the award-winning actor/director of films such as Zatoichi, Beyond Outrage and Hana-bi, uses the name Beat Takeshi when he works as an actor or performer.
Based on Javier Marias’ short story of the same title published in The New Yorker, While The Women Are Sleeping debuted in early form at Busan’s 2013 Asian Project Market.
Shot mostly in Izu, the film is about Sahara (Kitano), a mysterious older man who is at a resort with his young girlfriend. It is told from the point of view of Kenji, a writer who is also visiting the resort for a week with...
- 7/13/2015
- by hjnoh2007@gmail.com (Jean Noh)
- ScreenDaily
Though his career’s wandered down plenty of other interesting (Smoke) and less interesting (Because Of Winn-Dixie) paths, director Wayne Wang will always best be known as the premier chronicler of the lives of Chinese-Americans and Chinese in America on screen, from his influential debut Chan Is Missing to The Joy Luck Club. It’s a subject he’s returned to recently with 2007’s digitally shot double feature A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers and The Princess Of Nebraska, and in Snow Flower And The Secret Fan, he takes a step further, setting the film entirely in China. Adapted ...
- 7/14/2011
- avclub.com
Scream 4
Opens: April 15th 2011
Cast: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Mary McDonnell, Emma Roberts Director: Wes Craven
Summary: Sidney Prescott, now the author of a self-help book, returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book tour. There she reconnects with family and friends, but it also brings about the return of Ghostface which puts the whole town in danger.
Analysis: Back in late 1996 when I first began covering film news, "Scream" was released and became more than just a sleeper hit. After years of genre movies being relegated to direct-to-video status, this comedic slasher spawned the biggest surge in the horror film genre since "Halloween" almost two decades before. Its post-modern stylings and witty self-aware dialogue went on to be a big influence on films and television in general.
Yet the "Scream" series itself never could quite capture that glory again. By the time the...
Opens: April 15th 2011
Cast: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Mary McDonnell, Emma Roberts Director: Wes Craven
Summary: Sidney Prescott, now the author of a self-help book, returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book tour. There she reconnects with family and friends, but it also brings about the return of Ghostface which puts the whole town in danger.
Analysis: Back in late 1996 when I first began covering film news, "Scream" was released and became more than just a sleeper hit. After years of genre movies being relegated to direct-to-video status, this comedic slasher spawned the biggest surge in the horror film genre since "Halloween" almost two decades before. Its post-modern stylings and witty self-aware dialogue went on to be a big influence on films and television in general.
Yet the "Scream" series itself never could quite capture that glory again. By the time the...
- 3/8/2011
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
DVD Playhouse—June 2009
By
Allen Gardner
The International (Sony) An Interpol agent (Clive Owen) joins forces with a Manhattan D.A. (Naomi Watts) to bring down an arms dealing ring and a corrupt global banking cartel that’s funding them. Superlative thriller was oddly ignored by critics and audiences alike, but expertly blends intelligence (courtesy screenwriter Eric Warren Singer’s masterfully-crafted script) and full-throttle action (director Tom Tykwer stages one of the great film shoot-outs in New York’s iconic Guggenheim Museum), making this dynamite thriller reminiscent of the best work from masters such as John Frankenheimer and Robert Aldrich. Armin Mueller-Stahl is wonderful as a world-weary covert op. Bonuses: Extended scene; Featurettes; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
The Jack Lemmon Film Collection(Sony) Five films from the two-time Oscar winning actor, focusing on his early career: Phfft! is a zippy comedy from 1954, one of Lemmon’s earliest films, in which...
By
Allen Gardner
The International (Sony) An Interpol agent (Clive Owen) joins forces with a Manhattan D.A. (Naomi Watts) to bring down an arms dealing ring and a corrupt global banking cartel that’s funding them. Superlative thriller was oddly ignored by critics and audiences alike, but expertly blends intelligence (courtesy screenwriter Eric Warren Singer’s masterfully-crafted script) and full-throttle action (director Tom Tykwer stages one of the great film shoot-outs in New York’s iconic Guggenheim Museum), making this dynamite thriller reminiscent of the best work from masters such as John Frankenheimer and Robert Aldrich. Armin Mueller-Stahl is wonderful as a world-weary covert op. Bonuses: Extended scene; Featurettes; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
The Jack Lemmon Film Collection(Sony) Five films from the two-time Oscar winning actor, focusing on his early career: Phfft! is a zippy comedy from 1954, one of Lemmon’s earliest films, in which...
