Parsing Toronto's Announcement/Schiller Explains It All For You

PARSING TORONTO'S ANNOUNCEMENT

The Toronto International Film Festival announced the first wave of films for their lineup this morning.  It may tell us some things about Telluride...and Venice (which announces their big guns Thursday).

Before I attempt to take this apart, a couple of caveats...

1) We believe that Toronto is going to follow their own announced policy of labeling films "World" or "North American" premieres to the extent that those films will not play Telluride and/or Venice earlier.

2) That they have the information from the distrib/producer types in order to make that call.

That said, here's what we "know" from this morning's announcement:

Selected Toronto Galas and their premiere status:

"Foxcatcher" Canadian Premiere
"The Judge" World
"Riot Club" World
"Wild" International


Select Special Presentations and their premiere status:

"99 Homes" Canadian
"Coming Home" North American
"The Drop" World
"Eden" World
"Force Majeure" North American
"The Good Lie" World
"The Imitation Game" Canadian
"Love & Mercy" World
"Manglehorn" North American
"Maps to the Stars" North American
"Men, Women and Children" World
"Miss Julie" World
"Mr. Turner" Canadian
"Phoenix" World
"Rosewater" Canadian
"Theory of Everything" World
"While We're Young" World
"Wild Tales" Canadian


Takeaways:

Here's what seems to be your best guesses based on the announcement this morning about films that could be headed to Telluride:

"Foxcatcher", "Wild", ""99 Homes", "The Imitation Game", "Mr. Turner", "Rosewater" and "Wild Tales".

Films that surprised me by the "World Premiere" status: Bill Pohlad's "Love and Mercy" and Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young" (perhaps the "Untitled Public School Project" shows up at Telluride?)

Films of interest not mentioned at all this morning: "Birdman", "Fury", "Unbroken","Interstellar", "A Most Violent Year", "Macbeth", "Suite Francaise", "Carol", "Clouds of Sils Maria", "Two Days,One Night", "Every Thing Will Be Fine", "The Homesman", "St. Vincent", "Big Eyes", "Suffragette", and "Far from the Madding Crowd"

Also a surprise...no announcement of an opening film...very weird.

I'm personally very excited, if this pans out, for "Foxcatcher", "The Imitation Game" and "Rosewater".

Here's the complete breakdown of films and descriptions from The Playlist:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/tiff-2014-lineup-includes-the-imitation-game-while-were-young-nightcrawler-men-women-children-more-20140722


SCHILLER EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU

Friend of the blog Christopher Schiller, writing this morning for scriptmag.com posted a fascinating analysis of some of the legal ramifications that had to have played into this morning's announcement from Toronto.
Read it here:

http://www.scriptmag.com/features/legally-speaking-depends-film-festival-rules


More tomorrow...or as it becomes available...