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Returning behind the camera for the first time in almost a decade, Don McKellar took The Grand Seduction to Tiff last year, where it was received with warm reviews.

Led by Brendan Gleeson and Taylor Kitsch, the comedy will be released in the UK and Ireland at the tail-end of the summer, and eOne has now launched the trailer for our shores, along with the UK quad poster.

Brendan Gleeson is Murray, a once proud fisherman who now, along with his former colleagues in the harbour of Tickle Head are out of work and forced to live off welfare. Prohibited from fishing enough to make a living and the community spirit having faded a long time ago, the Mayor comes up with a dazzling plan – a giant corporation need a location to build a factory and Tickle Head could be just the right place. But there’s just one problem – in order to qualify,...

After making the festival run last year, the charming comedy The Grand Seduction is coming to United States theaters this spring. The film is actually a remake of Seducing Doctor Lewis, an Italian film from 2004. However, it also feels like a European take on Doc Hollywood from back in 1991. The story follows a small fishing village that’s in desperate need of a doctor to not only treat the many, sometimes amusingly, afflicted residents, but also to fulfill a business contract that will keep the local factory up and running. So when a hot shot doctor (Taylor Kitsch) comes to town, the mayor (Brendan Gleeson) does all he can to impress him, sometimes with charmingly hilarious results. This looks like a real crowd-pleaser. Watch now! Here's the new theatrical trailer for Don McKellar's The Grand Seduction from eOne: The Grand Seduction is directed by Canadian actor-filmmaker Don McKellar (of Childstar,...

Featuring a dreamy indie-rock soundtrack that quickly turns sour, a sense of disenfranchised teenage romanticism that curdles under its own emo, twee-ness and some occasionally charming performances and admittedly clever quips, the indie film, “Daydream Nation” can’t hide the fact that it is absolutely callow--riddled with vapid coming-of-age cliches expressed first and foremost by a rather painful voice-over and endless slo-motion music-video montages. Directed and written by Canadian filmmaker Michael Goldbach (co-writer of Don McKellar’s "Childstar"), the tedious and cloying picture reads and sounds like the diary of a deluded and guileless college-kid who assumes the world is dying to…...

Michael Goldbach begins his directorial career with an independent feature film on life in a small town. However, this film, Daydream Nation, "is not a documentary".

After Childstar (2005), which he co-wrote with Don McKellar, Goldbach wanted to direct a film. It took him 7 to 8 years to find the financial support. "It's very difficult to raise money for a first film," he mentioned. Although "Daydream Nation is not an auto-biography", it still contains a few references to what he has known in high school in Arva, a small town in Ontario near London.

During the first minutes of the interview, Goldbach speaks quickly and with enthusiasm. After all, Daydream Nation will be released tomorrow in select theatres in New York and Los Angeles.

As he was in the city of angels to promote his first feature film, Goldbach explained on the phone that he wanted to offer a different vision of...

Who to choose? A high school teacher or a stoner classmate? Anchor Bay Films released the trailer for indie film “Daydream Nation” on Hulu this week. The film stars Kat Dennings (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” “The 40 Year Old Virgin”), Reece Thompson (“Dreamcatcher,” “Assassination of a High School President”), Josh Lucas (“American Psycho,” “A Beautiful Mind”), Andie MacDowell (“Groundhog Day,” “Short Cuts”) and Rachel Blanchard (“Snakes on a Plane,” “Road Trip”). Here is the official synopsis: “Seventeen-year-old Caroline Wexler (Dennings) is facing a teenager’s nightmare: her widowed father has moved them from the big city to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. When Caroline realizes she has nothing in common with the burnout losers in her new school she pursues the one person with who excites her interest – her handsome young teacher, Mr. Anderson (Lucas). A bizarre love triangle ensues between Caroline, Mr. Anderson, and a sweet,...

Now, let's get to the bottom of things: Childstar was actually a film that I was glad to discover because it made fun of many Hollywood executives who clearly like to insult people's intelligence. Besides, I never thought that Don McKellar was beyond many North American humorists' league. However, any praises for the film should stop there.

Taylor Brandon Burns (Mark Rendall), an American childstar, is sent to Canada to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster called The First Son, a film in which the president is saved from terrorists by his son (played by Taylor, of course). Besides, once there, Taylor learns that the production crew had designated Rick (Don McKellar), an indie film director, as his chauffeur. Although Rick detests Taylor's behaviour, which is comparable to that of a prima donna, he enjoys one aspect of his job: banging Taylor's single mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) when he's not working.

However,...

