Despite the critics' claims that the offerings at this year's 30th Toronto International Film Festival were weaker than usual, the organisers came away with winning smiles.
'We couldn't be more delighted by how the festival went,' says co-director Noah Cowan (with Piers Handling). 'We were able to accomplish all our aims, which are to be the leading festival of international discovery, the starting gate for the awards season, and the biggest champion of Canadian film worldwide.'
The cash registers were ringing, with three American movies - Jason Reitman's satirical Thank You for Smoking, Bart Freundlich's romantic comedy Trust the Man, and Dave Chappelle's Block Party, the hip-hop concert film from director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) - selling for US$6-US$7 million. That set a sales record at the festival, whose previous high was US$5 million, for Robert Duvall's The Apostle in 1997.
The Oscars always come into conversations during the Toronto festival - which traditionally launches numerous films that go on to be nominated for, and win, the coveted statuettes - and this year was no exception.
Among those that had their world premieres in Toronto and which are sure to generate Oscar buzz were: the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, with Joaquin Phoenix superb as the Man in Black (Reese Witherspoon was equally adept as his great love, June Carter); Capote, with a terrific performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the eccentric writer; Roman Polanski's wondrous rendition of Oliver Twist, with a riveting Ben Kingsley as the notorious Fagin; The World's Fastest Indian, featuring Anthony Hopkins' stellar turn as legendary motorbike racer Burt Munro; and the delightfully twisted animated gem, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.
All those stars and the likes of Morgan Freeman, Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz, Kevin Spacey, Jackie Chan and Madonna (supporting husband Guy Ritchie's crime film Revolver) were also in attendance.
On a purely artistic level, however, there were only about six films that generated unanimous consensus among press and industry attending the festival.
