Benedict Cumberbatch's Oscar Hopeful Just Hit A Major Obstacle

Cinema Blend
By Conner Schwerdtfeger

The last week has seen a whirlwind of controversy sweep through Hollywood. With massive allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct leveled against film industry giant Harvey Weinstein, it has raised some fairly significant questions about the status of films associated with his name. One such film is Benedict Cumberbatch's potential awards darling, The Current War, and it looks like the Thomas Edison biopic has just hit a major obstacle on its road to Oscar season. Specifically, we have officially learned that The Weinstein Company has considered pulling the film from its planned release date in response to its current PR issues.

A new report from The Playlist indicates that The Weinstein Company's upcoming award contender, The Current War, may be pulled from the company's release schedule. Earlier statements from Harvey Weinstein himself had stated that the film was going to receive a significant overhaul anyway (it did not debut to the warmest welcome when it was screened for audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival), but the recent drama involving Weinstein seems to be making the scheduled release for the film even more difficult. Although it was initially set to hit theaters in limited release on November 24, this bump (yet another attempt to distance the company from the controversy) could effectively take it out of the coming year's race for Oscar gold.

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1713909/benedict-cumberbatchs-oscar-hopeful-just-hit-a-major-obstacle

Benedict Cumberbatch takes top TIFF prize

IRISH EXAMINER
September 15, 2014



A Second World War codebreaker drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch has won the top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Director Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game claimed the coveted Grolsch People’s Choice Award.

Sherlock star Cumberbatch plays British codebreaker Alan Turing, alongside Oscar nominee Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode.

Three of the past six People’s Choice Award winners have gone on to win the Oscar for best picture, including The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire and last year’s victor, 12 Years A Slave. © Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

READ MORE HERE: http://www.irishexaminer.com/examviral/celeb-life/benedict-cumberbatch-takes-top-tiff-prize-286434.html

Matthew Macfadyen's Lost in Karastan: Montreal Festival features culturally diverse cinema

Will this be the last year for the Montreal World Film Festival? God forbid. There are those in Quebec who have been announcing its demise for awhile, but the hue and cry was especially loud this year. The MWFF has lost most of its public funding, in a city that prides itself on its public festivals, for reasons I won’t attempt to go into here. (Let’s just say that the pugnaciousness so many Québécois display toward the rest of Canada can just as often be directed at each other.)

Unlike the Hollywood launching pad for the next crop of Oscar hopefuls that the Toronto Film Festival has largely (if not entirely) become, Montreal remains what a film festival ought to be, a showcase for films from around the world that North Americans probably wouldn't otherwise get to see. It concentrates less on movies made for international distribution than on those made for viewers in their home countries. As such they provide a much better reflection of different cultures as they see themselves, which more than makes up for the occasional reference that goes over your head.

I still have a few more days to spend here, and hope to be returning next year. Some of the best of what I’ve seen so far:

LOST IN KARASTAN—This bone-dry British comedy about Emil Forester, in which a blocked filmmaker (Matthew Macfadyen) accepts an invitation to a film festival in a small central Asian republic, was inspired by actual events in the careers of director Ben Hopkins and his friend Pawel Pawlikowski (whose Ida recently enjoyed an extended run in Buffalo theaters). That presumably does not extend to the part where our hero is hired by Karastan’s dictator to film his country’s national epic, a project that only Emil takes at face value. And I doubt that either Hopkins or Pawlikowski has ever made a film whose tag line (per one of Emil’s posters) calls it “electroshock therapy for the cinematically brain-dead empire.” You have to love filmmakers making fun of their own inability to recognize reality when a camera gets in the way.


READ MORE HERE: http://artvoice.com/issues/v13n35/film_feature

How Colin Firth finds the familiar in a story half a world away

GEOFF PEVERE
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jan. 31 2014, 5:00 PM EST
Last updated Friday, Jan. 31 2014, 12:00 AM EST

When Atom Egoyan approached Academy Award-winner Colin Firth to play Ron Lax, the real-life private investigator who assisted lawyers defending three teenagers charged with a multiple child murder in West Memphis, Ark., in the 1990s, the director knew he was bringing the actor a peculiar challenge – playing a man who can’t make a difference. No matter how much doubt Lax raised about the guilt of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., the machinery was in motion: Somebody had to be found guilty for a heinous crime.

