U2 doc, Pitt, Clooney films headline festival, which launches on Sept. 8
By David Germain, Movie Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --One of the world’s top film showcases is starting on a musical note as a documentary portrait of the rock band U2 opens the Toronto International Film Festival.
Organizers say the Canadian festival will launch Sept. 8 with “From the Sky Down,” a chronicle of the Irish band led by singer Bono. The film was made by “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim and marks the first time in its 36-year history that the Toronto festival has opened with a documentary.
Guggenheim said the film explores why “this band has endured and thrived.” The four-member band formed in 1978 and has been turning out hit albums since the early 1980s, including “War,” ”The Joshua Tree,” ”Achtung Baby” and “Zooropa.”
“In the terrain of rock bands, implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable. U2 has defied the gravitational pull toward destruction,” said Guggenheim, an Oscar winner for “An Inconvenient Truth” who also made the 2008 musical documentary “It Might Get Loud,” featuring U2 guitarist The Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White.
Director Cameron Crowe (“Almost Famous”) ventures into musical documentary with another Toronto premiere, “Pearl Jam Twenty,” tracing the band’s formation and how its members pulled back from the spotlight to cope after its rise to stardom.
Singer Madonna also is headed to the Toronto festival, as director of “W.E.,” a film that intercuts between the romance of a modern woman (Abbie Cornish) and the relationship of American socialite Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne for love in the 1930s.
Toronto is among the world’s largest film festivals, a spot where Hollywood studios and international filmmakers debut many prospects that will be in the running for next February’s Oscars.
Other highlights for the 11-day festival include Brad Pitt’s baseball tale “Moneyball”; Jennifer Garner, Hugh Jackman and Olivia Wilde’s comic story “Butter”; Kristen Wiig, Megan Fox and Jon Hamm’s parenthood comedy “Friends with Kids”; and Keira Knightley’s Sigmund Freud-Carl Jung drama “A Dangerous Method,” directed by David Cronenberg and featuring Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender.
George Clooney has two films at Toronto, directing and co-starring alongside Ryan Gosling in the political saga “The Ides of March” and starring in the family story “The Descendants,” directed by Alexander Payne (“Sideways”).
Rachel Weisz also appears in two Toronto films, the love-affair chronicle “The Deep Blue Sea” and the ensemble love story “360,” inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s play “La Ronde” and featuring Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Anthony Hopkins.
Also playing at Toronto are Glenn Close’s Irish drama “Albert Nobbs”; Jane Fonda and Catherine Keener’s family comedy “Peace, Love & Misunderstanding”; Sarah Polley’s relationship tale “Take This Waltz,” with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen; Ralph Fiennes’ Shakespeare adaptation “Coriolanus”; Freida Pinto’s “Trishna,” an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” transplanted to modern India; and Francis Ford Coppola’s murder mystery “Twixt,” with Val Kilmer.
Effie UK and Ipsos Report Concludes Marketing Industry Should Do Its Part To Heal Societal Divisions
Society has never been more divided, according to a new report Healing the Divide in which Effie UK and brand and advertising experts from Ipsos explored brands’ role in shaping society and healing societal divisions.
The report details how instability, inflation, and COVID recovery —the convergence of multiple interconnected crises around the world that coincide with and amplify each other, causing hard to resolve systemic challenges, have become the norm over the past few years. As a result, the use of division as a weapon is now a major theme in today’s culture and politics, and sadly 47% of the UK and 49% of the US agree with the statement that “Within my lifetime, society in my country will break down,” according to Ipsos Global Trends 2024.
While some brands have tried to respond to this, the report finds responsible marketing is now threatened by weaponized division. It points to the World Federation of Advertisers’ decision to shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X, combined with DEI rollbacks, as significant setbacks.
The report says these setbacks underline the importance of marketing in solving collective problems, such as climate change, food security, and harmful online content. It also points to a need for marketers to take more interest in and more responsibility for healing divisions.
Research claims marketers are ideally placed to build and rebuild the antidote to division (trust, empathy, a sense of control, connection and collaboration). According to the Ipsos Veracity index of trusted professionals, society is becoming more trustworthy of advertising executives. Additionally, 57% of Britons agree that brands should communicate their... Read More