GreenCine Daily - ”Beginning this weekend, the Brooklyn Academy of Music will pay tribute to IFC Films,” notes Martin Tsai in the New York Sun. “Aside from highlighting sneak previews of upcoming films from Gus Van Sant, Claude Chabrol, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Christophe Honoré, the series will feature the American premiere of Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World…, which will apparently skip the usual IFC Center pit stop and head straight to video on demand under IFC Films’s new Festival Direct banner.”

“This being a Loach film, it’s also a cruel world, populated by capitalist tools and fools, schemers and dreamers of every stripe, accent and ethnicity,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “In It’s a Free World… it’s the war of all against all yet again, this time with fistfuls of filthy pound notes and mouths crammed with speeches and broken promises.”… [Full Story]

National Post, Canada - Think for a minute about the number of films with guns, and you start to realize why Montreal filmmaker Stephane Lafleur saw the need to point out that his film has none. No guns does not mean no pain, however, and in this quiet, droll black comedy we find a group of characters who are besieged by the simple, terrifying weaponry of human interaction.

Continental, a Film Without Guns, which landed on the Toronto International Film Festival Group’s list of the 10 best films from Canada in 2007, opens with a man riding a bus to nowhere. At least, that is where he gets off, and after he wanders into the woods we do not see him again in the film… [Full Story]

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• Film Without Guns is like a bullet to the gut - Toronto Sun
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tiffg.ca - The official TIFF 2008 website is up at http://www.tiff08.ca/ with updated info about film submissions. Online submission forms for TIFF 2008 are now available here. Deadline for feature film entries is May 2, 2008 and for short films is April 11, 2008. The 33rd annual Toronto International Film Festival will be held from September 4 to 13, 2008… [Full Story]

Fox Searchlight - RSVP here for a free screening of Under the Same Moon on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 7pm at Cumberland Cinemas. Promotional screenings are on a first-come, first-served basis and not guaranteed seating. No purchase necessary. Seating is limited to theater capacity.

Directed by: Patricia Riggen

Cast: America Ferrera, Kate del Castillo, Jesse Garcia, Adrian Alonso, Maya Zapata

Synopsis: A young Mexican boy travels to the U.S. to find his mother after his grandmother passes away… [Full Story]

UofTtix - TUESDAY MARCH 4 7pm @ Isabel Bader Theatre

Tickets are FREE

A ticket is required to attend this event. Rush tickets will be available 10 minutes before the start of the event. Reserved tickets not collected as of 10 minutes before the event will be released.

Renowned Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan delivers his second public presentation as the Dean’s Distinguished Visitor in Theatre, Film, Music, and Visual Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science. The director of such award-winning films as The Sweet Hereafter, and Felicia´s Journey, Egoyan is currently teaching an interdisciplinary course with students from film, music, drama, and visual art. A reception follows… [Full Story]

Alliance Films - Get free tickets to the Simon Pegg romantic comedy “Run, Fat Boy, Run” being held on March 5th, 7:00pm at SilverCity Yonge & Eglinton. To register, please click here.

Director:
David Schwimmer

Starring:
Simon Pegg, Thandie Newton, Hank Azaria

Synopsis:
Five years ago Dennis (Simon Pegg) was at the altar about to marry Libby (Thandie Newton), his pregnant fiancée. He got cold feet and ran for the hills and he’s been going in circles ever since. When Dennis discovers Libby’s hooked up with high-flying-go-getter Whit (Hank Azaria), he realizes it’s now or never. He enters a marathon to show he’s more than a quitter, but then finds out just how much sweat, strain and tears it takes to run for 26 miles. Nobody gives him a chance, but Dennis knows this is his only hope to be more than a running joke… [Full Story]

Cinematical - It’s sad, and it’s unfortunate, but it all comes down to money, homeskillets.

