Like we said, whatever the Toronto International Film Festival wants it gets. What’s that? Venice is rumored to get the new Todd Solondz film, “Life During Wartime”? (it looks like he did drop the “Forgiveness” title, so much for that).
TIFF is like, “in your face!,” bam. They already have it. TIFF has revealed more of their 2009 line-up today and it’s getting better and better by the day (we swear TIFF ’08 didn’t look fantastic well into late August, so it bodes well for the rest of the line-up).
So Solondz’s film will make it’s North American premiere there and notice they don’t tout it as a world premiere and that’s probably because Venice bows out first. It’s a quasi-sequel to 1998’s “Happiness” and his first feature film since “Palindromes” in 2004. Welcome back, guy. It’s been a minute.
Also added to the festival which isn’t totally a surprise and things we have predicted are Pedro Almodovar’s”Broken Embraces” starring Penelope Cruz (which we already saw in Cannes), Lone Scherfig’s Sundance hit, “An Education,” which has everyone talking about newcomer Carrey Mulligan for an Oscar nomination. If Melissa Leo, who also peaked similarly early in her “Frozen River” Academy bid, was able to earn herself a nomination last year, it seems like Mulligan will probably be a shoe-in this year.
Other impressive additions that we predicted include the Cannes’ Jury prize winner, Jacques Audiard’s, “A Prophet.” Also bowing at TIFF is Samantha Morton’s directorial effort, “The Unloved” (possible score or help from Spiritualized? Her and J. Spacemen are tight friends), Gaspar Noé‘s Cannes-polarizing, “Enter The Void” and Lou Ye’s “Spring Fever,” that contains some controversial homosexual material that got the film banned in its native China.
Thirty eight new titles were announced in total, but these are the biggest highlights. The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10-19, 2009 and if we don’t get accepted we’ll cry. Remember all that in-depth coverage we did on our own dime last year? Yeah, tell someone is Toronto already so they’ll accept our application. And oh yeah, screw ComicCon, this Venice and TIFF news is 100x more exciting. [IndieWire]