The Financial Express (Delhi Edition)
Toronto fest rolls out red carpet for Oscar hopefuls
Stage is set for showcase of season’s biggest films; The Judge, The Humbling among favourites
TRUE to its traditions, the Toronto Inter national Film Festival (TIFF) has set the Oscar season tempo in motion with Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall staking an early claim to acting honours. The veteran Duvall and his younger Hollywood colleague Downey Jr push their performances in The Judge to the heights needed to secure the nominations for the awards of 2014.
Directed by David Dobkin of Shanghai Knights, The Judge is about big city lawyer Hank Palmer (Downey Jr) returning home to his estranged father, the town’s judge, who is suspected of murder. “Toronto is a storytelling town and my film is keeping that tradition alive,” Dobkin told the audience while introducing The Judge, which opened the 29th Toronto film festival on Thursday night.
Duvall already has a statuette at home, the Best Actor prize he won for Tender Mercies way back in 1993 while the Sherlock Holmes star Downey Jr is yet to have one of his own after winning Best Actor nomination for Chaplin (1992) and Best Supporting Role for Tropic Thunder (2008). The Toronto audience is already rooting for his first Oscar win after seeing his charming, yet powerful performance in The Judge.
Another Holywood veteran Al Pacino, who won the Best Actor playing a blind former colonel in Scent of a Woman (1992), too has joined the Oscar favourites with The Humbling by Rain Man director Barry Levinson. Screen on Friday, The Humbling, one of the two Al Pacino films in Toronto this year (the other being Manglehorn by David Gordon), is the story of a legendary actor’s affair with a lesbian half his age. Incidentally, Al Pacino was the first star to arrive in Toronto, to lead the Toronto festival’s annual charity gala held one day before the opening of the festival. Oscarwinning Denzel Washington (Best Actor for Training Day in 2001) too is a Toronto guest this year, with his new film The Equalizer, the cinematic
and Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed (Mira Nair’s The
Reluctant Fundamentalist) in Nightcrawler by Den Gilroy, another Hollywood big title in Toronto. Michael Douglas too makes his Toronto presence this year with The Reach by Jean-Baptiste Leonetti.
Twilight actor Kirsten Stewart comes to Toronto with two films — Still Alice by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland and the French film Clouds of Sils
Maria by Olivier Assayas. Hollywood actor Chris Rock is not left behind in the transformation of the industry’s top actors as directors as he makes his filmmaking debut with Top Five, the story of a New York comedian-turnedfilm star. Richard Gere brings Time Out of Mind, the story of New York City’s home shelter system, while Felicity Jones acts in The
Theory of Everything, the early life story of British cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Another highlight of Toronto festival this year is the appearance of Reese Witherspoon in The Good Lie, a Hollywood production in which she works with a group of young Sudanese actors who have left their country to pursue dreams in America. Witherspoon also acts in another film in Toron
to this year, Wild by JeanMarc Vallee.
Race and action
In Black and White by Mike Bender starring Kevin Costner, Hollywood handles America’s race issue, a film that arrives at the time of the death of African-American teenager Michael Brown in Missouri at the hands of a policeman that led to protests across the country. The Pianist actor Adrien Brody will be adding star power to the coming international releases based on action with his new film American Heist, which will have its world premiere in Toronto early next week. The film tells the story of two brothers embroiled in a high-stakes bank robbery. Maggie Smith and Jane Fonda too are involved in big American productions this year. Smith stars in My Old Lady, the story of a New Yorker inheriting an apartment in Paris and Fonda in This is Where I Leave You.
Faizal Khan is a freelancer adaptation of the cult '80s American TV show.
The big films from Hollywood on the Toronto list along with some small budget surprises have always kept the Oscar buzz going. In 2012, Argo, the American hostage drama set in Iran and directed by actor Ben Affleck, went on to win the Best Picture Oscar after its world premiere in Toronto. Last year, Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave too won audience support in Toronto after its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival like Slumdog Millionnaire did in 2009.
The big games
Spiderman star Tobey Maguire, who won accolades for his role alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gasby last year, is certain to be noticed for his role as American chess world champion Bobby Fischer in Ed Zwick’s Pawn Sacrifice, the true story of the championship fight between Fischer and Boris Spassky played in the height of the cold war. British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, another actor with his Sherlock Holmes portrayal credentials like Downey Jr, has returned to Toronto this year with The Imitation Game by Morten Tyldum.
Cumberbatch, who played Julian Assange in last year’s opening film here ( The Fifth Estate), continues with his biopic specialisation, this time as genius British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, who led the charge to crack the German Enigma Code that won the Second World War for the Allies. The film shows the persecution of Turing by the British government later in his life for homosexual acts then deemed illegal.
Men, Women and Children is another Hollywood movie expected to churn the international market with its story of how the Internet has changed the relationship between parents and their teenaged children. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner star in this Jason Reitman-directed film, a world premiere in Toronto. Brokeback Mountain actor Jake Gyllenhaal combines with Rene Russo