Comedy feature film wins big in Toronto

TORONTO - Reuters

Actress Jennifer Lawrence smiles during the press conference for the film ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto. AP photo

“Silver Linings Playbook,” a dramatic comedy about a man who returns to his family home after eight months in a mental institution, won the top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16.

The film, by “The Fighter” director David O. Russell and starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, took home the BlackBerry People’s Choice award for best film at the 37th edition of the festival.
 Based on the novel by Matthew Quick, “Silver Linings Playbook” examines one man’s recovery from a personal and professional meltdown. The film held its world premiere at the festival last week.

 “Just as ‘The Fighter’ to me was not about fighting, this movie to me is not about mental illness,” Russell said last week. “To me, it’s always about the people and the dynamic of the people.”

Recent winners of the People’s Choice award, which is selected by festival audiences, include Oscar-winners “The King’s Speech” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

 The runner-up for the prize was Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” a fact-based thriller about an outlandish plan to get six stranded Americans out of Tehran after the 1979 invasion of the American Embassy by having them masquerade as a Canadian film crew.

The People’s Choice award for top documentary went to “Artifact,” which follows actor Jared Leto and his band Thirty Seconds to Mars as they record their album “This Is War,” while waging a legal battle against their label. “This film is so personal and has been such a labor of love,” Leto said in a statement read by festival organizers. “Thank you so much to every single person who voted.”

 The People’s Choice award for top Midnight Madness film went to Bartholomew Cubbins’ “Seven Psychopaths,” a blood-spattered comedy starring Colin Farrell as a screenwriter struggling to complete the script for a serial-killer movie, and featuring audience favorites Christopher Walken and Woody Harrelson. The best Canadian feature award went to Xavier Dolan’s “Laurence Anyways.”