Film Festival Fever - IGN (original) (raw)
If you're a film fanatic living in Toronto, Boston, New York or Chicago, now is the time to get it together and make your festival plans. In the past couple weeks, these soon-to-begin festivals presented their schedules, each including many entries from the major studios. What you have here is a rare chance to see a film from a major studio well before its release, and maybe participate in a Q&A session with the attending director or stars. Here's my selected inventory of the premieres from the majors, along with a couple from the minors.
The Toronto International Film Festival, September 6 - 15 (click here for the complete schedule and tickets), scores the premiere of Twentieth Century Fox's From Hell, directed by the Hughes brothers, and starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. The fest will also offer Canadian premieres for Miramax's Serendipity starring John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Molly Shannon, Jeremy Piven, John Corbett; Artisan's Novocaine starring Steve Martin, Helena Bonham Carter, Kevin Bacon, Laura Dern and Scott Caan; New Line Cinema's Life as a House starring Kevin Kline and Hayden Christensen; and Warner Brothers' Hearts in Atlantis starring Anthony Hopkins, and Training Day starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke and Tom Berenger. Also of interest is Enigma, directed by Michael Apted, produced by Mick Jagger and Lorne Michaels, and starring Kate Winslet, Dougray Scott, and Jeremy Northam.
The Boston International Film Festival, September 7 - 16 (click here for the complete schedule and tickets), has some notable premieres from Miramax: there's the U.S. premiere for Iron Monkey, directed by Woo-Ping (The Matrix) and starring Donnie Yen (Blade 2) – it was filmed in 1993; the Poland-filmed Edges of the Lord starring Haley Joel Osment and Willem Dafoe; In the Bedroom starring Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl and Marisa Tomei; and Tape starring Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. Warner Brothers will premiere The Heist, written and directed by Boston-resident David Mamet, and starring Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell, Delroy Lindo, in addition to U.S. premieres for Hearts in Atlantis and Training Day. Other U.S. premieres include Novocaine, Serendipity, Life as a House.
Bowing at The New York International Film Festival, September 28 - October 14 (click here for the complete schedule and tickets), is Todd Solondz's (Welcome to the Dollhouse) Storytelling, starring Selma Blair and Paul Giamatti; Wes Anderson's (Rushmore) The Royal Tenenbaums, starring Gene Hackman and Ben Stiller; and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, starring Naomi Watts.
The Chicago International Film Festival, October 4 - 18 (click here for tickets) will announce its schedule next week, however, one major film is already set to premiere: Collateral Damage, directed by Chicago-native Andrew Davis and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Davis and Schwarzenegger are scheduled to attend the screening. For more information about the Collateral Damage premiere or to purchase tickets, click here.
– Steve Head wants to go to Morocco for one year. Just one.