- 6/3/2009
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Director Wayne Wang, best known for his adaptation of Amy Tan’s celebrated novel The Joy Luck Club, has kept himself at the forefront of Asian-oriented filmmakers even while making a variety of crowd-pleasing commercial films (Maid in Manhattan, Last Holiday). This collection of two of his latest films, both low-budget works shot on HD, is a great way to get acquainted with a unique filmmaker of considerable skill. Although the films vary in quality of both filmmaking and performance, there is no denying both pose interesting questions about Chinese or general Asian identity and their place in and outside of China.
The stronger of the two films, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, is a meticulous study of character. In the film, an aging Mr. Shi travels to America to visit his daughter Yilan, recently estranged form her husband. Mr. Shi is played by Henry O, until now relegated...
The stronger of the two films, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, is a meticulous study of character. In the film, an aging Mr. Shi travels to America to visit his daughter Yilan, recently estranged form her husband. Mr. Shi is played by Henry O, until now relegated...
- 5/27/2009
- by Mark Zhuravsky
- JustPressPlay.net
Director Wayne Wang, best known for his adaptation of Amy Tan’s celebrated novel The Joy Luck Club, has kept himself at the forefront of Asian-oriented filmmakers even while making a variety of crowd-pleasing commercial films (Maid in Manhattan, Last Holiday). This collection of two of his latest films, both low-budget works shot on HD, is a great way to get acquainted with a unique filmmaker of considerable skill. Although the films vary in quality of both filmmaking and performance, there is no denying both pose interesting questions about Chinese or general Asian identity and their place in and outside of China.
The stronger of the two films, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, is a meticulous study of character. In the film, an aging Mr. Shi travels to America to visit his daughter Yilan, recently estranged form her husband. Mr. Shi is played by Henry O, until now relegated...
The stronger of the two films, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, is a meticulous study of character. In the film, an aging Mr. Shi travels to America to visit his daughter Yilan, recently estranged form her husband. Mr. Shi is played by Henry O, until now relegated...
- 5/27/2009
- by Mark Zhuravsky
- JustPressPlay.net
- After a crazy year where they brought six or seven titles to Cannes (including Tulpan, Waltz with Bashir) in various competition categories, this year The Match Factory bring only a pair of titles in Ajami and Kinatay. Nonetheless, they also bring along their batch of well-performing films from Berlin. They aren't a production company, but highly selective sales company that work with producer's from all over the world. And that is why I'm including them in this producer's patch series. Update: they just included Aktan Arym Kubat’s next feature The Light to their stable. Contact High by Michael Glawogger - Completed The Dust Of Time by Theo Angelopoulos - Completed Ajami by Scandar Copti - Completed Dorfpunks by Lars Jessen - Completed Germany 09 (Deutschland 09) by Fatih Akin - CompletedGIGANTE by Adrián Biniez - Completed Kinatay by Brillante Mendoza - Completed The Milk Of Sorrow by Claudia Llosa -
- 5/14/2009
- IONCINEMA.com
Faye Yu And Henry O In Director Wayne Wang'S A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers. Courtesy Magnolia Pictures. Wayne Wang's work has always been about a balance of contrasts, whether it be Chinese and American, classical and experimental, or independent and Hollywood. Wang was born in Hong Kong in 1949 and moved to the U.S. in his late teens to study film and television at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. He made his directorial debut in 1975 with A Man, a Woman, and a Killer (on which he is co-credited alongside Rick Schmidt) but it was his sophomore effort, Chan is Missing (1982), an intimate and realistic portayal of Chinese Americans, that brought him to prominence. He continued to depict immigrants and first...
