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DeFore in Toronto: Toronto comes to you!
Whew. Just as my pipe dreams about squeezing some just-for-fun screenings in during my last few days in Toronto were revealing themselves as outlandish, I got word that some of the biggest titles on my must-see list are closer to Austin screens than I thought.
The Austin Film Festival just sent out the final version of their lineup, as Monsieur Garcia pointed out in a recent post, and I didn’t have to read beyond the headline to see two movies that got great buzz this week: Jason Reitman’s comedy “Juno” (which costars “Superbad” everykid Michael Cera) is the fest’s “centerpiece” film, while “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” Sidney Lumet’s crime flick starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney, owns closing night. Excellent.
“Lars and the Real Girl,” which I vouch for enthusiastically (see link to my review in the last post), will be at AFF, as will “Control,” the Joy Division biopic, and Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” I couldn’t catch either of those, but everything I’ve heard has been positive.
Paul Schraeder’s “The Walker” is booked, so here’s hoping that star — and former Texas Film Hall Of Fame attendee — Lauren Bacall, who attended Toronto to promote the film, liked Austin enough to return.
AFF is more than second fest to the Second City, of course. They’ve cooked up their own events, like a series devoted to Vietnamese- and Vietnamese-American-related titles and a shorter one devoted to environmentally-conscious docs. And of course there are the narrative and doc competitions, and … um … a tribute to “Moonlighting” creator Glenn Gordon Caron.
I may miss that last one, but will reconsider if I hear that Caron has a reel of Bruce Willis’ Seagram’s Wine Cooler ads to show…
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