As both a market and a launch-pad for fall titles, TIFF remains an essential barometer for indie film in terms of high-profile pictures, stars and distribution deals.

The 2008 edition of TIFF saw Summit Entertainment pay top dollar for Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” while Fox Searchlight snapped up Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” with Mickey Rourke’s comeback performance, after a first-weekend bidding war.

To top it off, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” picked up the 2008 People’s Choice Award in Toronto, voted on by festival audiences, after a world premiere here.

But TIFF, like rival festivals internationally, struggled last year as indie film buyers and sellers ran into a crisis-era market.

Bidding wars never emerged, and the only seven-figure deals were The Weinstein Company acquiring Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” and Sony Worldwide Acquisitions’ purchase of Canadian director Peter Stebbings’ “Defendor.”

Elsewhere, a slew of high-profile indie pics that came into Toronto without North American distribution deals went home empty-handed, and had to wait until after the festival, and especially to AFM, for reluctant distributors to finally pull the trigger on deals.

With Toronto now gearing up for a new Sept. 9 to 19 installment, hope springs anew among festival organizers that the industry gloom from the 2009 financial market meltdown may be lifting.

“The years of bidding wars are over,” cautioned Toronto festival director Piers Handling.

But deals will get done, Handling added, just not at the festival, with acquisition titles in Toronto more likely to sell in the weeks and months after the festival wraps.

“Every festival has noticed this: Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, where a lot of deals used to be done. It’s definitely a buyer’s market. Buyers can sit and wait for prices to come down, assess whether they actually want to invest the resources,” he said.

Toronto has made only its first programming announcements so far, with roughly 80% of its lineup still be unveiled in the coming weeks.

Festival co-director Cameron Bailey predicts roughly half of the festival’s 270 to 280 films this September will be eyeing U.S. distribution.

“There’s lots of acquisition titles coming in this year. Robert Redford’s ‘The Conspirator’ will come without a distributor, and that’s one all the buyers will be looking to see,” he said.

Other high-profile acquisition titles already announced for Toronto include Emilio Estevez’ “The Way,” a family drama that stars Martin Sheen, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Biutiful,” which earned a best-actor prize for Javier Bardem at Cannes, and Barry Blaustein’s “Peep World.”

Whether these and other acquisition titles will get picked up in Toronto any faster than last year, Bailey is uncertain.

“It might be a little quicker this year, or that may just be the new reality. It’s hard to say,” he said of slow buying times in 2009.

Even when Toronto titles are bought, either before, during or after the festival, acquisition prices will be lower than might have been secured in better times.

“Advances are decreasing, so people are not getting as much money for their films,” Handling observed.

“Films that used to have bidding wars in the past, especially in the States because there’s only one or two key companies left, there’s a buyers market today. Whether that will continue for how many years, no one knows at this stage of the game,” he added.

Away from the market, even the Toronto festival will feel the cold wind of the studio and indie film downturn.

“Everyone is looking at their bottom line. They plan shorter stays at the festival. The parties will be toned down, or producers will hold smaller sit-down dinners,” Handling predicted.

But Toronto’s role in introducing Oscar contenders or fall titles remains strong, he adds.

“People still see this (festival) as an important launch-pad. If they have a film they want to launch in the fall, or for the awards season, there’s still lots of pressure to get those films to Toronto,” Handling said.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Toronto-based Rogers on Tuesday saw second quarter earnings rise 13% to $464 million, against a profit of $374 million in 2009, as overall revenue climbed 5% to $3.02 billion, against a year-earlier $2.89 billion.

Wireless revenue was up 5% to $1.7 billion, while cable revenue rose 4% to $790 million.

The media giant pointed to continued revenue and subscriber growth “from efficiency gains” across wireless, cable and Internet businesses.

At the same time, Rogers signed up 119,000 new wireless phone customers during the latest financial quarter, against 142,000 in the year-earlier period, as sector competition heats up.

To fend off new market entrants, Rogers recently introduced a discount prepaid wireless brand, Chatr, with unlimited talk and text offerings.

Rogers also sliced bandwidth caps on cable broadband services for new customers to deal with the upcoming entry of Netflix into the Canadian online movie rental market.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

So, too, does his “work ethic and maybe my blind stupidity of just putting your head down and pushing through it,” adds Gander, Nfld.-born Peyton, whose first big-budget movie, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, opens Friday.

It’s quite a leap for a young producer-director probably best known to hip Canadian TV viewers as the creative force behind the darkly funny stop-motion claymation What It’s Like Being Alone, which ran on CBC in 2005. Its animated cast of freakish orphaned kids earned a loyal following.

Peyton spoke to the Star last week while visiting Toronto.

