News

Art and life are inextricably entangled in Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, a wildly ambitious, visually intoxicating reinterpretation of the Richard Strauss opera, Salome, that proves to possess almost as many layers as the Biblical princess’ famous dance routine.

After spending the past two and a half decades struggling to get his groove back following the 1997 success of The Sweet Hereafter, the filmmaker reconnects with his pet themes of alienation and family trauma, taking inspiration from his own revisionist staging of the opera, which he remounted for the Canadian Opera Company earlier this year. Using that production as a leap-off point, Egoyan interweaves a behind-the-scenes narrative involving a young director (Amanda Seyfried) who is challenged to put her own stamp on the oft-interpreted material while exorcising a number of personal demons in the process.

Handed its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival at the very same venue that...

Oxford, North Carolina — It’s a marvel Cheri Beasley made it here at all, to this drafty barn, off of a winding country road in rural North Carolina. Her handlers had the wrong address, the cell service was spotty, the two-lane road you take to get here was shut down in one direction for re-paving. But the campaign’s SUV rolled up the long gravel driveway, past pert rows of kale, just a couple minutes behind schedule. The former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court hopped out at...

Potential awards season contenders Truth from James Vanderbilt and Marc Abraham’s I Saw The Light starring Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams land world premiere slots, while Paco Cabezas’s Mr. Right will close the festival.

London is the subject of the seventh annual City To City programme that features world premieres of Tom Geens’ Couple In A Hole starring Paul Higgins and Kate Dickie and Michael Caton-Jones’ Urban Hymn with Letitia Wright and Shirley Henderson. Elaine Constantine’s Northern Soul gets a North American premiere.

The world premiere of Catherine Hardwicke’s Miss You Already is among five additions to the galas alongside Mr. Right, an action comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick.

Matthew Cullen’s Martin Amis adaptation London Fields and David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis get first public screenings in the Special Presentations roster with I Saw The Light.

Tiff top brass also unveiled the Contemporary World Cinema section, featuring...

Variety is reporting that Image Entertainment has scooped up the distribution rights to Atom Egoyan’s crime thriller Devil’s Knot. Image, a division of Maryland-based Rlj Entertainment, plans to release the film next year in the second quarter.

Synopsis:

Worldview Entertainment's dramatic crime thriller Devil's Knot, filmed in the greater Atlanta, Georgia, area under the direction of Atom Egoyan, stars Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth with a screenplay by Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson. Elizabeth Fowler, Richard Saperstein, and Clark Peterson produced Devil’s Knot alongside Worldview Entertainment CEO Christopher Woodrow. Worldview’s Molly Conners, Sarah Johnson Redlich, Maria Cestone, and Hoyt David Morgan executive produced alongside actual defendants Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. Devil’s Knot is a Fowler-Saperstein-Peterson Production.

Following the release from prison of the West Memphis Three, after nearly 20 years of incarceration, Hollywood was abuzz with plans to develop the teen trio's...

The first still from the true-crime tale Devil's Knot, which is based on the tragedy surrounding the now freed West Memphis Three, is here, and it offers your first look at Reese Witherspoon as Pam Hobbs, the mother of Steve Branch, one of the three children savagely murdered in Arkansas in 1993.

Synopsis:

Worldview Entertainment's dramatic crime thriller Devil's Knot, filmed in the greater Atlanta, Georgia, area under the direction of Atom Egoyan, stars Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth with a screenplay by Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson. Elizabeth Fowler, Richard Saperstein, and Clark Peterson produced Devil’s Knot alongside Worldview Entertainment CEO Christopher Woodrow. Worldview’s Molly Conners, Sarah Johnson Redlich, Maria Cestone, and Hoyt David Morgan executive produced alongside actual defendants Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. Devil’s Knot is a Fowler-Saperstein-Peterson Production.

Following the release from prison of the West Memphis Three, after nearly 20 years of incarceration,...

