Staff Writer
The famous Toronto International Film Festival,(TIFF) took place Sept. 4 through Sept. 14. Founded in 1976, the festival provides ten crucial days of movie debuts. This Canadian festival has become notorious for setting the screen scene for the very likely Oscar Nominations and Oscar winners for the US. Keep your eyes and ears open for these already marked hits:The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, Wild and The Theory of Everything. These and dozens of others are all ready to hit our theaters in the next three months. All of them signed, sealed reviewed and judged.
TIFF broadcasted over three hundred films from over sixty countries. A rather large fuss was made about Benedict Cumberbatch’s role in the impending film, The Imitation Game. This tale of the Nazi code-breaker Alan Turing took home the festival’s prominent prize the “Grolsch People’s Choice Award” this year. Other potential Oscar bait is Foxcatcher, based on a true story,”Steve Carell received kudos for not being funny at all,” says Chris Knight from The National Post, and takes a dark turn, dragging familiar stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo into the mix.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a “neo-noir” crime fiction called Nightcrawler, reaching new levels of creepiness as a sociopath. Andrea Mandell from USA Today says: “Another burning question: whether Bill Murray, as a wonderful curmudgeon-turned-reluctant babysitter in St. Vincent, will be headed back to the Oscars at the Dolby Theater in February.” Sweeping in on the sidelines is the story of the one and only Stephen Hawking played by Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. Reese Witherspoon makes a landmark in the film Wild, a story of personal discovery as she tries to escape from her demons by hiking the Pacific Coast alone, one step at a time. Funny guy Jon Stewart makes his directorial and writing debut with his film, Rosewater, based on the true story of a journalist who was detained in Iran for more than a hundred days in 2009, regarding an interview during the country's’ election.
The feast of films has not ended, this is just the beginning. The International New York Film Festival started late September to mid October and is planning to bring hundreds of more films to the Oscar bait podium, all of which leads up to one goal-who gets the Gold Man in February.
