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With a co-production forum and sold-out Spotlight on Incentives seminar complementing its pavilion and robust industry delegation, Spain is giving Toronto industry attendees a taste of what will unfold on a much larger scale in September 2026 when the festival launches its official content market.

On Sept. 6, the third iteration of the Do It the Spanish Way! International Co-production Forum saw five Spanish producers with features at various stages of development — and with partners and partial funding in place — network with a mix of Canadian and international producers and distributors.

The full morning event, which welcomed more than 75 attendees, opened with an introduction and presentation of the seven features then broke out into lively one-on-one sessions. Each participating Spanish producer met with at least eight companies, Variety was told.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for Spain to join forces with other countries, and more specifically with Canada because we both have...

Films by Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, and Buster Keaton are among the “hundreds of thousands” of books, musical scores, and motion pictures that will enter the public domain on January 1, according to The Atlantic. All of the works were first made available to audiences in 1923, four years before the introduction of talkies. Due to changed copyright laws, this will be the largest collection of material to lose its copyright protections since 1998.

Artists looking to incorporate black-and-white era throwbacks into their modern creations will have lots of new options. The Atlantic consulted unpublished research from Duke University School of Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which shared with IndieWire a list of 35 films that will soon become available to all.

“Our list is therefore only a partial one; many more works are entering the public domain as well, but the relevant information to confirm this may...

Week three of Strictly Come Dancing was movie night, ensuring an array of ridiculous costumes and routines. It also saw its fair share of drama (thanks to Len), and the highest score of the series so far!

Naturally, Twitter had a lot to say, and so Digital Spy rounded up the best reactions of the evening for your pleasure. Enjoy!

The opening number, being movie week, was naturally theatrical:

You'd have to be a dried up piece of crust not to Love #Strictly's wonderful opening to Movie Week. Either that or a Daily Mail reader.

— Lorna Cooper (@Coops_tv) October 10, 2015

Just as well Iwan left. Don't think I could have coped with a rhumba to Chariots of Fire #Scd

— Lily Tomlinson (@lilyvtomlinson) October 10, 2015

How Fab-u-lous was dat opening number on #Strictly

— Rose (@MsRoseCavalier) October 10, 2015

The VTs started to get on peoples' nerves slightly:

Just once I'd like a celebrity to go,...

"For 90 Years, Moviegoers Have Avoided Meta Depictions of Cinematic Escapism" was originally published on Film School Rejects for our wonderful readers to enjoy. It is not intended to be reproduced on other websites. If you aren't reading this in your favorite RSS reader or on Film School Rejects, you're being bamboozled. We hope you'll come find us and enjoy the best articles about movies, television and culture right from the source.

Many people watch movies as a form of escapism, and it makes sense that those people wouldn’t like movies that involve reflexive techniques that address this fantasy element. For at least 90 years, as of today’s anniversary of the release of Buster Keaton‘s Sherlock Jr., there has been a lot of evidence to indicate that such meta cinema is not popular with American audiences. At the start of 1924, Keaton was riding a wave of success following his two hits of the previous year, Three Ages...

The film is called Cleo From 5 to 7, but it’s actually Cleo From 5 to 6:30 Exactly”

Agnes Varda states with a chuckle. Varda is the Guest Director for the 2013 AFI Fest, so four of her films are being screened at the festival, starting with her most famous film, Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962). The woman who has been rightfully called the Godmother of the New Wave practically bounces in her chair, which is surprising for a woman her age. I hope I age half as well. Filmmaking and boundary-breaking agree with her.

Cleo From 5 to 7 takes place over a single afternoon. A young singer (Corinne Marchand) waits for results from her medical exam to tell her whether she has cancer. More surprisingly, the story takes place in real time; starting at 5pm and ending at 6:30pm. The film has the hallmarks of many French New...

The Night in Front – Raúl Ruiz

Buzz: Director of well over 100 films, Raúl Ruiz passed away late last number at the age of 70. As you can imagine from his sprawling filmography, the man always had new projects overlapping in their production stages. Many thought his 273-minute Mysteries of Lisbon was a fitting swan song, only to learn that he had two other films well into development at the time of death, one of which (this one) was actually completely finished. While another TV project will surface with his name on it in the next year, this is the last full Ruiz experience we will ever get to discover. Probably.

The Gist: Three ages of an old man, awaiting death, who wanders about a dream city re-living scenes from his youth. It sounds like a more modest incarnation of Mysteries of Lisbon, which itself was a film that Ruiz made predominantly...

This week's look at Buster Keaton on Blu-ray will focus on Kino's recent double feature of the Great Stoneface's two films leading up to his landmark The General. First up is 1925's Go West, a rather lackluster outing by Keaton standards, but still a solid comedy, followed by a significantly better outing, his 1926 boxing film, Battling Butler. The two of these films are both very entertaining, but when looking at them in terms of the oeuvre from which they emerge, they are minor works.  Kino's double feature of Go West and Battling Butler also feature the least impressive of their restorations I've seen yet, apart from Three Ages. While the films themselves are not my favorite Keatons, Kino makes up some of the difference...

