Toronto Finals

The final tally of Toronto Film Festival titles has been released, and along with that comes HE’s initial checklist (must-sees, should-sees). This usually includes about 50 or 55 films, which always has to be whittled down to a more realistic 25 or 30.
My first run-through has resulted in 49 titles, give or take. I’m posting this list in hopes of hearing from the usual know-it-alls in hopes of pruning it down or getting wise to films that aren’t on my list but should be.

Abbie Cornish, Heath Ledger in Neil Armfield’s’s Candy (ThinkFilm, 11.17.)

The only high profile head-turner in this morning’s official list is the inclusion of Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10). For whatever reason I hadn’t heard this was definitely going there.
Here are most of the categories reprinted with HE’s priority titles in boldface (and the ones I’m already seen in bold italic). If anyone knows anything good, hard and solid about any films I haven’t boldfaced — positive or negative — please advise and I’ll work them into the schedule. Obviously I don’t need to see the italicized bold titles again and there are all kinds of additions to come, and I can keep updating and modifying as I go along:
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The only high profile head-turner in this morning’s official list is the inclusion of Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10). For whatever reason I hadn’t heard this was definitely going to be up there.
Here are most of the categories reprinted with my priority titles in boldface (and the ones I’m already seen in bold italic). If anyone knows anything good, hard and solid about any films I haven’t boldfaced — positive or negative — please advise and I’ll work them into the schedule. Obviously I don’t need to see the italicized bold titles again and there are all kinds of additions to come, and I can keep updating and modifying as I go along:

Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10)

Opening night gala: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Closing night gala: Amazing Grace.
Gala Presentations (10): After the Wedding, All The King’s Men, Away From Her, Babel, Banquet, Black Book, Bobby, Bonneville, Breaking and Entering, Dixie Chicks — Shut Up and Sing, For Your Consideration, A Good Year, Infamous, Mon Meilleur Ami, Never Say Goodbye, Penelope, Volver.
Special Presentations (13): 10 Items or Less, A Chairy Tale, Alatriste, Begone Dull Care, Blinkity Blank, Brand upon the Brain!, Bubble, Cantante, Catch a Fire, Congorama, Crime, Dog Problem, Exiled, Fall, Fay Grim, The Fountain, Golden Door, HANA, Hen Hop, Homme de sa Vie, Horizontal Lines, Jindabyne, Kabul Express, Last King of Scotland, The Last Kiss, Little Children, Lives of Others, Love and Other Disasters, The Magic Flute (ought to see it, don’t want to).
Plus: Manufactured Landscapes, Merle, Mon Colonel, Namesake, Neighbours, Nue Propriete, Opening Speech, Pan’s Labyrinth, Paris, Je T’aime, Pas de Deux, Pleasure of Your Company, Post-Modern Life of My Aunt, Quelques Jours en Septembre, Seraphim Falls, Snow Cake, Stars and Stripes, Stranger than Fiction, Synchromy, This Is England, Venus, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights, Woman on the Beach.

Jude Law, Juliette Binoche in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering (Weinstein Co., December…maybe)

Contemporary World Cinema (6): 12:08 East of Bucharest, Abeni, Antonia, Beauty in Trouble, Bella, Bet Collector, Born and Bred, Bothersome Man, Candy, Chronicle of an Escaped Citizen Duane, Confetti, Copying Beethoven, Diggers, Dimanche √É∆í√Ǭ† Kigali, Dog Pound, Falling, A Few Days Later…, Fiction, Four Minutes, Grbavica, Hula Girls, Indigenes, Italian, Last Winter, Mainline, Monkey Warfare, Nouvelle Chance, Offside, Outsourced, Palimpsest, Prague, Rain Dogs, Red Road, Requiem, Retrieval, Silence, Sleeping Dogs, Slumming, Starter For Ten, Suely in the Sky, Summer ’04, Summer Palace, Sweet MudTimes and Winds, To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die, Tourneuse de Pages, Twilight Dancers, Unnatural and Accidental, Violin, Waiter, Wake, The Way I Spent the End of the World, White Palms, Winter Journey.
Discovery (0): 7 ans, Art of Crying, As the Shadow, Bliss, Cashback, DarkBlueAlmostBlack, Falkenberg Farewell, Family Ties, Glue, Grave-Keeper’s Tale, Griffin & Phoenix, King and the Clown, Out of the Blue, Reprise, Silly Age, Thicker than Water, True North, Vanaja.

Dustin Hoffman, Will Ferrell in Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction (Columbia, 11.10)

Masters (3): Caiman, Coeurs, EMPz 4 Life, I Am the Other Woman, Untouchable, Lights in the Dusk, Missing Star, Optimists, Rescue Dawn, STRIKE, Voyage en Armenie, When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts (seeing this on HBO), The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
Mavericks (2): “An Evening with Michael Moore“, “Making of a Bollywood Blockbuster: Karan Johar, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherji”, “Vanguard Cinema: John Waters in conversation with John Cameron Mitchell“.
Midnight Madness (3): Abandoned, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Black Sheep, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Host, Princess, Severance, Sheitan, Trapped Ashes.
Real to Reel (8): …So Goes the Nation, American Hardcore, Blindsight, Cry in the Dark, Deliver Us From Evil, Dong, Esprit des lieux, Ghosts of Cite Soleil, Iran: Une Revolution Cinematographique, Killer Within, Kurt Cobain About A Son, Lake of Fire, Made in Jamaica, My Life as a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein, Office Tigers, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Primo Levi’s Journey, Prisoner or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, Radiant City, Remembering Arthur, Sari’s Mother, Session Is Open, Shame, Sharkwater, Shot in the Dark, Sugar Curtain, Summercamp!, Tales of the Rat Fink, Tanju Miah, These Girls, This Filthy World, Toi, Waguih, U.S. vs. John Lennon, Very Nice, Very Nice, Yokohama Mary.

Werner Herzog, Steve Zahn, Christian Bale during filming of Rescue Dawn (Weinstein Co.)

Vanguard (5): 2:37, Bunny Chow, Chacun sa nuit, Drama/Mex, Election, Election 2, Hottest State, Jade Warrior, Macbeth, Renaissance, Shortbus, Sleeping Dogs Lie, Suburban Mayhem.
Visions (1): August Days, Bamako, Belle toujours, Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, Blessed are the Dreams of Men, Book of Revelation, Bugmaster, Building a Broken Mousetrap, Cages, Climates, Colossal Youth, D.O.A.P., Dans les villes, Day Night Day Night, Day on Fire, Fantasma, Flandres, Gathering the Scattered Cousins, In Between Days, Invisible Waves, Island, Khadak, Kinshasa Palace, No Place Like Home, NYC Weights and Measures, Sistagod, Takva – A Man’s Fear of God, Taxidermia, Ten Canoes, Time, Zidane: Un Portait du XXIeme Si√É∆í√Ǭ®cle.

Summer Palace