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    Director Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room” Wins Audience Award At Toronto Film Festival

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2016 Views
    Brie Larson, from left, director Lenny Abrahamson, Jacob Tremblay and Joan Allen attend the premiere for "Room" on day 6 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the Princess Of Wales Theatre on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015, in Toronto. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

    By Jake Coyle, Film Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) --

    The top award of the 40th Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday went to Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room,” an emotional tale of a captive mother and her five-year son.

    The film took the festival’s People’s Choice award, determined by audience voting. Starring Brie Larson and 8-year-old Jacob Tremblay, “Room” is adapted from Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel. It’s told from the perspective of a boy who has been locked in a room with his mother for his entire life.

    Toronto’s audience award has previously been a harbinger of awards season success. Past winners include “12 Years a Slave” and “The King’s Speech.” That bodes well for the prospects of “Room,” which A24 will release October 16.

    Runner-up went to Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight,” a newspaper procedural starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo about the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting on sexual abuse by Catholic priests.

    The prize for the festival’s inaugural Platform sidebar of international films was awarded to Alan Zweig’s “Hurt,” a documentary about Canadian cancer hero Steve Fonyo.

    Evgeny Afieneevsky’s “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” won the People’s Choice documentary award. The audience award for the Midnight Madness section went to Ilya Naishuller’s “Hardcore,” a kinetic Russian action movie shot on GoPro cameras. Its $10 million sale to STX Entertainment was the largest purchase from the festival.

    The Toronto Film Festival wrapped Sunday after 10 days of red-carpet premieres.

    Category:News
    Tags:Lenny AbrahamsonRoomToronto International Film Festival



    Growth Brings Growing Pains–and Bots–To Bluesky

    Sunday, December 22, 2024

    Bluesky has seen its user base soar since the U.S. presidential election, boosted by people seeking refuge from Elon Musk's X, which they view as increasingly leaning too far to the right given its owner's support of President-elect Donald Trump, or wanting an alternative to Meta's Threads and its algorithms.

    The platform grew out of the company then known as Twitter, championed by its former CEO Jack Dorsey. Its decentralized approach to social networking was eventually intended to replace Twitter's core mechanic. That's unlikely now that the two companies have parted ways. But Bluesky's growth trajectory — with a user base that has more than doubled since October — could make it a serious competitor to other social platforms.

    But with growth comes growing pains. It's not just human users who've been flocking to Bluesky but also bots, including those designed to create partisan division or direct users to junk websites.

    The skyrocketing user base — now surpassing 25 million — is the biggest test yet for a relatively young platform that has branded itself as a social media alternative free of the problems plaguing its competitors. According to research firm Similarweb, Bluesky added 7.6 million monthly active app users on iOS and Android in November, an increase of 295.4% since October. It also saw 56.2 million desktop and mobile web visits, in the same period, up 189% from October.

    Besides the U.S. elections, Bluesky also got a boost when X was briefly banned in Brazil.

    "They got this spike in attention, they've crossed the threshold where it is now worth it for people to flood the platform with spam," said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and a member of Issue One's... Read More

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