Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Twelve Movies Announced

The festival announced the addition of twelve more films for this year:

Bee Season, from Scott McGehee and David Siegel, is about a husband and father (Richard Gere) who avoids dealing with his fast failing marriage to Juliette Binoche by focusing on the success of his daughter in spelling bees.

Breakfast on Pluto is from Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, The End of the Affair, The Good Thief), and follows Patrick Brady (Cillian Murphy) as he leaves Ireland and becomes a transvestite cabaret singer in 60's and 70's London. The film also features Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, and Brendan Gleeson.

Bubble, from Steven Soderbergh, features a love triangle than comes to a tragic end. The movie features a cast of non-professional actors from the location in Ohio where the film was shot.

Corpse Bride, from Mike Johnson and Tim Burton, is a film using stop-motion animation. A man (voiced by Johnny Depp) puts a wedding ring on a woman's skeleton as a joke, but soon finds himself in the underworld forced to marry the woman's ghost (played by Helena Bonham-Carter).

Everything is Illuminated, is the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber (The Manchurian Candidate (2004)). The movie stars Elijah Wood as a young man trying to find the woman who saved his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis during World War II.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is from Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon, the Last Action Hero, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The film features Robert Downey Jr. as a thief who somehow finds his way into a screen test for a detective movie and ends up involved in an actual murder investigation with the girl of his dreams from high school (Michelle Monaghan) and a real private investigator (Val Kilmer).

Mary, by Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant), has three characters all linked together by Jesus Christ. A director (Matthew Modine) casts himself as Jesus in a film he is making. The actress playing Mary Magdalene (Juliette Binoche) finds spiritual enlightenment in Jerusalem after the film is finished. And a journalist and his wife (Forest Whitaker and Heather Graham) face death threats after the premier of his documentary on the life of Christ.

The Notorious Bettie Page, by Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol), follows the life of Bettie Page, a real-life 1950's pin-up model. The film stars Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, and David Strathairn.

Opa, by Udayan Prasad, stars Matthew Modine as an archeologist carrying on his father's uncompleted search for a Biblical artifact in Greece, who falls for the owner of the village tavern under which the artifact may lie.

Romance and Cigarettes is directed by John Turturro and features James Gandolfini as a man cheating on his wife (Susan Sarandon) with another woman (Kate Winslet), and is forced to make a choice when his wife discovers the affair. The film also has a musical element, with the characters lip-syncing the tunes in their head when they can't find the words. The movie also features Christopher Walken, Mary-Louise Parker, and Mandy Moore.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, is directed by Michael Winterbottom (Code 46, 9 Songs). The film is actually a film-within-a-film, about Michael Winterbottom (played on screen by Jeremy Northam (Gosford Park)) trying to film an adaptation of the novel by Laurence Sterne. The movie also stars Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People), Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Stephen Fry, and Kelly Macdonald (The Girl in the Cafe) among others.

The World's Fastest Indian is from Roger Donaldson, who previously directed The Recruit, Thirteen Days, Species, No Way Out, and The Bounty, among many other films. The film is based on the real-life story of Burt Munro, who set a land-speed record in the 1970s on a rebuilt 1920 Indian motorcycle. The movie stars Anthony Hopkins.

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My experiences at the Toronto International Film Festival. Note this blog is not affiliated with the Toronto International Film Festival Group or the festival itself.
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