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We’ve already told you about the celebs filing into town for TIFF and the extended-licence nightspots they’ll be frequenting. But with more than 300 movies being screened, the actual “film” part of the festival can be hard to navigate. Enter our handy guide, in which we scope out the buzz on the most hotly anticipated flicks of the fest.
Once upon a wine list (Image: Matthew Fox)
On Tuesday, we found ourselves sitting at the chef’s rail at Canoe for the second night of the Oliver and Bonacini joint’s grand reopening (check out our peek at the renovated space). Executive chef Anthony Walsh stood nearby marvelling at the general lack of chaos, and we asked him how the opening was going. Sure, minor elements of the $1-million renovation remained incomplete—baseboards weren’t finished, soapstone counters weren’t treated—but all in all, Walsh told us, things were running smoothly. The biggest challenge for staff, he said, was the installation of a new, more efficient computer system (which resulted in a few servers huddling over monitors trying to figure out how to process gift cards).
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Secret Daughter, a debut novel by an untested author, went supernova after just four days on the shelves at Costco
It’s amazing what a little support from Costco can do for a writer’s career. When HarperCollins Canada published Toronto-born Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s debut novel, Secret Daughter, last March, its prospects were not good: the advertising budget was nil, and booksellers greeted it with shrugs. But then HarperCollins asked Costco’s book buyer, Catherine Bergeron, to look past the store’s best-seller bias and give the novel a shot. That was on a Tuesday. By Saturday, it was one of the top-selling titles in the country. Since then, the book—about an Indian woman forced to give up her daughter and the American couple that adopts the child—has been anointed a Heather’s Pick by Indigo, gone through more than a dozen printings, and sold 200,000-plus copies in Canada alone.
All this is doubly curious when you consider that the 40-year-old Gowda has been a U.S. citizen for the past five years. (She lives with her husband and two children in San Diego.) She sold the novel not to HarperCollins Canada, but to HarperCollins U.S. The Canadian arm initially intended to distribute the American edition, but when the Toronto sales office noticed Gowda’s Canadian roots, a paperback version was created for the domestic market. (Paperbacks are Costco’s preferred format and a factor in its decision to carry Secret Daughter before it went supernova.) In the much larger U.S. market, where the book has been available only as an expensive hardcover, sales have been comparatively modest: 10,000-odd copies to date. Read the rest of this entry »
More than a few high-profile titles—Beatrice and Virgil, Ilustrado, Fauna—are conspicuously absent from this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize long list, but no snub was more shocking than the omission of Emma Donoghue’s Man Booker–nominated Room. Prior to the announcement, Room was fully expected to make the Giller short list, and the smart money was that it would ultimately go on to take the win. Good thing we’re not betting people.
In the hope of offering Donoghue some consolation, here’s a look the seven biggest Giller snubs in the prize’s 16-year history. Start the slide show »
As with any film festival, TIFF 2010 had its share of disappointments (Miral, Hereafter) and outright disasters (Passion Play, What’s Wrong With Virginia), but the general consensus is that this was a pretty good year. Critics and audiences found more than a few gems, and an astounding 18 films that arrived here without North American distribution have already found buyers. By our reckoning, however, eight films stood out as the biggest winners of the festival.
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Tickets go on sale tomorrow for all the screenings at TIFF 2010, but with over 300 titles, guessing at what film is worth the money (and queuing) is as challenging as ever. Well, fear not: our guide cuts through the hype surrounding the 50 most anticipated flicks to reveal which films are likely to give the most bang for your buck.
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