All shows take place at Amsterdam Brewery (21 Bathurst St., one block south of Front St. in Toronto).

To purchase tickets, or to see additional information on the organization, the films and the founders, visit openroomfilms.com.

Following a summer that has shown few flickers of life, this year’s TIFF, led by a Canadian entry, Barney’s Version, based on the late Mordecai Richler’s acclaimed novel, staring Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman, should be a test of the audience appetite for quality film and, more than in the most years, a rehearsal for the Oscar race.

At a jammed news conference Tuesday near the almost-complete Bell Lightbox (TIFF’s new headquarters, set to open Sept. 12), TIFF co-director Piers Handling vowed the festival would continue its quest to find the “little gems” that often premiere in Toronto with no profile only to later find international acclaim.

“We take great pride in our international role,” Handling said Tuesday. “Last year, for example, the Argentinian film, The Secret in Their Eyes, came to our festival with no North American distribution. It was bought here, and subsequently won the Oscar for best foreign-language film, and is still running in Toronto cinemas after a three-month run. This role of discovery is central to our mission, and, no doubt, there will be similar stories this year.”

Fifty-one films were announced at the opening press conference Tuesday. The festival should see visits by such stars as Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Helen Mirren, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Clive Owen, Colin Firth, Christopher Plummer, Ben Affleck, Hilary Swank, Christopher Plummer, and Natalie Portman. Major directors attached to the films on offer include Robert Redford, Michael Winterbottom, Woody Allen, François Ozon, Mike Leigh, Julian Schnabel, Stephen Frears and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Redford’s The Conspirator, about a young woman (Robin Wright) charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln, is among the most high-profile films to have its world premiere at TIFF. It also stars James McAvoy, Kevin Kline, and Evan Rachel Wood.

Mirren and Sam Worthington appear in John Madden’s The Debt, a thriller about three Israeli Mossad agents on a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal. Oscar-winner Cotillard headlines Guillaume Canet’s film, Little White Lies, about a group of friends forced to own up to the untruths they’ve been spinning about each other.

In Rabbit Hole, Kidman teams up with Aaron Eckhart to portray a couple devastated by the loss of their son. And in Beginners, with Ewan McGregor and Plummer, a son and father struggle to reaffirm their relationship after the elderly dad comes out of the closet.

With so many films in the festival (the remaining titles will dribble out through August), TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey said Tuesday that it is “always hard to pick and choose themes”.

“However, I think what we’re seeing is what we often do: filmmakers addressing the current issues in the world. Migration is a theme we’ve found in many films, and there are a lot of stories exploring tough family issues, particularly from American filmmakers. David Schwimmer’s film, Trust, is one that you’re going to want to see. It’s a very challenging film about what can happen inside a family.” It co-stars Owen and Catherine Keener.

Also in the lineup are Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller Black Swan, Affleck’s The Town (Jon Hamm, Blake Lively and Rebecca Hall), Andy De Emmony’s West Is West (the sequel to the acclaimed East Is East), Inarritu’s Biutiful (which won a best-actor prize for Bardem at Cannes), Rowan Joffe’s Brighton Rock (based on Graham Greene’s 1938 novel), Tony Goldwyn’s Conviction (with Swank and Sam Rockwell), Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Jack Goes Boating (Amy Ryan and John Ortiz), Schnabel’s Miral (about the establishment of an orphanage in Jerusalem in 1948), John Curran’s Stone (De Niro and Edward Norton), Frears’s Tamara Drewe (Jemma Arterton), Winterbottom’s The Trip (Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon) and Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (with an ensemble that includes Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts).

Last year, many of the films that came to TIFF with no North American distribution also left without any, only to get picked up in the months immediately following the festival. This year, Bailey predicted “it might be a little quicker,” but added “[the slower buy time] may just be the new reality. It’s hard to say.”

Whereas in past years the festival has boasted a lineup of 300-plus films, the number has been pared down slightly this year to between 280 and 290, a move Bailey explained as designed to “make the festival a little more manageable for those attending.”

