Singer speaks at Toronto film festival after announcing eye infection had left him with limited vision in one eye
Sir Elton John has made his first public appearance at Toronto international film festival, days after announcing a severe eye infection had left him with limited vision in one eye.
The British singer, 77, was pictured in good spirits as he arrived on the back of a buggy at the Canadian festival, alongside his husband, David Furnish.
Continue reading...Cord Jefferson’s story of a novelist (Jeffrey Wright) grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers is now practically guaranteed serious Oscar consideration
American Fiction, the literary satire starring Jeffrey Wright as a novelist grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers, has won the Toronto international film festival’s influential People’s Choice award, a result that practically guarantees it serious Oscar consideration and contention for major awards.
Described by the Guardian as “hilarious and withering”, American Fiction triumphed over pre-festival favourites such as Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers and Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Boy and the Heron, which were named the runners-up. It is written and directed by Cord Jefferson, a credited writer on TV shows including The Good Place, Watchmen and Station Eleven, and now making his feature directing debut.
Continue reading...Director’s most autobiographical film to date picks up audience prize generally seen as indicator of awards success to come
Steven Spielberg’s new film The Fabelmans has won the Toronto international film festival’s People’s Choice award, long regarded in the film industry as a key indicator of awards success over the next few months.
The Fabelmans, directed by Spielberg and co-written with Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner, has been hailed as Spielberg’s most autobiographical film and has won generally admiring reviews. The story of a teenage boy coping with his parents’ disintegrating marriage in the 60s midwest, the Guardian described it as a “rare insight into the world’s most famous director who has usually kept us at arm’s length”.
Continue reading...Stephen Karam’s Tony-winning play makes the leap to film with ease, an extraordinarily well-acted, uncomfortably intimate look at a family at Thanksgiving
There’s a surprising urgency to Stephen Karam’s adaptation of his Tony-winning play The Humans, a vitality one might not expect from a film that sounds like something we’ve seen many times before. Not only is the set-up of a dysfunctional multi-generational family descending on a Manhattan apartment for Thanksgiving as dilapidated as most Manhattan apartments themselves (the post-American Beauty world of indies was forever damaged by the increasingly cliched quirky family subgenre) but the decision to film a one-location, one-act play (especially by the person who originated it on stage) can often be the result of vanity rather than necessity.
Related: The Guilty review – Jake Gyllenhaal’s tense 911 call thriller
Continue reading...The multi-hyphenate star delivers a standout turn in a snappy, fact-based caper about strippers scamming Wall Street bankers
After the dog days of August, littered with one lazily patchworked Hollywood product after another, there’s something wickedly indulgent about the arrival of Hustlers, a slick, flashy, seductively entertaining segue from one season to the next. It’s ideally positioned, premiering at the Toronto film festival before a mid-September release: it matches the immediate gratification of a summer movie with the artful substantiveness of an awards contender – yet remains not quite definable as either.
Related: From Fyre festival to Hustlers: why are we so obsessed with scammers?
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