But Firth, who had worked with the renowned Toronto director on Where the Truth Lies, rose to the challenge, and agreed to appear in Devil’s Knot. At the Toronto International Film Festival last September, the actor talked about taking on one of the more counterintuitive assignments of his career.

The details of the case were new to you at the time; the West Memphis Three case is notorious in North America, but not in England. What was your initial reaction to it?

There was a conflicting double reaction. One of which was indignation and shock. Shock at the crime and the way everything was handled. But also a sense of it being all too familiar. This takes place in different forms everywhere, and the reasons for it are clear. It’s easy to make facile judgements of the people who mishandled it, but nevertheless the film does not make glib statements. You can really see how it happens.

And it doesn’t happen only in Arkansas.

There are equivalents in my own country, endlessly. When there’s a climate of fear, people look for answers and they want resolution, they want satisfaction, they want justice, they want to make sense of things. Then you get people whose job it is to provide that. Law enforcement and the judicial system, egged on by a media, which stokes up the temperature. You get a climate where people try to fast forward to some kind of understanding or resolution, which has not been acquired properly.

Not the best climate for due process.

What Atom has done is to let the questions breathe again. I think that’s the role of my character, who on the face of it doesn’t seem to achieve much. You want your detective to get his guy. That’s not what happens here. Ron’s the guy who says, ‘We cannot pretend these questions have been answered when they haven’t.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/how-colin-firth-finds-the-familiar-in-a-story-half-a-world-away/article16612535/

Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch: British filmmaker’s ‘12 Years a Slave’ wins best picture in Toronto

Actor and star of the film “12 Years a Slave,” Chiwetel Ejiofor poses for a portrait, on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013 in New York. PHOTO BY CARLO ALLEGRI/INVISION/AP

INQUIRER ENTERTAINMENT

Agence France-Presse

September 16, 2013 | 5:15 am

OTTAWA—British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” won the audience prize for best picture at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday.

The film, already generating Oscars buzz, is based on a firsthand account of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, recalling the horrors of grueling labor, daily humiliation and families torn apart.

Its premiere in Toronto last week received a standing ovation, as well as sobs, while some in the audience left early over the film’s graphic portrayal of unspeakable torture of slaves during this period in history.

The story is “a gift from the past to open a discussion, not about race, particularly, but about human dignity and our freedoms and what we most require in the world,” said actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Northup.

“And the only way to really open that discussion is to see all sides of it.”

The film also stars Michael Fassbender as a cruel plantation owner, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong’o, Adepero Oduye, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Michael Kenneth Williams and Alfre Woodard.

Read more: http://entertainment.inquirer.net/112755/british-filmmakers-12-years-a-slave-wins-best-picture-in-toronto#ixzz2f0Kv82eH 

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Jude Law: Vanity Fair interview from TIFF with Krista Smith

‘The Railway Man’ Trailer: War Leaves a Heavy Mark on Colin Firth

TECHNOLOGY TELL
by Adrian Diaconescu on September 11, 2013 at 1:40 pm

Quick, what’s the last World War II-centric film that moved you? And I mean really moved you and drove you to tears, without necessarily trying too much and overdramatizing the tragic events of the early 1940s.

“The Reader”? “Letters from Iwo Jima”? “Saving Private Ryan”? “Schindler’s List”? Well, I think you’ll soon have to make room on that list of masterpieces for one more title – “The Railway Man”.

Overlooked by many for reasons that are beyond me in what’s shaping up to be an uber-competitive Oscars race, the drama debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews and now has a trailer.

And boy, is the 150-second clip emotional, tense and touching. Don’t want to jinx it, but I think Colin Firth can already book his presence at next year’s Academy Award gala. Maybe even prepare a little speech.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/26854/the-railway-man-trailer-war-leaves-a-heavy-mark-on-colin-firth/

Keira Knightley: Weinstein Bid for Knightley Film Likened to Sparta Battle

BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK

By Ari Altstedter September 12, 2013

The lights hadn’t even come up at the world premiere of “Can a Song Save Your Life?” when Marc Schipper’s BlackBerry began buzzing with messages from distributors clamoring for rights.