- 10/1/2008
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
In essence, Wayne Wang's <i>A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers </i>consists of a single critical conversation. But the participants have been putting it off their whole lives, and it takes some building up to. So most of the film consists of empty exchanges and long, quiet pauses; as days pass, they fail to express themselves, and the tension gradually builds, until speaking finally becomes easier than silence. The wait is sometimes keen, sometimes dull. But just as it often happens in real life, once everything finally comes to the surface, it feels anticlimactic. Henry O stars as a Chinese widower visiting his only child, American immigrant and recent divorcée Faye Yu. He's a self-confessed bad father with no understanding of her relationship, her American life, or her adult personality; she's a quiet, withdrawn woman with no interest in baring her soul to her long-estranged dad. So he cooks and.
- 9/26/2008
- by Tasha Robinson
- avclub.com
Wayne Wang's new film "The Princess of Nebraska," from Magnolia Pictures, will make its world premiere on YouTube on Oct. 17. It will be released for free on the recently launched YouTube Screening Room, a channel dedicated to premium film content.
Magnolia is releasing another new film of Wang's, "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," theatrically on Sept. 19. But it opted to release his companion film, "Nebraska," online as part of a larger distribution plan for the two films.
"Nebraska" and "Prayers" are both adapted from a collection of short stories by Yiyun Li. They mark the seventh and eighth of Wang's Asian-themed films that explore the bonds of family and Chinese identity in the modern world.
"The Princess of Nebraska" is about a young woman from China who tries to locate her identity through different kinds of new media," Wang said. "The piece was shot with this kind of...
Magnolia is releasing another new film of Wang's, "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," theatrically on Sept. 19. But it opted to release his companion film, "Nebraska," online as part of a larger distribution plan for the two films.
"Nebraska" and "Prayers" are both adapted from a collection of short stories by Yiyun Li. They mark the seventh and eighth of Wang's Asian-themed films that explore the bonds of family and Chinese identity in the modern world.
"The Princess of Nebraska" is about a young woman from China who tries to locate her identity through different kinds of new media," Wang said. "The piece was shot with this kind of...
- 9/11/2008
- by By Gregg Kilday
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
San Sebastian, Spain -- Wayne Wang's U.S. film A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the Golden Shell at the 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival, official jury chair Paul Auster said Saturday.
Henry O. took the best actor honor for his portrayal in Prayers, which centers on a Chinese widower who visits his recently divorced only daughter in the U.S. Blanca Portillo picked up the actress prize for her role in Gracia Querejeta's 7 Billiards Tables, from Spain.
Nick Broomfield won best director for his U.K. docudrama The Battle for Haditha, about the war landscape in Iraq.
The 18-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf saw her directorial debut, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (Iran-France) -- which centers on a 6-year-old girl's efforts to learn the alphabet in Afghanistan -- take the special jury prize. The jury said the "first feature by a extremely young director impressed the jury with its exquisite cinematography and the remarkable performance by the child actress Nikbakht Noruz."
The jury called Shame "a promising debut by a filmmaker whom we hope will go on to create important works in the future."
Makhmalbaf also won the newly created Other Look Award, sponsored by Spanish pubcaster Television Espanola, which supports the film that best depicts the "female universe" by acquiring Spanish broadcast rights.
Henry O. took the best actor honor for his portrayal in Prayers, which centers on a Chinese widower who visits his recently divorced only daughter in the U.S. Blanca Portillo picked up the actress prize for her role in Gracia Querejeta's 7 Billiards Tables, from Spain.
Nick Broomfield won best director for his U.K. docudrama The Battle for Haditha, about the war landscape in Iraq.
The 18-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf saw her directorial debut, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (Iran-France) -- which centers on a 6-year-old girl's efforts to learn the alphabet in Afghanistan -- take the special jury prize. The jury said the "first feature by a extremely young director impressed the jury with its exquisite cinematography and the remarkable performance by the child actress Nikbakht Noruz."
The jury called Shame "a promising debut by a filmmaker whom we hope will go on to create important works in the future."
Makhmalbaf also won the newly created Other Look Award, sponsored by Spanish pubcaster Television Espanola, which supports the film that best depicts the "female universe" by acquiring Spanish broadcast rights.
- 10/1/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Like his new A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska centers on a Chinese character recently arrived on American soil. This time, it's a very young woman carrying a baby she isn't ready for.
