Why a musical about hockey is fit to open our beloved film fest
By Ava Baccari, Photography courtesy of official
Score website
Hockey night is back in Canada-cue
the CBC soundtrack Olivia Newton-John. Um, pardon? That’s right cave-dwellers, the 35
^th
Toronto International Film Festival opens on September 9
^th with homegrown director Mike McGowan’s
Score: A Hockey Musical (and oh yes, it really
is a musical about hockey.) The choice may seem like a curve-ball move (sports metaphor—couldn’t resist) for TIFF programmers, given the tone of films selected to open the festival over the past few years. (Religious holiday scheduling conflicts and a world premiere snag of the more obvious choice—
Barney’s Version, based on the book by Mordecai Richler— by the Venice Film Festival a week earlier, left the vacant slot open for the taking.) Given the doom and gloom tones of previous festival openers— you wouldn’t have seen
Glee-style musical numbers in either last year’s Darwin biopic,
Creation or Paul Gross’ WWI tribute
Passchendaele, in 2008— it’s refreshing to see such an abrupt change of pace for the self-proclaimed second-best film fest in the world (and we’re OK with that too, Cannes!)
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