Film telluride festival in religulous release

Deal was done via subsidiary Granada9/30/08 3:27pm Event to be held
April 7-8 in Paris9/30/08 1:54pm “Blind Pig” enters Tiger Awards
race9/30/08 6:45am ‘Changeling,’ ‘Palermo Shooting’ on slate9/29/08
11:34am ‘Assembly, ‘Atonement’ take home top awards9/28/08 11:27pm

TORONTO — Cannes and Sundance are cinephile fests, and Telluride
courts the arty. But the Toronto Film Festival offers something few
other major festivals can boast: real audiences by which to gauge a
film.
That makes Toronto the friendliest of the friendly festivals, both for
buyers and for distributors launching their fall titles.

Heading into this year’s fest, the mood was grim. The specialty box
office has been abysmal since awards season, while the acquisitions
market has been flat.

By Sunday afternoon, however, spirits were actually high — all
because of strong audience reaction to a handful of titles. Some, like
“Slumdog Millionaire” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” have
distribution. Others, like Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and
Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy “Management,” don’t, but that didn’t
stop auds from salivating.

“I think everybody thought Toronto would be off and depressing because
of the general state of indie films,” Picturehouse’s Bob Berney said.
“But I think it is looking really good. I don’t know if there will be
a lot of sales, but the quality of the films looks good, even though
some are very small.”

Deal-wise, the pace has been glacial, with all eyes on Sunday night’s
screening for buyers of “The Wrestler,” the Mickey Rourke comebacker
that just took the Golden Lion in Venice. “Management,” the Sidney
Kimmel romantic comedy with Aniston and Steve Zahn, was also set to
screen Sunday night.

CAA’s Micah Green, who is spearheading sales on “The Wrestler,” did
not screen the title for anyone after its hit run in Venice.
Negotiations with buyers are likely to center on how would-be distribs
would roll it out in Oscar season.

The concept of using Toronto as a springboard into the fall still has
a lot of validity, judging by Focus’ glitzy bow for “Burn After
Reading,” whose gala screening took over the town Friday. As it did
with last year’s “Eastern Promises,” Focus is using the first weekend
of Toronto, especially with this year’s Brad Pitt frenzy, as the
ultimate publicity fuel for a bow the following Friday.

Of course, positive audience reaction doesn’t always translate into
B.O. gold. Fest veterans like to joke that Canadian auds are too
polite to boo. “You could show them your high school movie and they’d
still love it,” one studio exec said.

Even grading on a curve, though, the resonance of the weekend’s preems
proved a tonic for the biz at large. On Saturday night, the Ryerson
theater was packed for a screening of Sony’s Michael Cera-Kat Dennings
comedy “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” directed by Peter Sollett
and opening Oct. 3.

Big Sony doesn’t generally use Toronto as a launching pad, but in this
case, it decided to do so precisely because of the audience factor.
Plus, Cera is Canadian.

After the screening, the audience departed from convention and stayed
put for a Q&A; with the director and cast.

Lionsgate’s Bill Maher upcoming docu “Religulous” got a standing
ovation later Saturday. Outside, a small group of protestors picketed
the movie, directed by Larry Charles, who himself decided to speak
with those carrying picket signs decrying the movie as an attack on
religious beliefs. That kind of publicity generally only helps a
studio raise a film’s awareness level.

Among acquisition titles, several docs all had noteworthy debuts and
generated deal talk. That short list included LeBron James basketball
doc “More Than a Game”; “Chorus Line” backstager “Every Little Step,”
late-’60s music pic “Soul Power” and Davis Guggenheim’s star-studded
guitar story “It Could Get Loud.”

Celluloid Dreams bought all international rights to “Soul Power,”
about the landmark concert that preceded the Ali-Foreman fight in
Africa.

A handful of narrative pics like “Me and Orson Welles,” “Lovely,
Still,” “Dean Spanley” and “Daily Show” brainchild “Coopers’ Camera,”
won some admirers, but gun-shy buyers expressed some reservations.