Princess doesn't dovetail with Prayers the way Wang's pair of 1995 releases, Smoke and Blue in the Face, did, even though they share some general cultural ingredients. If each of these new titles appeals to a limited audience, the number of viewers who will appreciate both is smaller still. In the case of Princess, the tight narrative focus it shares with Prayers is colored by a bleaker outlook and edgier visual style, placing it squarely in the art house arena.
Sasha, a fairly unsympathetic girl, is from Beijing by way of Omaha. She has flown to San Francisco to meet a Westerner, Boshen, who isn't her child's father but is involved in some way we don't initially understand. We're not even certain what it is he's about to help her do -- Arrange an abortion? Make plans to sell the child or find adoptive parents? -- but we know they aren't especially fond of each other.
Boshen is more solicitous, though, than she is of him. He invites her to a dinner party, where Sasha alienates a bunch of upper-class Chinese-Americans and rifles through their purses when nobody's looking. (Later, she'll casually steal a family's shopping bag in a mall food court.) Bored, she sets out on her own to Chinatown, where an ugly night awaits.
Shot in a much more seat-of-the-pants style than Prayers, the film is as casual about framing as Sasha is about manners. Its colors tend toward the lurid or fluorescent, and its perspective sometimes shifts so that we see action through the viewfinder of Sasha's cell-phone camera. The style suits her night-time adventure, as she meets the tough-girl "X," who may be a prostitute and is definitely unsavory, and proceeds to get drunk in places she has no business being.
The source of Sasha's problems is revealed much as the troubles are in Prayers -- at the end of some fruitless wandering, to be followed by an ambiguous resolution. Here, the outlook is bleaker, stranding the expectant mother in the center of a very empty frame. Moving on, we're told in the film, is a very American idea -- viewers are left to guess whether Sasha can put anything behind her or will be carrying her mistakes for a very long time.
THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA
No Distributor
California Asian American Media
Credits:
Director: Wayne Wang
Co-director: Richard Wong
Writer: Michael Ray
Based on the short story by Yiyun Li
Producers: Yukie Kito, Donald Young
Executive producers: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Stephen Gong
Director of photography: Richard Wong
Production designer: Amy Chan
Music: Kent Sparling
Editor: Deirdre Slevin
Cast:
Sasha: Ling Li
Boshen: Brian Danforth
X: Pamelyn Chee
Running time -- 77 minutes
No MPAA rating...
TORONTO -- Like his new A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska centers on a Chinese character recently arrived on American soil. This time, it's a very young woman carrying a baby she isn't ready for.
Princess doesn't dovetail with Prayers the way Wang's pair of 1995 releases, Smoke and Blue in the Face, did, even though they share some general cultural ingredients. If each of these new titles appeals to a limited audience, the number of viewers who will appreciate both is smaller still. In the case of Princess, the tight narrative focus it shares with Prayers is colored by a bleaker outlook and edgier visual style, placing it squarely in the art house arena.
Sasha, a fairly unsympathetic girl, is from Beijing by way of Omaha. She has flown to San Francisco to meet a Westerner, Boshen, who isn't her child's father but is involved in some way we don't initially understand. We're not even certain what it is he's about to help her do -- Arrange an abortion? Make plans to sell the child or find adoptive parents? -- but we know they aren't especially fond of each other.
Boshen is more solicitous, though, than she is of him. He invites her to a dinner party, where Sasha alienates a bunch of upper-class Chinese-Americans and rifles through their purses when nobody's looking. (Later, she'll casually steal a family's shopping bag in a mall food court.) Bored, she sets out on her own to Chinatown, where an ugly night awaits.
Shot in a much more seat-of-the-pants style than Prayers, the film is as casual about framing as Sasha is about manners. Its colors tend toward the lurid or fluorescent, and its perspective sometimes shifts so that we see action through the viewfinder of Sasha's cell-phone camera. The style suits her night-time adventure, as she meets the tough-girl "X," who may be a prostitute and is definitely unsavory, and proceeds to get drunk in places she has no business being.
