Just yesterday after the New York Film Festival was announced (‘Che’!), we wondered aloud if Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” had been left out in the cold. His debut feature wasn’t chosen to be part of NYFF, it wasn’t set for Venice and it appeared that the Toronto International Film Festival was going to overlook the twisty and deliriously strange film (who knows what those hippie kooks at Telluride will do ;).
Well, it appears the Toronto Film Festival is not done announcing titles as according to Variety’s Anne Thompson, “Synecdoche, New York” has just been added to the fete’s line-up. Good news for us as we’ll be there, hopefully we can weasel our way in as we’ve only written about this film about 10,000 times (big hint to those reading). This reminds us that we should write a full and real review of the ‘Synecdoche’ script which we read a few weeks ago. The short synopsis is this: it’s gloriously funny in that dark and twisted Charlie Kaufman idiosyncratic manner, it’s incredibly melancholy and seemingly autobiographical and its ending is fairly obtuse. We’re hoping in the live execution, the conclusion will be more poetically abstract than flat out confusing, but we’ll have to wait and see. One things for sure, the Sammy character in the film to be played by Tom Noonan, is a riot of writing and an amusingly odd persona. We love Noonan and can’t wait to see what he does with this role.
Hopefully, we’ll have time to write more about this script with full context soon.
And note Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” will also be hitting TIFF ’08 too! Another coup for the festival line-up that up to now had been somewhat mediocre. It’s turning out to be the film festival of the fall.
“Che” will be shown two ways at TIFF according to one of its curators Cameron Bailey. “We’ll show it the first time as two separate films on two separate nights. People also will get to see it as one back-to-back epic with a 15 minute intermission. You can choose your Che.”
Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler“ is also at both festivals and apparently Mickey Rourke turns in a stellar performance in the film (which stands to reason considering it’s also been picked for Venice and must be good). “It’s Mickey Rourke’s best work,” Bailey told Variety. “Aronofsky and Rourke connected and brought out the best in each other.”
Other additions to Toronto (wow, seriously, we’ll never underestimate you again) include Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” (which we just mentioned this morning), Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” which stars Christian McKay, Claire Danes and teen idol Zac Efron co-star, “Gigantic,” which features, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman Paul Dano, Zach Galafianakis and is scored by Imperial Teen’s Roddy Bottum; Kevin Smith’s R-rated “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” Rian Johnson’s “Brothers Bloom,” Michael Winterbottom’s “Genova,” and The Burning Plain,” starring Charlize Theron, Kim Basinger and directed by Guillermo Arriaga.
Damn, that’s impressive. The festival already boasts, Guy Ritchie’s “Rock N Rolla,” the Michael Cera/Kat Dennings teen comedy “Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” Spike Lee’s “Miracle Of St. Anna,” the Coen Brothers’ “Burn After Reading,” Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” Ed Harris’ “Appaloosa” with Viggo Mortensen plus a shit-ton of great foreign films that premiered at Cannes in May.
Wow, TIFF just got real and went from something that was going to be a leisurely vacation where we might catch a couple films to a clusterfuck of good problems. We’ll be running around like crazy and evidently not seeing everything, but luckily NYFF starts just when we get back. We’re kind of fucking super psyched right now. We’re so fucked though. Don’t call us in September, we’ll call you.
PS, this is the penultimate edition of TIFF additions. Apparently many more titles are being announced next Tuesday. Can we wish aloud that Jim Jarmusch’s new film is ready?