Matt writes: In past years, the Toronto International Film Festival's annual Ebert Director Award has been given to such revered talents as Martin Scorsese, Claire Denis, Ava DuVernay, Wim Wenders, Agnès Varda, Denis Villeneuve, Chloé Zhao and Taika Waititi. This year, the accolade will be presented to Oscar-winner Sam Mendes in-person at the 2022 TIFF Tribute Awards gala fundraiser on Sunday, September 11th, at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto.
An article about the Rare Book & Manuscript Library exhibit, “Writers & Their Tools: Parchment-Paper-Processors,” running through Friday, August 30th, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Terrence Malick's return to movie-making in 1998, preceded by a twenty-year period of largely mysterious retreat, was a tremendous event, the result of which - "The Thin Red Line" - exceeded any expectations one might have had at the time. I can still recall four consecutive evenings in early 1999, when I watched the movie repeatedly at the local cinema in my Polish hometown of Tarnowskie Góry. The first screening was so moving, I felt entranced and compelled to come back the next evening - and the next, and the one after that.
Q. Your Answer Man item about the availability of Pauline Kael's criticism reminded me that I hadn't brought you up to date about our looking into a reprint of Going Steady. Our paperback editor checked out the situation regarding her work, and it appears that the small British firm of Marian Boyars Publishers Ltd. now has rights to most of her titles. Just talked with our paperback editor, and she confirmed that Little, Brown (the original publisher of Going Steady) had directed her to Kael's literary agency in England, Curtis Brown Ltd, since rights had reverted to Kael in 1988.
Q. I just read that Stanley Kubrick's new movie "Eyes Wide Shut" has been slapped with the dreaded NC-17 rating. Since Kubrick was contracted to deliver an "R" rated film to Warner Bros., does this mean that the studio heads are going to have to edit Kubrick's vision to meet the "R" criteria? Don't you think that Stanley Kubrick's final film should be released in all it's NC-17 glory? (Ken Berglund, Long Beach, CA)
TORONTO -- I can't identify with a lot of the families I see in movies. They aren't like my family and I doubt if they're like anyone's. The family in "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries" isn't like anyone else's family, either, but I never doubted for a moment that it existed. The movie could be advertised with a line like, "Apart from the fact that my dad was an alcoholic novelist and we were raised in the expatriate colony in Paris in the 1960s, I had a typical American childhood."
TORONTO -- The program for the Toronto Film Festival falls with the thud of the Yellow Pages. This year, more than 300 films from 53 countries will be shown at the largest and most important film festival in North America, which opened Thursday, and as usual, the crowds will be lining up for everything - literally everything. If your movie can't fill a theater at this festival, you might as well cut it up and use it to floss with.
Great Movies