The source of Sasha's problems is revealed much as the troubles are in Prayers -- at the end of some fruitless wandering, to be followed by an ambiguous resolution. Here, the outlook is bleaker, stranding the expectant mother in the center of a very empty frame. Moving on, we're told in the film, is a very American idea -- viewers are left to guess whether Sasha can put anything behind her or will be carrying her mistakes for a very long time.
THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA
No Distributor
California Asian American Media
Credits:
Director: Wayne Wang
Co-director: Richard Wong
Writer: Michael Ray
Based on the short story by Yiyun Li
Producers: Yukie Kito, Donald Young
Executive producers: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Stephen Gong
Director of photography: Richard Wong
Production designer: Amy Chan
Music: Kent Sparling
Editor: Deirdre Slevin
Cast:
Sasha: Ling Li
Boshen: Brian Danforth
X: Pamelyn Chee
Running time -- 77 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/17/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- One of two new small-scale films from Wayne Wang (both based on stories by Yiyun Li), A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is modest but moving, a finely observed portrait of a father/daughter relationship that will resonate deeply for many viewers. The scale may limit its pull in the art house arena somewhat, but Chinese-Americans and viewers from other immigrant communities will appreciate its themes.
The story of a man who doesn't know his daughter at all, Prayers showcases an affecting performance by Henry O as Mr. Shi, who has just arrived in Spokane from China to see daughter Yilan for the first time in 12 years. The two greet each other stiffly when he emerges from the airport gates, and Yilan clearly has little idea what to do with him; heading out to work on his first day in town, she suggests that he should "take it easy" and might want to walk to the park.
Shi has higher hopes than that, taking constant notes in order to improve his English and shopping for what he needs to cook in Yilan's underequipped kitchen. For the next few nights, they will see each other only at dinner, where he makes much more food than the two can eat.
Though Shi is eager to make up for lost time (he innocently snoops around her apartment during the day, looking for insight), his daughter spends less and less time at home. Shi (whose wife died of cancer) makes friends at the park with an Iranian woman, and we come to get the point that, if rejecting one's parents is common in many cultures, it's doubly so for immigrants hoping to assimilate in a new environment. Shi and Madam, as he calls her, have amusingly piecemeal conversations in which three languages are spoken but only one understood.
Until the film's end, when some causes of family tension are finally brought to the surface, this is about all that happens. Wang's empathy for Mr. Shi, and O's dignified persistence in what appears to be a doomed effort to connect, draw us in and keep us from becoming bored. (An 83-minute running time helps in that respect.)
At one point, Yilan repeats a friend's idea that people would be better at raising children if they could somehow be grandparents before becoming parents. She doesn't seem to see the obvious corollary, that we are often far more forgiving of our grandparents' perceived faults than of our parents'. "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" waits patiently for her to piece it together.
A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS
No Distributor
North by Northwest
Credits:
Director: Wayne Wang
Writer: Yiyun Li
Based on the short story by Yiyun Li
Producers: Yukie Kito, Rich Cowan, Wayne Wang
Executive producers: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Jooick Lee
Director of photography: Patrick Lindenmaier
Production designer: Vincent De Felice
Music: Lesley Barber
Co-producer:
Costume designer: Lisa Caryl
Editor: Deirdre Slevin
Cast:
Yilan: Faye Yu
Mr. Shi: Henry O
Madam: Vida Ghahremani
Boris: Pasha Lychnikoff
Running time -- 83 minutes
No MPAA rating...
TORONTO -- One of two new small-scale films from Wayne Wang (both based on stories by Yiyun Li), A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is modest but moving, a finely observed portrait of a father/daughter relationship that will resonate deeply for many viewers. The scale may limit its pull in the art house arena somewhat, but Chinese-Americans and viewers from other immigrant communities will appreciate its themes.
The story of a man who doesn't know his daughter at all, Prayers showcases an affecting performance by Henry O as Mr. Shi, who has just arrived in Spokane from China to see daughter Yilan for the first time in 12 years. The two greet each other stiffly when he emerges from the airport gates, and Yilan clearly has little idea what to do with him; heading out to work on his first day in town, she suggests that he should "take it easy" and might want to walk to the park.
Shi has higher hopes than that, taking constant notes in order to improve his English and shopping for what he needs to cook in Yilan's underequipped kitchen. For the next few nights, they will see each other only at dinner, where he makes much more food than the two can eat.