One factor giving buyers pause was the sense that 2008, with all of
its turmoil and economic uncertainty, could go down as the year when
distribution models began their much-ballyhooed shift.

Filmmaker Wayne Wang met those forces of change head-on by announcing
an intriguing experiment with “The Princess of Nebraska.” It will
world-preem exclusively on YouTube Oct. 17 and will not receive a
theatrical release. Wang’s companion film, “A Thousand Years of Good
Prayers,” is scheduled for a theatrical release Sept. 19 by Magnolia.

Another model-disrupting setup came from Participant Films and
publisher PublicAffairs. They announced a deal whereby the publisher
will turn out books based on Participant’s films. The first in line
for the treatment is doc “Food Inc.,” the food industry expose which
had its world preem here Sunday and will be expanded into a paperback
original.

Edward Norton and Tim Blake Nelson also tackled marketplace issues
during a press conference Sunday with Nu Image/Millennium boss Avi
Lerner to tout their new pic, “Leaves of Grass.” A comedy spiked with
genre elements, the $9 million pic seems to risk falling into the zone
that has produced the most headaches lately.

“It’s trickier than it used to be,” Norton said, who also stars in
“Pride and Glory.” That upcoming New Line release was affected by Time
Warner’s shutdown of New Line but will still be released this fall as
a Warners pic.

“It feels so in flux,” Nelson agreed. “Now these companies have to
ask, ‘Is it DVD? Is it VOD?’ It’s certainly beyond me, and I really
study these things.”

Another in-the-works project being talked up during the fest is
Toronto-based helmer Brigitte Berman’s Hugh Hefner doc. The Oscar
winner (for a 1985 Arte Shaw pic) just wrapped shooting and expects to
have a cut ready by April. Canada’s Aver Media is handling sales.

“It’s not a biography that deals with babes and boobs,” Berman said.
Rather, it will revolve around his little-recognized social activism
in arenas such as First Amendment and abortion rights.

Amid all of Toronto 2008’s unexpected angles and the uncertainty
looming outside the fest gates, it was reassuring to know that some
sights were all too familiar. Gifting lounges are growing
exponentially here. Many of the suites are run by regulars at
Sundance, but now prefer the ease and talent concentration of Toronto.

“We want coverage in a cluttered environment,” said one organizer, who
had a laundry list of directors and stars that have hauled out sacks
of goods.

Unlike Sundance, the lounges are located in or near the hotels where
talent sleeps, so it’s easy to avoid the potentially embarrassing
paparazzi picture. Many of the A-listers here have their suite already
lined with gifts, including hundreds of dollars in gift certificates
to local merchants.

The products are all over the map. While Anne Hathaway picked out
threads from French Connection, Zac Efron got ACE “man-sized” grooming
tools (37% more grip!). In a convoluted twist, celebs at some lounges
have the option to re-gift their swag to charity as they leave.

Buyers packed into Toronto’s Elgin Theatre for the North American
premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler,” which arrived at the
Fest with a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival. Aronofsky tried
to cool the crowd down, saying, “There’s no way we’re going to live up
to that hype. It’s a gentle, small film.” French sales company Wild
Bunch believed in the film, he said, and if any North American buyer
“is interested, I have a phone number for you afterward.”

That number belongs to CAA’s Micah Green, who will be taking calls
through the night as buyers decide how much they are willing to commit
to a 2008 late year release with a pricey Rourke Oscar campaign
attached.

Paramount’s John Lesher, New Line’s Toby Emmerich, Harvey Weinstein,
Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, Overture, Miramax, Sony Pictures
Classics, Summit, IFC and others were huddling afterwards. The likely
buyer will be taking a risk on a movie that could win over critics and
Academy actors but would be a challenge to bring to market, observers
agreed.

‘Che’ gets second act at NY Film Fest The makers of “Che” are hoping
the New York Film Festival will provide a fresh opportunity for an
iconic Argentine revolutionary to find new life on American shores.

Bumpy road for Asian film financing Asian film financing is in a
fog. For all its recent marching around, it is difficult to tell
whether it is moving forwards, backwards or simply around in circles.

