DISPROVING the notion that film reviewers lack a sense of humour, the outrageously non-PC comedy Borat, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, topped the poll organised by Screen International for its daily editions at Toronto this year. The trade paper invited nine international film critics to rate a dozen movies having their world premieres at the festival. I was one of three Europeans on the jury, along with five US critics and one Canadian.
The poll had a maximum average score of four, and Borat romped home with 3.2, followed by Rescue Dawn and Venus on 3 each. Next came The Last King of Scotland (2.8), The Namesake and Catch a Fire (2.4 each), For Your Consideration (2.2) and The Last Kiss (1.8).
At the bottom of the pile were All the King's Men (the only film to warrant a zero rating, from Premiere reviewer Glenn Kenny) and A Good Year with 1.5 each, and Penelope (1.3).
La Bella vita
Bella? That was the question on everyone's lips last weekend when the Toronto festival announced its most coveted prize, the People's Choice award, voted by the audiences who turned out in vast numbers from early morning to late every night. With 261 feature films screening at the festival, Bella, a low-budget US production, did not create a blip on the media radar in Toronto. Now there's a surge of interest from distributors around the world.
Bella is the first feature directed by Alejandro Monteverde, a Mexican immigrant to the US in his teens. It deals with the relationship that forms between a once promising soccer player and a pregnant waitress at his brother's Mexican restaurant. The runners-up in the audience awards were Patrice Leconte's French buddy movie, Mon Meilleur Ami (My Best Friend), featuring Daniel Auteuil and Dany Boon, and the documentary, Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.
Film has Bush whacked
The jury representing the international critics group FIPRESCI at Toronto gave its prize to Gabriel Range's provocative pseudo-documentary, Death of a President, which operates from a premise set in 2007 that President Bush is assassinated in Chicago. In Toronto for the world premiere was its Irish producer, Ed Guiney, whose credits include Isolation (which opens here next Friday), Omagh, Lassie, Boy Eats Girl and Disco Pigs.
In a flurry of dealing immediately after the premiere, the film amassed over $3 million in distribution deals. Newmarket Films, which had a huge hit with The Passion of the Christ, acquired the US rights, and on the same night the film was sold to distributors in Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Lovely sales for ugly duck
Ralph Christians, chairman of Galway-based Magma Films, was in Toronto for the premiere of the company's new animated feature film, The Ugly Duckling and Me, which has been sold to distributors in Canada, Germany, France, Belgium, Portugal, Mexico and Brazil. The movie updates the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, adding new characters including a rodent with show business aspirations, a dissatisfied actor, and a cat with a ventriloquist act.
Films based on Trevor
An imaginative one-off Irish festival running over the weekend in Co Leitrim celebrates the screen adaptations of William Trevor's novels and short stories. Organised by Leitrim Cinemobile in association with the Irish Film Institute, the event opens tonight with Pat O'Connor's superb 1982 film of The Ballroom of Romance. O'Connor will be in attendance, and the programme also includes his film of Trevor's Fools of Fortune, Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey and the late Kieran Hickey's underestimated, quietly powerful Attracta. www.leitrimcinema.ie