To commemorate the 35th anniversary of the festival, TIFF also announced it will be offering free public screenings of seminal films in the festival’s history (Road Kill, Water, Crash) at the 550-seat Cinema One in Bell Lightbox. The organizers also tacked an extra day (Sept. 19) onto the festival for rescreenings of popular films. TIFF kicks off Sept. 9.

Source: The Globe and Mail

But now, with DVR penetration approaching 40%, according to Nielsen — and with more than 50% of ads skipped in DVR playback mode — some network executives acknowledge that they’re on-air promo efforts aren’t as effective as they once were.

So is it finally time for the broadcast networks to start promoting their offerings on one another’s air? It’s a thorny competitive issue that has stirred debate recently as the networks gear up to promote their fall 2010-11 program lineups.

Five years ago, the idea of the broadcast networks promoting their shows on rivals’ air would have been unthinkable. But now, at least one veteran TV audience analyst, Steve Sternberg, says the networks need to do it to remain competitively viable.

“If ABC could, for example, promote a new show on CBS, NBC and Fox at the same time, it would be like advertising on the Winter Olympics every night,” he said. “To simply ignore such a large group of potential viewers is ridiculous. Network ratings could easily go up by 10%-20% if they consistently promoted themselves on the other networks.”

But even while some network executives agree it might make sense in terms of reaching a broader audience, the technique isn’t likely to be embraced anytime soon, they said.

“From a marketing standpoint, I would love to do that,” said Rick Haskins, executive vp marketing at the CW. “But from a competitive standpoint, it raises a lot of issues. I’m not sure I’d love seeing a commercial for (CBS’) “Hawaii Five-0″ on CW. I think we’re a ways off from that.”

CBS marketing president George Schweitzer agreed. “I don’t see us selling time to ABC, NBC or Fox and vice versa,” he said.

Some other analysts take issue with Sternberg’s position. Don Seaman, vp-director of communications analysis at MPG, believes viewers would be confused after decades of conditioning to look for a new show solely on the network where they saw it promoted.

In the short term, networks are taking steps to enhance the power of on-air promos in the DVR era. For one, they’ve appropriated the last position in commercial pods for themselves. The position is less susceptible to skipping.

Haskins said the CW takes advantage of that by producing shorter on-air promos that direct viewers to the Web for more in-depth information. Indeed, with its younger audience, Haskins said the network uses up to 30% of its promo efforts online for some programs. “We’re making our on-air work harder to drive viewers online,” he said.

And most of the networks have started advertising on DVR platforms like TiVo. Tara Maitra, TiVo’s vp-GM of content services, said the company offers several kinds of program “tags.” One lets viewers know when they’re fast-forwarding through a promo with a static visual, and others redirect them to places where they can view longer clips or set up recording of programs. Ads also can be placed on TiVo’s home page.

Of course, it was TiVo that caused the ad-skipping headaches for the networks in the first place.

“Now we have solutions,” said Maitra, adding that since introducing its ad capability about 18 months ago, all but one of the broadcast networks have signed up for packages.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

For the Weinsteins to succeed requires two things that appear unlikely at this moment: The current leading bidders, Colony Capital and Ronald Tutor, must falter; and Disney must take a lower price, which it hasn’t been willing to do in months of talks so far.

Disney has made it clear it values Miramax at $700 million. The winning Tutor/Colony offer was $675 million, according to sources. The Weinsteins’ last offer with investor Ron Burkle, which Disney declined, was $565 million. Other investors were spurned who offered about $550 million.

It seemed the brothers’ final spark might have been extinguished Friday when the New York Post reported that Fortress Investments, another financial backer, was “out of the picture.”

The lead on the Post story said, “There will be no second chances for the Weinsteins.”

The Post, citing “a source with direct knowledge” of the Miramax negotiations, predicted that the Colony group would announce the closing of their Miramax deal Wednesday.