Sitges fest boosted by rise in genre biz In its 41st edition,
Europe’s largest genre movie event, the Sitges Intl. Film Festival,
shows no signs of age.

An intriguing docu about the intense history of a working-class barrio
in the south of Madrid, “Night Flowers” is a fine study of both a
particular community and the wider history of which it’s a part.

“Flash of Genius” stars Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham sit down with
Variety at the Telluride Film Festival. ; Director Paul Schrader and
“Adam Resurrected” star Jeff Goldblum chat with Anne Thompson in
Telluride. ; Anne Thompson sits down with “Slumdog Millionaire”
director Danny Boyle at the Telluride Film Festival. ; A view from the
scenic Rocky Mountains in Telluride, Colorado. ; “Happy Go Lucky”
director Mike Leigh speaks to Anne Thompson at the Telluride Film
Festival. ; happy go lucky; telluride film festival; interview; Mike
Leigh; variety; Sony execs Tom Bernard and Michael Barker talk to
Variety at the 2008 Telluride Film Festival. ; sony; michael barker;
telluride film festival; video; variety; tom bernard; “Firaaq”
director and renown Indian actress Nandita Das talks to Mike Jones at
the Telluride Film Festival. ; Salman Rushdie; Firaaq director Nandita
Das; interview; actress; video; variety; ‘Walt With Bashir’ director
Ari Folman sits down with Mike Jones at the Telluride Film Festival. ;
‘Waltz With Bashir’ director Ari Folman; video; variety; Producer Ron
Colby and “Pirate for the Sea” star Paul Watson talk to Variety about
their new anti-whaling documentary. ; Anne Thompson meets some fellow
Telluride enthusiasts in Colorado. ; Anne Thompson; telluride 2008
film festival; variety; ‘Hunger’ director Steve McQueen talks to
Variety at the 2008 Telluride Film Festival.; telluride film festival;
hunger director Steve Mcqueen; video; variety; Director David Fincher
speaks at an outdoor Q&A; at the 2008 Telluride Film Festival in
Colorado. ; panel; zodiac; telluride film festival 2008 david fincher;
Brad Pitt; Benjamin Button; variety;

Religulous movie’s oct film festival

Our crystal ball for fall movie trends is actually a snow globe, which
we consult every year at the Toronto International Film Festival.
That’s where many of the more glamorous year-end releases are
previewed for the world’s critics. Last year, the festival was
the coming-out party for the eventual Academy Award winner for best
picture, the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old
Men.” The Coens were back in Canada last week with their new spy
comedy “Burn After Reading,” just one of more than 300
features in the festival. It’s too early to predict whether any
of them will be Oscar’s date for this year’s homecoming
dance but, based on what we’ve seen, we can ascertain the
following trends in fall film fashions. Dim the lights!

In “Burn After Reading” (opened Friday), John Malkovich is
a malcontent midlevel CIA agent whose tell-all memoir falls into the
feckless hands of health-club employee Brad Pitt.

“Nothing but the Truth” (Dec. 19) is a lightly
fictionalized version of the Valerie Plame case. Kate Beckinsale plays
a reporter who goes to jail rather than reveal the source who leaked
the identity of the spy played by Vera Farmiga.

Jean-Claude Van Damme kicks his laughingstock status upside the head
in “JCVD” (TBD) in which “The Muscles from
Brussels” plays himself, a washed-up action hero who is thrust
into the middle of a real-life hostage situation.

Mickey Rourke is generating Oscar buzz for his poignant performance as
a has-been grappler in “The Wrestler” (TBD), which won the
grand prize at recently concluded Venice Film Festival.

The latter film also marks a comeback for director Darren Aronofsky
(“Pi”), whose time-travel fantasy “The Fountain” was
laughed out of Toronto two years ago.

(Another director who appears to have been resurrected is Jonathan
Demme, the Oscar winner for 1991’s “Silence of the
Lambs.” Since his poorly received remake of “The
Manchurian Candidate” in 2004, Demme has made only a couple
documentaries, but the recovery drama “Rachel Getting
Married” (Oct. 24) has sparked awards buzz for himself and star
Anne Hathaway.)

