"Che" makes its U.S. debut

  Che, director Steven Soderbergh's already-controversial, two-part epic about the life and death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara (played by Benicio del Toro), still has not secured a U.S. distributor since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. But the two films will be shown at the 46th New York Film Festival, which runs Sept. 26-Oct. 12.

Other films in the lineup, which was announced today, include: Laurent Cantet's The Class, a look at high school life featuring actual students and teachers, which is the opening night film (and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes); Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which stars Mickey Rourke as a retired pro wrestler (and sounds a lot more accessible - and commercial - than The Fountain); Clint Eastwood's much-acclaimed Changeling, about a woman (Angelina Jolie) searching for her missing son in 1928 L.A.; and Ashes of Time Redux, Wong Kar Wai's recut and reshaped new version of his first (and only) martial arts movie.

I wanna go.

United Artists celebrates its 90th birthday - and you're invited

To celebrate its 90th anniversary, United Artists (aka the studio that Heaven's Gate killed) is taking a series of some of its best-known films around the country, including a stop in South Florida over four consecutive weekends in April and May.

Founded in 1919 by the fantastic foursome of Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, UA was formed to give actors and filmmakers creative freedom in an era when the studios called the shots on every aspect of film production, from casting to the theaters where they were shown.

In 1981, after the financial disaster of Heaven's Gate, UA was absorbed by former rival MGM. In 2006, Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner took over the reins of UA, securing $500 million to finance new productions.

The new UA's first release thus far, Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, didn't fare very well. But this is supposed to be a birthday party, dammit, so let's not dwell on current events and relive the happy days instead.

Here is the list of the UA classics scheduled to be shown during the mini-fest. All screenings will be held at the Sunrise Cinemas Stadium 15 at Las Olas Riverfront, located at 300 SW First Ave. in Fort Lauderdale. Each movie will be shown three times on its respective day at 1:30 , 4:30 and 7:30 p.m.

Ticket prices are as follows: $7 for the 1:30 p.m. screenings; all other shows are $8.50 for adults and $7.50 for students. Seniors 62 and over and children under 12 are $6 at all times. To buy tickets, go here.

I tracked down the original one-sheet posters for each of the films, because old movie posters are cool (and some of them are worth big bucks).

April 22 - Annie Hall

April 23 - The Apartment

April 24 - West Side Story

April 29 - Some Like It Hot

April 30 - Raging Bull

May 1 - Rocky

May 6 - The Seven Samurai The Magnificent Seven

May 7 - The Good The Bad and the Ugly

May 8 - Midnight Cowboy

May 13 - The Great Escape

May 14 - Dr. No

May 15 - The Manchurian Candidate

Attack of the film festivals

The 25th Miami International Film Festival may be over, but the local film festival season is just getting started.

First up is the third annual Women's International Film and Arts Festival, which runs March 28-April 6. Boasting 100 feature-length and short films "by women, about women and for all who love women," the event opens with the red pink carpet world premiere of Steam, starring Ally Sheedy and recent Oscar-nominee Ruby Dee, both of whom will attend.

The black-tie screening will be held at the Gusman, followed by an opening-night bash at the Havana Club featuring a performance by Xiomara Laugart, star of the off-Broadway hit Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz, which I can personally attest is a whopping good time. Unfortunately, the party carries a big "BY INVITATION ONLY" label on the program, which is usually code for "We don't want you here." Alabao!

Anyway. Other WIFF events include An Evening With Ruby Dee at the Lyric Theater on March 31, a slew of workshops and panels and, of course, movies. You can download a copy of the festival program here.

  Next up is the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary April 25-May 4. The festival launches with a screening of Breakfast with Scot and closes with Were the World Mine, both at the Gusman.

Other noteworthy events include the festival's centerpiece selection, The Secrets starring Fanny Ardant, and a tribute to iconoclastic film producer Christine Vachon (I Shot Andy Warhol, Go Fish, Far From Heaven) along with a screening of her latest film Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore.

New this year is the addition of a parallel mini-fest, the Fort Lauderdale Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which will run May 1-May 4 with its own set of films. The festival's complete lineup will be unveiled this Sunday. 

A few weeks later, the 12th edition of the Brazilian Film Festival of Miami arrives. Running May 30-June 7, the event kicks off with a free outdoor screening of last year's People's Choice Award winners Urban Snapshots (Polaroides Urbanes) and Chicken Blood Stew (Galinha ao Molho Pardo) at the North Beach Bandshell on Collins Avenue.

Nine days of screenings, workshops and parties will follow at the Colony and Lincoln Theaters and Miami Beach Cinematheque. This year's lineup will be announced on April 18th.