If that happens, the money would come from equity investments by Tutor, whose day job is CEO of Tutor-Perini construction, and Colony Capital, led by chairman and founder Tom Barrack, whose online bio credits him with overseeing placement of $45 billion in assets for his investors.

The deal was brought to Tutor by David Bergstein, CEO of Pangea Media Group, who has taken a backseat in the final stages of talks since Tutor brought in Colony as a partner. Instead, former Disney CFO Richard Nanula, now a partner at Colony, led the negotiations with Disney.

This investment might mean Tutor will take a more active role in movies. Over the past half-dozen years, Tutor has been a silent partner to Bergstein in Capitol, ThinkFilm and other deals; but in an interview two weeks ago, Tutor said he will be more involved and that Bergstein (who remains an adviser on the sale) won’t have an operational role in the new movie studio planned to exploit and rebuild Miramax.

Aside from running a global construction giant, Tutor also has a date Friday to be deposed (over his strenuous legal objections) in the involuntary bankruptcy action brought March 17 in federal court in Los Angeles by creditors against five companies controlled by Bergstein, at least one of which, R2D2, Tutor co-owned with Bergstein until January 2009. Bergstein also was ordered last Tuesday to be deposed Aug. 3 by federal Judge Barry Russell.

Tutor and Bergstein did not respond to a request for comment made through their attorney.

Tutor/Colony minority investors include Jim Robinson, CEO of Morgan Creek Prods., which apparently is in line to handle foreign sales for the proposed studio; and Gulf Capital, an investment firm in Abu Dhabi, which has been involved since Bergstein put the deal together for Tutor in April.

Tutor had said that actor Rob Lowe would not be part of the buying group, but the “Brothers and Sisters” star said in an interview last week that he is involved.

“We are right now in very heavy negotiating with Disney, and we’re governed by all these nondisclosures, so really all I can say is that it’s real, it’s on, it’s happening,” Lowe told Zap2it. “I think it’s going to close, and it’s going to be really, really exciting.”

There are estimated to be $150 million-$250 million in receivables over the next five years that go with the library, which will help reduce the buyers’ cost.

Tutor’s nondisclosure agreement with Disney expires Wednesday, which is when due diligence on the deal is supposed to be done, barring an extension.

If, however, the partners don’t line up all the financing or, if after gazing at the books they lower their offer and Disney balks again, then the deal still could fall apart.

If it does, the Weinsteins and Burkle are ready to re-open talks, and Fortress will be part of it. Although Burkle is expected to provide the equity investment, Fortress and a related hedge fund would handle the debt portion of the buy, which would probably be more than $200 million.

In a statement late Friday, Fortress said: “The New York Post’s report that Bob and Harvey Weinstein and Ron Burkle have lost the financial backing of Fortress Investment Group is patently false. Fortress remains committed to providing financial support for the Weinsteins’ and Mr. Burkle’s bid for Miramax. Our relationship with the Weinsteins and Mr. Burkle, also contrary to yesterday’s report, remains strong and constructive, and the group has ample financial backing to successfully pursue an acquisition of Miramax. We look forward to continuing to work closely with our partners in support of their efforts.”

The Weinsteins’ ace in the hole was supposed to be their 2007 exit agreement with Disney, which sources at the Weinstein Co. continue to insist requires the brothers’ approval before anyone else can remake a dozen of Miramax’s key franchise movies including “Halloween” and “Scary Movie.”

Tutor said in an interview two weeks ago that their group doesn’t believe it needs the Weinsteins’ approval for the sale of the assets or to remake those movies.

If Tutor/Colony does close, the Weinsteins are likely to assert those claims, keeping the sparks flying.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

For $15, guests will be treated not only to the movie, but also to up-and-coming local Toronto bands and an exclusive rooftop party. “Open Roof Films is unique because we’re showcasing different genres of talent in the film and music industry, wrapped up in a great rooftop patio experience,” says Michael MacMillan, co-founder of Open Roof Films and former CEO of Alliance Atlantis Communications. MacMillan is working with co- founders and fellow film enthusiasts Burzin Contractor and Sandra Singer to launch the series.

