"If we don't make our own stories, then no one will," said Mira Nair before her Amelia Earhart biopic Amelia kicked off the inaugural Doha-Tribeca Film Festival, held from Oct. 29 through Nov.1 in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. The Indian-born Nair was talking to a diverse outdoor crowd of more than 5,000 viewers -- a combination of locals, expats, celebs, foreign dignitaries, and a healthy contingent of international industry and press. So Nair's "we," much like the festival itself, encompassed a broad range of identities.

While many of the 30-plus movies screened by the Doha Fest presented the latest work from Middle Eastern filmmakers (including Asghar Farhadi's Berlin Best Director winner About Elly and Bahman Ghobadi's Cannes award-winner No One Knows About Persian Cats), the program also reflected an effort to showcase films about women, often of the headstrong variety: Besides Amelia, the slate included Jane Campion's Bright Star, Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel, and Lone Scherfig's An Education, among others.

Movies exploring the East-West connection were also prevalent, including Ruba Nadda's touching romance Cairo Time, featuring Patricia Clarkson as a married American in Cairo falling for a charming Egyptian (played by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Alexander Siddig), and Liz Mermin's Audience Award-winning documentary Team Qatar, about the country's first national high school debate team, coached by a team of Oxford grads.

Continue reading "Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, and Mira Nair Help Inaugurate Doha-Tribeca Film Festival" »

The Toronto International Film festival wound down Saturday night -- and, between you and us here at AMCtv.com News, it's been a busy ten days running from interviews to red carpet premieres to press conferences.

But even as Toronto got quiet on this last day of the festival, the people spoke: The winners of the Cadillac People's Choice Awards were announced today. There were many movies with strong promise going into the People's Choice Award balloting; some suggested that a sympathy vote would earn Heath Ledger's last film, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus the prize (vote for your favorite Gilliam film here), while others thought Jason Reitman's recession drama Up in the Air was a strong contender. At the end of the day, though, the overall People's Choice Award had two runners-up -- Mao's Last Dancer and Micmacs -- while the top prize went to Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. Precious, which also won the audience award at Sundance, is the first film in history to win the audience honors at both festivals and marks it as a strong contender come Oscar season.

Continue reading "TIFF 2009 - Precious Takes Audience Honors at Toronto" »

It's not hard to find strange movies at the Toronto International Film Festival: In the past week, you could have enjoyed a musical set in '50s Russia set in the underground world of swing dancing with Hipsters -- or a surreal, sweet, G-rated comedy told through stop-motion animation done with '60s-era toys in A Town Called Panic. And it's not hard to find stars in Toronto, either, as you can tell from our coverage here at AMC, with stars from Viggo Mortensen to Matt Damon sitting down for chats.

One movie at this year's festival, however, combined strangeness and star power -- Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare at Goats, which stars Ewan McGregor as a reporter who stumbles across a veteran (George Clooney) of the Army's psychic warfare program. Based on a non-fiction book by Jon Ronson, the high-powered cast includes not only Clooney and McGregor but also Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey. Clooney, McGregor and Bridges were all up in Toronto to push the movie through non-psychic means, from an exclusive party (where Robert Duvall and Peter Sarsgaard competed with live goats for partygoer's attentions) to the film's rollicking press conference.

Continue reading "TIFF 2009 - Clooney Demonstrates His Psychic Ability With The Men Who Stare at Goats" »

Jordan Scott is a first-time feature film director, but she's not new to show business. Her festival entry, the boarding school thriller Cracks, is a Scott Free production, the company founded by her filmmaker dad, Ridley, and uncle Tony, also a director.

The movie was described by Vanity Fair as The Children's Hour meets Lord of the Flies and Scott told me she finds the description apt. The movie centers around mischievous young women in a British boarding school instructed by Miss G (Eva Green). "The most important thing in life," Miss G tells her students, "is desire." It's not exactly what you might expect from a boarding school teacher, and that's exactly the point, said Scott.

