Tracking Toronto

GreenCine Daily is providing all kinds of coverage on the Toronto International Film Festival, including some comments on The Smell of Paradise, a film that makes me uneasy just in its summary.

Meanwhile, the blogging has begun in earnest at Long Pauses by Darren Hughes, who is determined not to be controlled by “blog guilt.” He especially praises Sokurov’s The Sun. (Great. Now, in future conversations with film buffs, we’ll have to say, “The Sun…. No, S-U-N, not the Dardennes Brothers film!”)

And of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Three Times, he raves, “I had a stupid grin on my face during every moment of Three Times. There’s no chance I’ll see a more beautiful film this week.”

Regarding the Cronenberg film A History of Violence, which I’ll be seeing next week and reviewing for Christianity Today, he writes,

“It’s going to be a lot of fun watching how this one plays to American critics. It works wonderfully as a genre film, and based on the laughter and cheering that errupted throughout the screening, it will definitely play as such to many audiences. But it also subverts the genre and offers an allegory on Bush’s America that, in my opinion, holds together much better than Dogville. Another great film.”

Unfortunately, Darren’s not so enthused about L’Enfer (or Hell), the second film of a trilogy based on ideas charted out by Krzysztof Kieslowski, from the director of No Man’s Land. (The first was Heaven, directed by Tom Tykwer, and starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi.) Peter Chattaway has a few notes on that project up at FilmChat.