vendredi 30 octobre 2009

Fall festival season kicks off race to the Oscars


With Venice underway and Toronto just a few days from kicking off, the fall festival season is in full swing. Critics, producers, distributors, actors and agents are almost halfway through a nearly month-long stretch of critical fests that can shape the race for film awards.
"Venice is the very beginning of awards season campaigns," Lee Marshall, a film critic for industry mag Screen International, said in an interview from Venice.
With its parade of red carpet stars, the festival, currently underway at the Lido, has traditionally served as a launching platform for awards season. It screened "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005, which won director Ang Lee an Oscar.
Early predictions about awards front-runners have been floating around since Cannes, where speculation about Oscar hopefuls is as much a feature of the festival as tightly-packed crowds on the Croisette.
But the 18 days book-ended by Venice and Toronto, with small fest Telluride in between, gives critics and distributors alike an opportunity to take in dozens more films, and consequently, for awards speculation to really heat up.
"You occasionally get a film screened at Cannes that turns out to be an Oscar contender, but it's really more Venice and Toronto that play an important role in launching Oscar contenders," Venice veteran Marshall said.
At Venice this year, 24 films are in competition at the Lido, including Michael Moore's new documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story" and an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.

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