The drama, starring Keira Knightley playing a singer trying to make it in the music business, had been flagged by publicists and organizers at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival as one of the hottest titles for sale. It didn’t disappoint.

“Even before the credits were rolling, we had a bunch of offers in, people saying, ‘Don’t go to anyone else because we really want this movie,’ ” Schipper, chief operating officer of Exclusive Media Group and the negotiator for the film’s producers, said in a Sept. 10 telephone interview.

After an all-night bidding war, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s namesake company bought the U.S. distribution rights for $7 million. Organizers say the deal was one of the biggest in the festival’s 38-year history and highlighted Toronto’s place as one of the world’s leading film markets.

Perhaps the greatest battle played out at downtown restaurant Patria on Sept. 7. As Knightley, co-stars Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green and director John Carney (“Once”) held court on a narrow patio, representatives from The Weinstein Co., Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (LGF:US) pressed through the party’s 250 guests to make their pitch, according to Tobin Armbrust, one of the film’s producers.

Band of Spartans

He likened the scene at the restaurant to a battle depicted in the 2006 movie “300” in which the Persians struggled to surge through a gap in the mountains defended by a small band of Spartans.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-12/weinstein-toronto-bid-for-knightley-film-likened-to-sparta-s-war

Irish actor Brendon Gleeson defines what it means to be Canadian at TIFF

THE STAR.COM
By: Peter Howell Movie Critic, Published on Wed Sep 11 2013

Brendan Gleeson, left, seen here with Taylor Kitsch and Gordon Pinsent in a scene from "The Grand Seduction," gave an eloquent description of what the "Canadian voice" is during a Q-and-A session following a Tuesday morning screening of the film at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Irish actor Brendan Gleeson came to the rescue Tuesday when The Grand Seduction director Don McKellar was having trouble defining Canadians.

McKellar was puzzling over an audience member’s question about “the Canadian voice” in his comic film, during a Q-and-A session following the 9 a.m. screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Gleeson, the film’s main star, was standing near McKellar on the stage. He jumped in to offer his own interpretation of what it means to be Canadian, something he sounds like he’d really like to be.

“I think we have to do an Ontarian remake now, because you have two provinces with vastly different cultures, and we tell the same story from both places. And they’re each separate, but it is part of what is the Canadian voice,” Gleeson said.

“I think it’s an extraordinarily rich thing and what’s important about making films of this nature is that you express and share something that’s unique culturally. And that’s really where universality comes into play most, when you know what you’re talking about.


READ THE REST OF HIS LOVELY STATEMENT HERE: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/tiff/2013/09/11/tiff_2013_irish_actor_brendon_gleeson_starring_in_the_grand_seduction_defines_what_it_means_to_be_canadian.html

Benedict Cumberbatch interview plus Ewan McGregor arrives at August Osage County premiere

Colin Firth Movie news (video)

Benedict Cumberbatch rules Toronto fest

Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY
September 9, 2013

TORONTO — It's unquestionable that Benedict Cumberbatch is the man of the moment at the International Film Festival. Not that it doesn't come with a price.

"It's great. I wish I could enjoy the moment a bit more, (but) that's always the thing, isn't it?" says Cumberbatch, ensconced in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton. It's a gorgeous fall day outside, but with three prestigious movies to promote (Julian Assange biopic The Fifth Estate, the Steve McQueen-directed slavery film Twelve Years a Slave and August: Osage County) the closest he's getting to the great outdoors is by squinting.



"I can see it through the crack in the door," says the star, who may tie Oprah for how many interviews a human is capable of participating in (on Saturday alone he topped out at 64).

Cumberbatch grins, shrugs. "High-class problems."

And no matter that his fans ("Cumberladies," as he politely rephrases the more crass term) are clamoring for him on the sidewalks. "I still get star-struck," he says. "Whether it's Sandra Bullock or Nicole Kidman. I met Brad (Pitt) backstage at Twelve Years a Slave two nights ago. I really liked meeting him."