Q: Did you have to tone the darker elements of your sense of humour down to make a studio picture?

A: I showed the movie to a friend of mind and he said, “It’s very much a family movie but it’s very much you.” I have a dark sense of humour and they don’t want a whole lot of that in Cats & Dogs (he laughs). But when you have someone like Bette Midler as Kitty Galore on your side and she is going to these fun, dark places, then you have a partner in crime. I really liked working with Bette and I really liked the character of Kitty Galore — a hairless cat who accidentally fell into a vat of bikini cream. It’s ridiculous and a little twisted and that’s pretty much me.

Q: Did you do much writing on the movie?

A: I had input and worked with the screenwriters a lot. I feel as a director on a big movie you constantly work with them. When the actors come in to voice record, you want to give them some freedom. I don’t know if there’s one line from Bette that stayed the same. I also liked what Katt Williams (the comic who voices Seamus the Pigeon) did. It was just him being him. He made the stuff up. I’d shot the scene and then run the scene with their lines and you tweak it as you go.

Q: How did you get former James Bond Roger Moore to voice Tab Lazenby, the head of MEOWS?

A: We called him! That was a real moment of excitement. For me, Roger Moore was James Bond when I was growing up. My dad and I argued about who was Bond — he’d say Sean Connery and I’d say Roger Moore. I hadn’t seen him in a movie for a while and I love his voice and he agreed. For me, as a total movie nerd, I loved it.

Q: You’ve gone from small Canadian projects to helming a big-budget Hollywood movie. How did that happen?

A: It’s funny, everybody asks that. Is it that shocking? (He laughs.) I think most of it speaks more to my work ethic than anything else. I don’t feel I’m close to anywhere in my top form as a director and I want to just get better with everything. I took this project knowing it was going to challenge me every day and I was going to learn a lot about aspects of moviemaking I hadn’t done before, like animatronics and pyrotechnics … All I know how to do is go my hardest and give myself over to it fully, whether it’s an independent music video for a Toronto band, I’ll work as hard on that as I do a Warner Brothers movie. I don’t know how to do it any differently.

Q: You have another big movie in the works: a Journey to the Center of the Earth sequel. Brendan Fraser has left the franchise, Anything you can tell us about casting?`

A: We’re casting now, but I can tell you that Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right), who was 13 in the first movie, is now 17 and what we decided to do is for him to go out and have his own adventure. Which I could totally relate to when I was 17 in Gander.

Source: The Toronto Star

Gov. David Paterson has called Empire State lawmakers back to Albany for a 6 p.m. Wednesday special session that will interrupt the legislature’s summer break to approve the budget, which was supposed to be signed off on by April 1, as well as various other bills.

State lawmakers went on summer hiatus before the July 4 weekend, with the senate having failed to approve one key part of the budget bill.

Some senators are believed to plan to argue that the governor can’t force them back to Albany. Even if they show up, legislators could do so without voting on bills, which would put the state closer to a new record for a delayed budget.

In 2004, it took politicians in the state capital until Aug. 11 to finalize a budget.

The governor’s $136 billion budget proposal includes a revenue-generation section that calls for the continuation of a 30% tax credit for film and TV productions through 2014, with some fine-tuning of eligibility criteria designed to focus the benefits on state businesses.

The incentives, worth $2.1 billion over five years, would be larger than the one-time $350 million production-incentives allocation made last year that ended up being exhausted early this year. State politicians have cited the program’s job creation and tax-revenue benefits.

The proposed incentives also meets the industry’s demand for a longer-term commitment that many say is key to attracting film and especially TV shows.

“The state has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money and thousands of jobs,” Silvercup Studios president Stuart Suna said. “Hopefully, the senate will recognize the importance of the tax credits and the budget for New Yorkers and pass them.”

New York had a disappointing TV pilot season this year, which New York Production Alliance executive director John Johnston attributed to the uncertain future of the tax incentives. The state usually get more than a dozen TV pilots each season (it had 20 in 2008), this season it only had four, according to the state film and TV office.

In addition, several indie films went to Michigan and other states.

One show, ABC’s “Body of Proof,” shot its pilot in Rhode Island but looked at New York and other states for a while until remaining in Rhode Island after that state renewed production incentives well ahead of New York.

Some productions are waiting to come to the Big Apple until the incentives situation is resolved.

“We also have a number of folks who have applied in anticipation to start filming in the fall,” a spokeswoman for the state film and TV commission said.

New York recently got an assist from neighboring New Jersey when the latter ended its production tax-credit program. As a result, the NBC series “Law & Order: SVU” moved to New York.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

SAG said Saturday it has agreed to an AFTRA proposal to form a small working group headed by their respective presidents to discuss the possibility of a merger of the actors unions. A larger joint committee already has been batting around a possible SAG-AFTRA combo.

