Emily Blunt film gets a distribution deal

Good news for Your Sister's Sister, the very funny, quirkily insightful film from Humpday's Lynn Shelton. It's landed a distribution deal with IFC Films and should hit theatres in the coming months. Mark Duplass, Rosemarie Dewitt and Emily Blunt star in this largely improvised three hander about a strange weekend at an isolated cabin. I really enjoyed this one and so did the rest of the audience at the world premiere at the Ryerson Theatre Saturday.

Linda Barnard

Raunchy observations at TIFF

The subject of American director Tanya Wexler’s oh-so-British sex farce, Hysteria generated a few raunchy observations at Thursday’s press conference, following the film’s premiere at TIFF.

The supposedly true story of the invention of the personal electric vibrator in Victorian London by a young doctor who treated women with numerous emotional problems by stimulating their genitals to produce “paroxysms”, is a winner, judging from audience reactions to festival screenings. It stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Jonathan Pryce.

“What were you doing down there?” Dancy was asked at the presser.

“Acting!” he replied.

Dancy, like most who’ve commented on the film, was astonished to learn how ignorant Victorian men, even trained physicians like the characters he and Pryce play, were of female sexuality. Or were they?

“These medical men were seriously, and without any irony, diagnosing a non-existent condition, doing what they were doing manually, and failing to see that there might be anything sexual about it.”

-Greg Quill

Pretty as a picture

Original art of stills from the TIFF program book is on display in the downstairs lounge of the Hyatt on King St. W. It includes Carole Freeman's Paul Williams Still Alive acrylic on mylar for $1,800. The art is inspired by some of the docs at TIFF this year. Other pieces include Deepa Mehta, a divine-looking David Cronenberg and Bono snuggling a lamb.

Linda Barnard

'Always Brando' fascinating, well-acted

A conversation with TIFF programmer Rasha Salti led me to Always Brando, a film from Tunisian director Ridha Béhi that's having its world premiere at TIFF. A picture-within-a-picture, it's both Béhi's drama about a young Tunisian actor, Anis Raache, who is a dead ringer for the young Marlon Brando and Béhi's negotiations with the reclusive actor to appear in the film. They met, Brando had agreed to sign on and the died just months before shooting was to start in Tunisia in 2004. The movie is also an exploration via Anis's bit part in an American drama about Atlantis being shot in his village and how the seductive lure of Hollywood can make people engage in self-destructive behaviours. Fascinating and well acted, Always Brando screens again Friday at 2 p.m. at the AMC.

-Linda Barnard

Just spotted

Gilmore Girl Alexis Bledel chatting on her cell outside the Hyatt Regency on King St. W.

Nicolas Cage at #TIFF

Promoting the movie Trespass yesterday, he told this story, reported by The Star's Paul Irish.

 

Central Image Agency

Stars help out Amnesty International

Russell Peters and Keira Knightley both signed the petition to free jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi.

These pictures are a couple of days old, but the festival is winding down ...

-Malene Arpe