Toronto Film Fest 2008 Early Short(er) List

This year the Toronto International Film Festival has cut back on its big splashy Hollywood fare and increased the number of screens for smaller independents from 29 to 36.

This is not to say the festival will be any less red-carpet worthy.

I find an unusually good selection at this year's Midnight Madness - from the Being John Malkovich-esque JCVD wherein the muscles from Brussels plays himself, dealing with being a has-been only to turn into a post-modern action flick, to the similarly half-documentary/half-tribute Not Quite Hollywood that celebrates or marvels at some of the pulp cinema that led to Tarantino's Kill Bill and Grindhouse. Other films I chose either because they geographically interesting or because their directors have consistently delivered at Toronto and also bring something new to the table (Mike Leigh, Michael Winterbottom, Denys Arcand, Deepa Mehta, Bruce MacDonald).

Here is my long short list which I will narrow down further as actual screening times and discussion unfurls:

TIFF 2008
[Film Title - Director - Country - Series/Genre - Notes]

Eden Log - France - Sci Fi - Midnight Madness

Detroit Metal City - Toshio Lee - Japan - Midnight Madness

The Dungeon Masters - USA Comedy/Sci Fi

Food, Inc. - USA doc

Garden/Ing - Japan

Genova - Michael Winterbottom - UK

Ghost Town - Ricky Gervais new comedy

The Good, The Bad, The Weird - South Korea

Happy-Go-Lucky - Mike Leigh - UK

Heaven on Earth - Deepa Mehta - India

Horn of Plenty - Spain/Cuba

Hunger - Steve McQueen - UK

In the Shadow of The Naga - Thailand

JCVD - Mabrouk El Mechri - France - Midnight Madness (Jean Claude Van Damme plays himself)

Me and Orson Welles - Richard Linklater - UK

Not Quite Hollywood - Mark Hartley - USA/Australia - Midnight Madness

Picasso and Braque go to the movies - Arne Glimcher - USA

Plastic City - Yu Lik Wai - Brazil/China

Plus Tard tu Comprendras - Amos Gitaï - France

Pontypool - Bruce MacDonald

The Road - based on the brilliant Cormac McCarthy novel starring Charlize Theron

Rain - Maria Govan - Bahamas (coming of age)

The Real Shaolin - USA/China (sports Doc)

RocknRolla - Guy Ritchie - UK

The Sky Crawlers - Animation - Japan

Slumdog Millionaire - Danny Boyle - UK

Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman - USA

Tears for Sale - Uros Stojanovic - Serbia/Croatia

Tokyo Sonata - Kyoshi Kurosawa - Japan/The Netherlands/Hong Kong, China

Tulpan - Sergey Dvortsevoy - Germany/Switzerland/Kazakhstan/Russia/Poland

Two-Legged Horse - Samira Makhmalbaf - Iran (doc - abuse/poverty)

Yes Madam, Sir - Megan Doneman - India/Australia

Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love - Chai Vasarhelyi - USA

Save up for those Gucci 3D glasses

Hollywood has started to align itself behind the idea that the movie industry, despite a healthy summer take 26% over this time last year, is still seeing 5% decline in people's butts in movie theater seats.

They are meeting this challenge in a variety of ways, principally among them the idea that 3D is a movie viewing experience that can uniquely be appreciated in the IMAX 3D screening theater. The Hannah Montana movie of 2007 made almost 3 times as much on its 3D screenings as it did in conventional 2D theaters - earning almost 60 million in 3D showings off its meager 15 million dollar production budget.

The studios have taken notice, and there are no less than 25 3D movies in the production pipeline including comers from Dreamworks, Disney, Sony, Universal and even some independents.

Interestingly enough the companies that manufacture the 3D production equipment were caught off-guard by this sudden backing from Tinseltown. Caught with their pants down, they are now scrambling to get everything from cameras, lighting systems and stereoscopic editing solutions to market. And they are meeting the challenge - companies like Iconix, makers of the world's smallest HD camera showed a high-def stereoscopic camera system at this year's NAB show that can be had for somewhere in the ballpark of US$250K. Sounds like a lot, but that is just the first wave. Digital Ordnance showed a High-Def stereoscopic video playback system for newar realtime playback of your 3D content on set so you know you are getting things right. This is quite something considering the massive amount of bandwidth required to spit out synched, near parallel streams of full 2k HD of an array of hard drives.

But enough geek talk.

Another very interesting event that took place at this year's NAB show was the live satellite 3D television broadcast from Howie Mandell in Los Angeles. The company behind the demonstration, 3ality, has managed to acheive this using a simple single stream no different than 2-D television.

Yes, you heard me right. Live. 3D. Single-stream. Broadcast.

Samsung and Mitsubishi are already selling 3-D ready digital televisions, and recently WIRED magazine featured an exclusive stream of Bjork's new 3D video. They pointed out that the stream HAD to be viewed from their site because of a special encoder that permited it to work. see the trick here? it requires a proprietary encoder for playback - that means, until some hacker/coder develops a freeware/open source version of a hi bandwidth 3D streaming encoder, people can control where viewers access content. Advertisers LOVE this. And so do the content creators because they get financed by the advertisers. So 3D is big business and mark my words, before you can say "What is Blu-Ray?" you will be getting a catalog from Fred Segal's with a price list for the latest Gucci Polarized 3D glasses - you know the tortoise shell ones with the miniature diamonds in the arms.

Because in a year's time, you won't leave home without them.




ps. the above Gucci is FAKE and they had nothing to do with this article which is entirely speculative.