Wild headed to Toronto International Film Festival

By Brendan Kelly. Photo: Kayla Rocca. Source: montrealgazette.com

Two of Quebec’s hottest filmmakers – Jean-Marc Vallée and Philippe Falardeau – are headed to the Toronto International Film Festival but they’re going to the Big Smoke with two American movies. Both of which – in an odd twist of film fate – happen to star Reese Witherspoon!

Vallée is bringing Wild, which is adapted by British novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) from Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. After years of dysfunction, Strayed decides to hike over a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail on her own. It is set to be released by Fox Searchlight Pictures in early December.

Wild will be given a Gala screening at TIFF, which is the fest’s most prestigious slot.

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All Right, All Right, All Right!

By CBC News. Photo: Reuters. Source: cbc.ca

Dallas Buyers Club, directed by Canadian Jean-Marc Vallée, snagged a trio of Oscars, including best actor for Matthew McConaughey, whose performance as the scrappy, HIV-positive cowboy-turned-alternative medicine champion Ron Woodroof has earned him accolades all season.

Jared Leto, who had taken a six-year break from acting before tackling the film, picked up the evening’s first award — best supporting actor — for his turn as an HIV-positive transgender prostitute named Rayon. In addition to paying special tribute to his mother and brother, the actor and rocker also referenced AIDS victims and current zones of political unrest in his speech.

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Matthew McConaughey ‘unabashed’ in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’

By Associated Press. Photo: Chris Pizelle/Invasion/AP. Source: washingtonpost.com

In 1986, Texan Ron Woodroof was diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live. When receiving the news, the rodeo-lover argued with the doctor, saying only homosexuals got such a disease-and he was as straight as they came.

Matthew McConaughey, as Woodroof in the based-on-a-true-story “Dallas Buyers Club,” out this Friday, is magnificently cringe-worthy as this very scene plays out in the film.

“We had to go all the way unabashed with that,” said McConaughey in a recent interview to promote the film. “I would go as far as I could with the stuff that Ron thought, which was the stuff that made people go ‘You bigot, racist.’”

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‘Jerusalem’ documentary shows rare views inside city

By George Duffield. Photo: Nicolas Ruel. Source: bostonglobe.com

The job of the sort of IMAX documentary that screens at museums is simple: fascinate, educate, and visually wow an audience of both school field-trippers and their chaperones, and get off the stage in about three-quarters of an hour. With this as its tricky and sometimes contradictory criterion, “Jerusalem” succeeds rather nicely.

“Jerusalem is the crucible of coexistence,” said writer, producer, and first-time director Daniel Ferguson, on hand at the recent world premiere of the film at the Museum of Science’s Mugar Omni Theater. “Why are people fighting over this little city on a hill?”

He and his coproducers admitted “there was nothing that was not complicated” when it came to filming. At the crossroads and flashpoint of three major religions — Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — Jerusalem is “the most contested piece of real estate on earth,” intones narrator Benedict Cumberbatch (PBS’s “Sherlock”).

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Dallas Buyers Club at Toronto International Film Festival

By Cameron Bailey. Photo: Reuters. Source: tiff.net

Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto star in director Jean-Marc Vallée’s (The Young Victoria, C.R.A.Z.Y.) take on the true story of accidental AIDS activist Ron Woodroof, whose cross-border smuggling network brought much-needed treatments into the hands of HIV and AIDS patients neglected by the medical establishment.

In 1986, the AIDS crisis was still a misunderstood horror, withering then taking its victims, alarming the public and confounding the doctors who sought a cure. In Texas, Ron Woodroof stood beyond the fear of AIDS. He was clueless. So when this boozing, foul-mouthed, womanizing heterosexual contracted HIV, his response was instinctive: Bullshit.

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Interview with Lionel Kopp, Senior Colorist at Film Factory, who graded the stunning Mirror Mirror

By Digital Vision Press. Source: imagesystems.se

The project, which was directed by Tarsem Singh and shot by Brendan Galvin on the Sony F35, was completed at the Montreal-based facilities of Film Factory. Lionel Kopp, Founder of Film Factory and one of the world’s leading colorists, worked closely with the project’s creative visionaries, assisted by the expertise within Digital Vision to execute a dynamic color pipeline.

Read the press release