Riding high off of last year’s The King’s Speech, which became the first movie in a while to do Toronto before Oscar and still win (although it followed the similar pattern of Slumdog Millionaire which snowballed from Telluride, to Toronto, to Oscar, to …). A weepy that makes them stand on their feet works anywhere you show it first but Toronto was kind of hit and miss. Suddenly, after last year, it feels like how the Oscar race used to run.
This morning, a few titles have been announced — Venice announces Thursday and there is some crossover. For Toronto, according to Steve Pond over at The Wrap, George Clooney’s The Ides of March, Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and Madonna’s W.E., which will be ushered in by the Weinstein Co. and tells the flipside story of The King’s Speech — now that the Tom Hooper movie made a villain of Wallis Simpson Madonna is back to give the notorious woman a makeover. Pond also notes that the fest will open Davis Guggenheim’s U2 doc, From the Sky Down after the success of the Bruce Springsteen doc last year. Fist pumping bloggers, here they come.
Moneyball (Brad Pitt, directed by Bennett Miller), and Alexander Payne’s The Descendents will be joined by Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz (named after a Leonard Cohen song…)
Here is the list–
Opening Night:
“From the Sky Down,” Davis Guggenheim
Galas:
Butter, Jim Field Smith
A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg
A Happy Event
The Ides of March, George Clooney
Moneyball, Bennett Miller
Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley
W.E., Madonna
Americano, Mathieu Demy
Anonymous, Roland Emmerich
A Better Life, Chris Weitz
Countdown, Huh Jong-ho
The Descendants, Alexander Payne
Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn
50/50, Jonathan Levine
Friends with Kids, Jennifer Westfeldt
The Lady, Luc Besson
Machine Gun Preacher, Marc Forster
Peace, Love and Understanding,
360, Fernando Mereilles
Trishna,Michael Winterbottom
PJ20, Cameron Crowe