Two new movies with similar sounding names in the title introduce us
to couples who are clearly made for each other but are wary of taking
the leap. In “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”
(Oct. 3), Michael Cera (“Juno”) and Kat Dennings are teens who meet
and bond on a nightlong search for their favorite band’s secret
gig in New York City.

Far racier is Kevin Smith’s new comedy “Zack and Miri make
a Porno” (Oct. 31), in which Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks play
penniless roommates who consider filming a sex video to raise some
quick cash.

Two upcoming releases feature sculptures with magical properties. In
Spike Lee’s World War II drama “The Miracle of St.
Anna” (Sept. 26), an American GI believes that the marble head
he finds in Florence and lugs onto the battlefield will protect him
from harm.

In “The Secret Life of Bees” (Oct. 17), a fist-raised
statue of a Black Madonna that is scavenged from a shipwreck provides
spiritual sustenance to beekeeper Queen Latifah.

Strife in the Middle East was covered last year in several Hollywood
dramas, most of which fizzled at the box office. Only two are coming
in the months ahead, and neither directly addresses the political
underpinnings of the war.

“The Hurt Locker” (TBD), the long-awaited return of action
auteur Kathryn Bigelow (“Point Break”), is a thriller about a bomb-
disposal unit in Iraq.

In “The Lucky Ones” (Sept. 26), Tim Robbins, Rachel
McAdams and Michael Pena are furloughed soldiers on a cross-country
road trip, with a significant stop in St. Louis.

It seems that every year, at least one star has multiple movies on the
calendar. This season it’s Greg Kinnear. In “Ghost
Town” (Friday), he plays a philandering husband who is killed in
a bus crash and then haunts dentist Ricky Gervais to set things
straight.

In “Flash of Genius” (Oct. 3), Kinnear stars in the true
story of the inventor who waged a lengthy battle against Detroit
automakers over the patents for the intermittent windshield wiper.
Honest.

Two of the most talked-about films of the fall season are, in a sense,
about distorted vision.

“Blindness” (Oct. 3), adapted from a novel by Jose
Saramago by director Fernando Merielles (“City of God”), is about a
mysterious plague that robs the populace of its sight – and unleashes
the beastliness in human nature.

In “Happy-Go-Lucky” (Oct. 24), Sally Hawkins is a young
London schoolteacher who sees the world through rose-color glasses.

Maybe it’s contagious, because we’re looking forward to
some other autumn movies sight unseen, such as the Western
“Appaloosa” (Oct. 3), Bill Maher’s documentary
“Religulous” (Oct. 3) and Keira Knightley in the bodice
ripper “The Duchess” (Oct. 3).

Film u.s films in religulous movie

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Just as the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival got underway this
past weekend, industry attendees received a sobering statistic on
Monday morning: The weekend box-office in the U.S. was the lowest-
grossing in five years — about $67.6 million compared with $66.7
million since the same post-Labor Day period in 2003, according to
Media by Numbers. The bad news served as yet another reminder of the
film industry’s current precarious status, but those in Toronto were
determined to reinvigorate the movie-going audience.

The first such title to energize buyers: “The Wrestler,” an intimate
look at a burned-out ’80s wrestling star (played by Mickey Rourke),
which premiered in Toronto on Sunday night and was sold in an
overnight bidding war to Fox Searchlight for approximately $4 million.
The price tag makes it one of the biggest sales in the festival’s
history.

Several distribution companies clamored for the film, despite the fact
that the low-budget movie will need a careful and cautious theatrical
rollout. In the days after the screening, Mr. Rourke has been the talk
of the town as a possible Oscar contender. Fox Searchlight has
committed to releasing the film this December. (Fox Searchlight is
owned by ., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.)

At the world premiere of “The Wrestler,” director Darren Aronofsky
alluded to the fact that the movie was passed over by U.S. film
companies. He and his producer, Scott Franklin, sought financial
backing from the French foreign sales company, Wild Bunch, which has
increasingly become a prolific backer of filmmaker-driven titles
looking for funds.

