Toronto and New York Film Festivals of 2014

http://blogs.indiewire.com/bent/the-problem-with-the-imitation-game-20140915

Yesterday the Toronto Film Festival announced that Morten Tyldum's "The Imitation Game" won their annual People's Choice Award, and a predictable trajectory begins: Toronto will very likely get to brag that for the third year in a row (and sixth time in seven years) their audiences chose an eventual best picture Oscar nominee. It's a very safe choice to continue that tradition -- and also a very safe movie in general. Particularly compared to last year's TIFF People's Choice Award winner, which like "The Imitation Game," was a biopic of an extraordinary man who was brutally persecuted: "12 Years a Slave." Except unlike "The Imitation Game," "12 Years a Slave" was actually a brutal film to watch, and one that largely did justice to the horrors faced by its persecuted protagonist.

I'm already mixing up the Turing and Hawking biopics.

(maybe bcz i find Cumberbatch and Redmayne equivalently dreary)

No way ... one has an odd upsidedown squash-shaped head and the other one has succulent trout-lips for days.

too androgynous a trout.

Any port in a stream.

Laura Poitras to premiere her Snowden doc at NYFF (Opens NY/LA late Oct)

http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014/blog/laura-poitras-citizenfour-edward-snowden-nsa-nyff-world-premiere

Cumby has also played Hawking in a TV movie apparently

some tix were just released, got em for Mr. Turner!

nice its a goody

The new Film Comment has a lovely one-page interview with Spall; I didn't know he'd had leukemia in the late '90s.

an anticipated "2015 release" is the surprise screening, any guesses?

http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014/films/nyff52-surprise-screening

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

smartguy

"festival favorite"

Hou martial arts film?

wow, imagine. it wasn't terribly long since production wrapped, afaict; it would be a real get.

Oh, shit, if that is it, that would be incredible! But it could also be new Malick.

ach. these all feel to cannes-y, to me; isn't it more likely to be some small glossy state-funded european thing that'll be on VOD in march? i don't know who the nyff favs are.

apparently it's Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young

it was always weird that that movie wasn't playing at NYFF considering where the climax takes place

too obvious?

anyway i must bypass in favor of Hou-produced A Borrowed Life out in Queens, which has scarcely ever shown.

NYFF added encore screenings for Sunday (today it was Inherent Vice which quickly sold out); that's when I'm seeing the Hong Sang-soo. Otherwise unexpectedly impressed by Ferrara, pleased with Leigh, meh on Cronenberg.

also this Rod Serling-JL Makiewicz thing is free tomorrow, have always wanted to see:

http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2014/films/a-carol-for-another-christmas

the Hong is p splendid, maybe his best since Tale of Cinema

haven't seen tale of cinema but hill of freedom is wonderful!, yeah, just a delight. have a bunch to write about its structural tricksiness that i will try to bleat at you here tomorrow.

i loved it too