Miami Film Festival wrap-up

Here's my wrap-up story on the 25th edition of the festival, which ran in today's paper. I'm talking to Michael Haneke this morning about his Funny Games remake that opens Friday, and then I'm interviewing Michael Pitt at 5 p.m. about the film. In between, I'm hoping to spend the bulk of the day channeling Ferris Bueller.

Miami Film Festival award winners

It may not have been the Oscars, but the winners at the Miami International Film Festival's awards ceremony held at the Gusman tonight didn't seem to mind.

Bliss (pictured above), a Turkish-Greek drama about three people on the run from the rigid, sometimes deadly societal constraints of contemporary Turkey, won the Audience Award for Dramatic World Feature, one of three prizes voted on by audiences during the festival.

La Zona (The Zone) (pictured above), the Mexican thriller about the residents of a wealthy community who fight back against intruders during a blackout, won the Audience Award for Ibero-American Feature.

Vengo de un avion que cayo en las montanas (I Come from a Plane That Crashes in the Mountains) (pictured above), a documentary about the infamous 1973 plane crash that stranded a Uruguayan rugby team, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary.

Also announced Saturday were the Knight Grand Jury award winners, which are voted on by a panel of critics and industry experts and come with a $25,000 cash prize. Here is a rundown of those categories:

World Dramatic Features Competition

 

Winner: Tricks (Poland) (pictured above).

Special Mention: Best Actor, It's Hard To Be Nice (UK/Slovenia/Serbia/Germany/Bosnia-Herzegovina)

Special Mention: Best Script, Foul Gesture (Israel)

Ibero-American Dramatic Features Competition

Winner (tie): Cochochi (Mexico), pictured above, and Eat For This Is My Body (Haiti/France) (pictured below)

Special Mention: Blue Eyelids (Parpados Azules) (Mexico)

Special Mention: The Girls (Las Ninas) (Chile)

World and Ibero-American Documentary Competition

Winner: Santiago (Brazil) (pictured above)

Special Mention: Santa Fe Street (Calle Santa Fe) (Chile/France/Belgium)

Special Mention: A Paper Tiger (Un Tigre de Papel) (Colombia)

Shorts Competition ($2,500 cash prize)

Winner: Homecoming (Canada) (pictured above)

Honorable Mention: Traumatology (Traumatologia) (Spain)

Special Mention, Best Animated Short: Madame Tutli Putli (Canada)

Special Mention, Best First-Time Director: Overnight a Rose (Taiwan)

FIPRESCI Jury Prize

Foul Gesture (Israel) (pictured above)

If you missed them, you'll be able to catch repeat screenings of the Knight Grand Jury prize winners tomorrow at the Gusman. Check the festival's website for showtimes.

"One Water" at the Miami Film Festival

I know what you're thinking: Why sit through an ecological documentary made by the University of Miami when you can just pop an Ambien and get the same effect, right?

Wrong, friend-o. I had pretty much assumed the same thing, until I saw the movie, which is so visually stunning it made my eyes pop out of my skull and roll around on the floor like little marbles. Here's an advance look at One Water, which is screening at the festival at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Colony Theatre.

90 Miles (90 Millas) at the Miami Film Festival

Here are some crappy photos I took with my camera phone at the Gusman Thursday night during the Miami Film Festival's screening of 90 Miles (90 Millas), Emilio Estefan's documentary about the making of his wife Gloria's fourth Spanish-language album.

This is what the Gusman balcony looked like 15 minutes before the show, which had me a little worried. The Gusman seats more than 1,700 and is a tough house to fill, especially when you have other screenings going on simultaneously at five other theaters in the city. But if the Estefans can't pack a film festival screening in Miami, no one can.

Fortunately, people started flowing in at the last minute (why is it that Miami audiences are always running late?) and although the show was not a sell-out, the turnout was respectable - probably the best at the Gusman since the opening night screening of La Misma Luna.

By the time the movie started, the balcony looked like this:

The audience ate up the film, which celebrates the legacy and talent of the all-star lineup of musicians who collaborated with the Estefans on the album - everyone from Carlos Santana to Paquito D'Rivera to Cachao to rapper Pitbull. The movie allowed their natural charisma and personality to shine through, while giving them a rare forum to talk about their art and how the music that today we associate with Cuba came to be.

It also deepened my appreciation of Gloria's album, which I had bought last year but hadn't really listened to closely until now. If 90 Miles can't help but occasionally feel as a promotional tool for the record, at least it accomplishes its mission in a stylish and entertaining manner, since I've been listening to the album all day.