Toronto – On December 4th, Tiff saluted the best of Canadian Cinema at the 12th Annual Canada’s Top Ten industry event, hosted by Sarah Gadon (Cosmopolis, A Dangerous Method) and Don McKellar (Blindness, Trigger). A panel of industry professionals selected the top 10 Canadian feature and short films. Tiff Senior Programmer Steve Gravestock said that this year’s lineup “champions the work of familiar faces as well as emerging talent – all of whose stellar filmmaking achievements shape the Canadian film community”.

To celebrate the best Canadian films of 2012, Tiff will be hosting a 10-day festival of the winners. Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Festival, says that the festival “offers homegrown talent a dedicated platform to showcase their success, and we couldn’t be more impressed by the calibre of films the industry has produced this year.”

The selected top ten are as follows, in no particular order:

Short Films

Bydlo dir.

Short films are the loose change in the treasury of world cinema usually dismissed in favor of feature films, an over-valued currency not infrequently resulting into toxic assets. The cheap label slapped on shorts unjustly omits their pivotal role in a film industry that needs them but ignores them. It is common knowledge that in 90% of cases the calling card for new directors comes in the short format, yet it would not come as natural to name the title of a short film made by an established filmmaker.

Confined to the extra features of DVD reissues, programme fillers at major film festivals, sidebar curiosities for bored cinephiles, shorts lack in visibility because they are not as profitable as their longer brothers. Even imagination has its monetary value, and stock exchange…

Shorts nonetheless possess intrinsic values: they have a snapshot quality and are able to focus intensely on a single subject.

Today, the nominations for Canada's 2010 Directors Guild Awards have been announced. These awards are meant to give awards for some people who work behind the camera to give outstanding films and TV series. Besides, the gala will be hosted by Canadian comedian Dave Foley. So, without further ado, here are the nominations.

Best feature film:

* Cairo Time.

* Chloe.

* The Trotsky.

* Love & Savagery.

Best television movie/miniseries

* Darwin Darkest Hour.

* Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story.

* Sea Wolf.

* The White Archer.

Best dramatic TV series:

* Being Erica.

* Flashpoint.

* Sanctuary.

* The Bridge.

Best comedy TV series:

* The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town.

* G-Spot.

* Less than Kind.

* Little Mosque on the Prairie.

Best family TV series:

* Degrassi: The Next Generation.

* Heartland.

* How to Be Indie.

* Overruled!

Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary:

* Ballet High - Elise Swerhone (Director), Robert Lower (Picture Editor).

* The Experimental Eskimos -...

Adoration, Cannes, In Competition

Atom Egoyan's remarkable new film Adoration is a haunting meditation on the nature of received wisdom and how it can warp individuals, damage families and even threaten society.

Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it's an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people's imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over.

Featuring an exquisitely measured score for violin, cello and piano by Mychael Danna (The Sweet Hereafter, Little Miss Sunshine), the film treats moviegoers as grownups and it will appeal greatly to audiences that relish articulate and insightful filmmaking.

Structured as a mystery story with shifts in time and scenes from the imagination of characters, Egoyan's intelligent script tells of a high school student named Simon who takes a unique approach to an assignment in his French language class.

Required to translate a news story about a pregnant woman who arrived in Israel with a bomb in her luggage placed there by her boyfriend, Simon imagines himself to be the resulting child with his own dead parents cast as the people involved.

Encouraged by his teacher, Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), Simon develops the story to the point where his classmates believe his father really was a terrorist and soon it's all over the Internet to the alarm of his uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), who has raised him since his folks were killed in a car accident.

The boy's late grandfather, Morris (Kenneth Welsh), a condescending bigot and proud of it, always made him believe his Lebanese father (Noam Jenkins) had deliberately caused the death of his adored mother (Rachel Blanchard), and Simon feels he was in some way responsible.

Tom feels accountable too and in a series of well-staged and illuminating scenes, Sabine contrives to help them recognize something closer to the truth.

Bostick, who has to carry much of the film, does so with great aplomb while Speedman and Khanjian provide rewarding portraits of people only slowly coming to terms with great personal loss.

