TORONTO — Make no mistake, Sony Pictures Classics is on the warpath. Sony’s New York-based art film unit has sometimes been content to sweep up Oscar nominations and awards in the foreign language film or documentary categories. Films like “Searching for Sugar Man” and “Incendies” were distributed by the classics unit.
But this year, Sony’s small-films outfit has obviously large ambitions. At the unit’s annual dinner party here on Saturday, company representatives were privately predicting as many as three best picture nominees.
Which three of its nine or so seasonal films is anyone’s guess, but the list is sure to include “Foxcatcher,” which was introduced at the Cannes film festival, and is now being pushed as an all-around awards contender. The movie, about a real-life wrestling-based misadventure, features Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in lead roles — and both were beamingly present at the Sony dinner on Saturday.
Strikingly, the Sony Pictures Classics dinner, always held at Crème Brasserie in Toronto during the city’s annual film festival, and formerly an informal affair, has become a full-blown awards campaign event. It even has its own red carpet walk, which is remarkable, as Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, co-chiefs of the unity, have prided themselves on running an operation so austere, one wondered if their executive offices actually had carpet.
But they poured on the glitter this year, welcoming stars like J. K. Simmons, from “Whiplash” and Vanessa Redgrave and Mark Ruffalo, both from “Foxcatcher.”
Pictures on Sony’s wish-list include the period drama “Mr. Turner,” the documentary “Red Army,” and Zhang Yimou’s Cultural Revolution tear-jerker, “Coming Home.”
While Messrs. Barker and Bernard mixed it up with the stars, Cameron Bailey, artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival, was about mile and a half south at the Shangri-La Hotel. There, Warner Brothers was throwing a bash for itself and its associates. As of 8 p.m., the Warner party lacked the glitter of the Barker-Bernard affair. But it had Mr. Bailey, whose new policy of reserving the first four days of Toronto’s festival for films that had not played elsewhere in North America –especially the Telluride Film Festival — left room for some new movies, including “The Judge,” from Warner Brothers, and “The Drop” from Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Mr. Bailey was exiting just as we arrived. Maybe he was headed for Sony’s party — but that would have been a brave move, as Mr. Bernard has been the most vocal among those who oppose the new policy for limiting the options of already seen contenders like “Foxcatcher.”