“Toronto is becoming an internationally recognized hot-spot for film, and we’re excited to be a part of this ever-evolving culture.”

The series features award-nominated and winning independent films from across North America, including Toronto-based drama “This Movie is Broken.” Others include “Tiny Furniture” (SXSW 2010 Narrative Feature Film Award Winner), “Lovers of Hate” (Sundance 2010 Grand Jury Prize Nominee), “Winnebago Man” (Hot Docs 2010 Audience Top 10) and a series of comedy shorts produced by the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival.

Every Rooftop Screening will begin with a sample of local musical talent like Little Black Dress, Girls on Stilts, Alright Alright and more. After the music, the audience will be treated to an exclusive program called “In Conversation With,” sponsored by Heineken, which gives film enthusiasts an opportunity to hear from established filmmakers about upcoming projects.

Open Roof Films is committed to supporting the Canadian film industry and will be directing any proceeds to local independent film production. They have also partnered with the POV Film Program – a registered charity dedicated to helping at-risk youth gain the skills and experience needed to secure employment in film, television, and commercial production. Select screenings will begin by showcasing a short film made by one of POV’s young filmmakers. (www.povfilm.org)

The screenings take place on Friday Aug 6, Thursday Aug 12, Friday Aug 13, Thursday Aug 19, Friday Aug 20, Saturday Aug 21 and Friday Aug 27, at a cost of $15 per show. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Evenings will kick off with the musical act, followed by Heineken’s “In Conversation With,” and the screening at 9:00 p.m. A bar and refreshments will be available throughout the evening. All shows take place on the rooftop of 200 Queens Quay W. (just north of Queens Quay and Simcoe), Toronto.

To purchase tickets, or to see additional information on the organization, the films and the founders, visit www.openrooffilms.com

Principals involved with Disney’s upcoming live-action pic toplining Jason Segel flew to Pixar headquarters in Emeryville, Calif., on Wednesday for a table read of the project with the animation powerhouse.

The involvement comes just months after Pixar helped shape reshoots for Disney’s upcoming sci-fi tentpole “Tron Legacy.”

In other words, this is the second recent example of the animation house assisting parent Disney with a live-action feature.

Some of the members of the so-called “Pixar Brain Trust” — filmmakers John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Michael Arndt, Bob Peterson and president Ed Catmull — were there for the consultations. Docter is a particularly avid Muppets fan, so he almost certainly was one of the attendees. On the Disney side, Muppets director James Bobin and producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman were likely in the room along with Segel. Neither Pixar nor Disney would comment.

Beyond whatever advice might have come down for the project at hand, the fact that Pixar has its fingers in the Muppets pie suggests that Disney, under the new regime of Rich Ross and Sean Bailey, is intent on taking advantage of its subsidiary’s storytelling abilities.

Pixar still is batting 1.000 with critics and commercially, with “Toy Story 3″ being its 11th hit in a row. The film has grossed $366.9 million since its June 18 release, becoming the top domestic grosser of the year, surpassing the $334.2 million collected by Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland.” (Worldwide, “Alice” still is far ahead with $1.02 billion in grosses; the global tally for “Toy” stands at $634.4 million as its international rollout continues.)

At the same time, the new Disney regime has been hampered by a string of underperformers — “When in Rome,” “The Last Song,” “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and the just-opened misfire “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” — that it inherited from the studio’s previous administration.

Despite his success at the Disney Channels, Ross has no feature filmmaking experience, and Bailey, though seasoned as a producer, is new to top studio management.

As they develop their own slate, the new Disney team is eager to avail itself of Pixar’s expertise — and the filmmakers involved don’t appear to harbor any reluctance about taking advice from Pixar, either.

“If you want to get good ideas, why not talk to the Brain Trust?” Bailey said several weeks ago in remarks about the “Tron” meet-up, which took place in March.