Danna's music maintains the film's high IQ with delicacy and warmth employing wonderful soloists Yi-Jia Susanne Hou on violin, Winona Zelenka on cello, and Eve Egoyan on piano. It's destined to make a very popular soundtrack album.

Cast: Arsinee Khanjian, Scott Speedman, Devon Bostick, Rachel Blanchard, Noam Jenkins, Kenneth Walsh. Director: Atom Egoyan. Screenwriter: Atom Egoyan. Director Of Photography: Paul Sarossy. Production Designer: Phillip Barker. Costume Designer: Debra Hanson. Music: Mychael Danna. Editor: Susan Shipton. Producers: Atom Egoyan, Simone Urdl, Jennifer Weiss. Executive Producers:

Robert Lantos, Michele Halberstadt, Laurent Petin. Sales Agent: Fortissimo Films.

U.S. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics.

No MPAA rating, running time 100 mins.

CANNES -- Atom Egoyan has delivered a big, slick and sexy mystery in Where the Truth Lies, turning the Rupert Holmes novel into a sumptuous tale of show business hype and duplicity.

Boasting a handsome cast, top-flight design and evocative music, the film should have no trouble attracting audiences seeking high-style, grownup entertainment.

Rich in backstage atmosphere and the glamour of big-time hotels and nightclubs, the movie delves with considerable wit into the ugly side of the entertainment industry.

In the late '50s, Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth) are the biggest comedy duo in America. The last thing they need is the naked body of a beautiful blonde in the bathtub of their New Jersey hotel room.

In fact, the last thing the comedians do as partners is to deny they had anything to do with the dead woman, and they promptly break up their long-standing and hugely successful act.

Fifteen years later, a young writer named Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) wins a fat contract from a publisher to write a book about Vince Collins, and it is through her eyes that the secret behind their split is slowly revealed.

Using flashbacks from different points of view, Egoyan traces the lies and deception that have kept the sordid events that followed a Miami telethon from a still-adoring public.

Larry and Vince had been forced by a no-nonsense gangster named Sally Sanmarco (David Hayman) to fly directly from the Miami gig to the opening of his New Jersey nightclub, where the corpse was found.

As O'Connor discovers, many facts were quickly hidden and the comics appear to have covered their tracks cleverly but with their careers pretty much over by the '70s, their mutual desire for public acclaim drives them to reveal a version of the truth.

But the young writer cannot resist being drawn into the pair's intense world of fabrication and celebrity worship. "Having to be a nice guy is the hardest job in the world when you're not," Larry tells her.

Egoyan has enormous fun peeling the wrappers of showbiz lore so that we see the hoodlums, the drug taking, kinky sex and unstoppable violence. Soon O'Connor is wrapped up in it as much as the superstars who might or might not have committed murder.

The film obeys the sometimes strained logic of mystery novels so that there's more than the occasional need to suspend disbelief, but Egoyan's script moves slickly along to a satisfying conclusion.

Bacon is as taut and effective as usual, and Firth might prove a revelation to those who have seen him only in period pictures and English comedies. Lohman carries the weight of lead investigator with immense charm and no little grit.

Best of all, the film looks wonderful, and full credit is due to production designer Phillip Barker and costume designer Beth Pasternak. Mychael Danna's music, too, is sly and seductive, adding a touch of noir class to the proceedings.

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES

Serendipity Point Films, First Choice Films

Credits:

Director-screenwriter: Atom Egoyan

Producer: Robert Lantos

Co-producers: Sandra Cunningham, Chris Chrisafis

Based on the novel by: Rupert Holmes

Cinematographer: Paul Sarossy

Editor: Susan Shipton

Production designer: Phillip Barker

Music: Mychael Danna

Costume designer: Beth Pasternak

Cast:

Lanny Morris: Kevin Bacon

Vince Collins: Colin Firth

Karen O'Connor: Alison Lohman

Maureen: Rachel Blanchard

Reuben: David Hayman

Sally Sanmarco: David Hayman

Alice: Kristin Adams

Bonnie: Sonja Bennett

Mrs. O'Flaherty: Deborah Grover

Jack Scaglia: Beau Starr

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 107 minutes...