During the Toronto International Film Festival I talked to writer and director Robert Budreau about his film Born to be Blue, which stars Ethan Hawke as Blues legend Chet Baker. The film received numerous glowing reviews from its TIFF 2015 debut, and IFC Films has picked up the U.S. rights for a future release.
Throughout the forty years of the Toronto International Film Festival, the developing and fostering and incubating of Canadian films and Canadian cinematic talent has always been an important priority, and because of that this year’s terrific line-up of Canadian films can be seen as a direct pay off of all those past efforts and the need to keep TIFF a Canadian film festival–one that celebrates international films and film culture probably better than just about any other festival in the world, while remaining still a Canadian film festival.
Arriving on DVD and Blu-ray this week: Noomi Rapace stars with Michael Nyqvist in the Scandinavian thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Richard Gere fights crime in Brooklyn’s Finest; and Colin Firth deals with loss and love in A Single Man.
New arrivals this week include the thriller Edge of Darkness, starring Mel Gibson; the debut of Doctor Zhivago on Blu-ray; the action-horror hybrid, Daybreakers; plus a look at the amusing horror-comedy mashup, Lesbian Vampire Killers.
Opening in a theatre near you this weekend, Tim Burton directs the trippy remake of Disney’s Alice In Wonderland; and a look at Antoine Fuqua‘s crime drama, Brooklyn’s Finest.
Happy 2010, everyone, and welcome to a brand new year at the movies. New this week in theatres, Ethan Hawke stars as a remorseful vampire in the action-horror hybrid, Daybreakers. Also in theatres, Michael Cera stars in the adaptation of C. D. Payne’s famed novel, Youth In Revolt; while Amy Adams and Matthew Goode lead the romantic comedy, Leap Year.
Earlier today the Toronto International Film Festival confirmed that Daybreakers, Ethan Hawke‘s latest film, had been chosen to screen during this year’s Midnight Madness.
The film, which was directed by Peter and Michael Spierig, is set in 2019 after a plague has turned most of the Earth’s population into vampires.
Out on DVD this week, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays an introspective version of himself in JCVD; The Uninvited takes another stab at recreating the success of another Asian horror film; Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway star in the comedy Bride Wars; and Taking Lives, starring Angelina Jolie, debuts on Blu-ray.
