Best of the Fests: AFI Fest 2008

An "unfinished version" of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt (the religious drama based on his Tony Award winning play and starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams) will open the American Film Institute's AFI Fest 2008 tonight. The last minute change is due to Paramount pulling The Soloist (Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.) from the lineup since they have rescheduled it to open next spring.

The Soloist is just one of several high profile films that are being shifted to 2009 (and thus out of this year's awards races), such as Crossing Over (Harrison Ford and Sean Penn), The Road (Viggo Mortensen) and Shanghai (John Cusack), not to mention the oft-delayed Fanboys.


One film that will sneak in under the wire is Edward Zwick's Defiance (starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell), which closes AFI Fest on November 9. The Holocaust drama (watch the trailer here) will have a limited run starting December 31 (thereby just barely qualifying it for potential future gold) and then open wide January 16.

And speaking of awards and Doubt, it has been revealed that Philip Seymour Hoffman will be shooting for a Supporting Actor nomination for the film. This will put him in direct competition yet again with Heath Ledger, pretty much a sure thing at this point for his Joker in The Dark Knight.