Using “Tron” and the Muppets as examples, Disney insiders point out that Ross and Bailey are building bridges between divisions, a shift in strategy from previous regimes, where departments were less communicative and more focused on their own projects.

On the Pixar side, there doesn’t seem to be resistance to helping out the live-action unit at Disney. The sessions, at least so far, lasted only a day each, though after the “Tron” event, Arndt wrote some pages for the already-scheduled reshoots.

In Wednesday’s session, Disney execs clearly were hoping to identify and avoid potential problems before shooting begins. The Muppets movie is not officially greenlighted, and a possible outcome from the daylong get-together might be some rewrites.

The exchanges during the sessions have been described as “very honest” by some, “nerve-racking” by others. “You’re in the presence of people who have never had a misfire,” one “Tron” attendee said.

At Pixar, Catmull and Lasseter intentionally foster a collaborative but rigorous atmosphere in which their filmmakers’ work is reviewed regularly by their peers.

Speaking this year at a conference on innovation that the Economist held in Berkeley, Calif., Catmull said: “We have a structure so they get their feedback from their peers. Every two or three months, they present ‘the film’ to the other filmmakers, and they will tear the film apart. And it’s very important for that dynamic to work because it could be a brutal process; there needs to be the feeling they are all helping each other who wants that help.”

When Catmull and Lasseter took over Disney’s animation unit, they used the same process to fine-tune Disney toons like last year’s “The Princess and the Frog” — which offered the Pixar Brain Trust a thank-you in its end credits — and the upcoming “Tangled.”

What remains unclear is how often and on which other live-action movies Disney plans to ask for the Pixar touch.

With its whimsical mix of puppets and humans, the Muppets pic seems to fall within the Pixar wheelhouse; in the case of “Tron,” the filmmakers turned to Pixar — Lasseter is a big fan of the original “Tron” — for help in enriching the emotional tone and fleshing out the characters for the sci-fi tale set inside the world of computers.

“There are a lot of Muppet fans up there at Pixar. Both sides were excited and curious,” one Disney insider said. “I wouldn’t read too much into it. Pixar is acting more as a friend of the court.”

Souce: The Hollywood Reporter

The 10-minute movie was discovered by the American cinema historian, Paul Gierucki, who bought a can of old film marked “Keystone” at an antiques sale in Michigan.

He assumed it was just another Keystone Cops movie and didn’t watch the 16mm reel for months.

When he finally looked at the film, which is in good condition, he was amazed to see what looked like Chaplin emerging from the bushes in a police uniform, several sizes too big, armed with a nightstick.

Mr Gierucki couldn’t tell immediately but the actor’s distinctive twitches seemed to confirm that it was Chaplin playing a minor role in one of his earliest films.

He showed it to a fellow film collector, Richard Roberts, who said: “I looked at it two seconds and said ‘Yep, it’s Chaplin.’ Even though he’s dressed as a cop, the rest of the character is still there – the moustache, the walk, the mannerism. This is a character he’d been doing for quite a while.”

In the film Chaplin, who had yet to become famous, uses physical gestures that he would later employ for his most memorable, bumbling character The Tramp. After wiggling and shrugging in a way familiar to millions of filmgoers he delivers some instant slapstick justice by knocking around a group of hooligans.

The movie was made by Mack Sennett for his Keystone film company which produced a series of films about a group of incompetent policemen, the Keystone Cops, between 1912 and 1917.

Many other future stars including Gloria Swanson and Fatty Arbuckle, also began their Hollywood careers at the Keystone studio in Edendale, California.

Sennett had hired Chaplin, then a vaudeville star, in 1913 to make silent movies and A Thief Catcher is thought to have been the second or third film he made for Keystone. The film was shot from January 5 to 26.

It starred Ford Sterling, famous as the chief of the Keystone Cops, and he also directed.

The film also starred the now less famous names of Mack Swain and Edgar Kennedy, with Chaplin appearing on screen for three minutes.

