Small films, big dreams

LITTLE ROCK — In the past the Toronto International Film Festival helped to set up Hollywood's awards season.

This year it could be more about solving the industry's problems.

The 33rd edition of the film festival, which began Thursday, is devoting some prime spots to movies that are not so much jockeying for position in the 2008 Oscar race as fighting to be seen at all. Even with strong credentials, several featured pictures have been sideswiped by corporate consolidation, a weak market for independent films and producers' wariness of an audience that has often shunned the difficult.

Pride and Glory, a New York police drama that will be shown at an evening gala on Tuesday, for instance, was shot more than two years ago by director Gavin O'Connor, with Colin Farrell and Edward Norton in lead roles. Warner Bros., flush with films like this one after ingesting its corporate sibling New Line Cinema, is hoping Toronto will generate excitement for a much-delayed Oct. 24 release.

Another gala (on Wednesday) celebrates The Lucky Ones, about returning Iraq veterans on a bittersweet roadtrip back home. Directed by Neil Burger, it stars Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena, who are expected to appear at the festival in support of a film finally set for release Sept. 26 by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions. Confronted by Iraq-themed box-office disappointments like Stop-Loss, Redacted and In the Valley of Elah, the filmmakers and distributors have struggled for months to come up with the best way to market a moviein which the word "Iraq" is not mentioned, although the war infuses every scene.

North American premieres are also set for two challenging films, Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che (each part about two hours long) about Che Guevara; and Synecdoche, New York, directed by Charlie Kaufman, about a play within a city within a warehouse. Both screened at Cannes in May without finding a distributor there. Synedoche is now set for release by Columbia Pictures Classics; the producers of Che are finalizing a deal for U.S. distribution, their representative said.

"I think we've seen a redoubling of effort on the part of filmmakers," said Cameron Bailey, a co-director of the festival. He spoke of a sense that filmmakers are telling deeper and more personal stories rather than chasing commercial prospects, which may be diminishing in any case.

Bailey said he believed the festival's selections were among its strongest ever. He particularly noted two films, The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky, which has been looking for a U.S. distributor, and Rachel Getting Married by Jonathan Demme, set for release by Columbia Pictures Classics, as works by directors in peak form.

To avoid sprawl, the 10-day festival has become smaller,despite a growing number of submissions, which reached 4,200 this year. The number of features was intentionally trimmed from 261 to 249. But because last year's festival included some unusually long works, officials expected to screen 20,693 minutes of film, down 30 percent from 29,764 minutes last year. In relatively short supply arethe kind of big studio releases - Michael Clayton, Walk the Line, Ray, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - that in the past used Toronto to start Oscar campaigns.

Two films that could fit the mold this year are Flash of Genius, a Universal Pictures release, directed by Marc Abraham and starring Greg Kinnear as the engineer who invents the intermittent windshield wiper; and Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, a Touchstone Pictures film about a group of black soldiers in Italy during World War II.

Other principal attractions are Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading, a comic caper from Focus Features, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt among its stars; and The Secret Life of Bees from Fox Searchlight, adapted and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood from a Sue Monk Kidd novel.

But a number of the big studios' Oscar bets are missing. Clint Eastwood's Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, played at Cannes but is skipping Toronto as Eastwood tinkers with it. Also staying away are Ron Howard's adaptation of the play Frost/Nixon; Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman; David Fincher's Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Brad Pitt as a man who ages backward; and Ridley Scott's Body of Lies starring Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio.

With most of these films' release dates falling late in the season, the studios are planning to rely more heavily on advertising dollars than slowly building buzz from the festival circuit. In at least some cases, the Toronto festival will instead throw its weight behind films that are still edging their way off the shelf.

One such film is The Lucky Ones. Formerly called The Return, it tells the story of three soldiers thrown together on a cross-country trip from New York to points west. Shot on a budget of $15 million more than a year ago, it was scheduled for release as early as December but drifted as a cluster of Iraq war films failed to find an audience.

"A movie like this takes a little more consideration of what's happening in the world," Rick Schwartz, one of its producers, said this week. McAdams, one of its stars, he added, "is from Toronto, and that doesn't hurt."

MovieStyle, Pages 35, 40 on 09/05/2008