Attention all Joshua Tree fans: a U2 documentary is scheduled to open TIFF 2011

TIFF officials announced yesterday that 360 From the Sky Down, Davis Guggenheim’s documentary about bleeding-heart rockers U2, will be opening this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. It’s the first time in the festival’s 36-year history that a documentary is getting the opening time slot, so why U2? Guggenheim, who also directed An Inconvenient Truth, believes that “U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction” and says the documentary “asks the question, why?” We can’t help but compare this approach to Carl Wilson’s similar why-asking in his book Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, a project that left us actually siding with Celine Dion, the author’s maligned subject. We’re eager to see what Guggenheim uncovers with his documentary, and whether we might feel the same kind of emotional tug from some ballsy filmmaking as we did from Wilson’s nuanced, multi-layered writing. But frankly, if it’s even a fraction better than last year’s opening film Score: a Hockey Musical, it’ll be a victory (albeit, a small one).

• U2 documentary to open Toronto Film Festival [Telegraph]

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