When we think of child actors, it's easy to think of rich, overly indulgent scenarios like the one Don McKellar outlined in Childstar. But that's not always the case -- especially for the tykes of Slumdog Millionaire. It only lost two of its ten Oscar nominations, but for the young Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubiana Ali, post-Slumdog life isn't coming up roses.

On the heel of news that the kids were getting trust funds and school funding, The Telegraph reports that they are reeling after their whirlwind taste of luxury life at the Oscars. Azhar has been suffering from a 103 temperature and vomiting since returning home, a condition which isn't helped by the fact that he doesn't have a physical home to rest in (although neighbors are trying to build a metal structure for the kid to rest in out of the sun). Meanwhile, Rubina still wears the now-stained gown she wore to the Oscars,...

Filed under: Comedy, Home Entertainment, Trailers and Clips, Friday Night Double Feature

When you live in downtown Toronto, you quickly become accustomed to the people calendar -- when the streets will be silent, and when they'll be buzzing. It starts when school lets out -- young kids hit the playgrounds while the college kids head home and free up the late-night sidewalks. Every third person is now a tourist, stopping every few feet for pictures or to look at a map. On the weekends, the city often becomes a ghost town, as hordes head up north to cottages. But then it's back to school, often marked by the eager new engineers running around the city painted purple.

And just a few days later, they're joined by slick stars and a million press badges as the Toronto International Film Festival gears up. The stars are out, as are the press, the movie lovers,...

•   [Exclusive Image - click on picture for larger version. Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in Blindness. Photo Credit: Ken Woroner/ Courtesy of Miramax Films. © 2008.] #4. Blindness Director: Fernando MeirellesWriters: Don McKellar (Childstar)Producers: Andrea Barata Ribeiro, Niv Fichman, Sonoko Sakai Distributor: Miramax Films The Gist: Scripted by Don McKellar, the English-language film based on the 1995 novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, is a philosophical thriller about an epidemic of blindness that sweeps through an unnamed contemporary city and pushes society to the brink of breakdown. Fact: Think a Children of Men-like apocalyptic narrative texture. See It: Cidade De Deus (City of God) and The Constant Gardener are of a high pedigree - I only expect the same with this feature. For a great read on the project check out the LATimes article. Release Date/Status?: August 8th. I imagine a Cannes premiere is more than likely.   ...

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Sundance Channel has acquired home video and U.S. pay television rights to the Canadian comedy Childstar, starring Don McKellar (who also co-wrote the script with Michael Goldbach and directed the film), Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mark Rendall. The dark comedy -- which co-stars Dave Foley, Michael Murphy and Eric Stoltz -- is described as a "film within a film" that parodies the world of child actors as well as the big-budget U.S. film industry. Childstar, a Rhombus Media production, will be released Aug. 23 on DVD and VHS by Sundance Channel Home Entertainment through Hart Sharp Video. The film will have its U.S. television premiere next year on Sundance Channel. The deal was negotiated by vp film programming Christian Vesper on behalf of Sundance Channel and Sheena Macdonald on behalf of Rhombus International.

COLOGNE, Germany -- Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea, Sally Potter's romantic drama Yes and the latest from Canadian cult directors Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar are among the films selected for the Panorama sidebar section at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, Panorama organizers said Thursday. Joining McKellar's comedy Childstar and McDonald's comedy-thriller The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess on the Panorama slate are the French comedy Mariscos Beach, from Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau; Ira Sachs' music-tinged drama Forty Shades of Blue; Dallas, from Romanian helmer Robert-Adrian Pejo; Turkish director Yesim Ustaoglu's Waiting for the Clouds; Finnish drama For the Living and the Dead, by Kari Paljakka; and Saratan, a Germany-Kyrgyzstan co-production from Ernest Abdyjaparov.

TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday tapped Olivier Assayas' Clean and Don McKellar's Childstar for high-profile screenings next month. Clean, which stars Nick Nolte and earned Maggie Cheung the best actress award at the Festival de Cannes when it bowed there, will receive its North American premiere in Toronto at Roy Thomson Hall. Childstar, which stars Eric Stoltz, Dave Foley, Gil Bellows, Brendan Fehr and Kristin Adams, will receive its world premiere as a special presentation in the coveted opening Friday night slot at the Elgin Theatre. The announcements came as Toronto festival organizers abandoned the former Perspectives Canada sidebar, which placed virtually all homegrown Canadian movies into one niche, and adopted a sink-or-swim programming policy that will see established Canadian directors featured alongside their international colleagues in sidebars like Contemporary World Cinema and Special Presentations.