Toronto focus on politics, comedy and horror

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Global politics, seniors in love, fantastical fairy tales, technical glitches and the Weinstein brothers dominated the 31st Toronto International Film Festival, which wraps Saturday with the world premiere of the slavery drama "Amazing Grace."

The event was split between the haves (pictures with distribution in fall launch mode) and the have-nots (movies seeking buyers). And there were plenty of celebrities, such as producer-star Jennifer Lopez, selling her salsa musical "El Cantante," who flew in to strut the red carpets.

The festival was dominated by studio-owned "mini-majors," which were more interested in hawking their fall films and building Oscar buzz than in acquiring hot titles.

"For the past several festival cycles, more great films have been launched, with some interesting smaller film deals. The market was soft," said Bob Berney, president of Time Warner-owned distributor Picturehouse, which won raves for Guillermo Del Toro's horrific fairy tale "Pan's Labyrinth."

Of the movie stars who flew to Toronto, elegantly confident "Babel" star Brad Pitt was universally adored; less favored were Sean Penn and Russell Crowe, whose films "All the King's Men" and "A Good Year," respectively, lost altitude.

Politics, comedy and horror ruled, from popular premieres like Warner Independent Pictures' "For Your Consideration," a lampoon of awards season, to the comic-horror bloodbath "Black Sheep," to the year's most controversial film, the faux-documentary "Death of a President," which sold to Newmarket Films for $2.5 million, a risky move given its premise about the assassination of President Bush. Newmarket plans to rush the movie, which garnered major media coverage here, into release in a mere five weeks.

This year's festival saw "themes of huge anxiety about politics and violence," said festival co-director Noah Cowan, who believes that "September 11 is part of a conversation about a violent age that has been with us for the last five years. Artists are using their imagination regarding the future, which is so hard to imagine. 'Death of a President' is a gentle, thoughtful film."

Despite a projector breakdown at its first screening, 20th Century Fox's outrageous "Borat" took the festival by storm. The ultimate culture-clash comedy stars British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as a fearless anti-Semitic Kazakh reporter on the rampage in America. Along with Baron Cohen, another breakout was young Scottish star James McAvoy, whose films "Starter for Ten," "Penelope" and "The Last King of Scotland" also met with warm receptions.