Though Shi is eager to make up for lost time (he innocently snoops around her apartment during the day, looking for insight), his daughter spends less and less time at home. Shi (whose wife died of cancer) makes friends at the park with an Iranian woman, and we come to get the point that, if rejecting one's parents is common in many cultures, it's doubly so for immigrants hoping to assimilate in a new environment. Shi and Madam, as he calls her, have amusingly piecemeal conversations in which three languages are spoken but only one understood.
Until the film's end, when some causes of family tension are finally brought to the surface, this is about all that happens. Wang's empathy for Mr. Shi, and O's dignified persistence in what appears to be a doomed effort to connect, draw us in and keep us from becoming bored. (An 83-minute running time helps in that respect.)
At one point, Yilan repeats a friend's idea that people would be better at raising children if they could somehow be grandparents before becoming parents. She doesn't seem to see the obvious corollary, that we are often far more forgiving of our grandparents' perceived faults than of our parents'. "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" waits patiently for her to piece it together.
A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS
No Distributor
North by Northwest
Credits:
Director: Wayne Wang
Writer: Yiyun Li
Based on the short story by Yiyun Li
Producers: Yukie Kito, Rich Cowan, Wayne Wang
Executive producers: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Jooick Lee
Director of photography: Patrick Lindenmaier
Production designer: Vincent De Felice
Music: Lesley Barber
Co-producer:
Costume designer: Lisa Caryl
Editor: Deirdre Slevin
Cast:
Yilan: Faye Yu
Mr. Shi: Henry O
Madam: Vida Ghahremani
Boris: Pasha Lychnikoff
Running time -- 83 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/14/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Related story: Three at fest headed to IFC
Related story: Christie's digital gets screen billing
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its most American-friendly lineup in years, capped off with new titles from Renny Harlin, Paul Schrader and Robin Swicord.
Toronto boasts no official competition. But the Hollywood contingent booked for the twice-nightly gala screenings at Roy Thomson Hall looks set to turn the high-profile venue into an industry shindig.
Among the six new gala titles are Harlin's "Cleaner", a Sony Pictures Entertainment thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a cop-turned-crime scene cleaner; the Richard Attenborough-directed love story "Closing the Ring", starring Shirley MacLaine, Mischa Barton and Neve Campbell; and Schrader's "The Walker", a ThinkFilm release starring Woody Harrelson and Lauren Bacall that comes to Toronto by way of Berlin, Cannes and Sydney.
Also joining the Roy Thomson Hall party are two Sony Pictures Classics releases: Kenneth Branagh's Michael Caine-Jude Law starrer "Sleuth", which first bowed in Venice, and Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club", starring Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and Maria Bello. Also booked for a gala is French director Alain Corneau's "Le Deuxieme Souffle", starring Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci.
Those titles join such earlier Roy Thomson Hall entries as Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe", Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream", Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton", Gavin Hood's "Rendition", Terry George's "Reservation Road" and Aristomenis Tsirbas' "Terra".
Toronto, which in recent years has stepped up efforts to make its festival more Hollywood friendly, also has included 28 U.S.-produced films in its 50-strong Special Presentations sidebar.
The latest Special Presentations titles include the Michael Moore documentary "Captain Mike Across America", Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Melisa Wallack and Bernie Goldmann's "Bill", Gillian Armstrong's "Death Defying Acts" and Jason Reitman's "Juno", the follow-up to "Thank You for Smoking", which was a Toronto festival breakout hit two years ago.
Also joining today are the latest works from Jonathan Demme, Alison Eastwood, Brian De Palma, Thomas McCarthy and Anand Tucker.
Toronto will unspool 352 films between Sept. 6 and 15 -- 261 features and 91 shorts. The lineup includes 101 world premieres and 108 North American premieres, many of which will bow in Venice before jumping the pond to Toronto. In addition, 71 of the films are directorial debuts.
The festival lineup promises a strong French contingent, including a dozen titles arriving in Toronto with U.S. distribution deals in hand.