Here's a blurry, practically useless photo of Emilio, Gloria and some of the musicians who played on the album during a Q&A following the screening:

And here's a shot of the crowd dancing at the afterparty at Bongo's. At the party, I ran into Hesham Issawi, the director of AmericanEast, which had screened at the festival Wednesday night. He seemed really happy and pumped. It's a good thing I liked his movie, since there's nothing more awkward than running into a filmmaker whose work you've panned in print.

Miami Film Festival reviews

Here are a few more reviews of films showing at the festival this weekend, including Scrambled Beer (Malta Con Huevo), the Chilean odd-couple time-travel comedy guaranteed to scramble your brain (in a good way). I had hoped to review The Unknown Woman and XXY, two festival movies I was looking forward to seeing, but they were not screened in time for me to write about them.

Also, in case you missed it, do yourself a favor and read Connie Ogle's absolutely hilarious review of 10,000 B.C. Connie, who also edits my reviews, is normally not this funny in person, especially on those rare occasions when I'm blowing deadline. But she really outdid herself with this one. Here's a taste:

First things first: 10,000 B.C. is not a caveman movie. Nobody lives in caves. The main characters live in tents in the mountains, decorated with bones and skins and, judging from the looks of pouty-lipped mammoth hunter D'Leh (Steven Strait), they've got a Soloflex stashed somewhere. Which is fine. We need at least one thing to gaze upon that is not computer-generated.

Cuba and the Miami Film Festival

Life is to Whistle (La vida es silbar), which was shown at the Miami Film Festival in 2000, was the first Cuban feature film ever shown at the festival. It was also the last film made in Cuba shown at the event that I have liked.

The screening caused a bit of controversy the year it was shown. Here are a few graphs from an indieWire piece written at the time:

Life is to Whistle, a Cuban entry, also made the front page of the Miami Herald and caused the Miami-Dade County to withdraw $49,000 in grants from the Festival. Why? A Herald reporter discovered the film violated a Miami-Dade ordinance forbidding any group receiving county grants from showcasing Cuban artists or their works. After all the recent protests about Elian Gonzalez, chaos was expected at the screening. Some streets were blocked off and cops, who were not as attractive as the NYPD, stood watch. Nothing happened though. No demonstrations, no bomb threats and no hurled epithets.

There might be a positive consequence, however. Rene Rodriguez in The Herald surmised that "Life is to Whistle makes the strongest case to date that it's time for the ordinance to be overhauled to include an exemption, even if it's on a case-by-case basis, for cultural events. The movie is a perfect example of how artistic expression cannot be categorized by politics alone." That's certainly true here especially since Life is to Whistle is about three people who are miserable with their lives in Cuba, with one planning to escape in a balloon. This one couldn't have made Castro a happy camper.

Apparently, Cuba also makes festival organizers a little jittery, since the festival opted not to screen Vivien Lesnik Weisman's The Man of Two Havanas, her documentary about her father Max Lesnik, who is a polarizing figure among Miami's Cuban community. I blogged about the movie last May when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

I also wrote a feature story about the film for The Herald, which ended up being reprinted in the pages of Granma. Wait, does getting published in Granma make me a Commie?

Ana Menendez wrote a column yesterday explaining why the movie isn't being shown at this year's festival. Festival organizers are not being entirely honest about their reasons, but whatever. I have no doubt the movie will make it here sooner or later.

Meanwhile, the festival did bring us another Cuban movie to enjoy. Here's my review of Personal Belongings (Objetos personales), which is showing at the festival tonight. It is safe to say Whistle remains my favorite Cuban film to screen at the festival to date.

The festival's million dollar baby

Here's the story that ran in today's paper about last night's 25th anniversary homage celebration and the announcement of the creation of a film school at Miami-Dade College thanks to a $1 million donation by Grupo Televisa. Miami just keeps looking better and better as a place to be for film students.

The rest of the night at the Gusman, alas, was a dud. Overly long, dull speeches, technical glitches that prevented the showing of the homage reel of the festival's 25 years and a disappointingly low turnout made for a less than memorable night. I'm hoping tonight's shindig with the Estefans is a lot more fun.

Film festival reviews

I haven't been able to review as many movies in this year's festival as I had in years past, due to the limited availability of advance screeners. But here are reviews of two movies playing today, both of which are worth your time: The eBay documentary Traders' Dreams and the comedy-drama AmericanEast, about the lives of Arab-Americans in the U.S. post 9/11.

One more chance to see "Miami Noir: The Arthur E. Teele Story"

If you missed last Saturday's screening of Miami Noir: The Arthur E. Teele Story, Miami Film Festival organizers have added an encore showing at 11 a.m. Friday at the Tower Theater. Yeah, I know, it's the middle of a workday. But the movie is only an hour long and if you're like me, you could probably stand to skip lunch anyway.

