Another Toronto Film Festival has come and whooshed by! I’ve been asked what my favourite films from this year’s fest are. And what a coincidence – I made a running video about them. Another coincidence? Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which won the Grolsch People’s Choice Award was my top film too. Frances McDormand needs to win all the awards for her role in it, where she plays a grieving mother who takes up a drastic move to solve the mystery of her daughter’s brutal death. Sam Rockwell, too, shines, in this film from director Martin Mcdonaugh, who brought us In Bruges and Seven Pyschopaths.
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The Rundown: Johnny Depp, Toronto Film Festival, Sam Smith
This week’s The Rundown comes to you from Greece, where I went to my cousin’s wedding. Opa! The stories… * It’s film festival season right now – and Johnny Depp seems to be getting some of the spotlight… Telluride in the Rockie Mountains just wrapped up – Johnny Depp’s Black Mass has had people talking about his turn as mobster boss Whitey Bulger. So too, is there buzz for Joel Edgerton. Talk of Depp being back on top form makes me very happy as he’s had a couple of misses lately. An actress who’s been receiving a lot of praise is Brie Larson, one of the finest underrated actresses around…
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Trapped in the Bubble – Highlights from Toronto Film Fest ’14
When you’re at a film festival, you’re in a bubble – a cinema-wide bubble that includes only the story playing out on the screen in front of you. Walking out of my second film of the fest, the bubble was popped by the news of Joan Rivers’ death. But hurrying off to catch another film on the oh-so-tight schedule meant there was only time for a few quick obit reads and celeb tweets before it was time to go back into it. And so my bubble grew, screening after screening, bigger and bigger, until I was deep inside a world where Jake Gyllenhaal was a entrepreneurial maniac and Minnie Driver the mother of a pop-star. While…
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TIFF 2014 Kickoff: From Girlhood to Mommy
The excitement of opening day was tempered by the news of Joan Rivers’ death. I, like many festival-goers, emerged from the a darkened cinema to discover that the 81-year old comedian and actress had died. The news came a week after she suffered cardiac arrest and had been in a serious condition in hospital in New York. As word spread through the festival, so too were memories shared of her acerbic wit and sharp tongue. May her feisty soul rest in peace. I consider Day 1 to be a success, as I managed to make it to all four of the films I had planned to see, as well as fit…
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The Toronto Film Festival – Howzit Canada!
Howzit T.Dot! So happy to be back in Toronto for a third time, covering the film festival. It’s the only time I get to visit Canada, which is a shame really, as I always enjoy being here and would like to experience the place without the rush of having to get myself to a darkened cinema on time. But that is the aim for the next few days. The festival runs until the 14th but I will be leaving just before that to go to LA for another set of interviews. So, today begins the frenetic pace of fitting in film-watching, moviestar-interviewing, press-conference-hopping and of course, since I’m training for…