High-profile French titles looking for U.S. distribution include Amos Gitai's "Disengagement", Claude Chabrol's "La Fille Coupee En Deux", which will bow in Venice, and Eric Rohmer's "Les Amours D'Astreet et De Celadon," another North American premiere by way of Venice.
John Kochman, executive director of Unifrance USA, said the strong French presence in Toronto is due primarily to festival co-directors Piers Handling and Noah Cowan remaining "unreconstructed Francophiles" eager to program French titles in their event.
Other new titles announced Wednesday include Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska" and "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," both portraits of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Wang will bring the two indie titles films to the festival's Masters program.
Toronto added eight more documentaries to its Real to Reel section, including films by Paul Crowder and Murray Lerner, Olga Konskaya and Andrea Nekrasov, Julian Schnabel, Ran Tal, Philippe Kholy and Grant Gee.
In addition, the previously announced "Body of War", co-directed by Ellen Spiro and talk show legend Phil Donahue, will see its premiere accompanied by a live performance by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who wrote original songs for the Iraq documentary.
The festival has its usual complement of films about war and political protest that, according to festival co-director Noah Cowan, reflect a "seriousness of purpose and a real sense of drive to tell political stories."
"In many ways, the body of films recalls the American independent movie of the 1970s," he added.
American auteur films including Alan Ball's "Nothing Is Private", a drama about sexual politics and bigotry set against the backdrop of the 1991 Gulf War, De Palma's war drama "Redacted" and Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" reflect anti-war "provocation," Cowan said.
Toronto's lineup also includes a surprising number of crime-themed dramas, including Alexi Tan's "Blood Brothers", a drama about three friends taking on a life of big-city crime; Comeau's fugitive drama "Le Deuxieme Souffle"; Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a thriller about a botched robbery; Brad Furman's "The Take", about the aftermath of an armored car heist; and Ira Sachs' "Married Life", a drama about a husband who kills his wife to spare her the shame of divorce.
Cowan said that the crime-themed movies this year recall the '70s-era vigilante movies that coincided with Vietnam.
"When the U.S. is faced with wars that are frustrating in their inability to be totally understood, that comes out in their films," Toronto's top programr said.
"Just as the 1970s, there's films that reflect paranoia about government and police corruption and which come from a frustration and rage about what's happening in the world," he added.
Other Toronto highlights announced Wednesday include talks by President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, an update on Bill Maher and Larry Charles' anti-religion documentary and a briefing on the ongoing crisis in Darfur courtesy of International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Don Cheadle.
Toronto is set to open Sept. 6 with Jeremy Podeswa's "Fugitive Pieces" and close 10 days later with another Canadian film, Paolo Barzman's "Emotional Arithmetic".
A complete list of titles screening at Toronto follows:
Galas:
"Across the Universe", Julie Taymor, U.S.
"L'Age Des Tenebres", Denys Arcand, Canada
"Blood Brothers", Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong
"Caramel", Nadine Labaki, Lebanon/France
"Cassandra's Dream", Woody Allen, Britain
"Cleaner", Renny Harlin, U.S.
Related story: Christie's digital gets screen billing
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its most American-friendly lineup in years, capped off with new titles from Renny Harlin, Paul Schrader and Robin Swicord.
Toronto boasts no official competition. But the Hollywood contingent booked for the twice-nightly gala screenings at Roy Thomson Hall looks set to turn the high-profile venue into an industry shindig.
Among the six new gala titles are Harlin's "Cleaner", a Sony Pictures Entertainment thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a cop-turned-crime scene cleaner; the Richard Attenborough-directed love story "Closing the Ring", starring Shirley MacLaine, Mischa Barton and Neve Campbell; and Schrader's "The Walker", a ThinkFilm release starring Woody Harrelson and Lauren Bacall that comes to Toronto by way of Berlin, Cannes and Sydney.
Also joining the Roy Thomson Hall party are two Sony Pictures Classics releases: Kenneth Branagh's Michael Caine-Jude Law starrer "Sleuth", which first bowed in Venice, and Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club", starring Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and Maria Bello. Also booked for a gala is French director Alain Corneau's "Le Deuxieme Souffle", starring Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci.
Those titles join such earlier Roy Thomson Hall entries as Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe", Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream", Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton", Gavin Hood's "Rendition", Terry George's "Reservation Road" and Aristomenis Tsirbas' "Terra".