Following the screening, directors Joshua Miller and Sam Rega will conduct a festival seminar about their experiences as student filmmakers.

A big present for the local film scene at the festival

Birthday parties are no fun without presents, and the local film scene is getting a big one at the Miami International Film Festival.

I am not allowed to spill the beans just yet, but I guess it's OK to say that the terms "Miami-Dade College," "a major donation" and "a major partnership" are involved. The news will be revealed at the 25th anniversary celebration at the Gusman at 7 p.m. tomorrow night, which includes an homage to the festival's former directors and founders directors whose films have shown here and a screening of Chacun Son Cinema (To Each His Own Cinema), which I really want to see, but won't be able to because I'll have to rush back to the Herald to file my story.

The Estefans visit the film festival

Here's a link to my interview with Emilio Estefan from today's paper. His film 90 Miles The Documentary, about the making of his wife Gloria's last album, will be screening at the Gusman at 7 p.m. Thursday, followed by a sure-to-be-hopping party at Bongo's. The Gusman is going to be hopping.

Stuff you've missed at the Miami Film Festival

Miami Film Festival organizers had the ingenious idea this year of posting short videos of press conferences, red carpet galas, interviews with directors and other festival-related events. It's not the same as actually going to the festival and seeing the movies, but at least the clips give you a taste of what is transpiring.

Demi does Miami

Here are some real shots of Demi Moore's appearance at the Miami International Film Festival today, taken by El Nuevo Herald's C.M. Guerrero. You can actually see her in these, unlike my pathetic cameraphone shot posted below.

Earlier in the day, festival organizers said Renee Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson and Marisa Tomei were all confirmed to attend the red carpet premiere of Moore's film Flawless at the Gusman tonight. But at the last minute, as hordes of photographers waited expectantly, the celebs canceled, rumored to have opted to go to some party instead.

That must have been some party. Guess my invitation was lost in the mail. Again.

You can see me in this one, hanging back as Demi enters the press conference. I am not one to crowd celebrities. Especially when they are flanked by 250-pound bodyguards who seem physically incapable of so much as smiling.

Film festival weekend rundown

The 25th Miami International Film Festival got into gear this weekend, occasionally requiring that I be in two places at once, something that is beyond even my extraordinary talents.

On Saturday I got to talk to David Gordon Green, who attended the festival for the screening of his excellent film Snow Angels. This was Green's first visit to Miami, and he came away from the Friday night screening at the Colony happy with the way the audience responded to his film,

"A lot of people stuck around for the Q&A after the screening, and they seemed to be really thinking about [the film]," he said. "I got a sense of dramatic reaction to the movie, and the humor got across to the crowd, which is important to me.

"But more importantly than that, I heard people talking to each other about it when I was walking down the street. Regardless of what they're saying, the fact that they weren't just like 'Let's go grab a beer and a pizza' when it was over is the most rewarding part to me."

Green also talked a bit about his next film, Pineapple Express, which was written and produced by Judd Apatow (of Knocked Up and Superbad fame) and looks absolutely hilarious. He also revealed he's working on a screenplay for a remake of one of the weirdest - and scariest - horror films of all time, Dario Argento's Suspiria. Green, who also intends to direct the new version, says he wants to make sure the remake doesn't make too much sense, since that would be a betrayal of the original. I could not agree more.

Afterwards, I hustled down to the Colony Theatre to catch the premiere of Miami Noir: The Arthur E. Teele Story, which was written and directed by two UM film students, Joshua Miller and Sam Rega (pictured at left with festival publicist extraordinaire Lisa Palley). Here's my story about the screening and the lively panel discussion that followed it.

Miller and Rega will be hosting a seminar at the UM campus at 1:30 p.m. Friday about their experiences making Miami Noir. The festival is also planning to schedule a second showing of the film at the Tower Theater at some point on Friday, but the exact time has not yet been determined.

Demi Moore, who came to town for the U.S. premiere of her film Flawless, adopted an I'm-too-famous-for-you attitude and granted no interviews. But she did participate in a press conference for the film alongside director Michael Radford. I'm not a big fan of press conferences, but I stuck around to take a picture of what it looked like. Demi is leaning to her left, holding her arm out towards festival director Patrick De Bokay.

I also attended a screening of shorts at the Regal South Beach which included Kate Hudson's directorial debut, Cutlass. Hudson attended alongside pal Marisa Tomei, but they left shortly after the lights went down and did not return.

