As seemingly every movie of interest and prestige — and every movie that wants to be of interest and prestige — debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film journalism world has been scrambling to keep up with the slew of premieres, trailer releases, and Q&As that have been taking place. Today, the Lance Armstrong biopic The Program made the news twice, with a new trailer — which you can watch here — and, as Flavorwire previously reported, a Q&A with star Ben Foster (in the actor described his own experiments with performance enhancements in order to… enhance his impersonation of the cyclist… who used performance enhancements).
An erie teaser trailer was also released for Enter the Void writer Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution (also screening at the festival) . It helps to watch it after contextualizing it with the official description of the film, which reveals that Evolution takes place on a strange island inhabited only by mothers and young boys who are “subjected to mysterious medical treatment.” Alchemy, who picked up the film earlier this summer, described it as “ultimately as terrifying as anything [they’ve] ever seen.” (Of course, this comment is coming from the distributor, so its validity may be questionable).
Michael Moore’s upcoming doc, Where to Invade Next, has likewise made the news for various reasons today, spurred by its TIFF premiere. Earlier, Flavorwire reported that the first trailer for the film had been dropped. Now, The Hollywood Reporter has published an extensive Q&A with the director, in which he discusses his views on the Democratic candidates (and is seemingly more hopeful about Hillary than Bernie). He said of Hillary, “I believe it’s very possible with her as president that we are going to have a Pope Francis moment.” Though his ideal candidate, it seems, would be Meryl Streep.
Outside of TIFF (finally), Electric Literature published a fantastic, graphic rundown of the Decatur Book Festival keynote, at which a fissure occurred between Roxane Gay and Erica Jong after an audience member asked the question, “How do we make sure that feminism becomes more and more inclusive and accounts for more than just white women?” The author of the graphic work, MariNaomi, happened to have travelled to the festival with Randa Jarrar — the author who posed the question — and thus tells the story of their personal experience of the event, and the importance of speaking up.