NOT A lot of people know this (1): What do actors Mack Sennett, Ruby Keeler, Marie Dressler, Raymond Massey, Raymond Burr, Yvonne De Carlo, Norma Shearer and Colleen Dewhurst have in common? They spent most of their lives working in the US, but all of them were Canadian.
Since not even many Canadians know this, the Toronto festival is presenting one-minute films on each of the eight actors, along with one on director Claude Jutra. These vignettes are showing under the umbrella title Screen Legends before the gala screenings at the festival this year.
The pride of the Irish Times
Not a lot of people know this (2): Deborah Moggach, who wrote the screenplay adaptation of the new Pride & Prejudice, once covered the Cannes Film Festival for The Irish Times during an interregnum in the paper's film critics back in the 1980s. A novelist whose books include Tulip Fever and Porky, Moggach has scripted several TV miniseries, among them Google Eyes and Love in a Cold Climate. Pride & Prejudice, which had its international launch at Toronto last Sunday, goes on Irish release today
A poet & the world knows it
Even tough guys have their sensitive, creative sides. Firmly associated with playing morally bankrupt characters in movies since his ear-slicing Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs, Michael Madsen revealed another facet of his personality when he turned up wearing his poet's hat in Toronto on Monday night for a book launch of The Complete Poetic Works of Michael Madsen, Volume 1: 1995-2005.
The following night, Natural Born Killers star Woody Harrelson came to Toronto to launch his book, How to Go Further: A Guide to Simple Organic Living, in which he encourages people to "walk on the earth with a lighter footprint".
Cillian catches the red eye
Cillian Murphy had less than 48 hours to spend in Toronto for the world premiere of Breakfast on Pluto, in which he gives an extraordinary performance as a young Irish transvestite. This is because he's busy in London shooting Danny Boyle's new movie, Sunshine, with Chris Evans and Michelle Yeoh. He says he welcomed the extra space on his London-Toronto flight as the seat next to him was empty - not entirely surprising given the fate that befalls the Rachel McAdams character when Murphy's character sits next to her on an airplane in the current hit thriller, Red Eye.
Big names appear for Cohen
Bono has been ubiquitous in Toronto this week: in the audience at the premiere of Breakfast on Pluto; on stage, for four arena shows that sold out months ago; and on screen in the festival presentation of the new documentary, Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. Directed by Lian Lunson, with Mel Gibson as one of its executive producers, the movie was shot mostly at a Cohen tribute concert in Australia.
It opens with I'm Your Man performed by Nick Cave - who is doubling as screenwriter at the festival with an Australian outback western, The Proposition, starring Guy Pearce - and includes Beth Orton and Jarvis Cocker in a duet for Death of a Ladies' Man, Martha Wainwright singing The Traitor, and brother Rufus performing three Cohen songs, among them Hallelujah.
In a segment shot at the Slipper Room in Manhattan, U2 act as backing band for Cohen as he performs Tower of Song.
Twinkle, twinkle
A story circulating at Toronto this week, and one that's quite possibly apocryphal but amusing nonetheless, is that even celebs are asked to fill in a questionnaire supplied by the festival guest office. The word is that Liza Minnelli - in Toronto this week to introduce a special screening of Bob Fosse's 1972 TV special, Liza with a Z - listed her occupation as "Star".
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