“A Serious Man,” Colin Firth, “Videocracy” Tops With TIFF Critics, Bloggers
by Peter Knegt (September 22, 2009)
A scene from Joel and Ethan Coen's "A Serious Man." Image courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s “A Serious Man” was selected as the best film at the Toronto International Film Festival by an overwhelming majority of film critics and bloggers indieWIRE polled over the weekend. With more than 25 writers were surveyed in five different categories, the Coens latest took top honors as Toronto’s best narrative film, finding a place on nearly every single ballot. Erik Gandini’s “Videocracy” was named best doc, Colin Firth’s work in “A Single Man” was deemed best lead performance, “Precious”‘s Mo’Nique and “Up In The Air”‘s Anna Kendrick tied for best supporting performance (perhaps an inkling towards this year’s best supporting actress race?), while Karyn Kusama’s Diablo Cody-written “Jennifer’s Body” was considered the fest’s worst film. “A Serious Man” - being released in theaters October 2nd - was also tops in a supplementary poll that indieWIRE ran through the week, asking critics and bloggers to give a letter grade to 34 of Toronto’s most buzzy titles. Along with Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air,” the Coens’ film was among the only titles to receive an “A” level average. Unlike last year’s edition of this survey, which was topped by Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s “Still Walking,” films that premiered at festivals much earlier in the year - most notably Cannes (“A Prophet,” “Fish Tank”) and Sundance (“Precious”) came into considerable play in the poll. However, this repetition of favorites didn’t seem to frustrate any of those polled. “Plenty of strong, new work,” one of the polled folks stated. “Especially ‘Lourdes,’ ‘Videocracy’ and ‘The Road.’ Spirituality was a valid theme du fest, especially religion shot through a secular lens. Yet Toronto’s fucked-up families (the extremes of domesticity?) stayed with me longer: ‘Life During Wartime,’ ‘I Killed My Mother,’ and the nightmarish ‘Dogtooth.’ I’m definitely attending the right festival.”
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I hardly think that “Trash Humpers” was the 3rd worst film at TIFF09! Sure it was… different… but what did they expect?
Harmony Korine had some very interesting comments during the Q&A after the film’s first screening. It surely wasn’t a masterpiece but it was an interesting (to say the least) commentary, or non-commentary, on something… or nothing. haha!
No Colony in the Doc Selection? That’s too bad.
Very cool that I saw TIFF’s best film during the festival…at a screening room on W. 56th St. in NYC last Monday. Saved a lot of money that way.
One comment that I often hear film journalists lament about, and it’s touched upon here: When films repeat at film festivals. It’s an occupational hazard, but when industry visitors to a film festival grumble about a film “repeating”...my feeling is, why the hell not shouldn’t a good film entertain people in a new city, and at a prestigious new film festival? Hey, it lets y’all see other films in the schedule that you say you don’t have enough time for.
And related to this…when film festivals don’t program a worthy film because “its been played at too many festivals”. I can understand trying to create your own stamp, programming-wise, but again…..why cheat a local audience to a great film? So what if its played noted film festivals before?
Your audiences don’t care about that…but they care about great cinema. Give it to them.