Finally, on my way to the Regal, I took this photo on Lincoln Road. I am posting it here, even though it has nothing to do with movies, because bulldogs are awesome, and so are the people who own them.

 

Film festival frenzy

The 25th Miami International Film Festival kicked off last night with a screening of the excellent La misma luna (Under the Same Moon), which deserves to become a sleeper hit when Fox Searlight releases it theatrically in a couple of weeks.

Today, though, is when the festival really gets under gear, with simultaneous screenings at the Regal South Beach, Intracoastal, Cosford, Colony and Gusman theaters. My pick for today is Snow Angels, a drama about the overlapping fates of three couples in different stages of life that is by turns funny, harrowing and sad.

I'm looking forward to sitting down tomorrow for an interview with the film's director, David Gordon Green. In fact, I'll be doing little but working over the next 10 days. But it's the best kind of work I can imagine, so I'm not complaining.

Here are some more reviews for films being shown this weekend, including which celebrities will be attending their respective screenings. If you've ever wanted to eyeball Demi Moore in the flesh, you'll have your chance on Sunday night.Visit www.miamifilmfestival.com for a complete lineup of films and showtimes. I'll be posting mini-reviews of movies I catch throughout the event on here. And let me know if you've seen something that I should check out.

Everything sounds snootier in French

The stand-alone cut of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, which clocks in at 127 minutes (or 40 minutes longer than the version seen in Grindhouse), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week, awesomely retitled Boulevard de la Mort. Premiere's Glenn Kenny was there and liked what he saw.

No word yet on whether U.S. audiences will have a chance to see the long version in theaters - doubtful, considering Grindhouse's weak box-office grosses - but it's practically guaranteed to hit DVD later this year.

Anticipation

Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells has seen Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men and he's calling it "staggering... the Coens' best dark film ever. fuller and more refined than the classic Blood Simple, more solemn and straight-on emotional than Miller's Crossing, and at least on par with their much-loved Fargo."

This is exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping to hear out of Cannes, where No Country For Old Men is making its world premiere. The film is now being distributed in the U.S. in late fall by Miramax Films, and a long-time friend who works there e-mailed me this week and all but promised that I wouldn't have to wait too much longer to see it. This would make her my best friend in the entire world.

A tale of two cities

Just got back from the world premiere screening of The Man of Two Havanas at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The movie, which will be shown here several times over the next week, is director Vivien Lesnik Weisman's documentary portrait of her father Max Lesnik, who was raised in Havana, Cuba and later moved to Miami's Little Havana, but wound up fighting against the tide in both cities.

 

The reason for Lesnik's disenfranchisement was his political outspokenness. In Cuba, after befriending Fidel Castro while a teenager in college and playing a key role in the Cuban Revolution of 1958, Lesnik became disillusioned over the Castro's government marriage of ideologies with the Soviet Union.

In Miami, where he moved with his wife and two daughters, Lesnik was alienated by his refusal to toe the right-wing Cuban exile political line - and paid dearly for it. A sharp, charismatic and eloquent man, Lesnik is a fascinating subject for a film, and his daughter turns The Man of Two Havanas into a love letter to her father and a blistering critique of enduring political attitudes towards Cuba - including the U.S. embargo of the island.

At the screening, I ran into former Miami Film Festival director Nicole Guillemet (who is now apartment-hunting in New York) and asked her why the movie didn't premiere in Miami, where it would have been a natural. Guillemet says she loved the film and would have absolutely programmed it, political controversy or not, but it simply wasn't ready in time.

I am interviewing Lesnik and her father tomorrow for a story to run in the paper sometime next week. 

Viewing log

Saturday Apr. 28

The Man of Two Havanas (2007)

Farewell

Miami's film festival calendar just got a little less crowded.

After five years of unspooling movies during the sweltering South Florida summer, the American Black Film Festival is packing it up and heading west - to Los Angeles.

Festival founder Jeff Friday told USA Today that the move to L.A. "is an important part in the festival's evolution. We intend to work more closely with the studios and create a more potent marketplace for buyers and producers of independent black cinema."

The move west has also impacted the festival's dates. Instead of a summer fling, this year's edition will take place Oct. 25-29.

High hopes

I've never been to the Cannes Film Festival and will probably never get to go. For some reason, the beancounters at the paper can't justify spending several thousands of dollars to send me to the French Riviera so I can watch some movies and grab a few interviews. It seems mighty unfair to me, but that's the way it is.

This year, however, missing Cannes is going to sting a little more than usual, since Joel and Ethan Coen are going there to premiere their latest film, No Country For Old Men. I read Cormac McCarthy's novel when it was published two years ago and kept thinking throughout what a tremendous movie it would make - as long as it was in the hands of the right filmmaker(s).