It will be shown publicly this weekend at the annual Slapsticon film festival in Arlington, Virginia.

Organisers believe it is the first time the film has been shown since soon after its release on the eve of the First World War in 1914.

Chaplin made dozens of films between 1914 and 1967 but A Thief Catcher was never listed in his filmography, either by himself or the British Film Institute. It is the first title added to the list in 60 years and becomes the 82nd Chaplin film.

The London-born actor recalled in his autobiography that, apart from his starring role in Keystone comedies, he had also played bit parts as a “Keystone cop” in several films, but he did not give the titles and they were thought to be lost.

More than half of all silent films ever made are thought to no longer exist but A Thief Catcher is not the first to be rediscovered.

A trove of 75 missing Hollywood works, including the 1927 romance Upstream by Oscar-winning director John Ford, were recently found in a film archive vault in New Zealand.

Source: The Telegraph

Three of the dramas on CBS and ABC this month come from Toronto, the result of deals with Canadian networks to share the shows — and the costs. Last week the CW network joined the trend, buying repeats of a Canadian sitcom called “18 to Life.”

Network executives say that without the deals, their summer schedules would be carrying fewer new scripted hours and, in their place, more repeats and reality shows.

“This is not a business model to build a network schedule around, but it enhances your ability to program more originals year round,” said Chris Ender, a spokesman for CBS.

The deals with counterparts to the north started during the writers’ strike in 2007-8, when networks in the United States were desperate for fresh material. At that time CBS picked up “Flashpoint,” a police drama from the Canadian network CTV that is now in its third season and is shown in both countries.

Until “Flashpoint,” no Canadian series had also been shown in the United States since “Due South” in 1994 — and it only lasted one season in the states.

Last year two Canadian imports, “The Listener” on NBC and ‘Defying Gravity” on ABC, both flopped. But the networks have tried again this summer, with “The Bridge” on CBS and “Rookie Blue” on ABC.

Displaying confidence in the cross-border approach, ABC and its partner, Canwest Broadcasting, renewed “Rookie Blue” for a second season last week, although it has averaged only 4.2 million viewers in the United States. At that rating, the return on investment was sufficient.

“Rookie Blue” is a classic co-production between ABC and Canwest, the result of a deal that was struck last year. “At the right deal point, it was worth us taking a shot at finally putting money where our mouth was and doing original summer dramas,” said Quinn Taylor, the senior vice president for movies, mini-series and acquisitions at ABC. “It was a risk worth taking, and it’s paid off so far.”

New York magazine reported last week that ABC pays as little as $350,000 an episode for “Rookie Blue.” Mr. Taylor declined to comment on the deal terms. But three people at the networks said $350,000 is the average license fee for each of the imports on ABC and CBS, and one of the people said the fees for an episode were sometimes even lower. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose financial terms.

Networks typically pay a license fee well above $1 million an episode, so the savings on the Canadian shows are substantial — and fewer viewers need to tune in to turn a profit. Canadian tax credits help keep the production costs especially low for all the parties involved.

Network executives say the deals for each show are a little different, but the benefits are the same. The United States networks save money, the Canadian networks get to “put more money on the screen,” and the producers get a bigger audience for their work, said Susanne Boyce, the president for creative, content and channels for CTV, which commissioned “Flashpoint” and “The Bridge.”

“For years we’ve been bringing in fantastic programs from the U.S.,” she said. “It’s nice to do the reverse.”

For the Canadian producers, a United States showing also raises the value of a show in other international markets, where they often recoup their costs.

The networks dislike the notion that they are skimping on quality. “Advertisers still want the ABC brand, the ABC quality, so we have to be very diligent about that,” Mr. Taylor said.

It is a coincidence that the three Canadian dramas are all police series. At least the CW network’s acquisition, “18 to Life,” breaks the mold: it is a romantic comedy that is taped in Montreal and shown on CBC. It will start in the United States in August.