Wild Bunch also backed another somewhat risky investment, Steven
Soderbergh’s four-hour Che Guevera epic, “Che,” which had its world
premiere in Cannes last May and is screening in Toronto in a slightly
shorter version. An unconventional biopic that cost a reported $60
million, the film made much of its budget back in international sales,
and finally closed a U.S. distribution deal with Cablevision’s IFC
Films on Wednesday morning. After Cannes, the film received two firm
offers from U.S. buyers, according to Wild Bunch sales head Vincent
Maraval, but the company has been holding out for significant money
upfront and a marketing commitment that specifically looks to the
Spanish speaking audience in the U.S. The film will be released for a
one-week awards- qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles in
December, then be available in theaters in January and via video-on-
demand.

Now that “The Wrestler’s” fate has been sealed, companies looking to
fill up their 2009 release schedules are turning to other available
films. Film buyers were generally upbeat about the quality of the
films on display. Though sales weren’t exactly brisk, negotiations
were heating up on several titles.

Summit Entertainment, the fledgling independent film studio backed by
, purchased U.S. rights to Katheryn Bigelow’s bomb disposal thriller,
“The Hurt Locker,” shortly after its North American premiere on Monday
night, even though the film is set in Iraq — a subject that has been
a curse at the box-office lately (look to last year’s “Lions for
Lambs” and “In the Valley of Elah”).

IFC Films, which acquired several films in Cannes, announced it had
acquired North American rights to the Swedish film “Everlasting
Moments” for its video-on-demand and theatrical releasing operations.
Even smaller films, such as the Filipino family drama “Serbis” and the
Chinese documentary “24 City” found small U.S. theatrical slots,
indicating that the art-house business is continuing to operate as
usual, despite concerns of changing audience habits and flattening DVD
sales.

Some smaller film distributors, including IFC, were also pursuing the
Irish film “Kisses,” a bittersweet movie about pre-teens on the run in
Dublin. Other films generating interest, according to sales agents and
acquisitions executives, include Richard Linklater’s period film “Me
and Orson Welles,” the Jennifer Aniston comedy “Management,” “Is There
Anybody There?,” starring Michael Caine, and a number of
documentaries, including “Soul Power,” about a , and “Every Little
Step,” a look at the making of the musical “A Chorus Line.”

The Toronto festival also gave a boost to a number of films already
set for release in U.S. theaters — including Sony Pictures Classics’s
“Rachel Getting Married,” Fox Searchlight’s “Slumdog Millionaire” and
Sony’s “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” — by generating positive
word-of-mouth.

Also looking for a publicity bump was Lionsgate’s “Religulous,” which
previewed in Toronto and opens in U.S. theaters on Oct. 3. Starring
comedian Bill Maher who sets out to question and poke fun of the
world’s religions, the film follows in the footsteps of several other
controversial documentaries that have screened in the festival,
including the smash hit “Borat,” directed by “Religulous’s” Larry
Charles, the creator of “Seinfeld.” The festival also hosted the world
premiere of “Food, Inc.,” a damning investigation into industrial-food
production from the producers of “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“Political films with a sharp edge have always had a place here at the
Toronto International Film Festival, ever since Michael Moore’s ‘Roger
& Me’ won the People’s Choice Award here 20 years ago,” said Toronto
documentary programmer Thom Powers.

But while the North American premiere of “Religulous” was well
attended, it did not produce the kind of fervor that had accompanied
the “Borat” and Michael Moore screenings in years past.

Outside the theater, the multi-denominational Canadian Coalition for
Organized Religion organized a protest of about a dozen people with
signs reading “Don’t Mock My Religion” and chanting “Pray for Bill” as
Mr. Maher walked by. Many of those going into the screening wondered
whether it was all a stunt organized by Mr. Charles and the comedian.
At a Q&A after the premiere, where Mr. Maher took jabs at Pentecostal
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, he set the record
straight: “It wouldn’t have been so lame if I had hired them,” he
said.

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