Word: torontos
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...everyone knows that Toronto - TIFF, for short - marks the opening of the movie-awards season. Or the serious-film season, which has become the same thing. With blockbusters and buddy comedies filling most of the multiplex screens, movies with a slower pulse and a higher IQ almost have to be marketed as bait for the Academy Awards. Audiences are told that if they don't see this political exposé, or that family-crisis drama, they won't be in the know on Oscar night. It's like homework, but with George Clooney or Brad Pitt as the professor...
...dark, corporate-chicanery drama like Michael Clayton. or a murky, elegiac western like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. So the big boys are here to exchange their star luster for the ego boost, and maybe the Oscar boost, a good showing at Toronto can bring. That's how American Beauty and Crash, both Academy Award winners for Best Picture, got started...
...buzz title instantly interred, as the Sean Penn-starring All the King's Men was last year; or have a festival sensation, like the Bush-assassination fakeumentary Death of a President, that can't duplicate its success when it's released. Or you could be Borat, and ride the Toronto bronco to a $100 million-plus domestic gross and an Oscar nomination...
...Hollywood figures it, the upside is worth the gamble. Toronto, unlike Cannes or Venice, is really a people's festival; the movie equivalent of those Wal-Mart warriors pay real money to see these pictures. They may boo films but more often cheer them on, stoking a producer's dreams of big revenues and little statuettes. The studios count on Toronto audiences (and the thousand or so critics who come from the lower 48) to ignite the word-of-mouth that can keep a movie hot through February. Heat shouldn't be a problem at TIFF this year. The temperature...
...VENICE-TORONTO EXPRESS...