Dawn Ostroff, the president of entertainment for CW, said the deal was a way to “have more content on the network in the summer that’s original to our audience.” It has no other scripted series planned until September.

Having fresh scripted shows, whatever country they are from, on the networks in the summer — a season when viewers gravitate to cable for top dramas — gives marketers a platform to promote fall shows, the ones that cost far more than $350,000 an episode.

Ms. Boyce said she expected that Canadian shows, having found a foothold here in the summer, would eventually start to appear on the more-prominent fall schedules as well.

Other than an occasional mention of a “constable” or a sighting of the Toronto skyline, the national origin of these shows is undetectable to most American viewers. North of the border, viewers are more vigilant. One Canadian reviewer of “The Bridge” lingered on the fact that the bar where the police officers retreat after work “screams Boston or New York,” not Canada.

Fest organizers tapped Canadian director Michael McGowan’s music-driven homage to hockey, toplined by Olivia Newton-John and Nelly Furtado as a hockey zealot, to kick off their 35th edition with a glitzy world premiere at Roy Thomson Hall.

The coming-of-age movie portrays a sheltered 17-year-old, played by newcomer Noah Reid, going from zero to hero on the ice in a matter of weeks. Think “Glee” with sticks and skates as hockey players croon while slapping a puck round an ice rink.

“Plan for a fun night on Sept. 9,” festival co-director Cameron Bailey said after choosing the Canadian pop culture crowd-pleaser with 19 original songs woven into the movie’s dialogue.

The announcement of the festival’s 2010 opening-night film was suitably made Wednesday morning at the Hockey Hall of Fame in downtown Toronto.

The fest is looking to appeal with its first-nighter to Canadians who grew up with a hockey stick in their hands and makeshift goalie nets in their driveways.

TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling added the movie will be memorable for pairing hockey, which is to obsessive Canadians what baseball is to Americans, with a unique musical style and comic sensibility.

Canada, recently beating Team USA to win the hockey gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, should provide a convenient backdrop to this year’s TIFF opener.

McGowan, who also penned the script for “Score,” wrote the song lyrics that are put to music for the movie by the Barenaked Ladies, Newton-John, Amy Sky, Hawksley Workman and singer-songwriter Marc Jordan.

Jordan and Newton-John, who play the highbrow parents of the young hockey star, also co-wrote and perform a song for the indie movie’s end credits.

The movie’s ensemble cast includes Allie MacDonald, Stephen McHattie and Dave Bidini of the rock band Rheostatics.

McGowan was previously at TIFF with the 2008 road movie “One Week” and the 2004 drama “Saint Ralph,” both of which were boxoffice hits.

The festival last year opened with a foreign-made film, Jon Amiel’s Charles Darwin biopic “Creation,” so Toronto was, per tradition, likely to return to the Canadian fold for its launch.

The $5.3 million “Score” was produced by Mulmur Feed Co. Production, and was shot in and around downtown Toronto last February and March.

McGowan and Avi Federgreen share the producer credits, with Richard Hanet and Jody Colero executive producing.

About half of the film’s budget came from Telefilm Canada, the federal government’s film financer, with added coin was drawn from the Ontario MediaDevelopment Corporation, Astral Media’s Harold Greenberg Fund, and federal and Ontario tax credits.

Mongrel Media will release the picture in Canada in October to take advantage of an expected TIFF media splash.

TIFF will make added film programming announcements in the coming weeks, ahead of this year’s Sept. 9-19 run.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The flashback is not pharmacology-related. Egoyan is thinking about the bizarre connections and friendships you make on the festival circuit, an increasingly focused group of filmmakers who are finding themselves pushed to the fringes once again.

After enjoying two decades in the sun, thanks to the commercially and critically successful careers of Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson, independent filmmakers are now looking at a much different picture.

As studios continue to minimize risk while maximizing returns, the place for new and original voices continues to shrink.

That’s why Egoyan is looking forward to awarding the next Golden Apricot, top prize at the forthcoming Yerevan International Film Festival in Armenia, where the Toronto-based director will be leading the jury alongside the likes of one-time Italian bombshell Claudia Cardinale and director Claire Denis.

