David reporting from TIFF in spirit though I'm an ocean away in person. Ron Howard's Rush premiered at the festival last night, but I got a sneak peek on my own shores so Nat didn't have to. Turns out, he might want to anyway...

Motor racing is a peculiar sport. Dangerous (formerly deadly even), impulsive and isolated, it’s often more about the beauty of the machines than the drivers for fans. Seeing the flash of the sleek cars go past is about all spectators actually present will do – the whole picture can only come across on screen. It’s less a sport than a spectacle.

Brühl & Howard on the setThis is what makes it, perhaps, an ideal subject for cinema, although it’s been far less exploited than most sports have over the past sixty years. Senna, Asif Kapadia’s 2010 documentary, thrillingly reproduced the story of its eponymous driver from archive footage, focusing particularly on his rivalry with fellow driver Alain Prost. It’s a similar competitive rivalry that drives Ron Howard’s latest blockbuster, the rather obviously titled Rush, which rewinds the F1 clock a little further to the 1970s. [more...]