And although I've been down on the Coen brothers' last few pictures (everything they've made since Fargo has been self-indulgent to a fault), I think they are an inspired choice to do the novel justice. Their casting choices alone - including Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin in the three lead parts - suggest they have taken just the right approach, or at least an approach that will make me very happy.

Not going to Cannes, though, means I will have to wait until the late fall to see the movie, unless distributor Paramount Vantage takes it to the Toronto Film Festival - or better yet, starts screening it early. Really early. Like next month. One can wish, right?

Missed opportunities

I had hoped to catch last night's Miami Film Festival screening of the Spanish-language adventure epic Alatriste, but my workload kept me from attending. If you happened to go, let me know how the movie was and what the turnout was like.

Nothing - nothing! - will keep me from tonight's screening of 300, though. And if you happen to have Thursday morning free, don't forget to try to swing by this festival seminar to hear me and other film critics/writers prattle on about what it is we do.

On sale now

Miami Film Festival tickets go on sale today for the general public.

Here are a couple of recommendations to get you started. More to come in the days ahead.

Don't overlook the seminars, either. You never know who will be participating.

Viewing log:

Tuesday Feb. 13

Breach (2007): Review here.

Thursday Feb. 15

Brick (2006): Wish I had caught up with this one last year, when it would have probably cracked my top 10 list. A deep fondness for hard-boiled noir is required. Writer-director Rian Johnson is ridiculously talented. Has David Lynch seen this movie?

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006): I know, I know. But guess what? It's better than you think. Not good, mind you. But better.

And the winner is

Festival organizers unveiled the list of this year's award-winning movies. Bella, director Alejandro Monteverde's tale about a life-altering chance meeting between two strangers in New York, won the People's Choice Award, which is voted on by festivalgoers. The two runners-up for the award were Mon Meilleur Ami and Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.

The Norwegian comedy Reprise won the Diesel Discovery Award, which is given to first-time filmmakers and voted on by the media attending the festival. Death of a President won the FIPRESCI jury prize, which is voted on by a panel of international critics. The panel honored "the audacity with which [the movie] distorts reality to reveal a larger truth." Whatever, FIPRESCI dudes.

You can check out the rest of the festival winners here. I'm off to try to sneak into a sold-out public showing of Paris, je t'aime, a collection of 21 short films by 21 famous filmmakers (including the Coen brothers, Alexander Payne, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and a bunch of others) all set in Paris. It sounds like a nice way to cap off the festival, and since they're all short films, I won't have to concentrate all that hard, which is good, because I'm feeling pretty movied-out. I just wanna go home and catch up with last week's premiere episode of The Wire.

True stories Part II

The other harrowing documentary I saw, Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil, recounts the astonishing story of Father Olivier O'Grady, the Roman Catholic priest and self-described pedophile who sexually molested and raped what may be hundreds of children - including a nine-month old baby - over the span of 20 years.

Berg's main theme in the film is to show how the Catholic Church continually ignored the mounting evidence against O'Grady and essentially pretended nothing had happened, the way any major corporation would hide the wrongdoings of one of its executives to avoid public scrutiny and criticism. But the key to the film's success are the plentiful interviews with O'Grady, who currently lives in Ireland, has the manner and tenor of a kind-hearted, friendly man, and speaks so calmly and clinically about his crimes and why he did them, he becomes as frightening and monstrous as Hannibal Lecter.

Lionsgate Films plans to release Deliver Us From Evil in theaters next month. Sitting in the row in front of me at the screening was director Brian De Palma, who often attends the festival as a fan, just to gorge on movies. Being a huge fan of his films, I was tempted to lean forward and ask him a couple of questions about The Black Dahlia, which opened in theaters yesterday. But I had a feeling that most reviews were probably going to be a lot like my own, so I didn't bother him.

True stories

Two of the most powerful movies I've seen here happen to be balanced, informative documentaries about incendiary subjects. Lake of Fire, director Tony Kaye's first film since 1998's American History X (which he publically disowned after the studio took the movie away from him and allowed actor Edward Norton to re-edit it), is an epic, two-and-a-half hour documentary about the abortion debate in the U.S.

The movie, which currently has no U.S. distributor, will probably have to be trimmed a bit to make it more commercially viable. But even at its current length, Lake of Fire is utterly engrossing and provocative, forcing you to consider the other side's stance, no matter which side of the fence you happen to be on.