Toronto, which in recent years has stepped up efforts to make its festival more Hollywood friendly, also has included 28 U.S.-produced films in its 50-strong Special Presentations sidebar.
The latest Special Presentations titles include the Michael Moore documentary "Captain Mike Across America", Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Melisa Wallack and Bernie Goldmann's "Bill", Gillian Armstrong's "Death Defying Acts" and Jason Reitman's "Juno", the follow-up to "Thank You for Smoking", which was a Toronto festival breakout hit two years ago.
Also joining today are the latest works from Jonathan Demme, Alison Eastwood, Brian De Palma, Thomas McCarthy and Anand Tucker.
Toronto will unspool 352 films between Sept. 6 and 15 -- 261 features and 91 shorts. The lineup includes 101 world premieres and 108 North American premieres, many of which will bow in Venice before jumping the pond to Toronto. In addition, 71 of the films are directorial debuts.
The festival lineup promises a strong French contingent, including a dozen titles arriving in Toronto with U.S. distribution deals in hand.
High-profile French titles looking for U.S. distribution include Amos Gitai's "Disengagement", Claude Chabrol's "La Fille Coupee En Deux", which will bow in Venice, and Eric Rohmer's "Les Amours D'Astreet et De Celadon," another North American premiere by way of Venice.
John Kochman, executive director of Unifrance USA, said the strong French presence in Toronto is due primarily to festival co-directors Piers Handling and Noah Cowan remaining "unreconstructed Francophiles" eager to program French titles in their event.
Other new titles announced Wednesday include Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska" and "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," both portraits of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Wang will bring the two indie titles films to the festival's Masters program.
Toronto added eight more documentaries to its Real to Reel section, including films by Paul Crowder and Murray Lerner, Olga Konskaya and Andrea Nekrasov, Julian Schnabel, Ran Tal, Philippe Kholy and Grant Gee.
In addition, the previously announced "Body of War", co-directed by Ellen Spiro and talk show legend Phil Donahue, will see its premiere accompanied by a live performance by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who wrote original songs for the Iraq documentary.
The festival has its usual complement of films about war and political protest that, according to festival co-director Noah Cowan, reflect a "seriousness of purpose and a real sense of drive to tell political stories."
"In many ways, the body of films recalls the American independent movie of the 1970s," he added.
American auteur films including Alan Ball's "Nothing Is Private", a drama about sexual politics and bigotry set against the backdrop of the 1991 Gulf War, De Palma's war drama "Redacted" and Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" reflect anti-war "provocation," Cowan said.
Toronto's lineup also includes a surprising number of crime-themed dramas, including Alexi Tan's "Blood Brothers", a drama about three friends taking on a life of big-city crime; Comeau's fugitive drama "Le Deuxieme Souffle"; Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a thriller about a botched robbery; Brad Furman's "The Take", about the aftermath of an armored car heist; and Ira Sachs' "Married Life", a drama about a husband who kills his wife to spare her the shame of divorce.
Cowan said that the crime-themed movies this year recall the '70s-era vigilante movies that coincided with Vietnam.
"When the U.S. is faced with wars that are frustrating in their inability to be totally understood, that comes out in their films," Toronto's top programr said.
"Just as the 1970s, there's films that reflect paranoia about government and police corruption and which come from a frustration and rage about what's happening in the world," he added.
Other Toronto highlights announced Wednesday include talks by President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, an update on Bill Maher and Larry Charles' anti-religion documentary and a briefing on the ongoing crisis in Darfur courtesy of International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Don Cheadle.
Toronto is set to open Sept. 6 with Jeremy Podeswa's "Fugitive Pieces" and close 10 days later with another Canadian film, Paolo Barzman's "Emotional Arithmetic".
A complete list of titles screening at Toronto follows:
Galas:
"Across the Universe", Julie Taymor, U.S.
"L'Age Des Tenebres", Denys Arcand, Canada
"Blood Brothers", Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong
"Caramel", Nadine Labaki, Lebanon/France
"Cassandra's Dream", Woody Allen, Britain
"Cleaner", Renny Harlin, U.S.
- 8/23/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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