Toronto roundup. 1.

Not only has indieWIRE relaunched with an impressive new design that allows for lots of great big photos, the switch has been timed to jibe with the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival. Which, of course, indieWIRE is covering extensively. Again, lots o' pix; more from Matt Dentler.

The front door to the Movie City News coverage of Toronto opens onto a pretty intense collection of news and reviews from the MCN team and pointers to trailers, the MCN Festival Blog and yet more coverage, from Roger Ebert's to John Mckay's interview with David Cronenberg and on and on.

Banlieue 13 has been quite a hit at Twitch - Todd, Mack, Matthew - but Todd and Kurt have quite different takes on Terry Gilliam's Tideland.

Also:

• Todd on Isolation, Manderlay, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, Les Saignantes, Shark in the Head, I Am (Jestem), Evil Aliens, Be With Me, Pusher, Pusher II and Pusher III.

• Matthew on Workingman's Death, The Giant Buddhas and Manderlay.

• Kurt on Jesus is Magic and Evil Aliens.

Among the films Michael Sicinski's seen: Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream and Three Times. Via Dan Meyer at Cinemarati, who's also pointing to coverage from the AV Club's Scott Tobias and Noel Murray blogging ferociously, the ever sharp and witty Mike D'Angelo and the Martyr himself, Jeremy Heilman.

"So just who are screenwriter Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller?" asks Anne Thompson in the Hollywood Reporter. In other words, of course Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, but where did Capote actually come from? Also: Kirk Honeycutt reviews Oliver Twist: "The biggest surprise... is that there are no surprises."

Carina Chocano revives the Los Angeles Times movie blog for Toronto and Bruce Newman's blogging the fest for the San Jose Mercury News.

Tom Hall has gone out of his way to avoid any film he's likely to catch before the end of the year anyway and instead seek out "films that may have travelled under the radar.... Only one film has really captivated me so far; Philip Groening's Into Great Silence, a three-hour exploration of the rituals of daily life at the Grande Chartreuse monastery near Grenoble, France."

For Jeffrey Wells, Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry "is a stirring, hugely likable portrait of the most daring and innovative architect of our time."

The AP's David Germain reports that the festival "features a handful of films that, with the initial shock of Sept. 11 wearing off, now are beginning to incorporate the events in historical context as facts of everyday life."

Filing at AICN: RoloTomasi and Tommy Five-Tone, Batphantom, El Fuego and pmoney, the 1337 n00b and JediShaft, Ghostboy, Claudius and more.

Taylor Barratt (back story) breaks down a day of screenings at Cinematical, where Karina Longworth has begun filing reviews as well.

Posted by dwhudson at September 11, 2005 3:03 PM