The movie gives equal time to both pro-life and pro-choice groups; recounts the shootings and bombings that have taken place at various abortion clinics since 1993; interviews Norma McCorvey (a.k.a. the original "Jane Roe") about her conversion to Christianity and her subsequent anti-abortion stance; and uses interviews with respected authors and commentators (including Noah Chomsky, Nat Hentoff and Frederick Clarkson) to put the abortion debate into a political context and show how it reflects American's current ideological climate.

Kaye also does two daring things in the movie: He follows a 28 year-old woman through her abortion procedure, providing an up-close and personal account of her psychological and emotional turmoil. Kaye also includes in extremely graphic and disturbing images of aborted fetuses, knowing that the sheer power of those images alone express things no amount of pro-life rhetoric could ever hope to express. What's best about Lake of Fire is that it doesn't set out to change anyone's mind, pro or con: It just hopes to raise the level of the debate by giving viewers as much information as possible, as experienced by those - both extremists and not - who are in the thick of the battle.  

The party's over

The Toronto Film Festival officially ends tonight, but for the few journalists still lingering here, the party was over two or three days ago. I haven't had a problem getting into a press screening since Wednesday - unlike the first half of the festival, when you had to show up at least a half-hour early if you hoped to snag a seat.

I wish I could say that the extra elbow room gave me the chance to catch some worthwhile movies, but most of what I've seen over the last 48 hours has been on the level of Bonneville, in which Jessica Lange, Joan Allen and Kathy Bates play three Mormon women who go on a road trip from Utah to California in a Pontiac convertible, a la Thelma and Louise, and raise all kinds of hell, like drinking coffee or laughing so hard inside their motel room that they disturb the neighbors.

It's always strangely fascinating to watch good actors in a bizarrely bad movie, although the novelty wears off after 30 minutes or so, and you start wondering why, exactly, you're forcing yourself to watch the thing. The best moment in Bonneville came when the hapless heroines are stranded by a flat tire in the middle of the Utah salt flats and they see a figure on the horizon approaching. The critic sitting next to me leaned over and whispered "Maybe this is going to turn into Wolf Creek," which momentarily got my hopes up. Alas, it was not to be.

Girl power

Caught up this morning with All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which was scooped up for a U.S. release by the Weinstein Co. here after a wildly successful midnight screening on Saturday. As often happens at film festivals, I found the movie to be a tad overrated. But there's no denying first-time director Jonathan Levine is trying to do different something with the slasher-flick genre, incorporating Columbine-era themes of teen alienation and violence into the usual Friday the 13th formulas.

Although it's primarily a horror movie, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane isn't really all that scary or disturbing. It is most effective, really, as an exploration of adolescent sexuality, especially when it focuses on Mandy, the prettiest and most sought-after girl in school, who is either oblivious to the effect she has on the opposite sex or just hasn't let it go to her head. Played by the excellent Amber Heard, whose sexy confidence and poise reminded me of Chloe Sevigny, Mandy is a fascinating and original heroine who ends up rewriting all the rules in the slasher-film canon.

"The Richard Burton and Liz Taylor of the barrio"

That's how director Leon Ichaso describes the relationship between Puerto Rican singer Hector Lavoe and his wife Puchi in El Cantante, which made its world premiere here last night. The story of Lavoe, who popularized salsa music in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, shares more than a few similarities with the ones recounted in Ray and Walk the Line - drug addiction, marital strife, the pressures of stardom - except that Lavoe's is infinitely more tragic.

To his credit, Ichaso does not attempt to sugarcoat the reality of Lavoe's life: If anything, the movie could have used less darkness and more levity. The script, which Ichaso co-wrote, nimbly covers more than 20 years of Lavoe's life and career, but lacks the depth and dimension to properly convey what made Lavoe tick.

The casting of Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez is both blessing and curse: It's undeniably entertaining to watch the real-life couple tear into each other during hysterical, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-scale arguments, or snorting lines of cocaine and cackling madly while riding around 80s-era Manhattan in the back of a limo. But the actors' personas are ultimately too big for the characters they are playing: Despite the filmmakers' obvious affection for Lavoe and his legacy, El Cantante is more The Marc and J-Lo Show than anything else.

But the plentiful musical numbers, which Ichaso choreographs and directs with tremendous energy and style, are all outstanding - joyous, infectious, and worth the price of a ticket. Even if you've never heard of Levoe, El Cantante is bound to turn you into an instant fan, a testament to both the singer's talent and Anthony's excellent re-recordings of his songs.

The movie is currently on the market for a U.S. distributor has been picked up for U.S. distribution for a reported $6 million by Picturehouse, the same company releasing Guillermo Del Toro's marvelous Pan's Labyrinth in December. However the movie fares, I suspect the soundtrack album will be a big hit. Despite its flaws, El Cantante is also instantly recognizable as a story about Hispanics told and acted by Hispanics, which should earn it an audience beyond Lavoe's considerable fan base.

