Malaysia Star, Malaysia - Renowned filmmaker Wai Ka Fai juggled the roles of producer, director and screenplay writer for the complex and suspenseful Mad Detective.

“For this collaboration with producer-director (Johnnie) To, the idea was to make a cops-and-robbers movie with a difference. We were inspired by the famous Dutch artist, Vincent van Gogh. He’s a talented painter whose art is markedly different from what the eye can see. But, he was thought to be mentally disturbed during his lifetime.

“The idea was that if Van Gogh were a cop, how would he go about solving cases? So, we created a character who is a genius at cracking tough cases. His eyes are not like others. He can see an individual’s inner ghosts,” says Wai during a telephone interview from Hong Kong… [Full Story]

Cinematical - What do the Stockholm Film Festival and Tokyo Filmex have in common? Nothing! Except that they both ended and announced their winners this weekend. That’s enough to combine ‘em into one post, I say.

At the 18th annual Stockholm fest, the top winner was 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the Romanian abortion drama that’s been racking up prizes since debuting at Cannes earlier this year. (Cinematical’s James Rocchi reviews it here.) It was named best film at Stockholm, and star Anamaria Marinca won the actress prize.

Jason Patric was named best actor for his performance in the abrasive dramedy Expired (a film I hated at Sundance), with Carlos Reygadas taking best script for the challenging religious drama Silent Light. Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was honored, and Persepolis — it’s impossible to hold a film festival in 2007 without giving Persepolis a prize — got a trophy for Oliver Bernet’s musical score… [Full Story]

Georgia Straight, Canada - Sidney Lumet isn’t getting shy in his old age. His new family-values thriller, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, kicks off with a steamy sex scene between Philip Seymour Hoffman ( Capote ) and Marisa Tomei ( In the Bedroom, My Cousin Vinny ) that features a lot more of Tomei than Vinny ever saw.

Asked about the graphic opening during a one-on-one interview with the Georgia Straight just before his film’s North American premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, the 83-year-old directing icon ( Network , Dog Day Afternoon ) explained: “That’s what changes his life,” referring to Hoffman’s character, a morally bankrupt money manager… [Full Story]

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National Post, Canada - You couldn’t ask for a better symbol of Marisa Tomei’s round of interviews for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead than the tray sent in to the windowless room where she waited. On it stood a mango smoothie and two boiled eggs in white cups.

Tomei brought sweetness for reporters, while photographers discovered they were treading on eggshells. My photographer and I got the first crack (so to speak) at Tomei, which turned out to be fortunate (another photographer was asked by a member of the actor’s entourage to delete his photos of the actress).

It was one of those 10-minute movie-star-in-hotel-room interviews during the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Tomei was promoting the Sidney Lumetdirected drama about a pair of desperate brothers (played by Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman) who plan a robbery of a mom-and-pop jewellery store that, not coincidentally, belongs to their own mom and pop. The robbery goes horribly wrong; mom is shot and things go further downhill from there… [Full Story]

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blogTO, Canada - If you (like me) saw Bruce McDonald’s new film, The Tracey Fragments, at the Toronto International Film Festival, then you (like me) might also be of the opinion that the film sucked. We can get into critical responses on McDonald’s film, which opens today at the Royal, in a minute - but for the time being, let it never be said that McDonald isn’t giving the naysayers the ultimate opportunity to do him one better.

To coincide with the nation-wide release of the highly experimental Tracey Fragments (which stars hottie Haligonian up-and-comer Ellen Page), McDonald has made the complete collection of raw footage from the shooting of the film available on the Tracey Fragments web site, thetraceyfragments.com. The challenge? Do with the film what you will.

The project is called Tracey Re-Fragmented, and like the film itself, it’s a journey into the continued plasticity and destructability of the filmed (and/or videotaped) image in the YouTube Decade… [Full Story]

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Toronto Star, Canada - For Kenneth Branagh, the decision to direct Sleuth was no mystery, because he knew Jude Law had all the ducks lined up in a row long before they started.

During an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, Branagh cheerfully admitted that Law was the one who decided to remake the classic 1972 film thriller about two men trapped in a gimmick-riddled mansion.

“Jude felt this basic idea of two men confined in a house fighting a deadly game over a woman we never see had something timeless and powerful about it,” says Branagh.

And having made the decision to remake the film, Law had a couple of clever aces up his sleeve… [Full Story]

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Pittsburgh Post Gazette, PA - Christopher McCandless’ family trusted writer Jon Krakauer to retrace his final steps — into the wilderness of Alaska where he lived to his fullest before dying at his weakest.

They weren’t sure they were ready for someone to tell the story again, on screen. That’s why it took Sean Penn a decade to get “Into the Wild” made.

“This was a very raw, fresh wound with the family when the book first came out” in 1996, Penn told the media during the Toronto International Film Festival… [Full Story]

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Globe and Mail, Canada - …Sounds like a dead-cert Academy Award winner, no? No. But then along comes Lars and the Real Girl, the new feature starring Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling - it comes to theatres early next month - and one’s reflex cynicism escapes like air from an inflatable doll. Somehow, the whole thing works rather well. So well in fact, that whispering about possible Oscar nominations has already begun. Gosling for best actor, Bianca for best-supporting. They’d attend the awards together, of course. Rumour is that Bianca has not yet picked her designer.

That Real Girl does work may have a lot to do with the way the filmmakers approached what is in part a comedy - with utter seriousness.

I don’t know if they went so far as to give Bianca her own trailer during the shoot in Southern Ontario, last winter. But director Craig Gillespie, his actors (also including Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner and Patricia Clarkson ) and crew apparently did everything but, handling the life-sized Bianca as if she were in fact a living, breathing part of the cast. She had makeup. She was carefully lit. She was treated with star deference… [Full Story]

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Toronto Star, Canada - …In an era that has post-punk cultural touchstones, such as skinny ties, danceable rock and distrust of the government, making a comeback, many of those participating in the band’s revival seem more apt to frame debate around what Joy Division isn’t than to provide a new raison d’être for its resurgence.

“When people revisit it, there’s no cultural kitsch. It’s so pared down, it’s not retro,” said Grant Gee, director of the new documentary Joy Division. “Everything about the band has a minimalism that doesn’t age.”

Added Anton Corbijn, director of the elegantly shot Curtis biopic Control: “Joy Division doesn’t feel fashionable in any way. It defined an era, but it doesn’t really come from that era.”… [Full Story]

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Toronto Star, Canada - Although her role in Elizabeth earned her an Oscar nomination 10 years ago, for a long time, Cate Blanchett strongly resisted director Shekhar Kapur’s pleas for her to return in a sequel.

“It was primarily because Shekhar began talking about it as soon as we finished the first one and I felt not enough time had passed and I wouldn’t really have anything different to say,” she recalled, talking shortly before the premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.

“I’m not someone who looks backward, I want to move forward. But now I’m 10 years older and the script is very much about a love triangle, so the structure of the film is different. Also, we’re all terrified of aging so I felt that making a film about a woman approaching middle age and realizing she’s not going to have a child was a potent and relevant thing to say about the state that a lot of women are in… [Full Story]

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