The TIFF Tattler: September 14

THE STORY OF O
Just when we thought Toronto couldn’t get any more celebrity-clogged… it’s OP-RAHHHHH! America’s most influential person graced us with her presence Sunday to attend a screening of Precious, a film for which she is an “executive producer." Unfortunately, Oprah’s northbound visit was limited to waving at some people, watching the movie, giving a quick press conference, and disappearing as quickly as she arrived.

Apparently Oprah, and co-producer Tyler Perry (yes, the man who dresses like a large woman and yells at people for laughs) signed onto the movie as producers after seeing it. A couple of influential folks are pegging this as, unsurprisingly, on their short list for the Audience Choice Award. 

As exciting as our glut of celebrities has been, they’re starting to become dreadfully predictable. The big celeb stories this weekend were about:

1. Viggo Mortenson, who — despite reports that he was imminently ready to go all Joaquin Phoenix on our ass — is not quitting acting.
2. Michael Caine on account of his agedness and being full of anecdotes. 
3. Michael Moore saying some provocative stuff.  
4. Colin Farrell getting mad at a reporter for some reason.

Ho hum.  

DON'T LET IT BRING YOU DOWN
Neil Young’s replacement has been announced for the Yonge-Dundas Square show tonight. Following the free screening of The Neil Young Trunk Show, as introduced by director Jonathan Demme, there will be a special guest performance by… wait for it… The Carpet Frogs!

For those who aren't familiar with the band, they’re a Toronto-based group of session vets frequently used by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings to bolster their solo shows. Joining the band is another of Canada’s most prominent sweet tenors, Rik Emmett, leader of recently reunited Canada seventies Rush-lite hard rockers Triumph. The “supergroup” will perform a catalogue of “Young’s greatest hits." So for one night only, Toronto is going to going to celebrate the city’s place in the global cultural landscape by dedicating its most prominent public-performance space to entertainment on the level of a typical Peterborough roadhouse bar. And people wonder why we don’t get the Olympics…

DISTRO DOWN-LOW
News of purchases continues to be slow this year, probably in part because most of the bigger titles came into the festival with distribution deals already in hand, but also because, you know, the economy cratered and we’re all preparing a The Road-like post-apocalyptic future. There are still no major deals, though apparently distributors are starting to take a long, hard look a couple of bigger names: Variety reports that Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime, Atom Egyoan’s “Chloe” and the Bill Murray-toplined conman film Get Low have all had packed industry screenings, but that major deals are still a couple of days away.

Notably, no indies have had a splashy pick-up yet, as predicted by festival director Piers Handling a couple of weeks ago. Coincidentally, The New York Times’ A.O. Scott and Manhola Davis ran a round-table piece with independent filmmakers over the weekend about looking for other technological avenues of distribution for smaller movies, including video-on-demand and Netflix like delivery services. Is it perhaps a comment on the relevance of mainstream film festivals that they elected to run the piece this very weekend? More likely, they just didn’t want to have to write about Sorority Row for five pages…

RACE FOR THE PRIZE
A few things will come into sharper relief after today, since all of the major films will have received public screenings. As a fan of a good horse race, I’m inclined to start wondering which movies might be in consideration for the Audience Choice prize; so far, word has been good on mostly obvious titles, like An Education and Precious. Thoughts anyone? Post them here.