It’s also why Egoyan is working hard on a new “crazy little movie” that will be part of the opening festivities for the Bell Lightbox, the new home of the Toronto International Film Festival opening in September.

Festivals lit the fuse on Egoyan’s career with Family Viewing and The Adjuster. Now, he wants to give back.

“The reality is that [festivals] may well represent the last form of theatrical exhibition for certain kinds of filmmakers,” says Egoyan.

“Once upon a time, it used to be, you’d go to a festival to make a sale and get a wider distribution deal. Now, the festival circuit is the means of distribution.”

Egoyan speaks in a matter-of-fact tone. Able to transcend the pettier concerns of a frequently petty industry, thanks to a sophisticated world view, trenchant sense of humour and healthy dose of Canadian humility, Egoyan sees the shifting business model as the result of technological change and financial trepidation.

“I noticed the shift really started happening in the mid-’90s, when independent movies became the new American dream,” he says.

Egoyan says the romantic ideal of making a movie motivated by personal expression — not commercial pressure — got wound up with the American ethos and quickly became a beacon for wannabes.

“Very quickly, things became oversaturated,” says Egoyan, whose own career rose above the flood with the success of The Sweet Hereafter.

“[The movement] made people really excited about independent film, but often without the attendant education [in film].”

Egoyan points to the endless parade of Quentin Tarantino emulators as a prime example of where things started to derail.

“What you have to remember about Tarantino is the depth of knowledge behind everything he does. He’s a brilliant filmmaker because he knows so much about cinema and film history. He’s like Scorsese — his knowledge is encyclopedic,” he says.

“People want to be Quentin without understanding that Quentin really has the knowledge.”

The result of too much emulation was a zombie march into irrelevance, and the subsequent downward spiral of a workable independent business model.

Egoyan says filmmakers have to be creative and collaborative if they want to stay afloat in the current tidal pool. He points to Chloe, his last feature starring Amanda Seyfried debuting on DVD this week, as a case in point.

Chloe was based on a French movie called Nathalie that did well in Europe, but never made the transatlantic flight with any great success.

“It was a different movie in a lot of ways, and when I got the script, I just couldn’t abide the ending. The original has (Liam Neeson’s) character going to the house and killing her. That’s it.”

Without unveiling the end in Egoyan’s reel, Seyfried’s character does find a splinter of redemption by the final credits. A young prostitute who develops a frightening fascination for a female doctor (played by Julianne Moore), Chloe could have been a very standard femme fatale: hauntingly beautiful, eerily sexy and absolutely icy in every part of her life except the boudoir.

Egoyan warms her up with a very human breath, because he sees Chloe as a social victim.

“Sex workers have an incredibly difficult job. It’s hard to remove yourself from a moment in order to do the work you need to do . . . but Chloe succumbs to something with Catherine.”

When Egoyan cast Seyfried in the part, she was unknown. Mamma Mia! had yet to hit theatres and Letters to Juliet was still ink in the pot.

“I look like a genius, because she’s the hottest actress in the world right now. But she wasn’t well known. I cast her as Chloe because she felt real.”

Egoyan was eager to keep Chloe riding a sharp psychological edge, but he says the “sledgehammer” marketing of the movie blunted some of the impact. “They used gunshots in the trailer,” says Egoyan, adding there were no gunshots in the actual film. “They had their own ideas about how to market it.”

For now, Egoyan says he’s focused on wrapping 8 1/2 screens, one of several shorts commissioned for the Bell Lightbox opening.

“It’s a fun project. Guy Maddin is also doing (a short). They’ve given me the run of an empty theatre, which is great.

“The whole facility is pretty impressive. It’s one of the best I’ve seen of its kind,” says Egoyan of the new multiplex in downtown Toronto. “Expectations are pretty high. We need this. We need the shared experience of watching together.”

Source: Canwest News Service