READ MORE HERE: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/09/09/benedict-cumberbatch-is-the-man-of-the-moment-in-toronto/2785297/

Tom Hiddleston - great Vanity Fair Interview for Only Lovers Left Alive (TIFF)

Disappearing act: Colin Firth looks half the Single Man he used be at Devil's Knot premiere in Toronto

MAIL ON LINE
By DONNA MCCONNELL and CHELSEA WHITE
PUBLISHED: 08:10 EST, 9 September 2013 | UPDATED: 09:19 EST, 9 September 2013

Colin Firth's Hollywood ascendance appears to have affected his waistline.

The Single Man actor looked extremely slim on the red carpet at the Toronto premiere of new film Devil's Knot, alongside his co-star Reese Witherspoon.

Firth has shed pounds to play a prisoner of war in upcoming film The Railway Man. 

Based on the true story of British officer Eric Lomax, Firth plays the soldier who is captured by the Japanese during the Second World War and forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway.

The Oscar-winning actor, who won for The King's Speech has previously spoken about how mastering a character’s physical appearance is key to his acting method.

He said: ‘Some people spend days, weeks even, getting inside a character, getting under his skin, working out how he thinks, what makes him tick.

‘My secret is that I get outside the character. Take my character in [2009 film] A Single Man: it’s the big glasses that draw you in, make George’s anguish believable.’

Meanwhile co-star Reese Witherspoon has also waged her own battle to shed the baby pounds, and she has certainly won it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2415997/Disappearing-act-Colin-Firth-reveals-dramatic-weight-loss-Devils-Knot-premiere-Toronto.html#ixzz2eQTZdyXJ 

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Tom Hiddleston, 'Only Lovers Left Alive' Star, On The Scene He Pitched For 'Thor: The Dark World'

HUFFINGTON POST

Mike Ryan

Mike.Ryan@huffingtonpost.com

It's remarkable how popular Loki has become. What could have been a forgettable role as a mostly unknown villain (at least to the non-comic book reading population of the world) in "Thor," a then-second-tier superhero movie, has now become something close to a household name. This has everything to to with Tom Hiddleston.

Hiddleston is at the Toronto International Film Festival in support of Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive." Hiddleston plays Adam in the film, a very sad vampire who spends his days moping around Detroit and being snobby about music (Adam is a Jack White fan, though). This is not a vampire movie that will appeal to "Twilight" fans; this is a vampire movie that will appeal to Jim Jarmusch fans.

In person, Hiddleston is a geyser of charm, and he's certainly not the type who would look his gift horse -- in this case, his gift god -- in the mouth. That's something Hiddleston displayed to dazzling effect at this year's Comic-Con when he took the stage in full Loki wardrobe in front of hundreds of screaming fans. (It's a moment that, as he mentions here, meant a lot to the 32-year-old actor.) Loki aficionados will have even more to cheer about this fall: In the interview below, Hiddleston discussed the post-Comic-Con additions to "Thor: The Dark World," which he says adds a lot more Loki to the film (including one thing that Hiddleston pitched himself).

But, first, the interviewee explains why he was recently the interviewer.

Tom Hiddleston: I just recently did your job.

What do you mean?
Well, I mean I conducted an interview and had to transcribe it.

Transcribing is awful, right?
It's the hardest thing in the world.

Who did you interview?
I was interviewing Natalie Portman.

Did you enjoy being on that side of it?
Very much so, yeah.

How so?
I liked listening. And I actually thought, I'd better do my research, like serious reporter. I went back and watched all of her films -- and then you begin to see things differently I guess. The biggest thing I took away from it is actually the perception of the interviewee is a subjective thing. That's what I realized. I realized how much it's my particular view of Natalie. I can't possibly be objective; I bring who I am to the table. And it made me realize, like, your interview with me is your interview with me.

Subjectively, I think you seem like a nice guy because I just watched a video where you gave Cookie Monster a cookie.

[Laughs] Thanks, man. I did. I gave him a whole plate! Yeah, Cookie Monster was a big moment for me.


READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/09/tom-hiddleston-only-lovers-left-alive_n_3890573.html

TIFF 2013 Colin Firth says there is no such thing as “just acting”

CANADA.COM

Katherine Monk

Published: September 8, 2013, 6:21 pm

Updated: 12 hours ago

Jacki Weaver referred to him as “that bastard!” — but she said it with a gigantic smile, because even if Colin Firth really were a scoundrel, we’d like him anyway.

It’s a rare talent to be lovable yet aloof, and it’s clearly one that serves the English Oscar winner extremely well because even as he sits stiffly in a comfy chair wearing a finely tailored black suit, crisp white shirt and the kind of thick-rimmed glasses that make everyone look like they’re an extra on Mad Men, he projects a prickly pear sweetness.

Cast of The Railway Man

You want to know him, plumb his Firthy fruit and squeeze it, which no doubt explains why he’s so incredibly guarded.

“It’s fine,” he says, as he addresses the issue of the celebrity cocktail blender that is the Toronto International Film Festival. “You have to pace yourself and remember that you have a home to go to.”

Firth will be homeward bound in just a few hours, but right now, he’s talking about Devil’s Knot, the new Atom Egoyan movie in which he plays a special investigator looking into the case of three teens accused of murder, now known as the West Memphis Three.

READ MORE HERE: http://o.canada.com/2013/09/08/colin-firth-says-there-is-no-such-thing-as-just-acting/

Macbeth Adaptation ‘Enemy Of Man’ To Star Rupert Grint, Sean Bean

THE INQUISITOR
September 6 2013

One of the darkest Shakespeare characters, Macbeth will come to life once again in the form of British actor Sean Bean. Harry Potter star Rupert Grint and Game Of Thrones’ Charles Dance will join the cast of Enemy Of Man, the new Vincent Regan film.

Kaleidoscope Film Distribution has sealed the deal as the film’s worldwide distributor and it will start its pitch during the Toronto International Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The new adaptation is set to start filming in January 2014.

Also starring are Jason Flemyng (X-Men: First Class), James D’Arcy (Cloud Atlas), Neil Maskell (Kill List), and Joe Gilgun (This is England).

The film is being labelled as a retelling of the classic story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth, who receives a prophecy from three witches who tell him that one day he will become King of Scotland. This fuels his ambition and he stops at nothing to make the prediction come true.


Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/938946/macbeth-adaptation-enemy-of-man-to-star-rupert-grint-sean-bean/#ziD4144HRqXYQ0xy.99

Colin Firth tackles story of torture, forgiveness in 'Railway Man'

REUTERS

By Jeffrey Hodgson

TORONTO | Sun Sep 8, 2013 6:37am IST\

(Reuters) - Actor Colin Firth said on Saturday he felt a special sense of obligation portraying the true story of a British soldier who was tortured and then suffered for decades before finding the strength to forgive his captors.

In "The Railway Man," which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Firth portrays World War Two veteran Eric Lomax, who was captured by the Japanese and spent years as a prisoner of war.

"You just want to be absolutely sure that you don't drop the baton, that you don't compromise how well this story has been told up to now, despite your limitations. Such care has been taken to get the truth out there," Firth, who won an Oscar in 2011 for his performance in "The King's Speech," told reporters in Toronto.

The film begins in the later decades of Lomax's life, when he meets and falls in love with his future wife Patti, played by Nicole Kidman. Their marriage was tested by his nightmares and breakdowns, a legacy of the beatings and other torture he suffered.

Lomax is forced to confront his past when he learns that Takashi Nagase, the young English-speaking officer who participated in his brutal interrogations, is still alive.

Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce said that sadly, while the film is historical, topics like the trauma of torture victims and returning soldiers are as relevant as ever.

"The way that Eric was tortured was water-boarding. When we first started working on this film, that seemed like a kind of antique, remote thing. And now it's part of how we do business in the West," he told reporters.

READ MORE HERE: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/entertainment-us-toronto-railwayman-idINBRE98700Q20130908

Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine: The Railway Man Press Conference - TIFF

Benedict Cumberbatch, Dan Stevens - Press Conference for The Fifth Estate (TIFF)