When the Canadian Genie Awards airs this Monday, March 3, it might be with the lovely Sandra Oh leading festivities, but it will be doing so without any sort of Juno love. This might seem strange since, well, Ellen Page and Michael Cera are Canadian, as is director Jason Reitman, the comedy was filmed in Canada (British Columbia, to be exact), it had an extended Canadian cast, and a Canadian crew. Topping that Canuck goodness off with all the nominations and wins the film has received, it would seem certain that Juno would be all over the Genies.

Not quite. As Yahoo/Reuters states: Genie rules say that some of the film’s production budget must come from Canada for it to be deemed a Canadian film and be worthy of consideration. (Is there a certain, specific amount of “some,” I wonder? Could some dudes just donate a $20 and make these sort of problems go away?) I see the rationale, but it sure makes for skewed selections. Ellen Page and her Diablo-led brethren have been snubbed, but Eastern Promises is in the running because approximately 20% of the film’s budget came from Canada… [Full Story]

Iceland Naturally - …In collaboration with the New York-based curatorial team Package Deals, a handful of feature films will be screened in Toronto during the festival. The film Children (Börn), by well-known Icelandic director Ragnar Bragason, is a compelling look at a group of dysfunctional people in Reykjavík. Shot in beautifully stylized black and white, which complements the film’s dark atmosphere, the story’s unexpected twists and turns lead to a provocative denouement. The film was awarded the Best Screenplay award at the 2006 Edda Awards, Iceland’s equivalent of the Academy Awards, in 2006. This screening marks the Toronto premiere of Children (Börn).

The new acclaimed film Heima will also be screening as part of the Taste of Iceland festival. Directed by Ottawa native Dean DeBlois, Heima—which translates as both “at home” and “homeland”—chronicles a series of free concerts that Sigur Rós, Iceland’s biggest musical export after Björk, played in their native Iceland in the summer of 2006. The film provides unique insights into one of the world’s most fascinating and inscrutable bands, captured live while exploring their natural habitat—the mysterious, otherworldly landscape of Iceland—like never before.

Both films will screen at the Cumberland Theatre on Bloor St. Children will air at 6:30pm and Heima at 8:15pm, both on Thursday, March 13th… [Full Story]

Status of Women Office - Hosted by the Status of Women Office in partnership with Hart House, celebrate International Women’s Day all week long with free screenings and refreshments. The themes of the films address the intersection between gender and other equity issues in women’s lives.

St George Campus
March 3: Moolaade (6:30pm) Hart House, Arbor Room
March 4: Desert Hearts (6:30pm) Hart House, Arbor Room
March 5: Shameless: The Art of Disability (12pm) Hart House, East Common Room
March 6: Rabbit-Proof Fence and Highway of Tears (6:30pm) Hart House, Reading Room
March 7: Nine to Five (6:30) Hart House, East Common Room

UTSC
March 4: Moolaade (5pm) HW215
Discussion will follow and refreshments will be served
March 5: Shameless: The Art of Disability (4pm) BV264

UTM
March 3: Earth/Fire/Water (2pm) Presentation Room, Student Centre… [Full Story]

Eye Weekly, Canada - Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast had a few surprises (Marion Cotillard? Really?) but the triumph of The Counterfeiters in the Best Foreign-Language Film category was not one of them. Austrian writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s adaptation of Adolf Burger’s memoir The Devil’s Workshop — a first-person account of a Nazi counterfeiting operation in which appropriately skilled concentration-camp inmates were put to work forging British and American currency — had been in the pole position since it screened last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, where more than one critic dubbed it “this year’s The Lives of Others.”

Depending on your point of view, it’s either high praise or a backhanded compliment to say that Ruzowitzky’s film earns the comparisons to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar champ. Like The Lives of Others, The Counterfeiters is a serious, technically accomplished and very well-acted piece of work probing issues of guilt and complicity; also like The Lives of Others, it’s altogether too neat in its structure and the organization of its themes. It gains relevance, however, by virtue of its rarity as an Austrian film addressing the Holocaust. “Most of the people [in Austria] appreciate that a film like this was made by an Austrian,” says Ruzowitzky over the phone from Los Angeles. “Not just by an Austrian, but by somebody like me, with my family background.”… [Full Story]