The final additions to the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival have been announced and the supplemental films aren’t major names (as we predicted yesterday), but still significant and substantial.
The biggest major film added to the line-up not surprisingly is the Coen Brothers, “Burn After Reading,”* a CIA comedy that stars George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Brad Pitt. The flick comes out right as the festival ends (September 12) so it will only be premiering a scant few days early, but this is a regular TIFF occurrence. Also as predicted, Oliver Stone’s “W” wasn’t added to the final roster (despite some speculation that it might get added; we just read the script last night, it’s kind of delicious).
The other big announcement is that Torontonions and those visiting for the festival will get a sneak preview/ work-in-progress screening of “New York, I Love You” which includes vignettes directed Scarlett Johannson, Natalie Portman, Brett Ratner, Allen Huges (one half of the Hughes Brothers), Fatih Akin (the very excellent “The Edge Of Heaven” from earlier this year), plus more international names such as Yvan Attal, Randy Balsmeyer, Shunji Iwai, , Shekhar Kapur, Joshua Martson, Mira Nair, Jiang Wen and Andrey Zvyagintsev.
The film is set to star actors like Ethan Hawke, Shia LeBeouf, Kevin Bacon, Orlando Bloom, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Blake Lively, Robin Wright Penn, Rachel Bilson, Christina Ricci, Olivia Thirlby, Drea de Matteo, Jule Christie, rapper/poet Saul Williams and many, many more (PS, did you know Williams’ brother is Omar from “The Wire” aka Michael K. Williams)
The long awaited NYPD drama, “Pride and Glory,” starring Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight will also finally see its North American debut (it’s apparently up for sale if anyone wants it).
Other final additions include “The Lucky Ones,” starring Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins and Michael Pena; Rod Lurie‘s “Nothing But the Truth,” with Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga, David Schwimmer and Angela Bassett; “Who Do You Love,” starring Alessandro Nivola; “Dean Spanley,” starring Peter O’Toole and Sam Neill ; and “The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond,” featuring Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Evans and the inimitable Ellen Burstyn.
Also slated for TIFF ’08 is the Paris Hilton documentary “Paris, Not France“; Francois Richet’s “Public Enemy No. 1” with Vincent Cassel; Paul Schrader’s “Adam Resurrected,” with Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe; Nigel Cole’s “$5 a Day” with Christopher Walken; and Oliver Assayas’ “Summer Days” which is also at the New York Film Festival in late September.
There are a whopping 249 feature films in total, 76% of which are either world, international or North American premieres. The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4 – 13, 2008 and is the bell of the ball for the fall film fest season. It’s line-up also boasts Soderbergh’s “Che” biopic, Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Guy Ritchie’s “Rock N Rolla,” Spike Lee’s WWII drama “Miracle At St. Anna,” Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and many, many more prestige films. The entire list of films can be viewed here.
*You’ll notice we already had “Burn After Reading” listed in one of our last major TIFF ’08 updates. Turns out a friend told us it was scheduled to be there and we assumed this was common knowledge when we hadn’t even reported it yet (and no one else had either). So cool, we had it a little early inadvertently. 😉