AFTRA and its president Roberta Reardon long have been on record as favoring a merger with SAG. But SAG only recently has shown signs of warming to the idea following a turnover in leadership at the guild.

“This is a positive step toward uniting SAG and AFTRA and good news for our members,” SAG president Ken Howard said. “The creation of a single performers’ union is overdue, and I’m pleased to be working with Roberta Reardon, who’s been such a champion of that goal.”

In 2003, a proposed SAG-AFTRA combo was batted down when 75% of AFTRA members voted to approve the proposal but SAG membership mustered only 58% approval, short of a required 60% “yes” vote by the guild.

In the fall, the unions will begin early joint negotiations with studio reps on their next theatrical and primetime TV pacts, which are set to expire June 30. In a departure from decades of precedent, SAG and AFTRA negotiated their current agreements separately.

Among other actions at the one-day SAG board meeting, Bob Bergen was named national chair of the guild’s negotiating committee on TV animation.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The Milken Institute report says 10,600 entertainment jobs have fled the state since 1997 along with 25,500 jobs indirectly related to the industry.

The entertainment industry jobs that have been lost paid an average salary of $92,000 per year, according to the report, titled “Film Flight: Lost Production and Its Economic Impact on California.”

It lists a sample of movies that chose to film outside of California to take advantage of more lucrative tax credits and other business incentives. The most ironic title? “Captain America: The First Avenger,” which is filming in England.

The 40-page report says 42 states, including California, and the District of Columbia offer incentives for film and television production, but it also notes that California’s are less ambitious than many others.

New York recently won “Salt,” for example, and Georgia got “The Blind Side” and “Zombieland.” New Mexico has “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Thor,” and Clint Eastwood took “Gran Torino” to Michigan.

Joining “Captain America” in the ironic category is “Battle: Los Angeles,” which Columbia Pictures is filming in Louisiana.

The report says the film production industry is worth $57 billion annually and that California has given up $2.4 billion in wages and $4.2 billion in economic output since 1997, the peak year in entertainment employment in the state, when its share of North American employment in the industry was 40%. By 2008, it had dropped to 37%.

A year ago, California implemented a tax credit for projects budgeted below $75 million, and 75 TV and movie productions have been approved to receive those credits. But the report says California should do much more, including:

– Make the tax credits, scheduled to end in 2014, permanent.

– Provide the California Film Commission with enhanced staffing and marketing resources.

– Expand tax credits for TV production to include network and premium cable shows.

– Consider digital-media tax credits to retain developers of digital animation, visual effects and video games.

– Encourage investments in infrastructure by implementing tax credits for building and upgrading studio and post-production space.

“The motion picture and television industry may trade in fantasy and escapism,” the report says, “but as a business, it is hardly immune to economic pressures and the imperatives of technological change.”

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

“Next year, we are looking for an increase of about 15,000 jobs,” said Jack Kyser, economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “But there is a big asterisk on that because in the middle of 2011, you have all the Hollywood labor contracts expiring.”

Combined film and TV employment would reach a total of 170,400 jobs if the LAEDC forecast holds up, though Kyser said all bets are off if one or more guilds walk the picket line.

He recalled the devastating economic impact of the 100-day WGA strike in 2007-08. “The writers are still feeling the impact,” Kyser said.

Overall, jobs recovery is showing good momentum in Los Angeles County and adjoining communities, he said.

“We have seen a very nice rebound in motion picture and TV employment,” Kyser said. “A lot of that is due to the rebound in advertising activity — people are shooting ads, and the broadcast networks are ordering a lot of pilots and series. You also have a modest positive impact from the state film-production incentives.”

For this year, the LAEDC estimated regional entertainment employment at 155,300 jobs. That includes 137,400 people employed in the motion picture and sound industries and 17,900 in television and radio.

The midyear report represents a swan song for Kyser, who is retiring from the nonprofit LAEDC after almost 30 years. He will consult for the L.A.-based Southern California Association of Governments on a part-time basis.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

It’s a phenomenal show, with great acting, special effects, and a surprising amount of original music, written by composer Michael Roth.

The banning decision followed a viewing of the Bruce LaBruce film by the Australian Film Classification Board, which concluded that implied sex with corpses as alien zombies range across Los Angeles for dead bodies and gay sex breaches local taste standards.

“L.A. Zombie” will receive a world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival on Aug. 5, before the Canuck film receives a North American bow at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, according to the film’s producers.

LaBruce’s latest film was to have screened in Melbourne on Aug. 7 and 8.

The Aug. 7 slot will now be filled with a screening of the French film “Rubber” by Quentin Dupieux, with a replacement for the Aug. 8 slot to be announced at a later date.