Cracks is based on the 1999 novel by Sheila Kohler. This movie is one Scott feels can apply to any time and place, not just the 1930s, when its set. The film, unlike the novel which takes place in South Africa, is set in England and was filmed in Ireland, one of the many TIFF09 films shot there. Scott told me she switched locales because of her own British upbringing and schooling, which created a sense of personal connection for her.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is slated to close the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night and there are several reasons why it may end up being director Terry Gilliam's best movie: Not only does it promise a fantastical and unusual story filled with surreal surprises -- but it is also graced with Heath Ledger's last performance, as well as those by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. After its December release in theaters, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is sure to rank high amongst Gilliam's most well-known works --Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- to name a few.

In the meantime, what's Terry Gilliam's best movie so far? 

With The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, author and director Rebecca Miller adapts her own novel for the big screen. The movie stars Robin Wright-Penn as the title character, a woman dealing with the changing years, and changing loves, of her life. Surprisingly funny while still being real, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee gave actors Wright Penn and Keanu Reeves a unique challenge -- working with a novelist, screenwriter and director who all happened to be the same person.

I asked Wright Penn if it was intimidating to not have the normal wiggle room in the difference of opinion between the director and the writer -- or if it was liberating to work with someone whose understanding of the material was so self-contained? Wright Penn explained that in every case, Miller was in charge: "There were moments when I'd say 'OK, maybe she wouldn't be... maybe...' and Rebecca goes, 'No, she is actually. OK? She just is.' So, you have to have that faith and trust..." Miller interjected: "And if you don't have that [trust], you're fired."

Continue reading "TIFF 2009: Keanu Reeves Compares Working on Pippa Lee to Physics" »

Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino came by our studio at TIFF09 to discuss I Am Love. It's a story of the well-to-do Recchi family who get together to celebrate the birthday of the family's patriarch, and from there, cracks begin to emerge.

In our conversation, Swinton and Guadagnino said they've been trying to make the movie for more than a decade, but that it seems relevant now more than ever. The TIFF09 program compared the story of the troubled family to Shakespeare's King Lear, but Swinton and Guadagnino saw more parallels to another film in the festival, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.

While one may not look to a story about aristocrats in Milan -- much less ones inspired by Madame Bovary -- as a populist tale, Swinton and Guadagnino begged to differ.

One of the biggest success stories out of this year's Toronto International Film Festival has to be the purchase of the A Single Man by the Weinstein Company -- and the attendant buzz that suddenly has vaulted the movie into the awards race. Starring Colin Firth as a man adrift after the death of his longtime lover, the movie marks the feature film directorial debut of noted fashion designer Tom Ford.

At the press conference for the movie, I asked Firth if he felt any trepidation about working with a director who'd never made a movie before. "Never trepidation. I mean, it couldn't have been further from trepidation," recalled Firth. "There are a million different ways you can be a wonderful director. If you are working with a highly imaginative, highly intelligent person with an extraordinary set of skills ... it was nothing but intrigue from the beginning, really. It was a day or two into shooting where I realized that we had harmonized in terms of what we were both wanting to do. It was never really much of a tussle."

Continue reading "TIFF 2009 - Colin Firth Found Working With First-Time Director Tom Ford on A Single Man Intriguing" »

The Informant! is director Steven Soderbergh's new movie based on the true story of Mark Whitacre, the highest-ranking corporate whistle blower in U.S. history. Whitacre decided to turn against his employer, Archer Daniels Midland, but in so doing found himself, and not just his bosses, in hot water. The movie, from Warner Bros. and Participant Media, tells many stories: Corporate corruption, big agriculture's role in the lives of American consumers, and the very human story of Whitacre himself. As you may have seen if you follow AMC News on Twitter, I spoke with Matt Damon at The Informant! premiere over the weekend. Take a look at this clip airing all this week on AMC.

For more late-breaking updates from the Toronto Film Festival, follow AMC News on Twitter. 

When Eve and Juliette Lewis stopped by our AMC News set at TIFF09 to talk about Whip It, we discussed what it was like learning to become a derby girl -- skating on a slanted track ready to take a spill... and adopting names like "Rosa Sparks" and "Dinah Might." Whip It, which stars Ellen Page as a derby novice, premiered at TIFF09 (see pictures from the premiere on the AMC News Twitter feed) and it's Drew Barrymore's feature directorial debut. According to her stars, she got good reviews from them and their fellow castmates. Take a look at our conversation.

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To read what Drew Barrymore had to say at the movie's press conference, click here.