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Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant Added To Toronto Fest Lineup

Posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 by Russ Fischer

herzog_cage_bad_lieutenant

We’ve been wondering when the hell we’d actually get to see Bad Lieutenant, the non-remake of Abel Ferrara’s film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicolas Cage (click here to see the Bad Lieutenant trailer). Now the Toronto International Film Festival has announced that the film will screen as part of the ‘Special Presentations’ slate. No huge surprise, as Herzog is frequently represented at TIFF (he was last there with Encounters at the End of the World in ‘07) but since Bad Lieutenant has seemed to languish without distributor interest this is a good sign. Other great filmmakers were also announced for the fest; get details of the Coen Brothers and Michael Moore appearances after the jump.

Here’s the short form release from TIFF:

The Toronto International Film Festival is pleased to announce the addition of two Gala Presentations and eight Special Presentations to the programming lineup for this year’s Festival, running September 10 to 19. Included are works from critically acclaimed filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, Werner Herzog, Rebecca Miller, Michael Moore and Oliver Parker, and featuring on-screen performances by Drew Barrymore (in her directorial debut), Jim Broadbent, Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Colin Farrell, Colin Firth, Rebecca Hall, Val Kilmer, Christopher Lee, Juliette Lewis, Blake Lively, Eva Mendes, Julianne Moore, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Robin Wright Penn and Keanu Reeves.

So, the big additions are that we’ve got A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers, Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore and, in the slightly surprising column, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It. (Which was promoted around Comic Con by squads of rollergirls in costume as the film’s main roller derby team.) While the Herzog, Coen and Moore films aren’t surprises, it’s nice to see them in the lineup.

And, as The Playlist noted while we were returning from San Diego, Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox will not be at TIFF, or at Venice. It will premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. Since Venice has loved Anderson in the past and gave this one a pass, does that mean the film isn’t any good?

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  • Benjamin
    I am so fucking excited for this. Herzog's a great director, Cage is a wonderful actor (who has great comic timing, intentional and unintentional) and I love the original.

    SHOW ME HOW YOU SUCK A GUY'S COCK.
  • Why is it that its all the old guys making the crazy trippy super original movies?
  • I really like your jab at Fantastic Mr. Fox for no reason. The poor film, going around with no trailer, fighting constantly against negative questioning from people like you.
  • Jerome
    No kidding. Maybe Mr. Fox is debuting in October because it won't be ready by the first week of September.
  • RussFischer
    There's a difference between a jab and a question.

    And since Mr. Fox has been test-screened, the idea that it won't be ready in time for Venice isn't my first thought. (Not that test screening means by any stretch that it is ready.)
  • doctorfumanchu
    The trailer looks beyond bonkers.
  • I don't follow your logic. Because Wes Anderson was appreciated in Venice previously, the fact that he's not taking his new film there should lead us to wonder if it's any good? That's just silly.

    TIFF is looking pretty fun this year, with the new Coen movie, Valhalla Rising, and now this. Midnight Madness looks a bit disappointing, but I'm getting too old to be up that late anyway.
  • Saladinho
    I'm usually against remakes of good films, but in this case, I never could get into the original Bad lieutenant, but with Herzog and Cage involved, I'm definitely looking forward to the new version.
  • AntoBlueberry
    As last year, we'll see basically the same movies in Toronto and Venice.
    Strangely enough, there's an Italian movie that will be shown in Toronto and not in Venice.
    Renato De Maria's "Front Line (La prima linea", a movie about a left wing terrorist in the early 80s Italy.
  • Are you going to both?
  • AntoBlueberry
    No, I'm going to Venice and then to the Rome festival after some weeks.
  • bennybrady
    At this point, casting Cage is .5% better than getting The Arnold to do it. This is either Cage's people saying "DAMMIT! we need to get him in a good movie TODAY. Have you seen how many of us are in his entourage and the lease is up on my Merc??" OR, its' Hertzog's people going, "Hey, did you know that people make shit movies? No seriously, they do... we should get ol' Verne to make one... for sport, like how Ridley Scott does sometimes."
  • stefaniacastelli
    I watched the movie one hour ago here in Venice.
    Jeez, guy. I think the worst one from the creativeness of Mr. Herzog.

    A junk policeman (Nicholas Cage) modeled with a rarefied, unshaped psychology, with showered violence rented from some cheap "B" movies and an overall, final message "catholethical" and old-fashioned, anti-Yankees flavored.

    Despite the tons of prescript-ed medicines citations (Vicodin, Oxycontin, Dilaudid....) and assumptions plus the not legal meds (Heroin, Cocaine, hydrochloride and basified) taken orally, by nose, smoked, the Bad Lieutenant, talking and behaving like any street junk, become socially stronger and successful, yearly rewarded with career advancement....

    An annoying junkies drama with no thrill and no message.

    Neither a minimum effort to embrace this "second choice plot" with a clear, social commitment as a real attach to prohibition and its social putrefactive actions or the need to put on top of emergence priorities the drugs law reform and definitively send the DEAs and the Reagans/Dubya philosophy to the horrors cellar....

    With a bitter mouth, very nervous and full of delusion, I left the Theater to get an hot dog and wash out the feelings, hoping in Michael Moore’s cure of tomorrow….
  • um ummm
  • see it !!
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