LaBruce in a statement Tuesday pointed to the irony of the Australian censors viewing the softcore version of his film, “which features no explicit anally penetrative sex.”

The director said the festival version features an erect zombie, played by French porn star Francois Sagat, “and it is a prosthetic (fake) cock, not the actor’s own.”

The Canuck film’s producers bill “L.A. Zombie” as a drama about an alien zombie from the ocean who goes in search of dead bodies in Los Angeles to have sex with so they can be brought back to life.

“Although apparently the Australian Classification Board has no problem passing all manner of mainstream torture porn movies which feature, amongst other things, the rape and dismemberment of women, it’s interesting that they have no stomach for a movie that reaffirms life,” LaBruce said in a statement.

Melbourne fest programmers billed “L.A. Zombie” as a hardcore companion piece to LaBruce’s 2008 film “Otto” and added that it “raises the stakes with LaBruce’s infamous ’schlock’ tactics — promising plenty of wound-shagging and more penises than you can shake a stick at.”

LaBruce has built a directorial career shooting hardcore pornography that aims to produce a return for financiers, along with a second softcore version with auteur touches that can screen on the festival circuit to critical acclaim.

The hardcore version of LaBruce’s latest film, “L.A. Zombie Hardcore,” will be released and distributed separately on Halloween after the softcore version plays the international festival circuit.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The story originally was to be a portrait piece of a young reporter known as ‘Joshua’, a member of an underground network of activists (Democratic Voice of Burma) who risk their lives daily to document the oppressive conditions in the country. However, when the events of September suddenly took a turn, Danish director Anders Østergaard found himself on the precipice of history.

Academy Award nominated documentary, Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country is one of the most important DVD releases this year. The film covers the 2007 Saffron Revolution through footage that has been smuggled out of the country and skilfully woven together by Østergaard. Shot by a few brave undercover video journalists who risked torture and life imprisonment in order to ensure the truth about what was happening in their country got out; it gives a powerful global voice to those Burmese that struggle for freedom in a police-state.

Burma has been under military rule since 1962 and has not seen an uprising since 1988, a protest that ended in thousands of deaths when the military opened fire, and thousands more imprisoned. The protest did lead to the democratic election of Aung San Suu Kyi, however the military refused to hand over power and she has been under house arrest for the past 22 years. Up until 2007, people had been afraid to protest, afraid to speak out against their government. Plain clothes agents wander the streets with video cameras, hunting down dissidents in big-brother fashion. When the film starts, only one man stands in protest outside of the gates, and people are afraid to speak to anyone with a camera. Foreign TV crews are banned from entering the country.

The cost of living began to rise by 30 to 60 per cent, in 2007 (the average wage is $300 a year) and small groups began to gather in peaceful demonstration. The harsh actions taken by the government to disband a group of protesters resulted in the injury of three monks. An apology was demanded by the people. When the government refused, more and more people took to the street including thousands of monks in their traditional saffron coloured robes. It is estimated that at the peak of the protests, up to 100 000 people marched demonstrating in Yangon, citizens forming a protective barrier around the monks. Amidst the peaceful protestors, the vicious police agents, and trigger-happy military the video-journalists did their best to keep the world informed of events inside the closed country. History was recorded on mobile phones and small hand-held cameras that had been smuggled into the country and hidden in bags, but up until now we have only seen short segments.

Burma VJ knits together all of the footage to reconstruct the events from the beginning to their brutal end. The film revolves around a person whose face we never see: ‘Joshua’, who allows us to experience the events through his eyes. Østergaard worked closely with ‘Joshua’ to create re-enactments of certain situations that he couldn’t film, such as telephone conversations, which he then worked around the authentic footage shot by the VJs. This gives the film a much stronger build of tension as we switch between ‘Joshua’, helpless and isolated in the Thailand office and the escalating violence happening in Burma.

Video journalism takes us beyond the experience of being living-room spectators. It makes us witnesses. From Vietnam to 9/11 to the 2004 Tsunami, the camera has played a powerful role in how we view events and the kind of action, we as a global community, take. 

“Sometimes I feel really unhappy when I think about my colleagues in prison”… “I always remind the younger generation that what you are having known is the result of the people who sacrificed before you. We have everything ready now. We have cameras when we want to make a story. We have computers when we want to edit a story. And this is… not because of me. And this is not because of DVB even, we can say. This is because of every Burmese people. It is because of the situation in Burma. So we have to be respectful, whenever we are using all these things. And we have to remember all the time that we need to fight for their freedom.” -Joshua

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Daisy Maclean will review recently completed documentaries for TO411 Daily – please contact her for more information: daisy@to411.com.