Kino Lorber has taken on the awesome responsibility of transferring all of Buster Keaton's surviving work to Blu-ray in the next year or so.  In honor of this great and noble undertaking, we'll be taking a look at their existing releases in the run up to their late November release of Keaton's Seven Chances.  In the past, we've reviewed both their double feature of Sherlock, Jr./Three Ages and their superlative edition of Our Hospitality, today's review takes on Kino's first Buster Keaton Blu-ray and one of the great American films, The General.Consistently ranked among the greatest films ever made, Buster Keaton's The General is so brilliantly conceived and executed that it continues to inspire awe and laughter with every viewing. This Kino Ultimate Disc Edition...

I have basically resigned myself to reviewing, watching and recommending Blu-rays whenever possible. I love the format and wish everyone could just magically adopt it so the prices would become more reasonable (a dream scenario I'm sure). I am always waiting and looking for deals when it comes to Blu-rays since most often the prices are simply too outrageous. As a matter of fact, while putting this piece together I only now bought myself copies of The African Queen and The Bridge on the River Kwai at Barnes and Noble as both were on sale and I had a 10% off coupon. The way I see it $39 isn't bad for the those two titles, especially when suggested retail is $75 before shipping.

So understand, I know when recommending this many titles at once I realize the possibility of you purchasing all of them is slim to none, but hopefully I may be...

The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Fred Weekend Shopping Guide - your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support Fred by using the links below to make any impulse purchases - it helps to keep us going…)

They rebuilt him… Better… Stronger… Faster… And now, after an interminably long wait, The Six Million Dollar Man (Time Life, Not Rated, DVD-$239.95) has finally arrived on DVD. As if that weren’t enough, Time Life has delivered the complete 5-season run in one massive set, which includes all 3 pilot films, all 3 reunion films, the Bionic Woman crossover episodes, newly-recorded cast interviews, and alternate syndication edits of the pilots.

The Film:

Ranked #62 on the list of AFI’s Top 100 Funniest Films of All-Time (AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Laughs, here), Sherlock, Jr. clearly defined who Buster Keaton would become. Back then in 1924, the film was what we would call now a flop, yet due to critical reevaluation, Sherlock, Jr. is now considered a classic. You see, back then audiences didn’t know what we know now: Keaton is comedy.

I’m not one of those classic comedy guys that prefers Keaton to Chaplin, as I honor and adore both for different reasons. Sherlock, Jr. prefaces many of the classic gags he would later go on to do in The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr., but if anything, the double-meaning of the film’s title (Sherlock sounds like Sure Luck) classifies the comedy of Buster Keaton. He might be stone-face and love sick, but he lucks out 9 times out of 10. That’s why we still laugh.

About two years ago I started watching Charlie Chaplin films for the first time. I watched City Lights, The Great Dictator, The Kid, The Gold Rush and, of course, Modern Times. I didn't instantly take to his style of comedy or commentary, not the same as I instantly fell in love with Buster Keaton's work in The General, but as I watched each film my appreciation began to grow.

With only a few films under my belt when it comes to Chaplin and Keaton, I would probably still place myself more in Keaton's camp than Chaplin's. But with the thought of Criterion potentially adding the rest of Chaplin's classic features to their collection, and if the Blu-ray releases are as spectacular as their treatment of Modern Times, that won't stop me from wanting more, more, more.

Modern Times is the first Chaplin feature Criterion has added to their collection,...

It felt good this week to get back to the reason I started this column... old movies I hadn't seen before. This week I watched a pair of flicks I had never seen as well as a few films I'll be reviewing shortly such as Criterion's Blu-ray edition of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, Frank Lloyd's Mutiny on the Bounty and Kino's Blu-ray version of The Complete Metropolis.

But more on those later, let's get to the two films below and then let us know what you watched... I have a feeling more than one of you will be saying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, which I would actually love if you added your opinion to my review right here rather than in the comments on this post, but either will work.

Le Cercle Rouge (1970) Quick Thoughts: With Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows coming to...

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The Complete Metropolis Correction: Only the DVD edition comes out this week. The Blu-ray will be released next week.

I have the Blu-ray edition of this, but haven't had the time to watch it yet, but will over the next couple of days and hope to have a review for you shortly. It will be interesting to return to this film considering the first time I watched it was back in 2007 when there was talk of a remake in the works and I posted my first impression of the film. And this is a film that makes one hell of an impression.

However, I haven't seen it since then so it's going to be a little more difficult for me to form an opinion on the 25 minutes of new footage, since I am not overly familiar with the film in the first place.

When it comes to Buster Keaton, like most anyone that's heard the name, I've seen The General enough times there was actually about a two month stretch where I couldn't get the theme song out of my head. However, my experience is limited other than having only seen The Garage, which he made with fellow silent film icon Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, whose name is mentioned frequently throughout the special features on Kino's Blu-ray double feature release of Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and Three Ages.

Before I get too far into this review it should first be said -- to make sure it's quite clear -- just as I loved Kino's Blu-ray treatment of The General, a more than 80-year-old film restored to look as if it was made yesterday (my review here), they have done it once again with both Sherlock Jr. and Three Ages. However, it should also be mentioned...