"What are you going to do, arrest me for smoking?"

Good thing I decided to quit the evil weed before coming to Toronto.

Controversy sells

Just as I feared, I got shut out of this morning's press screening of Death of a President, along with some 200 other journalists and industry types. I did, however, manage to snag a ticket for its final public showing here later in the day.

 

Noah Cowan, a programmer for the Toronto Film Festival, introduced the movie by saying "This film should be considered more than a single image or a scandal for the American right-wing," referring to the controversy that has surrounded the picture since festival organizers announced it would be making its world premiere here (the $4 million was made for British television, where it will air next month).

Newmarket Films, which bought the U.S. distribution rights for the film here Monday, should hurry up and bring it out soon, because the controversy is bound to be short-lived. As a technical achievement, Death of a President is fascinating: Director Gabriel Range seamlessly mixes real-life footage of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney into his fictional documentary, Zelig-style, to create a convincing and disturbing depiction of an imaginary assassination of Bush during a speaking engagement in Chicago in October 2007.

But what follows is a highly manipulative, dramatically clumsy and painfully obvious scenario in which the Cheney presidency first tries to go to war against Syria for the assassination, then passes an amendment to the Patriot Act which further erodes personal rights and privacy in the U.S., resulting to the arrest and conviction of an innocent Muslim man. The lack of imagination in the film's "what if?" scenario isn't just disappointing: It also renders the second half of the film so dull, it's no surprise that two people sitting near me in the theater were sound asleep.

After the film, Range and his producer/screenwriter Simon Finch took the stage for a Q&A session with the audience. Range said he wanted the film to double as "a series of reflections about things that have happened in America since 9/11" and claimed that the only response he's had from the White House about the movie came from a spokeswoman who said "the film did not dignify a response."

Range also said he wanted to make sure Death of a President strongly conveyed the "horror" of the assassination so no one could accuse him of making a wish-fulfillment fantasy or encouraging anyone to try to kill the President. He can, however, be accused of making an obvious, sensationalistic movie that squanders its potential as speculative drama. 

Disappointments

Midway through the Toronto International Film Festival, the general consensus here seems to be one of vague discontent. It's not that the movies are awful: It's more that they're often just not good enough to get excited about.

One example is Breaking and Entering, director Anthony (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley) Minghella's sophisticated, highly watchable drama about the relationship between a London businessman (Jude Law) and the mother (an excellent Juliette Binoche) of the teenage thief who burglared his office. The movie, which marks Minghella's first original screenplay since 1991's Truly, Madly, Deeply, has the breadth of a novel, grappling with everything from marital dysfunction and parenting to the plight of refugees. But there's something overly schematic and stilted about the film, which seems to be striving for the moral complexity and quiet intensity of a Krzysztof Kieslowski picture, but is far too pat and contrived to get there.

Departing from the mockumentary format of his previous three films (Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind), director Christopher Guest takes on the ridiculous vanity and inflated egos of the film industry in For Your Consideration, about the making of a low-budget movie that becomes a possible Oscar contender. Although it's often very funny, the movie still isn't as clever or inventive as I hoped it would be. Yes, the Hollywood Access spoofs are hilarious. But it's not like we've never seen those before.

The Fountain, a metaphysical, sci-fi tinged meditation on love, death and immortality spanning more than 1,000 years, certainly does not lack for ambition, maintaining Darren Aronofsky's track record as an iconoclastic, daringly original filmmaker. The movie, which stars Hugh Jackman as a scientist and Rachel Weisz as his terminally-ill wife, is stuffed with both trippy ideas and romantic passion. But it is also the kind of picture that is easier to respect than to like: Like Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, The Fountain is a love-it-or-hate-it experience that some people will embrace passionately, while others will walk away from puzzled, if not baffled. I'm somewhere in-between.

Peter O'Toole canceled a planned visit to the festival due to health reasons, which is a shame, since his name is being bandied about as a probable Best Actor Oscar nominee for Venus. O'Toole is the main reason to see the film, playing an aging actor who forms a surprising bond with a spirited teenager (Jodie Whittaker). But the movie, directed by Roger Michell, is a one-trick pony, its premise never leading anywhere other than the expected.

Running out now to get in line for the press screening of the controversial D.O.A.P., or Death of a President. The movie doesn't start for another hour, but festival screenings this year have been unusually packed, and with all the attention the film is getting, I'm probably already too late soo snag a seat.

Restraint

I sat  down for an interview with director Ridley Scott Saturday morning, presumably to talk about