The 25th iteration of Toronto’s LGBT Film Festival kicked off last night with a screening of Paul Weitz’s Lili Tomlin vehicle Grandma. Tomlin plays an aging poet and academic who is estranged from her children and tries to seize upon a sticky situation to bond with her granddaughter. Premise-wise this has been done many times but the performance has gotten a lot of attention.
The rest of the festival runs until May 31 and features some 150 films. There’s much to be curious about on this slate including a highly-touted doc called Tab Hunter Confidential. It looks at the former star’s closeted sexuality in mid-century Hollywood as he played the strapping hunk in a variety of mostly forgotten not very good films. Hunter himself will be in attendance for the screening tonight at the TIFF Bell Lightbox at 9:15 p.m.
Other highlights include a new film from the renowned British director Peter Greenaway called Eisenstein in Guanajuato which looks at Soviet montage pioneer Sergei Eisenstein’s (Battleship Potemkin) time in Mexico after leaving the Soviet Union and Hollywood as he looked to make his final masterpiece. Another one to look for is director Jamie Babbit’s Fresno which played at SXSW and features as hip a cast as you can find for binge TV watching junkies with the likes of Natasha Lyonne, Judy Greer, Aubrey Plaza and Fred Armisen.
What’s Happening for TIFF 40
We already know that this year’s “City to City” focus is London and it was previously announced that TIFF would feature a TV-centric programme for the first time called “Primetime,” but there’s another new programme called “Platform.”
“Inspired by the Jia Zhangke film, "Platform" will showcase films made in the spirit of true directors’ cinema: free, daring and transformative,” said TIFF’s artistic director Cameron Bailey in a press release. “It will offer audiences, industry members and media a new opportunity to discover high-quality international cinema while giving the next generation of master filmmakers a platform to reach audiences and increase their global profile.”
That doesn’t really elucidate much but I think the key takeaways here are: directorial vision, global profile and a $25,000 prize.
Go Goth
I know very little about goth lifestyle or even sartorial style in general, but I love vampire flicks, and that’s what I’m really up to here. The Royal has a pretty mean double feature tonight in celebration of World Goth Day. Lisa Ladouceur hosts screenings of Hammer Studios’ classic Horror of Dracula starring Christopher Lee in the cape and Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing. That flick, which is my favourite take on the material actually, runs at 7 p.m. and is followed by the best thing that Joel Shummaker has ever directed, 1987’s The Lost Boys, at 9:15 p.m.
Toronto Screengrab of the Week
Last week’s grab was of James Woods’ in David Cronenberg’s still startling Videodrome. Everyone loves our very own “baron of blood” so let’s hit that note again with a scene shot at Canada’s Wonderland in its infancy some 30 years back.
