From EW, The more easygoing second half of the Toronto Film Festival began with a technical glitch that threw a bit of a wrench into many festival-fatigued journalists' Tuesday. The morning press screening of Cassandra's Dream — Woody Allen's new film, starring Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, and Tom Wilkinson — was delayed a full hour due to an undisclosed mishap with the projector. That delay pushed back the rather anticipated showing of writer-director Todd Haynes' fractured cinema study of Bob Dylan, I'm Not There, which in turn threw off many carefully planned schedules. But really, such is life at a major international film festival.
THE AUDIENCE BUZZ
Neither Cassandra's Dream nor I'm Not There fully won over their respective audiences; responses ranged from mild praise to outright pans. Still, when EW spoke with McGregor on Tuesday, he offered a likely preview of Wednesday's expected press conference with Allen, by describing the journo gaggle after Cassandra's Dream's recent premiere at the Venice Film Festival. ''None of [the actors] got asked any questions,'' reports McGregor. ''It was all questions to Woody, as it should be. So we just sat and listened to his very quiet answers, and he was lovely to listen to. There were some great European, deeply intellectual questions being thrown out. He listened to [them] very, very intently and went, 'Well, all I can tell you is that it's a story I wrote about two nice boys who were brought up by two nice parents, and things went wrong in their lives.' He just kept calling it a story about two nice boys.''
THE TOUGHEST TICKET
One wouldn't necessarily expect erstwhile talk-show guru Phil Donahue (whom EW.com is scheduled to chat with on Wednesday) to be connected to the hot ticket of the day at Toronto. And yet his film — Body of War, a documentary following a paralyzed Iraq war veteran's life for a year — was by far the most anticipated movie on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Then again, that could have had something to do with the fact that Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder sang two acoustic songs at the packed screening.
THE BIG DEAL
As the day wound to a close, news broke that one of the most controversial films of the festival, Alan Ball's feature directorial debut, Nothing Is Private, had been acquired for $1.25 million by Warner Independent and Netflix offshoot Red Envelope.
The sale was a bit of a surprise. In fact, after Nothing Is Private first screened on Saturday, several movie industry wonks were left wondering whether its unflinching portrayal of the often painful sexual awakening of a 13-year-old half-Lebanese girl (played by 19-year-old Summer Bishil) would be far too much of a hot potato for the Hollywood specialty divisions. And, to a degree, they were right. ''It is a movie that is going to push so many buttons for so many people,'' a relaxed Ball told EW.com earlier on Tuesday, before news of the acquisition broke. ''A lot of those reactions are going to be very emotion-based. I know [the film] is very divisive. Certainly, my experience here this week has reaffirmed my opinion that a lot of this business is basically fear-driven. People are so afraid of taking risks and taking chances.''
A few hours later, of course, Nothing Is Private officially had a new home — with, as it happened, the same indie studio that released the family-friendly March of the Penguins in 2005 — something Ball hinted he knew was in the works. ''I just tried really hard not to have any expectations [coming into the festival]. Of course, I did. And it looks like it's going to turn out pretty okay. I've had a really good time here. But,'' he concluded with a robust laugh, ''I am ready to go home!''
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